#Weeknotes - 06/02/2025

What's been happening?

What's in a name? That's the question that ASCEL have been exploring as part of our rebranding work, and one thing has become clear; it's important that we have a name that reflects who we are. We want to be able to walk into a room and convey who we are and what we stand for with ease.

Our young people's hackathons, led by Participation People and their team of creative children and young people, gave us so many ideas to springboard from; it's fantastic to have their thoughts and opinions underpinning this work. This week we held a branding session with a focus group of ASCEL members, led by Bryony Bishop, who has been supporting ASCEL with marketing and comms for over a year now. It was a lively, explorative session, which again, gave us direction, focus and plenty of ideas.

We've also been:

• Talking to web developers: Alongside our branding work, we've also been laying the foundations for a new website. ASCEL's existing site is 'clunky' to say the least and doesn't reflect us, our members, or the children and young people we serve. We've been in discussion with web developers this week, identifying what we can realistically achieve within budget, and how we can enhance member experience on the site, capture our vision, mission and values, and ensure it's as accessible, secure and future-proofed as possible.
• Kids in Museums - #RethinkingMuseums: Yesterday, I spent the day at the Kids in Museum conference, Rethinking Museums. We can learn so much from museums and their approach to engaging and meeting the needs of children and young people, so I was hoping to come away with plenty of ideas and reflections. I wasn't disappointed! It was especially wonderful to be at the youth panel session in the afternoon and hear about their experiences working with museums, the opportunities this has presented them with, the challenges, and what they'd like to see organisations doing more of in the future. It was also inspiring to listen to them share details about the initiatives they've launched in museums, such as slow crafting to address social isolation.

What's next?

Next week, I'll be attending some training on risk assessment for youth programmes. This promises to be extremely useful, as children and young people's safety is of utmost importance to ASCEL and its members. I've got quite a few catch-up meetings next week too, with members, the team and national partners. It's fair to say it'll be a fairly meeting-heavy week, I think.

Outside of work

I've been fending off a cold this week, so to be transparent, a lot of my 'outside of work' time has been spent sprawled on the sofa, sniffling, coughing and watching Ripley and One Hundred Years of Solitude. Both are excellent by the way (and both based on books; I really do conform to stereotype, don't I!).

I've also been avidly reading. You Are Here by David Nicholls was adorable; a bumbling comedy-romance set on a hike, with plenty of rain and social awkwardness. Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen by Marilyn Chin was a very different read; a hyper-energetic series of vignettes focusing on the lives of twins; Mei Ling and Moonie. It really made me laugh in places, but was also quite poignant in others; an exploration of Chinese culture, traditional values vs modernity, and the links between the generations. Two very good reads - I'd recommend both.