Welcome and thanks for visiting. This blog is where I write about projects I am working on, capture my research in progress and generally organise my thinking in public. It helps me enormously to have a place to do this – I hope you also find it useful. I’ve also started a running post with some definitions and background reading that may be helpful.
Current lines of enquiry are captured in this enquiry map but I tend to roam between designing for democracy and more general thinking about technology driven change and the digital mindset. You may find it helpful to read this ‘why I blog blog’ but suffice to say that this a place where I share my thinking in public but that means its subject to change and may look quite different when its actually applied in my role at Adur and Worthing.
If you are looking for my professional bio then you need to head over to LinkedIn . If you are trying to find me online for a more research orientated discussion then you can find me on twitter as @curiousc. If you want to contact to me about speaking at an event then you can contact me via either of these routes.
Dr Catherine Howe
Here are some of the things I am currently working on:
Latest posts
Systems of democracy: A bit of democracy everywhere
Last year I set out three areas of enquiry for myself; The relationship between technology and change, the effect of networked social movements and democratic innovation. This year I want to focus on democratic innovation but still draw from the other two as the last year has given me clearer ...
2020: setting an(other) intent
As ever I am spending these first few days of the year pottering about sorting at home, thinking and writing. I love this time hunkered down at home, the house is cosy and the dog walks are tranquil with the countryside sleeping (albeit it doing so underwater). This post is ...
In which purpose demolishes culture while culture is distracted eating strategy
I am a bit wary of talking about culture. It’s intangible, elusive and in reality best addressed via behaviours rather than head on. As my team know, I have a huge fear of a conversation about culture or values ending up as a pile of laminated signs that get strewn ...
In which I am a bit over this digital transformation business.
I’m going to bang on about me for a couple of paragraphs and then I’m going to talk about imagination, system change, complexity and why I am a bit over digital transformation – bear with me. It seems odd to be listening to the news coverage of the Westminster chaos ...
Do you have 5 minutes?
This is a quick capture of the informal research I want to do around the social movements topic. My first approach is going to be to ask people their examples of social movements and then ask them to respond to the word cloud (in the image) but circling the words ...
Socialising some social movement thinking
We are doing some work on future trends and disrupters at CRUK. This is to help inform our organisational strategy thinking going forward and is also a good opportunity to check in with some of the assumptions and ideas that underpin how we think about ourselves. This blogpost is my ...
Health as a social movement
The NHS has an ongoing interest in the concept of health as a social movement and has commissioned and co-delivered work from NESTA and the RSA amongst others to explore this. One of the most sophisticated exploration of this was the NHS Citizen programme a few years ago which ...
Another august firebreak – redux
Events, dear boy, events……as Harold Macmillan may or may not have said….. This is a bit of a check in how the week has gone. I think fair to say considerably less serenity than last year which is down to me not protecting the time enough and also to the ...
Another August firebreak
I'm taking another firebreak week - though circumstances mean that its actually a firebreak 3 days with a day in the office and a day with DemSoc in-between but the essence is there! I have a few things I want to look at and expect these to spill over into ...
6 month notes
I’ve been away this week – walking on the Isle of Wight which has been lovely. This post is a wrap up of what I’ve been working on in my head while I was yomping along by the sea. Nearly 6 months into the year I wanted to check in ...
Digital Leadership All posts
Decisions….decisions…
I’ve been thinking about governance a lot recently – how and where we make decisions ...
Field Notes All posts
In which everything is STILL extremely very important and urgent
I wrote about our approach to prioritisation a while ago and we have been progressing ...
NHS Citizen All posts
NHS Citizen design – agile but structured
I wanted to capture my first reflection from the final NHS Citizen design workshop last ...