Since 2013, Scottish Leaders’ Forum has sponsored a stream of work called ‘Skilled Workers, Skilled Citizens‘.

Our focus has been on discovering what happens when teams in public service organisations put human relationships – rather than bureaucratic processes – at the heart of our ways of working. We have described this as a shift from a ‘deficit’ to ‘assets’ way of seeing, being and doing: we are interested in building on positive stories of what works in the transformation of public services.

We have looked out for a big diversity of experiences. This isn’t about ‘rolling out’ a ‘one size all’ approach.

Instead, we’re paying attention to and appreciating our differences – whilst at the same time noticing common threads where these call out to be noticed.

In our first two years, Skilled Workers Skilled Citizens pioneer sites have produced films, shared material, and hosted events where our wider community (or movement) has heard first hand from people who are directly involved – as citizens and workers.

We’ve decided the time is now right to draw out some of those threads.

Our intention is that by doing this we can in some way serve a wider movement that is transforming public service in Scotland and beyond towards genuinely creating more resilient, socially just and ecologically sustainable communities.

The purpose of this blog is to:

– showcase what we’ve done so far in pioneer sites;

– draw out common threads;

– engage with ideas and insights from elsewhere to help test and strengthen our practice and thinking; and

– help us develop and share material that others might find helpful – in Scotland and beyond.

We’re using the ‘wordpress’ blog platform – that can allow many people to be co-authors.

If you’re up for contributing, get in touch.

Looking forward to seeing how this blogging experiment unfolds…

Nick Wilding,

Scottish Government for Skilled Workers, Skilled Citizens collaboration