Do you ever get blank stares and confused faces when you try to explain what you do? Well, in this episode, you're going to learn how to turn those blank stares into a haas. Here's the guess for this episode. Let the show begin. Hi, I'm Leon Hovenation. This is the service design show and this is episode 103. Hi, I'm Mark and welcome to the service design show. Here on this show, we empower you with the most effective skills and strategies so you can design services that win the hearts of people and business. And the guest of this episode knows exactly how to do that. Leon Hovenation is a business designer, business strategist, but he started out in the craft space of design as a visual artist, a graphic artist. In this episode, he shares his journey, his transformation and the challenges he had to overcome to actually get to the point where he is. We'll be talking about identity. We'll be talking about how to get accepted as a hybrid, somebody who's both from the design space and the business space. How do you get people to understand what it is that you actually do and the value that you bring? I think a thing we in the service design community still struggle a lot with. And by the end of this episode, if you remember one thing from this episode, it will be the power of the phrase, show me what you do. Remember that phrase. If you're looking for inspiring stories and practical advice that will help to make you a better service designer, make sure you click that subscribe button and that bell icon because we bring a new video at least once a week here on this channel. So that's it for the intro. And now let's quickly jump into the chat with Leon Hovenation. Welcome to the show, Leon. Thank you, Mark. Thanks for having me here. Awesome to have you on. It's going to be a great story. This is the prototype of the new service design show format. So I'm excited to see how this turns out. Leon, for the people who don't know who you are, could you give like a brief introduction? Sure. I'm Leon Hovenation. I'm an innovation strategist. I work at the intersection of business strategy, human-centered design, technology. And in that intersection, there's a lot that happens. I spend a lot of my time doing service design, innovation strategy, the fuzzy front end, where to play, how to win, all the way down to launching new services in market that are either physical, digital and everything in between. I think we're going to talk a lot about identity so I'll leave it a little bit. We will, yeah, yeah. So this question, to give an introduction, it's already like a challenging one. We have a new section here in the show, Leon, which is a 60-second rapid fire to get to know a little bit more about you. Are you ready to do it? I have to cheat the first time. Are you ready? I'm ready, let's do it. Let's do it, let's do it. What's the thing that's always in your fridge? Almond milk. Almond milk. Which books are you reading right now? I have been endlessly picking up and putting down good strategy, bad strategy. What superpower would you like to have? Which what? Superpower. Oh, man, I am a huge science fiction, comic book, superhero fan. You can't ask me that question. If I had the pick one, I think it would be infinite knowledge. Infinite knowledge, awesome. And this one, what did you want to become when you were a kid? What did you want to become? Oh, wow. I think my earliest memory what I wanted to become when I was a kid was a Disney animator. I wanted to draw the Disney animations. Yeah, that was the earliest. Final question. And then the 60 seconds will be over. What is your first memory of service design? My first memory of service design was taking a service design course in my graduate program, which to me did not feel distinctly different than anything else I had been doing. And I was waiting to do the service blueprint and I didn't do it. And that was my first encounter of what is service design trying to define it. Cool, thanks for this introduction. I'll try to add more questions to the list for future episodes. Leon, we had a little bit of preparation for this chat and this is going to be about your journey. And let's start this journey with the destination. So where are you heading? Could you paint us a little bit? The picture of your final destination? Yeah, that's a great question, especially for me. And so far, my destination is, as we've talked about, trying to stitch and knit together all of the experiences that I've been that I've had in design and strategy, consulting the business world, the social sector, nonprofit and figure out how to be a effective design leader without losing the design along the way of becoming a leader, which is tough. And I know others are struggling with this and I'm trying to figure that out as I'm moving in that direction. So how would you say the final state looks? What is the ideal? What is the dream situation? Yeah, the dream situation is tough because I see examples or exemplars or heroes out there who might be close to it, but I haven't quite found the perfect fit for that. So I think the example is a truly design-led culture, a truly design-led organization that does all the things that we talk about design without having to substitute it for other things along the way, right? So there are great examples of design leaders who have reached the top of organizations, businesses and they sometimes just blend into tapestry. So how do we keep that unique little thread? They compromise, yeah, exactly.  Take us back to the moment where this journey started. When did you get interested in this topic? When did it become relevant for you? Yeah, so way back, I started off in the world of design. I think what is sometimes unfortunate called design with a lowercase d. I think the design that we practice is designed with the uppercase d. I don't know if you've heard this. It comes from the external world trying to bucket what we do. But that is more traditional design as craft. Traditional design is connected to art, right? Visual communication, drawing, making. And I discovered early on that I was a bit of a hybrid person that I had more to bring to the table than just my craft or being a hired gun who could draw really well. And it's been a blessing and a sin since I was little that I could draw really well, better than most. If you put me in any room, I was always the best drawer. And it was just something I did, I enjoyed. It wasn't a thing to showcase. It also wasn't a tool to professionalize, right? I just enjoyed doing it. And I think as we've talked about, people would always say, oh, but you're also so smart. And it made me think are people who are creative, not smart in your mind, those tensions are interesting. And I think I began to discover that I could do more than just provide my craft and provide my thinking. And so hence, design thinking at another term, which I'm not particularly fond of, that sometimes I get bucketed under. So I decided I'd rather lend my thinking than my output as a crafter tool. Yeah, or at least both would be nice, I guess, right? Yeah. So what do you feel is at stake here? Why is this important to you? Why is this important is identity is a big deal. I think that's the theme. And being hybrid is a big deal. So a little bit personal about me. I'm really a hybrid person in that I do this design thing. I also do this business strategy thing. I've got depth and credibility in both. But as a person, I'm a hybrid person, right? People always ask, oh, your name, where are you from? What's your background?  She was born in Cuba, moved to the US and she was a little girl. My dad is Armenian, so I have that name. So I'm this hybrid person who has these two distinct backgrounds. And then people want to ask me about either. I'm like, you know, I'm both, but I'm either. I'm something new and it's tough, it's tough. And I feel the same is an inflection point with design. You know, design is not the things that have come before. When I meet people who have no idea what I do, they say, oh, so you like interior design? You go, no, no, no, it's not that. And then you're in the business world, they take another presumption. So I have to craft a new identity and others I think are like me in that space. Yeah, that's always challenging. Like if you're defining a new category rather than, I don't know, sort of describing an old category with a different twist. It, that's like, I feel that that's the point you're making. It's like, it's not a different old category with a new twist, but by blending two things together it becomes something new. And then you have to, there's a lot of explanation to do. Exactly. And I find that I function for a long time as a business designer and strategist. That's yet another fuzzy territory that we could possibly talk about. But I have found when I'm doing that work with strategy, with clients and my coworkers, I find the tools that I use and the thinking that I use is not distinctly different from traditional strategies. Where to play, how to win, right? That kind of approach and tools they would use, we just use it in a slightly different way, a more effective way that makes them go, oh, wow. Like two questions here. Why do you feel that we aren't in this situation yet that you described where we have fully designed that organizations without compromise? Like what are the things, first could you describe the gap between that situation and right now and what is the big struggle for us? The big struggle is a lot of it is cultural. So, and there are some examples of design-led organizations that I think are a few that are making an impact like Airbnb, right? And this is a great company that I feel strongly about because it arose from my graduate, sorry, my undergrad. There was a couple of Rhode Island School of Design grads who went out there and maintained their ethos all the way up. Even in this COVID time, they had to release a bunch of people and I don't know if you noticed that the CEO, Brian Chesky, wrote a very heartfelt empathetic message that has resonated throughout the business community saying this is what empathy looks like. So we as designers in the business world are synonymous with empathy and maintaining that empathy to answer your question is hard when you get to the top of that system because it's business and business is not always empathetic, right? That's not the heritage of business. That's not the way we think about business. Exactly and I think we, exactly. And I think maintaining that empathy like you might see an Airbnb in other companies is rare and doesn't happen often because of the constraints and pressures. It's cultural is the answer. There are a lot of pressures there with people who think differently and it's hard to shift that. Yeah, mental models, things that have become ingrained in education, in news, right? That's, I'm curious. Yeah, you have so much experience and you've worked with so many people.  Yeah, so the challenges are when you make these leaps over these gaps and chasms in your life when you're shifting from one thing to the next. It can be a career level. It can be a discipline level. It can be within design. So we know a lot of people who start off as an industrial designer. I see a lot in your show they become a service designer. A graphic designer becomes this. In my case, I started off on the visual communication side as an illustrator, right? So my pedigree was going down storyboarding and comic books and they found out- That was your career path, the destined career path. Early on, early on, yeah. And then people keep telling me how important storytelling is in business. I said, I've been telling, that's my job as a storyteller but how do you not just become the storyteller? So I find the gap is bringing forward your skill, what makes you useful in that situation to work with others? But not getting pigeonholed in their mind by being able to do that one thing. And also not over-explaining. I'm guilty of over-explaining and keeping it simple is a big deal. And I think you demonstrate more with actions and with words sometimes. And you can tell them you can do this other thing but often just doing it. And they say, wow, can you show me how to do that? Then you're on the path of learning. And learning is the path of understanding and empathy. And empathy is the part of fabric of culture. So to dig into this point, you said it's about showing, not over-explaining at the start. Any examples or stories that you think were this, yeah, were this sort of demonstrated or materialized in your own practice? Yeah. So I was, as a business designer in my previous firm, so currently I'm an innovation strategist with Dublin, which has a tremendous heritage and innovation of obviously with the 10 types and whatnot. But before that, I was at Fjord and got to work with really amazing people including Robert Bow, who you've had on this show. And the space of business design, even in there was a bit murky. People would say, so even in the group we were at, what is business design? So I had to demonstrate what was business design and it meant having to roll up my sleeves and explain with models and examples and on projects demonstrate, this is how you frame the value. This is how you create a measurement strategy and bringing others in. So they say, oh, wow, so it's like this.  So it's literally having to sit down with people and walk them through it. Any examples of aha moments that happened both for you and the people you were explaining to? Because I guess you also must have had some enlightened moments that you were like, oh, if I show them this or if I explain it in that way, then it suddenly clicks. So I had piloted a workshop in my last firm, which was a business design 101 and it was an immersive half-day experience to show them what does it really, really do. And I think it was having to turn these things into tangible experiences. So people get very freaked out if you take them outside their swim lane. Please forgive the pun. If they haven't done service design, they're very confused. What is a blueprint? How do you make it happen? If they're service designers, they're very confused. What are you doing as a business designer? How does this work with us? So I think my experience in these sort of things like in a workshop is just make it tangible and real. So if we have a case study and it's this company and they wanna be this thing, what would you be doing as a service designer? They would explain and say, okay, so as a business designer, we're doing a very similar thing. We're working with you. We do this thing and we bring them over and we show how that connects the dots. I think the aha moment was turning it into more of a narrative and just getting away from the titles, right? It's no longer about the thing. It's just here's something you should be doing as well with me, but we could be doing it together. So it's from what I hear you're saying, it's grabbing a generic concept or a phrase and then actually giving it meaning. And you use the word narrative, building a story around it. It's a story that happens in somebody's head, right? Innovation, designer, it can mean anything, but let's build a shared understanding of what it is and is that how it worked for you? Very often, yes. What is the story that we're sharing around this that people can tell? And then it comes back around and you say, that sounds like the story I'd like to hear about what we're doing, let's say in business design. So how on projects, if we're working together and we're working to client, can we be the voice of the business in all the things we're doing, but be relentlessly human-centered? What does that look like? And they say, oh, okay, so you're part of what we're doing, absolutely. And then we go in and then we start giving the stories and examples. It's kind of like writing a value prop. Is it? Yeah. Why do you feel the way? So, that's a great example. Value propositions are often these tools of business that, well, let's let the business people craft them. But all we're doing is crafting a story. Why are we doing this? Who are the people that we'd like to work with? What value are we giving with them? And if we're doing this right, co-creating with them, how are we doing it? What, that's it. Yeah, which problems are we solving? Identify, maybe identifying the problem first and then pointing out that that's an area of expertise where people like you, I, us, collaborate to create solutions, something like that. You inspired me actually to remember a big part of what we would do if you're an innovation space or a strategist. I think services owners should be doing this who are in the strategic end is reframing the problem, right? An exciting part of what we do all the time. In certain organizations that might just be the domain of business design or an innovation strategist or a service strategist, right? That's a new title that differentiates from service design. Reframing the problem is exciting and it's instead of just diving into mapping it out, first let's flip the orthodoxy, right? If the problem is people are having a hard time getting access to food or meals, well, how do we flip that? How do we get the meals to come to them? Simple and it's like, well, okay, I haven't been thinking about that. Step one, and then what's the story around that? Step two, then step three, we can get in all the other stuff. Sure. If we go back to your journey and the quest for getting this new hybrid identity accepted as something unique and valuable. Any other challenges, stories that come to your mind, challenges that you had to overcome? How did you do it? Yeah, so from the context of professional life, it's you being associated with the front end of the problem and implementation are two separate identities. Service design is supposed to be this promise that bridges it, very difficult to have that identity to say I can reframe your problem, but I can also deliver something real and in market. And those two groups, whether it's in design, whether it's in business, whether it's in technology are usually very far apart and trying to bring them together has been a lot of talk about it. That's also becomes a cultural problem, like we said at the beginning, but is a very, very difficult thing to do. And once again, I come from a background of making things. I know how to make things and I have made things, both a little illustration or an entire digital service. You can also think about the problem. And do you, is one of the two ways harder? Like, is it harder to get accepted as a strategist coming from a craft background or is it harder to get accepted as somebody who's also doing implementation when you're seen as the strategy guide, girl? So as someone who does both and has done both, I think the reframe of your question is it's not, it's not harder to get accepted in. It's hard to get out, if that makes sense. So I have found, yeah, which of these two? Yeah, which of these two is harder? I honestly think that they are both equally hard in different ways. And I know it's a nuanced question because I think life is less about absolutes but more of shades of gray. Of course. But I think if you asked me in my experience, I actually believe, I used to think it was harder to move from the craft side, the delivery side, implementation side to the strategy side. And now that I'm firmly on the strategy side currently, I have found people raise an eyebrow and say, yeah, but can you actually make things real? And you go, oh God, it's back to the beginning, right? If you're a craft person who draws, what business do you have being in business? Once you get in business. So I think they both have their challenges but I would say from my point of view, right now shifting back to delivery of an implementation and creation right now for me feels a bit harder because people have their domains and they want to know they can trust you to make something. And have you been in a project or a situation where this was actually happening where a client was pushing you back on this? And if so, what did you do? Yes, I have. And the best thing to do, I think in those circumstances is to not over explain, keep it simple. And if you have that experience, walk them through what it looks like. And this is where collaboration and co-creation is so crucially important. I don't think it's always important for you to claim your identity at all times. So if you have another person in there who does that, then let them step up to bat and take that hit. Go ahead. Yeah, like how? The second person, what would they do? So working with people who are on the delivery side who create the digital technology, they're creative technologists, let's say, right? And for all intents and purposes, the only thing that the client sees in the moment is that title, they don't know them. They don't know what your history, I could have been that person if brought in at that moment, right? But you bring them in and you let them support the proposition and say, yeah, this can get built. First, let me open up my credentials. Let me show you my weapons.  Great, and then you send them out. And then I think as the conversation evolves, the trust gets there, they also see you as part of that journey. So you might need them to open the door for you. Yeah, so it is splitting out the roles into different characters is one of these, it's not even a strategy, it's really a tactical thing. And then maybe what at some point happens is that a client starts to see you as a team rather than individuals and then as a team who can do both strategy and delivery. Is that something that happens? Yes. Is that the transition? That is a transition. It's also a really great embodiment, I think of what I am tackling is because when you're being a design leader means really removing yourself from being siloed as part of these groups, you have to be able to be seen as all. And you have to be able to communicate with all of these groups and these individuals. So you have to bring the trust, the credibility, we also need to in yourself, except you know what, I can be all these things, but none of them. So how do I maintain that integrity and pave the way forward? So it is the teamwork and it's co-creation. It's the ability for, if not one person's gonna do this. Have you seen examples where this sort of gigantically failed? Where, I don't know, circumstances just prevented you from sort of putting forward this new hybrid identity? Yeah, so some circumstances around that is number one, the credibility issue. People wanna see certain things in your bulleted resume or whatever is ahead of you that qualifies you for that thing. And if you don't have that thing, if you can't demonstrate it, you're not gonna be able to do it. So that's on a personal level. I would say on sort of a team level, it breaks down when you, being a hybrid is great. You know, the famous T-shaped person, right? IDEO gave us this thing that we talked about for a long time. It works well, but there are certain areas that you don't have expertise as well.  Because I think if you do a lot of things, you also are in danger of feeling you could do everything. And you can't.  Yeah, well, yeah, I'm just curious if this is something really practical that people can actually do. And the thing is making a list of things where you're not good at. And just also stating that like, these are the challenges I can help you with, but don't call me for these challenges. Or I don't know, have a two by two matrix where you plot yourself in a one area and just say, okay, I'm really good at this, but these areas I need to collaborate with someone just to show that you know what the limitations are of your own skillset. Question one. A SWOT analysis, a two by two. I make those every day, unfortunately. But I actually think that's smart. And I think you can create trajectories on that because there are things even within your realm you don't do. So for example, I have certain limitations to my quant capability, either bringing in analyzing data or the depth of which I can craft a business case. Business models all day. Business case, certain degree, but I'm not a finance guy. So there comes a point where I should really say, who is another hybrid like me who actually comes from a finance background and we can connect and that becomes, so there comes a point where I'll set up the Excel, do something, but you know, I'm visually oriented. So I see numbers, but I don't calculate them in my head as natural or intuitively as them. So that's a moment. And do I wanna become native with that? Well, I have to put time into it. So where is it worth stretching down and going in that other direction? If you look back on your journey so far, is there anything, any piece of advice that you give could give people with, what can we do on a maybe even daily practice that would help us to accelerate the path towards this ideal destination? Something small, daily basis, a muscle that we can flex? So I think first, having a sense of what is the identity you're drifting towards. In my case, I look towards design leaders who are doing a similar thing and I try to pull that back, right? So instead of trying to push our current reality into the future, try to pull the future back into our current reality and say, well, what are the ingredients in that? That's a framework into itself. So for me- Reverse engineering, yeah. Right, back casting, right. What does it look like if I bring it to here? And I know we do this with our teams, we do it with our clients, we do it with our work, but you can do this with yourself and there's a self-improvement aspect to it. So I think there are little things. In my case, it's having to learn the balance between being these things that I've developed excellence in and also being a broader thing to move forward in that leadership side. But I would say, for example, if you are a service designer who's more interested in understanding the backend of the systems that you're designing because you work with developers who do a certain magic at a certain point because it's a black box because you don't code, I think what happens is you can do daily rituals to get around it. I have found if you ask people, show me what you do, they will sit with you for an hour and show you what you do. And you find tutorials and you do this every day. And what you find is that after a year, people start, you start demonstrating, they say, hey, can you code that for me? And you say, sure. And you say, when did I become that person? Sure, yeah. And sometimes it doesn't require a degree or formality, it requires just connecting to your network and doing the exercise. And I like that question, show me what you do because you can also reflect it on yourself. Like imagine, stand in front of a mirror and somebody asking you this question, show me what you do. What would you show? What would it be? And maybe like doing it as a mantra every day in and out, you sort of start to develop your narrative about what can you actually show, tell, let them experience about who you are. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I get a lot of requests to connect, to talk about, talk to me about what innovation is or services are. And it could be in my network, it can be from my friends, it's LinkedIn. It doesn't happen as much that I decided to reach out as well. And so it does work both ways. I think that's powerful because it lets it in. Just sort of really inspired me with this question, show me what you do. Because if you ask this question to other people, you'll see how they, what they show you and how they show you things, where they show you, what they show you. They will also inspire you to think about ways you can communicate your identity. Really, I really liked it. And you know what happened when I've done that, which has always made me laugh. And it's the aha moment. When someone says, when you ask someone to say, show me what you do, and they explain it, and you realize, oh, we're doing the same thing. It's just the name is different. And that gets back to the core of what we're talking about. It's like, oh my God, like we're doing 80% the same thing, except there's a name and label on top of it. And it's like, you know, it's the service design problem. When you work with a service designer and innovator, and they say, well, what do you do all day? And you realize you use the same methods, use the same techniques, you read the same books, you follow the same thought leaders, you read the same stuff. And it's like, oh, you've watched Mark's show too? And then you realize you're getting the same inputs. That's a moment. And to me, that's an aha moment back to one of the first questions you asked, is that the differences aren't as stark as they seem externally. We have to ask and go in to see. Yeah, you have to be curious to actually go beyond the titles. And maybe we need to find ways to make other people curious to go beyond the titles. Taking this last 30 minutes into account, what would you say is the moral of your story? The moral is you can only be reflective to a point, but don't waste time and don't be afraid to ask and keep it simple. I have found, for me, because I'm a bit of a thinker and I love to explore ideas and talk it out, that you can actually get lost with others and in your own head. Just keep it simple. If you go to people and say, hey, I come from this background, I wanna learn what you do in the listening and in the talking and in the connections, you'll find those boundaries. So I would say, don't waste time. Don't feel constrained by your current identity or the world that you live in. If you say you want to do this other thing, just say you'll do it. Go do it. And you'd be surprised. Look at the people who are experts in their field and you look backwards at their career. Some of them, you wonder how they even got there. It's because they've told people after a certain point, I'm an expert and then they demonstrate it and then they prove it and then they're an expert. So it begins somewhere, just do it and keep it simple and just run in that direction. And in your own practice in the last years, what is the thing that you could have kept simpler? Yeah, explanations, interpretations of things and goals. Goals with myself, goals with the teams I'm leading, goals with the clients, both mine or theirs, you'll find that your clients and teams will tell you exactly what they want at the beginning. And all you have to do is take it in and either reframe it with them or put it back out and the same with myself. This is exactly what I'm doing. There's a tendency to chase the horizon. That's a beautiful notion, but you'll keep running forever. So sometimes you have to put something down and say, that is my object I'm gonna run to. And that object is this. And just trust that the next object will be as valuable. You don't have to plan 10 years ahead, right? Right, so it's great to look 10 years ahead and say, who do I wanna be? But know that you're looking at direction but you're not paving the road. It's a compass, yeah, not a star. Yeah, right. And it's the same reason why companies don't make five-year, 10-year road maps anymore because you don't know exactly what's around the corner. Things are moving too fast. So just be adaptable, be flexible and just put that marker down. Is there a question that we haven't yet addressed that you feel we should have asked here? Yeah, when are we gonna stop using the word design, perhaps? This is a big one to me because I've noticed a lot of big companies have put an influx of design thinking into their strategy methods. And then I think what happens, you realize that they're basically the same thing at their core, just with a different mindset. So when does design get relabeled or renamed or reappropriated? Or when does business become design? When do these other things become design? That word is a tough one. And I found it's a very, minute you walk to someone you don't know and they say, what do you do? And you just say design that you are, you could easily just describe the last thing you did in action and result. And they say, that's great. Don't say the word design. And if you put the word design, really always. So I think the challenge is someone, someone should take that word back and or put it in its new context. That's a tough one. I hope that we're all adding to, changing the context around design at least. That's what I try to do. And therefore, a new perspective on design and the more realistic perspective on design, I guess. Yeah, you know, if design at its core is about solving problems or looking at problems differently, I think we're all doing the right thing. Hopefully, I think maybe 10 years from now, if we could actually fold that future back, we would be surprised at how the word design is being used and who's using it. Any recommended reading, any recommended videos for people who wanna dive into this topic? Mm-hmm. So I, in terms of design and strategy, I've actually really enjoyed that book that I've been trying to get through, Good Design, Good Strategy, Bad Strategy. It's a great one. Have you heard of it? No. In reading that book, I kept thinking the entire time, this is a book geared to the discipline of strategy. And all I kept thinking is this is design. This is what I do. The word design is used a billion times every chapter. I mean, they're talking about how broad strategies have been implemented, where the discipline comes from, who's using it, how you connect it to actually creating things in the real world, not just thinking about the problem. So I would recommend that as a good starting place to connect to all the other volumes of design books you may have. Sort of to start wrapping this episode up, I feel like sometimes we need a Trojan horse and strategy might be a Trojan horse to get people to understand design easier, right? To lower the threshold, to lower resistance, and then to work your magic from inside rather than having to convince people. Yes, yeah. I agree. If people wanna continue this conversation with you, what's the best way to get in touch? Many ways, so you can reach out to me via email. Also, I run a group in Chicago called the Chicago Business Designers, where we actually address these problems. It's a few hundred strong now. We have a lot of great programming and interviews. Robert Bow, as I mentioned, is part of this group, including others, so we bring in diverse perspectives. I would reach out to that group. We would love to hear you from you. Also, the Chicago Business Designers starts in Chicago, but it doesn't have to just be there. And I think the definitions that we're talking about are being debated there. So I would reach out to that group and we can get a link to that. We've got a Slack group, of course. We've got a mailing list. Everything will be in the show notes. Yep, absolutely. And also, we're doing online programming like this. So we're shifting, of course, to hosting our stuff online. Yes, of course. We'd love to see you. I'll try to add all the links over there. Leon, thanks for sharing your journey, your experience, your challenges. Really enjoyed. The thing I'll remember from this episode is show me what you do. That question is super powerful. So yeah, thanks for bringing it up. Absolutely. And it was great talking with you. I look forward to seeing your upcoming episodes as well. This show is a great resource, by the way. So I checked this routinely just to keep my thinking sharp. I'll add that to my testimonial list. Great. Thanks, Leon. If you're a regular listener of the show, you might have noticed that this is a different form than we did in the previous 102 episodes. Let me know what you think. What did you get out of this episode? What is your main takeaway? Leave a comment down below. Or just send me a message on LinkedIn. And if you found Leon's story inspiring and think that somebody else needs to hear it, grab the link and share this episode with them. That way, you'll help that other person and you'll help to grow the service design show family, which helps me to invite more inspiring guests for you like Leon. And if you wanna continue hearing stories about skills and strategies that help you to design services that win the hearts of people and business, make sure you check out this video because we're going to continue over there.


introduce you to sculptor, artist, jeweler, teacher, Jim Sardones, who is a local artist here from Randolph, and is a designer and creator of Whale Dance, which is just a mile down the road. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much. And everybody here, okay. Okay, well, I do have a short film on the making of the Whale Dance sculpture. This is the sculpture that I made 30 years ago, which used to be in the same location, and is now in South Burlington that was sold and moved there 20 years ago, after spending its first 10 years on the same site as the new ones. But I thought I would just show a little more about some of the other work that I do. I don't just do Whale's Tales, but I'll show you the last 20 years or so. I've kind of focused on public art so that it is placed often in universities, aquariums, libraries, places like that, where the public can have access to the work, which I enjoy more people being able to enjoy the work, hopefully. But I started out just as a high school student, taking a sculpture class, which was offered. I went to Phillips Exeter Academy, which happened to offer sculpture. I would have never thought to do it otherwise, but I took the class and fell in love with the whole process of making traditional type sculpture, which meant using clay, plaster, wood, and stone. This was in the late 60s when lots of newer materials were being used like plastics and other things. And when I went to college, I went to Oberlin College in Ohio, and I majored in studio art and art history. But my studio art teachers couldn't understand why I wanted to work with something like stone that in their eyes had been done as well as it could be done 500 years before when we had all this new material to work with. But I was always drawn to these natural materials and the natural forms of human, animal, and plant subject matter. So that's pretty much what I've focused on and started out just doing my own work, mostly on a small scale, until I had the opportunity to do a large piece, which I'll show you at the end here. That was in 1981. So this was the piece that is titled, Reverence, and the one that used to be in Randolph. It ended up inside and on the cover of this art history textbook. Some of my work comes from competitions that I enter around the country. This one is in Raleigh, North Carolina at the North Carolina State Veterinary College. And I proposed this called Swimming Retriever along the lines of the whales' tails where one has to imagine the earth, the grass, or whatever material as a water surface. And I wasn't sure they would go for it, but I decided to, and they ended up loving the idea. The head of the retriever is a gold-colored granite and the stick in its mouth is bronze. So it was a matter of attaching that and the stick is used as a bench. People sit on in front of the veterinary hospital there. How big is it? It's, the stick is seven feet wide and the head is about 10 feet long. So it's made for children to climb on as well as people to sit on the stick. And it was, these competitions, usually, there's a budget either because they're a part of the percent for art law that a lot of states have where a new building is required to spend one percent of the budget on art, or as in this case, fellow donated a lot of money to this veterinary college and his entire family consisted of five golden retrievers. And he used to like bringing them to this hospital and when he died, he left something like $24 million to the hospital, which is partly how they built this state of the art hospital, but they wanted to honor him.  And when people enter these competitions, you show them what you've done and from those, they pick four or five finalists from whom they ask for a specific proposal. And I was one of four finalists and this was my proposal and thankfully they ended up liking it. So that's how that happened. This is up in Burlington at Champlain College. It's kind of my interpretation of the explorer, Samuel de Champlain, and this piece is in bronze on a granite pedestal. I made three or four different models in different positions and in this case, the donor of the money that they had for this as well as the president of the college chose from the models that I presented. Small ones kind of along these lines and that's the one they liked. This is a group of polar bears carved out of Bethel white granite that comes right down the road. It's in Andover, Massachusetts. There was a library that wanted something as a focal point for readings on the environment and also for children to climb on. So I proposed this idea of the time the polar bears were in the news with the whole climate change and the ice polar, ice caps receding and melting. So that was something that they ended up liking as well. Sorry, I put the wrong thing here. This was another competition up in Maine at the University of Maine at Presque Isle and I didn't realize that manors are very much into fiddlehead ferns just like a lot of Vermonters are. Apparently they keep their patches secret from everybody but I proposed this bench that uses giant sized fiddlehead ferns partly to look a little bit to me like a family and this is in the lobby of a new fitness building that they were building for the university but it was also open to the public so felt like it might be a nice idea for kind of community support. This is a group of dolphins family. Families are often a theme of mine and on the other side that you can't see is the ocean. I would have placed it a little differently if I had been involved in the pouring of the concrete foundations which they did before I got down there in Fair Hope, Alabama but I always think of the photos like this I'd rather have seen the ocean in the background than those trees but that's how they placed it. This is of at St. Michael's College they a donor there wanted to honor well both kind of commemorate the St. Michael which the school was named after but also three or four of their students died in the 9-11 catastrophe in New York so this was also an honor of them. Ammonites which are the fossil forerunners to Nautilus shells were around up to 400 million years ago and this is a bench that I made out of a chunk of black marble that comes from one of the Champlain Islands where in the stone I found many fossils that look very much like this but it's at the University of Vermont in the geology building and at the time my daughter was a student at UVM and I proposed that they trade me tuition which I often try to do with my work I do a lot of bartering and have gotten things from antique cars to fine wine from people. Did they take you a class? They did, yeah, yeah I ended up not really spending the money on the tuition but that's what it was supposed to be for. This is a piece that's made out of the same Champlain black marble from Isle of Mon and it was a competition for an elementary school in Maine and I proposed this little family of bears so happens my oldest friend who grew up across the street from Maine and Nashua, New Hampshire was a first grade teacher in this school so she got to, I got to visit there in her classroom. Sorry the quality isn't that great on these photos but this is also another bear family which is at the Dartmouth Medical Center and I was contacted by a couple from Hanover who rather than have a big 50th anniversary celebration they wanted me to create something which they donated to the children's ward in the hospital at Dartmouth and this is what I came up with it's meant for the kids who are patients there to climb on and have a little fun while they're there for not so fun things. Some of you may have been on Braintree Hill where the Braintree meeting house is just a few miles from here but in 1991 I made this Panther family turns out back in the 1800s Panthers were quite a popular thing in Braintree in particular there was a lot written about them and in fact in the museum, historical museum in Randolph is a footprint that was cast in plaster from an actual print in a farm field in Braintree that was confirmed by the New York Natural History Museum as a Panther footprint which I used and looked at but that was one of the reasons the community that was in on deciding what they wanted me to make chose this idea. After I made those Whales Tales in Randolph 30 years ago, 1989, an architect friend of mine from Warren, Vermont who went to Yale and was having a 30th anniversary, I'm not anniversary but reunion, they had a classmate named Bart Giamatti who had been the president of Yale as well as commissioner of baseball at this time and they as a class gift wanted to do something in his honor so he had seen the Whales Tales which he loved and asked me if I would work with him to create this big granite bench which is on the campus there at Yale. Unfortunately, Bart Giamatti died while I was making it, he never got to see it although he knew it was happening, getting down to the last few here. This was just a photo that I took shortly after the original tales were in there which I liked before any grass grew but and just a few years before that, sorry, I'm not used to this. In front of the Gifford Medical Center I made this family, I call it Vermont family, at the time my wife and I had a little baby who died and we suggested we felt as though we were given such wonderful family care that I proposed the idea of a family sculpture to kind of symbolize the care that the hospital provided and thankfully they went along with raising the funds for me to do that which included going to Carrara, Italy to buy this marble which is a beautiful marble. Unfortunately, it's not the greatest stone for being outdoors anymore now that we have acid rain raining on it. And then the very first large piece I ever did is right by the Floating Bridge in Brookfield. It's a pair of hippos called father and son. My father had just died and my son had just been born so I named it that also because everybody always assumes it's a mother and child. And this is also the Bethel White Granite. And at the time I didn't have a studio, the fellow who commissioned this let me work in a field that he had that once I plunked it down on the ground I wasn't able to move it until I was done so I had to lay on the ground to do the lower parts. And because I was teaching at the time I thought it would be a great summer project but it ended up taking three summers for me to finish it in those conditions. Yeah, I would say it's not the hardest granite but it's very hard. All granites are hard. Compared to marble it's another much harder level. So you use electric tools? Yeah, you know people have carved granite but I look at the Egyptian sculptures which are some of my favorite and can't believe that I don't know how they did it but they carved these beautiful things. In fact one of my favorite pieces is at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. It's ahead of a queen and it's this yellow jasper is the stone that's broken right in half so the top is broken off and the bottom has these beautiful lips carved and the chin polished granite. And I remember reading that when they got that in the museum they didn't have anything in the museum that could drill a hole in it so they could mount it and here this thing had been carved thousands of years ago so beautifully and expertly. So maybe we'll, Bonnie if you could switch over to... Jim I want to make a note. Yeah. I'm talking in the water. Oh yeah. And I read came through. Yeah, well there, the read came through and the water level covered the grass so that it looked like the sculpture was in the water and it was kind of a nice sight. I'm glad it didn't stay that way.  Yeah, let me get the other one out of here first I think. I had a question about that one. The sculpture of the dog in the stick outside of veterinarian school. Did you know the story of the dog's being that green when you chose that? Yes, when I was chosen as a finalist, typically finalists go to the place and learn, you know, meet the committee and see where the sculpture will be placed and talk to people about whatever they may have in mind. In this case, it wasn't that they had anything like this in mind, it was just my idea and my fact that I like to use other surfaces as water, imaginary water surfaces. But I did learn that he had all these golden retrievers. He had a house with a pool for them to swim in and he left money for the woman who was taken care of the last of those dogs that were still alive who was living there when I went down there with the nine, two, two or three of his golden retrievers that came. For all set? Okay, so yeah, this is the short film and we'll have time for questions about this or the other things afterwards. Yeah, in 1980, after I had been working with the kids in school making projects related to whales, I had a dream and I woke up from the dream and the dream was that I was standing on a beach looking out at the water when these two whales' tails came up out of the water and I remember seeing the water cascading off of the tails, watching them and when I awoke, I realized that was something I was gonna need to do in some form of a sculpture and originally I thought it might make a good fountain with water coming off of them but I later decided it would be better to use the earth, whatever surface it might be on, grass or otherwise as an imaginary ocean surface so that people could get right up to the pieces and actually touch them and feel the scale of whales. I figured out that I could make each tail in two pieces and with steel pins and epoxy, attach the flukes on top of the vertical part of the tail, which is what I did and which is the piece called Reverence that ended up spending 10 years on the Exit 4 site in Randolph, which belonged to this guy whose name is David Threlkelt. After 10 years on this site, the owner found he had to sell both the land and the sculpture. A group of people in South Burlington who owned Technology Park ended up buying it from them and hired me to move them from Randolph to Burlington. You know, the Preservation Trust was formed in 1980 and the Whales Tales, the original sculpture was installed in 1989 and it was here until 1999 and as part of my job all these years I've done a lot of traveling around the state, really been to just about every community in the state, traveled interstate 89 a lot. I would often stop along the way because every time I stopped and had a chance to have a look at the sculpture, I would just sit there and smile. It was so surprising, so wonderful to just come upon this incredible sculpture, hopping out of the field in this very unlikely location was a very special experience. And then when the sculpture was sold and it moved to Chittenden County, it was a very sad day frankly. It was kind of a metaphor of what's happening in Vermont that all good things move to Chittenden County. And we've got to make every effort in the state to make sure that communities all over the state can be successful. And Paul Brun and the Preservation Trust helped to get the land conserved and at that point asked me about the possibility of doing another sculpture and at this point in time I had decided I was no longer planning to work in stone but that I would love to make something in bronze which would be along the lines of the original but a little different design. Bronze casting is a process that involves collaborating with a foundry in this case, the Polish Talix Foundry in New York was one of the only ones capable of casting something this large. So I worked with them first by experimenting on a small scale with little plaster models and I made these out of wire and screen and cardboard and applied plaster over the surface and made probably 10 different versions of these tails and different sizes until I came up with the one that I felt would be the best for the large scale. At that point I sent these models to the foundry and they were able to use them to enlarge in foam by a digital scan of my models so that the size of the pieces were exactly what I wanted which was 16 feet tall and about 12 feet wide across the flukes. Once they roughed out these foam patterns I was able to go and work on the foam, get it a little bit more to my liking and then a layer of metal screen was applied on top of the foam and about three quarters of an inch of plaster on top of that and from those patterns molds were made in sand the pieces were cast in about I would say six different pieces each one. Cast they were welded together and ground down finished what they call chasing of the bronze to get the smooth surface I was after. Patina which is the application of chemicals with a torch that oxidize on the surface to make a color that can be anything from green, brown, black as well as other colors. I was looking for mostly black with a little bit of green showing through in places. I have the opportunity to not, I didn't think of it as doing the same thing again because they are quite different but obviously they're both two whales tails but I felt like I had a lot of years to think about what I had done originally and what I might like to do again and not really thinking I'd ever have the chance so it was incredible to have this opportunity to try again. This sculpture, the original sculpture and we hope this sculpture will be one of those things that will contribute help contribute to the efforts that are going on in this community to build a stronger downtown and village center up on the hill. Sculpturb, Sculpturb in Gen Least and I think others, it makes you stop for just a moment from our crazy days. We're the things that we have to deal with in our lives and then all of a sudden you see this sculpture and you stop for a moment and smile, calm down a little bit, respite in a busy day. The director of preservation trust unfortunately passed away just two months after that sculpture was done so I was so happy he got to see it in place. I'd probably stop there more than anybody else and it's thrilling for me to have them back there again but I'm also checking on them unfortunately discovered the first graffiti on them. It's marker, which shouldn't be too hard to get on. Fears I've had, but you have to take that chance. Was that a decision about the lighting at night? I wonder how they're not lit at night and I wondered if some of that's to protect them or would? I don't know either. At one point I know I was told I wasn't at the meeting but there was a community meeting in Randolph before the sculpture was done and they knew there was gonna be it up there and someone thought I had told them, which I didn't, you know, that it was gonna be lit and apparently there was quite an uproar from the people there about having it lit up here. I don't see why, no they didn't like the idea at all. I don't know why, because McDonald's certainly is. Well, but maybe it's, you know, at this point there's not money there to do more with it, whether it's lighting or otherwise and the plan originally by the preservation trust was to offer the sculpture and the land that's on to the town of Randolph, which they did and the town turned it down. Not exactly sure why, but they didn't want the maintenance which was very little needed. But there's a little- Like scrubbing off of graffiti? Right, yeah, yeah. I wonder if a camera on there could help with the rest of the handle? Yeah, maybe, but we'll have to see. Do you and Maryboulds know each other? You look familiar. But you wrote the most beautiful home prayer. I tried to find it, I want to send you a copy. I'd love to. You did, because I've just retired, so I'm between about previous computer, my home computer, they're not at all communicated. I couldn't find it, but I dedicated it to you. And you wrote about the sculpture or? Yes, I happened to be praying in church that Sunday after the event at Chandler and I did it about before. Thank you, that's nice, I'd love to see it. Thank you so much. Did you create the table list in the foyer at the hospital? Yes, I did. Good guess, not too many other whale-tailed guys around, but yeah, I made two of them. One of them belongs to a friend and Maryboulds. You haven't seen it in the lobby of the hospital, or two browns tails that form a table with a piece of glass on top. It's in the waiting room there, in the lobby of the hospital. I'm curious, how do you think of the whales? Are they, since you knew the father and the son? Yeah. And the family, are they friends? Are they siblings? Are they, what happened? Do you have a thought about this one? Yeah, I think of them as a couple or a pair. And the reason they're placed the way they are is because I think of the rest of the bodies underneath and how they relate to each other. And in this case, I think of it as a hug, that they're parts that you can't see if you could imagine them extending and curving the way that the tails do. Below the surface, they would be touching. The whales do that? I think they do, I certainly don't know that they do it exactly like this, but in other orientations, certainly with young ones, you see lots of caressing and touching each other. So I don't think it's too big of a stretch to think that they might not do something like that. Jim, when you go to a foundry where it's created, do the workers feel like they've created this creation? Yeah. I mean, are they more than just workers? Are they craftsmen? Oh, yeah, most of them are sculptors, you know. Oh, okay, I'm curious about that. Yeah, lots of sculptor background and people who are artists in their own right, but it's one of the few jobs artists can do and get a regular paycheck for. So a lot of them do work in that arena, but they were very, very appreciative and really liked the sculpture, which made me feel good. This foundry in New York does work for most of the big name artists in the country and around the world. So I felt lucky to be able to have work done there, the top notch place. Did they ever see them? Well, I sent them photos, yeah. They have a team that does the installation, which I've hired them to do, but I've sent lots of photos to them. And do they commission you the sculpture or does the sculpture commission a foundry? How does that? Yeah, the sculpture commissions the foundry. They'll get a quotation of what it's gonna cost to do all the stuff that's needed, the making of the mold, the casting, the patina, and in this case, the delivery and installation. So that's usually quite a large figure and that doesn't include anything for me. So that's how things are, at least how I price things, knowing what it's gonna cost me out of my pocket to get this thing done. I have to get reimbursed for that as well as my time that I'm putting in. Yes. What's the average time of takes when you do a piece? Most of the large pieces I've done have been between six and nine months. This was basically a year's project, although I wasn't working on it constantly. Somebody there was mostly working on it throughout the year. But the original tales, the reverence piece that I carved out of granite, I spent nine months working every day on it. Do you have any future projects? I'm hoping, I never know if the one that I last do is gonna be the last one to get to do. I have a design for one and I have some interest that I have not got a firm commitment yet, but if I get to do it, it is a very different design for a whale's tail that doesn't have the vertical part. It's just the flukes at a diagonal, but it would be 25 feet across, which would be the size of a blue whale, the largest whale, so that's what I'm hoping I get to do, but I don't know that I won't. Are you gonna tell us about the frog? Oh, yeah, and I have another little short, well, I was gonna say, if you could get back to my little thing there, I've got another short little thing we could show to anybody who needs or wants to leave, I don't feel free to, but I have this frog, which is up at the new Vermont Agriculture and Environmental Laboratory, was another competition, the most recent one that I entered and won, and so I've put on here my presentation to the committee to kind of show how I go about trying to get work. In this case, it worked out, you know, you have to try a lot of times and it doesn't work out very so often, it does, and in this case, my little model, which was this size that was made out of plaster originally, I photographed it and my son, who's great with computers and digital art, you know, helps me in these situations, like that dog with the stick in his mouth. I had a photo of the model and a photo of where I was gonna go and my son made it look like it was already there and people sitting on it, you know, he could do that part, but he helped, I originally proposed that they put this in the lobby of the laboratory, but they decided they really would prefer to have it outside, so the photo that I had him help me with showed my model with it inside of the lab. But one of the main things that the laboratory does is water testing around the state and this was partly what made me propose this idea because frogs being the fact that they absorb everything through their skin can be the ones that work cast a problem with contaminants in the water. I think we need to take this out and add it again in order for it to, it won't. It's not showing. You've added it, come on. So I kind of referred to it as the canary and the coal mine in that when frogs start to have problems which they already are in many cases becoming deformed and it's typically from chemicals that have gotten into the water. So that's that V-A-E-L, yeah. So once I was chosen as a finalist and I decided this is what I wanted to propose, I put this together to show the committee on the night that the finalists were proposing their ideas. And was yours the only frog that was proposed? Yes, yeah. Yeah, there were some great ideas. Again, because some of these things require people to use their imagination that that's not really water that the frog is sitting in. You have to imagine that it is. I'm never quite sure whether people are gonna go with it or not, but it's been so far so good. Same with the dog. I almost didn't propose that. Several of the finalists with that North Carolina state piece was proposed, the guy who left the money with his dogs around him. And the committee told me that he was someone who very much would have preferred my idea and not wanting to be in the foreground. He was very much someone who liked to be in the background.  So he could find who it was. Yeah, this is just a series of slides, some of which may be redundant, but I'll read them so you don't have to. My work is inspired by natural forms, human plant and animal. This is the Champlain piece that I showed you earlier. Same with the fiddleheads showing human and plant and animal. I didn't show at the time all examples of my work, so I put a few of these in. And then one of the themes in my work has been to use other surfaces such as grass, brick, et cetera, as imaginary water. This forces viewers to imagine unseen parts below the surface. This being an example of that. This was a piece that was commissioned by a fellow who saw the Whales Tales in Burlington and he happened to have gone on a sailing trip with his wife from, started on the East Coast and ended up West in the Marshall Islands and they came upon a typhoon, which they knew was gonna happen and they sailed into a harbor and decided to spend the night there. And they were invited to join the local people in the town hall, but they wanted to make sure the boat was okay, so they stayed on the boat. And in the middle of the night it changed direction and came right through this harbor and the boat was destroyed and his wife was lost. He was washed up and he wanted a memorial to her having seen the two of mine. So I made one similar that has a engraving on the side of a little poem that he had written, but he wrote a book about the whole experience called Dark Wind, which I have. You can find it, I'm sure you're interested in this being the original one. This is now where they are in Burlington. This is my favorite view, which is if you're traveling south on 89, you get to see the hills in the background more like you did when they were here. So this, my proposal for this site was inspired by the next photo taken by Vermont author and photographer, Mary Holland. The head of a male green frog emerges from the water and the rest of the body is unseen below the surface, substituting approximately 64 blue tiles for the gray tiles that they had planned for the lobby. A bronze frog's head between three and four feet tall and four to five feet wide will sit in the middle of the blue tiles as if in water. This is the photo that I went to a presentation that this woman, Mary Holland, she's written several great books on nature. One of them is called Naturally Curious, but she's a fantastic photographer as well as a writer. I highly recommend finding her books. One of them goes through every day of the year and tells you what's happening in nature in Vermont, relating to different animals, plants, birds, beautiful photos and very interesting work. Anyway, I saw this photo at her presentation and I said, I'm gonna make a sculpture like that. So this came along and my design highlights one of the most important functions of the VAEL, which is to test waterways for dangerous pollutants. Guy Roberts, the director had this to say when I asked whether the lab tests lakes, ponds, rivers and streams, yes, we test all the surface waters you mentioned for nutrient runoff from farms and acid deposition that drifts from out of state. Of the 30,000 samples we test per year, this type of testing accounts for about two thirds of the work, so it's a very important focus of the lab. A huge percentage of our work ultimately helps protect our surface waters since they're connected to so many Vermont activities and seem to get it to change here. Well, that's okay. I was talking about why I felt like it was a good idea. And here's the little model that my son made up for me with a child there to kind of show the scale. But if you take a, you could probably almost walk from here up there. You can see it out in front of the entrance to the building there. I think that's all that I have. I think that's the end anyway. So anyone else who has questions, you're welcome to ask. Was the fog passed here in Randolph Center? No, Bob Wright has cast things for me. I've worked for many years with a friend of mine who has a foundry in West Rutland, and I had already kind of committed to having him do this at the time, but Bob's doing a great job. It's great to have this foundry here. He casts some of these small ones for me. Right now he's doing some. That is the grunt on the wheel stand. And are there indeed reinforcing rods inside? The bottom of each of the bottom sections has a framework of stainless steel which is welded inside of the bottom and then eight inch legs extend down to the foundation. So they're bolted in, they were bolted in first and then we filled in eight inches of dirt up to the base of the sculpture. So before the sculpture came, the first thing was to had to demolish the top layer of the old foundation that had been there originally just because it had been there for 30 years and these were a little larger. So the shape of the foundation needed to be different. So we broke up the concrete, then poured a new pad and I tried to keep track of where the rebar was in the cement knowing that we'd be drilling holes to attach these not wanting to hit the rebar. So you might have seen one of the shots of my daughter helping draw red lines on the concrete which corresponded to where the rebar was so that when the fellow came to install he came a few days early with the bolts which he drilled according to our patterns that we had left there to avoid the rebar. And then a couple of days later after the bolts had been epoxied into the cement they were able to just lower it down and luckily they lined up the way they were supposed to and just put nuts and washers on and tighten it up. So it's bronze is very strong by itself and they have engineers who had to approve the design and decide whether it needed extra reinforcement inside which it might have, but they decided it didn't. So how big is this stick? So the bronze it's always about a half an inch thick something this small is a little less than that but something that size typically is about three-eighths to a half an inch thick. Well thank you all for coming. Thank you. Thank you. It's possible for that now. Who owns the brand off? They still are owned by the preservation trust whether they will gift them to another entity I hope they'll maybe try again with Randolph and having seen that it is somewhat of a draw for the town that maybe they'll be more receptive to the idea, but the other thing is possibly the state of them what they may give it to. They have the responsibility because this frog came through the art and public buildings program that means that this among many other public art pieces are the responsibility of the state to maintain. So they will be coming here to do the maintenance on the frog and I was suggesting that perhaps they'd wanna take these as well. So we'll see. It's not really up to me at this point, but I hope that there'll be someone in charge of maintaining them which simply means applying a coat of wax twice a year to keep the patina the same as it is now. When you do nothing it ends up turning that green color that you see on a lot of old bronzes or copper roofs which doesn't look so bad, it starts eating into the metal. So it really needs to have that little bit of maintenance which is really about a day's work for one or two people. Did Randolph give a reason why they were rejecting it? I wasn't there at the meeting, but I think part of it was the maintenance. Part of it I think was they felt like they're getting some benefit without having to do anything, but I don't know, I think it happened to be the particular makeup of the select board and the town manager that felt they didn't want to do it. Anyway, thanks again for coming. Thank you.


I'm Keely, I'm a support worker. So I got into this job because I've got a few friends and family friends that have got a learning disability or physical disabilities and seeing the work that people do with them always appealed to me as something I wanted to do. Typical day coming in the morning, a quick ten minute meeting with all the staff. Then we head off for our key group so we have our key customers. I would definitely say one of the skills you need is patience. Obviously you've got to be caring. You've got to be able to work in a lot of diverse situations and have a good understanding that everyone works in a completely separate way and you're going to be dealing with people that can be very challenging. I work in retail so I was a stockroom team leader at Argus working in the stockroom. So working in retail to then working in care, there was a lot of skills and qualities that were transferrable between the jobs. One of the main similarities is working with people. My ambition would be just to progress within West Sussex, work potentially as hard as I can. I'd say if you're considering a career within care, I would say go for it. It's very rewarding and fulfilling. You're able to see people achieve things they might not necessarily have been able to achieve a year ago, a month ago or even a week ago.