Welau'r bydd ffordd eich llyn ar y gadew i gael yma yn y g Forbes.  Felly yma'r gweithio'n gwybodaeth ar gyfer amser maen nhw i'n eu pethau ar y Gwynhau. Roedd gwaith ymlaen i'r Gowdd ac mae nhw'r eich gweithio i gael y gweithio ar y gair, artist Harold of Fay. First thing my name is Karen Thomas and I'm community officer for Kettlejard in Cambridge. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Harold. I'm going to shortly introduce Harold and ask a few questions but as Rachel said please do you have a think about your own questions that you'd like to ask and submit them via the Q&A bottom at the bottom of your screen there. You might need to wiggle your mouse and it will appear in the toolbar so there'll be an opportunity to ask some of these at the end of our chat. So I've had the wonderful pleasure of working closely with Harold in 2017 when he was selected by communities in North Cambridge to be their third open house artist in residence with Kettlejard. He worked with Kettlejard and folks in our drinking hedges throughout the year exploring design and meaning inspired by the house and collection at Kettlejard. Harold of Fay is an artist living in South Cambridge and works nationally and internationally through a range of media including performance, video, photography, learning and social arts practice. He particularly explores historic narratives and contemporary culture. Recently Harold has worked with Tate Britain, Tate Modern, South London Gallery, Wising Arts Centre and Kettlejard. He's also worked in New York, France and Japan just to name a few. Additionally, very busy Harold currently teaches at universities in both Leeds and in London. So good afternoon and welcome Harold. Hey, hi Karen. It's really great to be here. Thanks to everyone for tuning in and yeah looking forward to the conversation. So I've given you a very very brief introduction. Perhaps you could tell us a little bit more about what inspires you to make art. Yeah, I mean I think, I mean I think the reason I'm an artist is that I'm sort of curious. I'm sort of really curious about the world and particularly curious about people and I think I realised, I was lucky enough to realise quite early on in school that doing art allowed you to explore questions. It allowed you to learn because it was very much about you like framing or posing questions and then finding ways of not necessarily answering them but exploring them, researching them and I think what I've increasingly found is that it's really interesting and useful to share those questions with other people and see what questions they have. So yeah. Curiosity is an important important thing I think for all of us. So that, so curiosity is what inspires you but then kind of thinking more about practical ways. How do you choose what media you then use to create your artwork? Like I don't know whether it's photography or film or performance. I mean that must be a really difficult decision. Yeah, I mean I think in some ways, you know, I mean different artists have different approaches, you know, some artists are very invested in materials, you know, whether they're working with like wood or bronze or obviously sort of paint and I think I've never sort of really been like that. I guess I've been more interested in situations and ideas and then often what comes out of that is an opportunity to work in a particular way. I mean I have sort of, sort of most often work with like photography and video and performance and often think about ways in which I might like role play things or test things out and I'm interested in like photography and documenting and portraiture. But yeah, I mean other projects have allowed me to, for example, you know explore ceramics and make objects. I mean that was one of the things we did as part of Open House, which I'm sure we'll talk about later, which is sort of Cattles Yard initiative that allowed me to work with communities in North Cambridge. So that was a really exciting opportunity to kind of sort of, you know, do something like that and there are occasions where I make sculptures and I've worked with textiles. So I really enjoy the variety. The variety is really important for me. Does that kind of keep it fresh for you then? Like a new challenge of working with a different material? Yeah, definitely, definitely. I think that freshness is really important. And sometimes I've just sort of found that it can be useful as well. Like what I don't know can be useful. So yeah, so definitely doing the kind of, you know, Open House, like being able to do like ceramics, which, you know, I mean I did at school and I always enjoyed but I don't really get a chance to kind of, you know, really make ceramics or glaze things. So that idea of shared learning is really important to me where I'm often sort of working with people that, you know, might have skill or we're together. We've never done it before and it's like a leveler, which is, I think, really important. So really interesting. So you've kind of mentioned your residency with Cattles Yard through the Open House programme but you've also undertaken residencies at Wising Arts Centre. So how does working in Cambridge inspire you? That's a good question. I mean, I think, I mean, I've been living in Cambridge and now just in South Cambridge here for, it's coming up, it'll be seven years in February and it's gone quite quickly. And I think what, I mean, I came from London and I think what I've been really heartened by is just the kind of like diversity and variety of people and places and situations that, you know, that's here in a relatively sort of small area. And I think I've been really lucky through, particularly through these residencies with Cattles Yard and Wising Arts Centre, in that they've become platforms for me to meet some of the most extraordinary people, you know, and organisations as well. So I think I feel like I'm really privileged in that I've got, had these amazing experiences and insights into individual people's stories or histories, people who are working in really interesting ways, often who've come from very different divergence or backgrounds. It's like a very rich place, actually, sort of culturally, you know. Yeah, so that's been really inspiring and continues to be as well, yeah. So is there, I mean, without naming names, are there particular people that you've met through those residencies or moments in those residencies that stand out for you? I mean, I think, I mean, definitely, I think a stand out moment was the kind of outcome of my residency with Open House in Cattles Yard, where we sort of staged this like gathering festival at North Cambridge Academy. And that brought together, I think, lots of the organisations and individuals that we've been working with. And I think just because it was just a big platform and there were so many people, you know, I think I was really sort of taken aback. I mean, there's an organisation called Rowan that we worked with. It was just amazing. And I don't know, one of the things I was sort of a bit sad about is that I kind of, you know, maybe I should just, I just, you know, the project was really great over, I mean, it was nine months, I think, or maybe even two, I don't remember, but I mean, looking back on it now, I was quite sure and I really enjoyed those kind of conversations, regular conversations that kind of came about and being sort of like feeling a little bit part of these existing communities. But yeah, oh God, I mean, there's so many. I'm not mentioning, I mean, there's loads of just even individual people as well, they're really just generous with their time and sort of just relaying their own experiences and stuff. Yeah, I could go on. My enduring memory of the Open House gathering is, of course, the amazing artworks. There was lots and lots of food, which was delicious that people bought and shared. Delicious bread that was being made by another artist, Anna Brownstead. But it was also really rainy. And all of these people came out and were so excited to share everything that they've made with Harold through that year, despite torrential rain. No, it was kind of classic because we had this amazing marquee. So everyone was like, huddled in this life marquee during the writing. I don't know, something very British about that. Huddled in a marquee while it's like really pouring outside. But in some ways, I think it brought people together. It was really great. I mean, Eddie from Cambridge African Network as well really supported that project. We had some great Ghanaian performers as well, which was a real highlight for me on top of the food as well. Yeah, so that was a really great experience. Yeah, it was such a celebration. So thank you. People come together in adversity, don't they? So recently, through another project with Kettlejad, you've been sharing your reflections from home, which is a project Kettlejad have invited artists to kind of share their experiences of working from home. And in that, you talk about creating photographs in your garden during lockdown and a strand of your practice which concerns the politics of posing and the visibility of the black body. And I believe this is something you'll be bringing to us at Kettlejad in January as part of their forthcoming exhibition, Untitled. Could you tell us a little bit more about that? Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, this is a really like long ongoing project that I've been doing over 10 years, in 2008, sort of where I've been really interested in looking at album covers in particular and how like sort of black performers, black singers are using the album cover to represent themselves through the photography, through the album artwork. And particularly looking back at this period of the 70s and 80s, where there's like a sort of, for me, like a heightened consciousness about it might be sort of black power or black pride or celebration or assertiveness. There's an opportunity to really think about how these performers are presenting themselves to audiences through these poses, particularly how do they pose and what does that mean? And so the series sort of started out by looking at, you know, singers like Grace Jones, mostly kind of like, it was mostly women to be with and soul singers. And the series that we're showing at Kettlejad is those series of female singers from soul disco genres. And then more recently through, I mean, maybe this is an opportunity to just very quickly share. Just so people have a bit of a reference, hopefully people can see this. Yeah, most recently it's turned to this series of album covers that I found of like 80s male soul singers. So this is Teddy Pendergrass. I miss album cover. I'm just really interested in like how, you know, particularly at this period, singers like Lionel Richie, Michael Jackson, I mean, this is a kind of bigger spread, but they're all adopting the same pose, which is this reclining pose. So it's an image of sort of black men trying to kind of project through these album covers, these photographs, something about their identity. Obviously album covers are to promote music and to draw people to the music, but it's interesting when this similar pose I think is kind of used. So I've been just really interested in what, you know, this pose says about like, you know, blackness and masculinity. And for me it's often, it's very 80s, you know, in this idea of kind of being sophisticated and relaxed. And it's about, you know, a certain kind of power. For me it's interesting the pose in art history. Western art history has a kind of long, you know, you'll see like Roman sculptures of reclining figures or Renaissance paintings, or, you know, even like Henry Moore sculptures. So it's a kind of power pose. And then what I did on the residency at Wising, so these are just photographs of me at Wising, which is a sort of rural setting just outside of Cambridge, is just like re-enacting these poses and presenting them in like, you know, different locations in the countryside and seeing how it changes it to kind of like put it in a different, slightly different kind of context. And then just very lastly, what I've also been doing as well at various opportunities is inviting other people is extending the conversation to like perform the pose. So working with a good friend and collaborator of mine, Eloise Calandria, we set up this studio just with a backdrop and we're inviting different people to kind of like perform this Teddy Pendergrass pose and interpret it. So we've got like this collection of different people kind of performing these poses. So yes, just some small photographs. It's so amazing. It's so interesting them doing the same pose, but some of their participants look super comfortable and relaxed and then other ones look so tense and uncertain. How did you feel doing that pose? I think what the particularly that Teddy Pendergrass pose is that it sort of looks like really relaxed because that whole thing about lying down is you're like chill now and you know being in control, but it's really uncomfortable because it's slightly awkward the way that he crosses his leg over the other leg and then this whole thing about doing that and the elbow. So it's not actually that comfortable to do, but I guess I was interested in like repeating it over and over again and seeing how it works when you put it in slightly unusual spaces or like you know yeah. So I mean and then obviously yeah I'm really interested in how other people have interpreted it and yeah some people being really uncomfortable. I should I should just say that they chose to do we had like three or four poses and people could choose which ones I wanted to do so it was not me asking them to do that against my will. Yeah, I think some people are quite surprised or less uncomfortable. The leg thing I just look at you do I thought oh that's actually very high up the leg that you're kind of crossing over. I don't know if I have to add it to the yoga pose. I mean it's kind of just like lots of stretching. It might not be able to get out of it again, that's what you're worried about. It's not something you want to do on the sofa for a while though. No. So clearly like from the images that you've shown us, collaboration interaction is a really important part of your practice but so how have you managed to do that when we're all being asked to be physically distant from each other? Is that still possible? It is, I mean it's difficult. I mean I think it's I think like everyone else and I'm sure you feel the same. You sort of it's made me realise the kind of you know the kind of quality of like being in the same space and sharing the immediacy of being in that same space as other people but yeah I mean I think what's happened is obviously like everyone else it's kind of been replaced by conversations like we're having now over Zoom and other platforms and I think that's been interesting actually because it's it's been a space where you're able to be a bit more kind of reflective perhaps and obviously you know with the various kind of lockdowns people have been really thinking about their situations and and that's sometimes led to I think hopefully more intimate or open kind of conversations about how we're kind of feeling. So yeah a bit of that has sort of transferred and I mean I've had a few projects that have been kind of postponed but they've been replaced by sort of conversations which have been really productive actually and there's been lots of sharing and exchanging of knowledge and references which is a really good thing. And is that with other artists or with the public or a mix? A mix, yeah a mix which has been really good you know and I guess one thing about even like working with sort of audiences and the public is that in some of the projects actually we've been able to bring people together who wouldn't necessarily be able you know like from different locations so people in different cities or we've been able to kind of sort of bring them together through this, through things like Zoom. Yeah so that's been a kind of upshot, a minor one but you know it's been good. Yeah I know actually you think this time last year you were over in Japan and that was my first experience of doing a remote event because you were leading a performance at Kettilwshad as part of the Cambridge show then and it was really interesting it was a steep learning curve and now it's like second nature that we're all kind of linked together through the internet and art is happening in this way and creativity is happening in this way and conversations are happening in this way and it's really exciting and you were there ahead of us. Just a reminder to everybody at home that you can submit questions via the Q&A so just tap on the toggle bar at the bottom you can tap away and we'll get round to asking those very shortly. I've got a couple of other questions Harold so I know that you've taught before that you've been really heartened by the discussion of decolonisation and sharing resources and readings in light of the Black Lives Matter movement and I know our partners at South Canyon Bishop District Council have also recommended readings and other resources as part of Black History Month. Are there any particular works which you would recommend to others to read and watch? Ah, give me if I'm just going into the... I've just acquired, I haven't actually properly started reading it but somebody recommended to me if I'll hold on. I might have to turn my background off because you're not going to say. No you're not going to say, anyway. It's a beautiful was sharing though. I'm not actually hiding it.  Okay yeah so this book which hold on if people can see is called Decolonising the Camera Photography in Racial Time by Mark Seeley who's a really great writer curator and the book is kind of really looking at like the history of photography in relation to depictions of the Black Body, depictions of Black people through portraiture thinking about that and also thinking about how artists then have I so thought about kind of representing, you know, what does it mean to be photographed as a Black subject, you know? So I really recommend that and there's some really good, you know, like historical references to thinking about things like kind of colonial photography but then also thinking about kind of like early Black photographers as well who are kind of sort of taking control of kind of sort of image making. Sorry I wasn't planning this as well and this is also a really great book by this Marlion photographer from Mali called Malik Sederbe who was a studio photographer in the 60s and 70s so in Bamako in Mali he was sort of taking photographs of kind of sort of, you know, you know, people out dancing, you know, groups of friends, you know, even people sort of just kind of sort of swimming so it's a real kind of like amazing kind of depiction of sort of like every day. I love this one, people doing the twist, holding up a James Brown album. Yeah just kind of a really kind of great insight into kind of these West African, oh this is a brilliant one of like these performers with these flares. Oh my gosh, sorry. And I think, I mean, you know, while that is not explicitly about it's interesting Malik Sederbe is actually this generation of photographers that were depicting decolonised Africa so in that immediate period when African countries were becoming independent so for me there's an important thing about recognising these practices I think that emerged in the post-colonial period as well and unfortunately Malik Sederbe just very recently died but you know into his 80s he's beginning to kind of be recognised for this kind of rich documentary photography so we have this amazing archive I think of kind of images and I mean there are other lots of other photographers as well. I think that for me is also kind of part about the visibility, part of the decolonising project is about the visibility of these kind of performers and voices that have sort of like presented. The beautiful images, thank you for sharing to get on and on the bookstore line and have a look. Thank you. So we've had a few questions being shared and do keep on sharing. We've had one from Adele, Adele asks or says social arts is on the rise particularly through the pandemic or the pandemic has made us rediscover or refined the artistic self. How do you think social arts and arts as performance has changed since March and will it continue to change during these ongoing stop-starts periods of uncertainty? That's a really great question and sometimes I think it's slightly too early to say. I mean obviously the very obvious change that's happened is that you know it's been more difficult to have these shared space, physical kind of spaces and things have become sort of more mediated through like you know technology and video calls. But I think in some ways I think, I mean I can't answer this in two ways because I think there's an open question about how like social arts and performance arts will kind of go on at the moment as a bit of a kind of hybrid or there has been depending on you know the exact nature of the kind of lockdowns and you know over the summer as we opened up a bit there was a bit more kind of physical face-to-face interactions and now sadly obviously that's kind of retreating a little bit but and I suspect that will continue as long as we're in this uncertain period. But I think for me what's interesting is how like what interesting I say obviously it's coming out of a very difficult problematic time but is just how the everyday now is a bit like performance art in terms of like I mean I think about like every time I go into boots or a shop you know this this idea of like you're very aware of your obviously for safety reasons but in a way there's a kind of weird performance and choreography of that you're really aware of what does it mean to be in proximity to other people and I think that's going to be a legacy really in terms of um really thinking about our relationships to other people um and and I mean I hope it will mean we have a great appreciation about the things that we've been kind of denied and there's a kind of more of a value about what it means to be in in spaces with people or socialising with people um and we yeah we really kind of value and appreciate the worth of those things. Yeah I think that's really important and I know something that's been discussed a lot not only in in arts practice but also in kind of socials and social aspects and in community engagement as well so that kind of value of coming together and shared experiences. Um we've got another question from Liz and Liz says thank you lovely to see you and here you talk about your work um you talked about freshness and shared learning within your practice and wondered if or how you've managed to continue that in lockdown um is there anything you would recommend to see watch listen to do online that you've been inspired by during lockdown? Oh that's a good question um lovely to hear from you Liz I hope you're well um uh oh that's yeah gosh um I'm sure like lots of people I've been down sort of these like wormholes of kind of sort of research I just can't make up any right then what a top mind um I mean I've been looking a lot um just because I'm various projects that I've been researching at um I've been looking at this sort of like dance marathons um and histories of sort of like um yeah sort of people kind of coming together and dancing often in relation to kind of like causes though like you know HIV fundraising or but even more obscure like in the 30s like depression era sort of dance marathons um and I know that there've been some online dance parties as well which has been interesting like um so that idea of you know um like yeah DJ zoom calls where like one person is like the DJ and everyone's you know zooming in and everyone sort of dance up so I've been really interested in that as a kind of sort of like um social space for sharing I think that's been yeah it's been kind of super interesting yeah yeah I know I'm kind of thinking about works Christmas parties and stuff and they're going to be some dancing happening remotely I think it might be I hope not but yeah I hope not see it um so we've got another question um from Joanna or Johanna sorry if I've got the pronunciation wrong there um so they're asking about the pose that you used um in the motif in your latest project that you touched on and that you saw it as a manifestation of black identity particularly for males during the 80s what's your interpretation of that and what do you think the photographers or performers of this pose were trying to communicate and there is a like a follow-up question to that so I'll let you kind of digest that um did you feel you were communicating that same message when you yourself performed the pose in various settings it's a great question so I'm going to quickly answer Liz's question because I've just thought of stuff that I have I'm sorry okay which is I've been listening to a lot of um contemporary jazz music but there's a whole amazing generation of new jazz artists um black british female uh trumpeters so um I'd really recommend this great band called coca roco um and they formed a part of the virtual proms this year might be still an eye player but yeah I definitely recommend people check them out and they're the UK british jazz scene some people aren't up maybe put up by jazz but it's really funky it's a mixture of like afro b and high life as well as like you know kind of contemporary r&b as well it's really great um so definitely check out the UK british jazz scene and coca roco um so yeah back to back to johanna or johanna's question um it is um what do you think photographers and performers um it's a good question I mean I think um I guess you're asking what's at stake with these kind of poses and these sort of performances really what's um I mean A there's a kind of just an initial thing about um like how what does it mean to present yourself in a particular way um I think it's very difficult to kind of divorce it from the kind of context so I think you know those album covers that I'm looking at are very much coming out of the kind of politics of the 80s um and I think the artist choosing to adopt those poses is to do with like the politics of the 80s so so you know people like Billy Ocean or Lionel Richie and Michael Jackson they all represent like in in like popular music they're like crossover artists so like coming out of like um black genres like r&b and soul and reggae and and inter pop culture so I think they're adopting these poses that are often about being sophisticated and loungy is about I think often about them appealing to white audiences if I'm being honest is about them um so it's a particular strategy and so I think my idea about re-adopting these poses is to think about what does that mean now and what does and by I think when you represent something I hate the way of acknowledging or quoting history but it's also a way of thinking about how that history operates now for me amazing thank you so much Harold um so I thank you everybody for sharing their questions they're so thoughtful and considered so thank you um I so you meant we had a little chat before and you've mentioned another project you've you've got going on um that anyone can get involved with involving a spaceship so do you want to tell us a little bit more about that yeah I'm um I'm working with an organisation called bold tendencies who commission artists to make sculptures um that are cited on this multi-storey car park in Peckham in southeast London and every summer they have this kind of like free open sculpture park from May till September um obviously this year it was curbed quite heavily and um the project that I was doing was postponed um till next summer uh but I am going to be um building a replica of a spaceship by a musician called Sunra who's a uh who was an American jazz musician kind of known as the godfather of afrofuturism um and he made this like amazing film called space is the place in the 70s and it features this spaceship where which he lands um in um so I'm going to sort of make a scale model of that and and sort of Sunra was this kind of predictor of the future really thinking about like alternative futures of blackness and thinking about sci-fi and space as this kind of imaginative place um so I'm asking people to to think about predictions for the future um and you can submit um that as a recording an audio recording something that you might speak to it could be music if you make music it could be it could be a postcard um and you can submit that or you can make a small video um and then this big model of the Sunra spaceship is actually just going to be a big speaker we're going to play out um a mix tape soundtrack and then there'll be events where we'll be kind of like showing some of the images that have been produced so I think um and yeah if you go to kind of uh bold tendencies.com website there's information about the open call um and what you'll need to do um but yeah I mean for me it's about also the conversation about thinking you know it's been a very difficult year and I think there's a lot of questioning about what what we want to see hopefully and I do believe that we'll be at some point an end to you know the kind of current pandemic but what what do we actually want to come out of that what do we see what do we hope for the future um so yeah it's an invitation for people to speculate about the future and people can be as playful as people want as well so you know um yeah yeah humor and playfulness is very much part of your practice I know that absolutely but I think we're all curious about what the future might bring so um I'm definitely going to get my my thinking cap on and and have a go at submitting something to that so thank you um thank you so much Harold for your time um I also wanted to say thank you to Rachel and everybody at South Cambridge District Council for enabling this to take place today um also thank you to Eddie and everybody at Cambridge African Network for inviting us at Kettlejad to support their programme of events um thank you Harold so much for your time and talking to us today um as I mentioned at the start you can see Harold and his work is part of and untitled art on the conditions of our time which opens at Kettlejad on the 16th of January in 2021 so something to look forward to after Christmas um and other than that thank you everybody so much for joining us today and it will um share some of the links with um Rachel and the team at Southcown so perhaps they can also share that through social media um but thank you once again Harold for your time and we'll see you all soon thank you thanks Karen thanks everyone thank you so much thank you


Thank you very much, I appreciate it. Good morning. Thank you very much. Good morning. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you very much.


Hello, everyone. Good evening. Ross here at Teacher Toolkit. Costs of living, energy prices, if you're watching here in the UK, the mini-budget, times are tough financially for people personally and for our schools professionally. In times of financial challenge, many multi-academy trusts and schools are likely to cut areas of discretionary spending. A staff wellbeing budget is sometimes the first to be cut, but research suggests successful organisations do the complete opposite. Evidence demonstrates that you can reduce costs and improve your financial performance, your pupil outcomes, as well as your staff retention. This session this evening is pitched for school and college and multi-academy trust leaders. We've had a number of people sign up. I'm going to show you where people have signed up in a moment and I'm going to introduce Mark Solomon. Solomon is the founder of WellBe, a great tool, a very affordable tool actually to help you more strategically manage your staff wellbeing culture. In this session, so I'm currently live streaming to people through my YouTube channel, on Twitter and on LinkedIn. So if you are logged into one of those platforms, you can leave a comment and interact, post some questions on the screen. So I'll just leave a comment here and just show you how that will be displayed. So here is my hello message on the screen there is in the bottom corner. So log in to LinkedIn, Twitter or YouTube and let me know where you're watching from. So we've got a few people watching live. I'm going to put up some statistics and see how many people have signed up. One or two will be watching this recorded, I'm sure. And let me know. So let's just start off with where are most people watching from. So if I just get this map up here, ticket holders for this session that have expressed an interest. We've got a couple of people over in the Middle East, but if we just zoom in over to the UK and we zoom in, we've got a few attendees, one or two from Northern Ireland, but the vast majority here from England. So if that's you, this is exactly what we are hoping to share with you tonight and talk to you about some of these issues that we face in the current climate. We're going to talk about the evidence behind improving staff well-being, how staff well-being can be a central to your people strategy, what's well-being, why use it. So I'll talk about my experiences well-being and where to start and then what to focus on in terms of how you can align your school values with the Department for Education staff well-being charter. So I am going to just take my screen off here and I am going to introduce you everyone to Mark. So Mark, good evening. Good evening. Thanks for having me, Ross. And welcome to everybody from at least we can say globally, although you've said most people from England, but welcome to everyone wherever you are. And I always feel a bit guilty talking about well-being at seven o'clock at night. Yes. It should be off, but Ross has assured me to when people can find time. So you find people to tune in. Mark, can I get you to just introduce yourself, you know, your background, why you got interested in staff well-being and let's add a third question. What is well-being? So who are you? Yeah, I know. So I've worked with schools for the last 10, 12 years. I did have a first career, actually, which was you can all do a little bit retail banking. Didn't get any of the bonuses that anybody talks about these days, although, you know, I was retail director of the Soldiers Bank, but really fascinated in culture, because I had people from three different organisations working with me nationally and they always stuck with me. And I got into education by helping to set up a national charity that took Olympians into schools as part of the 2012 games. And then over the last few years since then, I've been really supporting thousands of school leaders, hundreds of schools, really around culture and leadership. And then in 2016, and welcome to our guests in Northern Ireland, working with 17 schools around Belfast, the idea of well-being kind of was born out of working with schools and seeing a survey there. And this realisation that if we want to deliver the best outcomes for our students, there's only one real way to do it. And yet it is about whole-school well-being, but actually the starting point is staff, because if they don't come in at work, they don't have the resources, they don't feel good in themselves, they don't have the right support, then how can we expect them to deliver the outcomes for young people? So really I've worked, founded well-being 2013 and I've worked tirelessly with schools and my team to really help them understand, I guess, how to put staff first and what the best approach is. Okay, so we'll unpick what well-being is and we'll have a look at it in a moment. Could I start off with the tricky question about staff well-being evidence, I suppose, in the current climate where we've got increasing costs for everybody, the recruitment crisis in England is getting worse, it's harder to retain teachers, the numbers of applications are declining. What's the evidence suggest from your perspective in terms of improving people's outcomes, improving staff retention budgets or reducing what you spend on advertising, for example, and generally the data that you gather, so I know your software which we'll look at later, gathers well-being data from across a large number of organisations and that gives you a kind of macro overview of the issues, but give us the kind of evidence that you're aware of. Yeah, so there's limited evidence in the schools but much more evidence in business and the health sector and I'll share some more, some of that and if anybody's interested, I've got it all written down so I'm not going to give links now but I'd be very happy to share through Rosso directly with anybody where this evidence comes from and of course it's quite natural in times of high stress and financial stress that people tend to protect what they've got and cut that discretionary spend but I guess the first bit of evidence, really I'm going to talk about is the impact it has on results and the first major piece of evidence research in the education sector goes back to 2007 with Burbeck College and Work Life Support around 800 schools overall and both in the primary and the secondary sectors and they found a statistically significant link between staff's self-reported well-being and improvements in SACs and GCSE scores and also value-added improvement. The challenge they found though was could they really prove it was causal so it's statistically significant but actually the debate still came that maybe staff well-being was better because the performance of students was better as opposed to performance students got better because staff well-being was better so there was still some doubt around that but they were very excited with the researchers because they thought what they showed was it was actually easier to improve some performance of these young people through improving well-being than it was in many of the strategies that schools deployed. Last year though in 2021 the School Development Trust did an overview of over 30 papers really pulling together the researchers out there and came up and said actually they tentatively believe that they could prove a causal effect between the impact of the quality of teachers working conditions and well-being and that it had a clear and consistent relationship with student attainment and I think for all of those of us that work in education just intuitively it is kind of obvious that if people go to work feeling well if they enjoy what they do if they feel supported it's highly likely that what they deliver is going to be better and as a result the people they're delivering it to are obviously going to get a better outcome and result. The evidence I often like and what it comes from the King's Fund is around the health service where there has been much more research into staff self-reported well-being and the impact it has and a wide number of studies have shown its link with multiple outcomes. So those outcomes cover staff absenteeism so I guess people have lower absences significant reductions in turnover reductions in staff cover spend so when we could get I guess in the education when it was easy to get cover we wouldn't need it as much. In patient satisfaction in patient infections and mortality rates so we could actually put a direct link between staff self-reported well-being and the mortality of patients so I guess next time you look at a book in your hospital don't just look at the consultant but maybe look at the staff well-being scores because it could have a material outcome on how you get through what you've mentioned Mark so just for people watching we're streaming live on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube you can post comments and post them to myself or Mark we're going to have a chat we're going to show you some slides we're going to show you a bit of software along the way Mark I was familiar with that piece of research that you first quoted published 2007 or something like that yeah 2007 and for me getting interested in well-being it was one of the first piece of research that actually suggested look these happy skills can get happy outcomes in certain ways and I guess the research is much more in abundance now and I guess why we're here is to think how can school leaders do it more strategically beyond you know that Google anonymous survey which is where well-being comes in and we'll get to that point I guess my question is you've got this phrase people's strategy what do you mean by that? Yeah just before I jump into that I think that one other thing we ought to just say is we didn't talk about it as an associated cost because that's what we're one of the things we're talking about because it's as I said it's natural here for people to think about spending money or not spending money but it hasn't been that much up to date but if we look back at some government own statistics and information from our school back from 2016-17 it was easy to predict that schools from a small school around 20,000 to bigger schools way over a hundred thousand pounds and in some cases three, four hundred thousand pounds of cost was being wasted on things like recruitment on I remember spending a hundred thousand pound one academic year on cover alone So clearly there are some direct cash benefits from getting this right in terms of immediate reduction and so the natural thing is and it's the same in business in many ways when you look at businesses people stop spending on marketing and they stop spending on training but actually the smart leaders do exactly the opposite because actually that's the best way to get the market share and get their message out there and in some ways for schools it's kind of the same you know this is the time when staff need the most support and you need the best retention and it's a time to really stand out so in many ways the smart leaders do the opposite this is a time to spend on this area and not just become the employer of choice but we are sadly in a competitive marketplace now although we all educators want to work together ultimately you know you're looking after your own match your own school you want to make sure that those people that work for you and particularly the talented people do not leave so it's about how do you what are the things you put in place and people's strategy in developing them is one way of doing that and interesting there was a creation of school trusts report out just just back in June July we're a recognised supplier of theirs and you know that showed that 81% of the larger trusts that's 20 schools plus this was their number one priority for this coming year and even 50% of smaller trusts those below and even the very small trusts were saying it was their number one priority so a lot of people were talking about it but only about a quarter had had something in place and the rest was saying well this coming year 22-23 was when they were going to really focus on this I'll come back to this well I'll just cover this slide in terms of staff wellbeing and then we'll jump on to people's strategy the key thing in terms of putting staff wellbeing at centre is to think about where you want to start and we'll come on to that again at the end but really a lot of schools when they're looking at staff wellbeing or they're looking at being an employer of choice are starting what I call hygiene factors really which are you know the perks the treats and kind of activities that wellbeing day discounts, shopping things I see all the time now, life cover all the things that actually just become a hygiene factor they also look to provide training things like resilience, mindfulness there's nothing wrong with any of these but really putting staff wellbeing at the centre is really about your culture so it's actually about how do you create a culture where people really want to be there and that's really about the behaviours, the assistance support and how that ties into your values and your vision and by values it's the behaviours that underpin them so can your staff resilience and people articulate what we see every day in order to deliver those values and so that's what we mean by putting wellbeing at the centre it's the culture and what we mean by people's strategy and it'd be great while we're talking about this if people can in comments or maybe opportunity to do a poll or something just to say who out there has got a people's strategy but people's strategy is about having a plan and that plan covers all these areas around the employment life cycle so how do we attract how do we recruit and onboard how do we manage the performance so that people are performing well how do we develop people how do we then retain and if people do leave because it's inevitable some people will whether that's hopefully the end of a long career when they're ready for proper retirement rather than early retirement or escaping or perhaps they do go for promotion and you don't have those vacancies although it's maths particularly those geographically well placed this should be less of an option if you manage that well across the map is this strategy yours or is it inspired by a bit of research or some reference I'm going to add one bit to this which is ours but actually this seven sequence of an employment life cycle and what makes up people strategy is well researched organisations particularly in business have been doing it for decades and there are many schools that are doing this often people talk about attracting recruiting and retaining and they don't always talk about all the pieces that make up but it is really about how you develop a plan to build a reputation where actually people hear about you so they want to come to your school how do you track them how does your recruitment process stand out differently I mean if you go to a test or even some digital ones and you look at different job adverts you can often kind of move them around and it wouldn't make any difference really it's a school so I guess it's how do you demonstrate that you are that difference from others on board them and I deliberately use the word on boarding often we still use induction in education but on boarding is induction sounds like a good call yeah on boarding is the business term Mark we're 18 minutes in and I'm conscious we're talking about Welby which is a great resource and we haven't really showed anybody let me just finish this side then we'll move on to Welby so I'm just going to say and often within this when we look at development we talk about talent and succession and obviously it's helping people to say well how do we develop the right people and how do we know if we've got the right people to develop and then how do we plan the replacements harder to do at a single school in a way but as Matt's become bigger and more professional this should be something that's kind of sitting at the key and the bit that we added to this and I've called it Welby is really the day-to-day activities the behaviors of leaders we refer to 12 competencies proven to prevent and reduce staff stress again I can share information but every day there are moments of truth where leaders mix with staff and things happen where if you can get those rights through the behaviors it can make a massive difference to the daily well-being and the culture and again feeding to all these bits and just before I get into the Welby if anybody's interested in the key thing you might have seen the nine grid box in terms of talent management and succession planning but obviously one way is to review and measure people's performance and put them into these boxes so you know who your talent are so you know who your people that need some support are very easy to do one of the things, one of my partner companies has a tech solution for this and I'm interested again in saying well how can we actually measure this because it's so hard, particularly because hundreds or thousands of people there are ways of doing that so let me just very quickly bring you on to Welby then so what Welby's about really is helping do some of the things I've talked about which is professionalizing and systemizing how you go about managing staff well-being and the key point is that start how do we know where we are now you can come to us, we've got a survey it's just one of the starting points but of course there's lots of things happening in your mat school, college setting that you can use without doing a survey to say actually let me understand about my well-being your staff retention and turn over your absences where you've got grievances doing exit interviews so when people leave but of course also doing stay interviews which is something I've mentioned with Ross before about actually asking questions of staff and particularly your talented staff about what's going to keep them in your school what do they like about it what do you need to do more of are all things that you can do to measure and keep people before you move on to kind of a more professional survey platform but what we do is we provide a measurement simple online platform on the left you can see our dashboard effectively we use the health and safety executives indicated tools so it's a recognised measure in the new staff well-being charter so you can have a consistent measurement each time you do it I'm going to look at some comments coming in and I want to ask the hard part I suppose is this I've used well I know it's fantastic software so people might be looking at this for the first time new and a topic why we're here costs of living and things like that how would this data not only improve staff morale but how would it help save me money as a scale so what we do as well as measuring it and I need to track to give that starting point we suggest and recommend action so we help you pinpoint those areas that are likely to be needing the greatest support and as a result you can take action to improve culture to support those staff that need it clearly making them less likely to be absent from school making them more likely to to stay you know the bits you can see and they're not going to kind of help you think about where those challenges are with your own mat and we also provide a toolkit which again provides you with well-being foundations but also some courses and training that you can share with leaders and give them an opportunity to understand those behaviours that if they deliver each day and have some training around those that are effectively kind of help them so the survey is an important part and that measurement is an important part and the tracking is really important commitment in 11 of the staff well-being charter but actually the most important thing is what happens afterwards so we're heavily focused on how do we help you take action as opposed to what often happens when you do it yourself with surveys as well as having to take all that time to run it and spending obviously money on doing that and then doing your own analysis often you run out of time or energy or aren't quite sure where to focus for action so really it's about us helping you identify where you really need to put your energy and effort and clearly that reduces your workload also through filters and things like that we can pinpoint the staff groups so you're not doing it to all teachers for instance or all support staff you might just be able to focus on particular groups of teachers or particular staff and so you can really hopefully lift up performance but as I said all our recommendations are really about culture so we won't see discriminating yoga even though there's nothing wrong with yoga obviously once you've done the yoga if you're not happy with your job nothing changes so everything we do is around leadership and culture so make a change to your policies, behaviour curriculum whatever it would be you can track the changes inside as long as your questions are the same between each survey you can track the changes so we use the health and safety executive tool just for that because it is evidence built it's been independently evaluated staff wellbeing charter we know people like to use their own questions so we have added the ability to add a few of your own however we've locked down the 35 questions you can't change those that's the core of our survey it's probably what differentiates us from most others and sometimes we lose we lose custom promise because people do want to create their own surveys and change data sets but I go look if you're going to track you've got to use the same questions in essence we get connected you help the school get set up we start the initial survey we might target groups of staff or all staff and then we start to gather the data the other key thing that we've got in our platform as well is the ability to click the staff comment and respond to them so you can have two way anonymous go back to the slide that had all the different boxes and arrows I think it was tough that one there so you went too far one too far Mark's controlling the slides tonight ladies and gentlemen that one yes that one so if we just kind of do a little whistle stop tour of what's on this screen for people so what's the top left we've got the progress so that's all the different topics all these colors represent different so they're the seven management well there's six management standards but they're the seven scores plus the additional questions score because the management standard for support is split into manager support and peer support so these are health and safety not ours they're health and safety executive management standards those have done stress risk assessments or those from the HR groups may well recognize these every employer five or more staff is supposed to have management standards in place you don't have to use the health and safety executive ones but why wouldn't you and for those that don't know the health and safety executive they're usually the ones that people hear about with accidents but you've probably heard more about them because they also managed all the covid security of workplaces as well so boxes on the screen the ones to the right-hand side the management standards is it so which are we looking at the red and greens the red and greens on the right-hand side that's heat maps so that effectively is taking scores from different filters and showing you they so if you look at the ones on the left they're the overall scores for the school in those management standards ones on the right are heat maps that show specific groups of staff scores in the same areas so you're breaking those overall scores down for the school or the maps into individual ones and those filters can be you can create your own so they're effectively you can have do your maths teams we do protect anonymity so you can only report if five or more in any particular group take part so people can respond to each other anonymous inside isn't is that yeah so people leaders can respond to staff that have taken surveys and provided comments anonymously that's great if you know you've probably all had that survey where somebody says communication is poor and that's it and so you can now go back and say okay thank you for sharing but what about communication but what ideas have you got or maybe you just want to thank people for taking part in giving you nice comments and occasionally we obviously have those comments nobody wants maybe it's about bullying harassment or it's about diversity inclusion equity and you want to perhaps respond and say look that's not what we expect here here's the policies and procedures but please break anonymity come and see me and even if they don't you can at least follow up with it's nothing new so I guess people watching live again comments in the chat books please we're streaming live to Twitter YouTube and LinkedIn and we're going to circulate lots of links and codes for you people that have signed up some QR codes at the end with some resources I guess a critical question then from me tonight is cost of living energy prices etc given that you have a large number of schools now using your software in a macro level you can I guess map which schools are managing well being really well can we dig a bit deeper do you have an idea of if schools that are managing well being better than others have a healthier budget for example well I think it is quite difficult because obviously so much goes into budget in terms of what a school gets in the first place of where it is I think one of the things I can say in terms of a lot of our schools do well and I think that's often inevitable isn't it you often find that the people that come and find you who are interested in this often are doing perhaps better they understand the benefits of it we've just started to track actually and look at working with some of our customers about can we track the attention of their things because it's in early days because a lot of schools and places don't actually track it as well as they might so it's not easy to get that information so this is my perception and my opinion but clearly we've seen the evidence and I think clearly schools that lead well that have a good culture where people want to be staff do stay there longer they don't want to leave and usually leave only because of promotion if there's no vacancies so I think intuitively and I guess most of the people watching I hope would agree that intuitively if you create a culture where people want to be and can do their best work then it's highly likely that things like minor absences and various other bits are likely to be less because people are likely to be healthier, get less ill face less stress but also they want to go stay there so you know you're going to face the likelihood of less recruitment costs as well Could you take us through maybe a couple more slides Mark so everyone watching we're halfway through we're probably going to wrap things up earlier than scheduled but we're just going to talk you through some kind of key things to help from well be how you can use it to help your retention, raise results and Mark's going to have a couple of QR codes and how you can get connected with them and we can go back and look at the people strategy I'll jump back to that as well just to give a couple of ideas around what some of our I suggest or what some of our good customers are perhaps doing I've kind of covered that I'm not going to cover that but those are some of our key benefits and I will have for you as I said we said to people we'd start with we'd also say where to start and the staff wellbeing charter I've always already given a clue that really that starting point is around those leadership behaviours and culture and if we look at the staff wellbeing charter so whether you've signed up to it or you're thinking about it the purpose of signing up is to use it to support what you're doing both in terms of publicly declaring it but actually it can't be a tick box exercise so you shouldn't do it so you can just tell people you really do need to think about how you're going to use it and which areas to focus on and again you know in typical fashion when we've got heavy workload schools you know let's produce a charter within 11 commitments and although it does have the DFE commits and the offset commitments the biggest number or the highest number clearly for schools so I'm going to suggest the three that you might want to kind of look at commitments and this is the leadership team that should focus on these I think to start with the first three there's four you should look at but the first three I think are three and ten together which is about looking after yourself the leaders obviously the the oxygen mask in the plane is a well used kind of similar you know but it's true isn't it that you have to look after yourself if you know if you're burnt out in no fit state how can you look after us and that includes middle leaders and so if we look at our well-being scores particularly around demands it is leaders particularly middle leaders but also senior leaders that give the lowest scores of any and yet we need them to be in the healthiest position and it's a factor of our sector isn't it one of the few having had two careers 23 years in retail banking and now 12 in education now I can very much see the differences and I've worked with a lot of other sectors as well before I kind of finished in education and one of the biggest differences of leaders is how is the lack of capacity and lack of time they're given I remember when I came out of being a cashier and kind of moving up as part of my training out very quickly you didn't have to keep going back to do things as you led up more and more of your time so 80, 90% of your time was as a leader and your job was to help develop and deliver the performance through others not also to do your job and clearly a lot of training programs in business in particular to live a graduate another training more effectively because people are given time they're not quite as timetabled there is more capacity so a lot of reasons why it is harder and also why our smart leaders we need to think a little bit differently and say well how can we support but use your platform and gather that data I would suspect they are number 11 on the screen measuring staff well being and working smarter or are many on a journey still no I think a lot of people are still on a journey I think it's inevitable how hard it is and the sheer workload that does go on because even our high scoring schools there is still workload what they do is they do help staff understand that actually you can only do well you can only do what you can do and therefore it is about being smart it is about working efficiently it is about accepting you'll not get everything done so when you get to the end of the day you don't have to carry that over you just pick it up in the morning but you are quite right anybody using us is covered under number 11 automatically because our major is recognising the staff well being chartered because it's the health and safety executives not ours so that will automatically kind of go yet on meeting commitment in 11 the resources we provide in the toolkit are very much aimed at 3 and 10 which is how do we help people understand those behaviours that will lower stress in the school and other staff and what are some of the training like coaching and other bits that we deliver the one I haven't highlighted that will be next will be number two which is about giving staff the support they need to take responsibility Mark just for clarity just in case people watching live so this is England's Department for Education staff well being chartered 2021 I think it was 2021 May 2021 that's quite pretty recent you know a few schools are getting to grips with this now obviously challenging circumstances for everyone here in England and I do see recognised now on a number of maps pages when they look at they've often got a well being link or staff benefits link and often they are now starting to mention the staff well being chartered I think as in a person in charge of the strategy or person driving as in they've signed up to it what I've seen in some schools now is they're starting to have a well being committee recommended not a member of the SLT on the team so it's a bit more of an honest transparent process that feeds into leadership I mean it's fine not to have a member of the SLT as long as it has decision making and sometimes not having SLT it's not highly effective but they can also become talking shots so it's how do you make sure if you're going to do things but you are right people are appointing people as to leading I guess the other thing I've seen on my travels is a well being budget that's protected which has helped that committee take some actions Mark I'm conscious of time we've got another slide you want to put on I've got an offer for people and some resources but let's just come back to this Remind people watching live leave your comments on the device that you're watching the platform and then they'll come on my side and I can put these on the screen for Mark to respond to Mark people's strategy yeah so again it's just getting people to think about this whole area because if you think about I'll start with recruitment I didn't want to give a couple practical thoughts that are different some people love these, some people go that'll never work, we can't do that there's no time but one of the things as I said is how do you stand out how do you look different to all the other schools when people are kind of applying to you and I guess one thing is to think about what goes into your recruitment pack what are you going to say that is a bit different to someone else so it can't just be about the perks and benefits but why would they want to do and there's one my customers for instance has got genuinely asked staff who want to and they've made a load of videos about what it's like to work in this school, in this trust I'm kind of using those out there but again if you're going to recruit people one of my pet hates and I understand why it is but from whatever sector it is I always get frustrated when people say from a application point of view if we don't get back to you there's no feedback yeah no that's not acceptable but everybody does it and they say to me about the volumes yeah it's not good and I go but you're missing a massive opportunity to stand out and with technology these days I was losing teaching numbers yeah and just one quick quick thought and you might love it you might hate it and technology but somebody's got to check the application form anyway so you don't just look at the name and put it down you read what people said therefore if somebody's got to do that just get them to note down one good thing they see and get them to note out the main reason why it was applied and then if you make a note of those two things and then anybody using a tool just as simple as loom or anything can jump on there and make a 45 minute sorry 45 minute 45 seconds 60 second quick video to say hi quick email thanks so much for applying really love this about the application this is one sounds like a bit of hard work but that ripple effect of giving somebody quick imagine sending that and the impact on that school I didn't get the job but I feel like I did and I'm going to tell everybody in my school about this wonderful it's thinking like that and also when you appoint people think about they joined my school the day I've appointed them not when they turn the first day so how do I keep them interested how do I get them to my culture and on day one it's not about a one week a day one induction or a week one it's kind of year one, year two how do policies live out and we can run that all the way all the way through Mark give us the QR codes for people watching they've been waiting a long time I'll give you the QR codes first and then QR code please people watching live scan the screens please Mark tell us what each of the QR codes the first one I showed you a tech example of the nine grid box but actually for free and if you don't want to pay for a tech example it's much easier on there I've put together an example of a talent management succession planning process where you can literally fill in use the questions and fill in your own box and take you through for a whole process of how you put people into grids etc the second one is for people who want to measure perhaps they don't want to pay or they want to see it's kind of everything you ever wanted to know about running a staff wellbeing one in the middle why you should do it and then the other one just looks at from attraction to retention it's a kind of a partner to the DIY and angry box just looking at some of the things that are kind of there that you might do so they're all kind of things that fit into a people's strategy it's not a complete picture but I'm hoping they'll give people some real value and so there you go loads of great resources and do you have a special discount for people that if people want to come and have a conversation you know hey the first thing we're going to make sure as well is a fit for you so it is for a lot of schools but maybe it isn't you know you've got to be able to take action not just talk about action you've got to be able to get all the decision makers bought in you know often we find HR directors and others but they can't always get it past the CFO or the CEO etc but we're always happy to talk give a demo but also give free advice as we do so what we've done actually is and it's difficult you can go to our website wellbeing.co.uk 1L and look at pricing it's all transparent we don't hide you can see a number of people if you're a map you can get a bit extra off there depending on the size of your map so don't think that's it just there and that's not because maps and resources are special obviously you're all special it's just because if we get a group of schools together it doesn't cost as much to market and it doesn't cost as much to bring on so why shouldn't we pass on that saving for people so when I've been working with the Conferential School Trust for example and everybody seems to be doing the real problem so what we thought do you know what why don't we give people certainty of this year's premium and next so it's a better way than saying it's half price because it really is half price but we're not going to make you pay the two years up front we're going to let you pay half now half next year so effectively you're getting two years premiums for one and as it says it includes Tomlin's report you never tied in with us because you know if you didn't like it and I'm sure you would and you actually if you don't like it the first time the money back guarantee as well we've had that since we started because we believe we want people to love what we do and if they don't then nobody's ever claimed on it the key question I've got here on my screen I'm going to boot your the actual price page on your website here so good value really affordable I see a lot of edtech products in my life as a teacher blogger costing thousands and thousands of some cases for schools and Mark and Welby make things very affordable and if you can get logged in and gather that data then you can start to really tackle the highest price for an individual school without this offer would be 11.97 with a premium obviously you get that half that price at the moment you get that half each year so I think we're doing our bit to help in the cost but if you didn't get back what you invested with us in 12 months then you're not implementing stuff and you're doing something wrong there's a lot of folks on the screen quote teacher toolkit email market support at Welby wellby.co.uk I'm going to put all these in the links to people that have signed up if you're watching this recorded also while we're on the screens Mark I've got the blog that I wrote on your site when I had a look at your software and we called it stop guessing in the dark we do surveys we don't really religiously gather the data so that's a blog on teacher talk that I've written that's ported over to Welby so where we can talk about how we evidence this we've got a landing page there is that a separate landing page to this evening so that's if you want you can self select and just go and buy it but I wouldn't do that at the moment because if you did that you wouldn't get my offer so it comes with your teaching tool and then that slide there if you do that by mistake we'll sort you out don't worry but obviously we'd love to see you my suggestion though is because we want to make sure it is right for you is come and have a demo in 30 minutes we'll whizz you through the live platform we'll take you through the things we'll talk to you about what are you doing in your school or mat at the moment we'll make sure we are the right fit for most schools we are and most mats we are but hey sometimes it's not the right time for people or they've got so much other things going on if you can't devote the time after you've run the first bit perhaps you might want to wait six months so we want to help schools that want to help themselves so once this isn't a done for you service we make this as easy to do it for yourself I found a great phrase the other day from an edtech client who said to me we're not PC world where you go and get the computer and you've got to get on with it yourself a lot of companies a lot of good supplies and education should not only give you the product but help you show you how to use it longer term and I guess a good way to finish mark as Welby does that for for schools we do and you get 12 months remote support thrown in so whilst we don't expect you to jump on a video call every week saying what next we hope you'll do it clearly I mean our renewal rates over 90% and I think that says a lot don't renew it because they're waiting a bit for Covid came Mark are you on the spot and asking for a concluding word of wisdom in the current climate of energy price rises the mini budget costs a living you know things happening in Ukraine and all sorts of the pressures that all teachers and school leaders in particular face running our schools here in England any words of wisdom put you on the spot I'll do my best well I think the key thing is you know there is a lot going on but we have to focus on what we can control not what we can't control and we have to do the opposite to what most people naturally do in times of recession and crisis which is to focus in on those things and spend on those things that are going to have the biggest impact long term and that for me is your staff your employees across you know where that's your mat your school and effectively making sure more of them if not all of them stay with you through this difficult time and you know that's kind of our mission is how do we help more people you know put more money back in their budget whilst improving improved pupil outcomes and student outcomes all through putting their staff first becoming an employer of choice and a place where people really want to work and skipping to work with a smile on their face every day so a very fitting way to end I won't add any other words of wisdom I think people have heard enough from me in other places so I'm going to leave things there tonight everyone that's watched live thank you people watching this recorded circulated with all the links and the offers take a look you've got nothing to lose Mark thank you for your time thank you for your work thank you so much special thank you to everybody after a hard day in schools taking some time out tonight to watch us and I hope we've shared something that has some value and some interest for you and whether it's you know to have a look at or if you've just got any questions people's strategy on well-being I'm really happy to just fire them in and I'll come back to you individually and answer any questions you've got so there you go fitting way to end I'll leave that up on there Mark thanks very much I'll speak to you soon thank you everyone bye for now take care bye bye


We are on the steps of City Hall, where students have turned out in protest of a proposed bill that would add additional regulations to group living accommodations. The proposed regulations are likely to have serious impacts on students living in fraternities, sororities and co-ops. We are out here today speaking to some of the students who are going to voice their opinions to City Council against the bill. We brought a huge group of students out to oppose the group living accommodations bill, so we see a lot of issue with some of some of the things the bill is trying to combat, and we're all here to just talk about how we feel about it. I know that there's people in the Greek system and in the student population as a whole at Berkeley that are passionate about this, and we have been trying to make change, like implementing a law to try and make it happen right away. It's not the right way to do things. It's not as effective, and I think the best way to go about this is to have students fight for students. Included in the regulations are limitations on large gatherings, increased regulations on underage drinking, required neighbor notifications for gatherings over 50 people, and the addition of a responsible resident.  If someone is sexually assaulted at a party, that house can be declared a public nuisance, which actually would discourage sex assault survivors because they will be discouraged from reporting over fears of being accused of trying to shut down a house. I would say that a lot of students, and I can't speak for all, but feel that it's just an unnecessary piece of legislation that is trying to do things that we're already doing on our own, but in a way that's not probably the most productive manner. Keep on coming to the City Council and write letters, write emails to the City Council members of not only the districts that go where they live, but also districts of the City Council members that aren't in their areas that are very opposed to the bill. If we get as much support and reach out to these City Council members, I feel like then maybe they would alter a word, deny this bill.


Hi and how are you all today? I am Priyanka and let us discuss this question. It says in the expansion of 1 plus a raised to the power m plus n prove that coefficients of a raised to the power m and a raised to the power n are equal. Now to proceed on with the solution we should be well versed with the expansion of a plus b raised to the power n. Here the r plus one-eth term is written as n c r a raised to the power n minus r b raised to the power r isn't it? Now the expansion of this binomial expansion is the key idea of our question. Let us proceed on with our solution. Now here we are given the binomial expansion for 1 plus a raised to the power m plus n. Now if you compare it with the key idea that we just discussed, we can find out the coefficient of a raised to the power m by knowing first of all m plus one-eth term that will be equal to m plus n as it is the n of the expression given to us c r over here is m a raised to the power here a is one n minus r then b raised to the power that is a over here r that is discussed as m. So here the b given to us is a further m plus n c m one raised to the power n as m will get cancelled out a raised to the power m which can further be written as m plus n c m m raised to the power n will give us one which can be neglected over here a raised to the power n. Now with whatever expansion that we have done we can know that this will be the coefficient of a raised to the power m hence here we can write down it as m plus n c m let this be the first equation. Similarly we need to find out the coefficient of a raised to the power n following the same procedure here we will find out t n plus one-eth term that will be m plus n c n as r is n over here a raised to the power n minus r n is m plus n and r is n a raised to the power n solving it these two terms will get cancelled further it can be written as m plus n c n one raised to the power m will be one only multiplied by a raised to the power n so here now here the coefficient of a raised to the power n will be m plus n c n isn't it so here we can write down it as m plus n c n let this be the second equation further now here we need to prove was that the coefficient of a raised to the power m is equal to coefficient of a raised to the power m this was the thing which was needed to be proved now in the above from one and two we can write down the coefficient of a raised to the power m that is m plus n c m m plus n c n further now we know that we can write this as m plus n factorial divided by m factorial n factorial similarly this can be written as m plus n factorial divided by m factorial n factorial so this proves that the coefficient of a raised to the power m and coefficient of a raised to the power n are equal so this ends our session have we proved the thing that was given to us I hope you enjoyed this session do remember the general term for r plus one-th term and you will be able to prove anything that you want I hope you enjoy take care