always too late

We are in the middle of the third week here and I still haven't collected thoughts from the last one... It can't wait longer.
There was the real English weather (melancholic, misty) in one of the mornings last week, when I found myself in front of the Civic Centre in Stoke (not Stoke-on-Trent, just Stoke - you, from Poland, will never guess what I mean...) an hour before the meeting... I spent it walking around the church on Church St. (not surprising, doesn't it?).

That was the beggining of the week. At the end I learned how to use English doors and locks. There is one normal handle and above it you can find the second that blocks the machanism of a lock - happily my Penny (who demonstrates that a weather here is usually better than in the stereotype - Penny, I am not sure if I have your permission to use your image?..) managed to explain me that by phone when I stayed alone in the office on Friday afternoon.

Between this two events many things happened. I took part in millions of meetings (maybe a bit less...) introducing myself to millions of people: from the City Council, housing associations, uni staff, local art organizations (B-art), residents, volunteers and so on. I read the reports about some projects implemented in Stoke thanks to uni (Quality Street; digital stories). I collected a lot of observations. A few of them:

• The main point of many meetings was connecting the university with other institutions from public/private/volunteering sector (and also the role of CCU is connecting poeple and institutions rather than direct action).
• As well important is never-decreasing interest in involving poeple (especially those with learning disabilities, excluded somehow) and communities in activ citizenship.
• A person that we call in Poland "animator" here is called "facilitator" - it changes a lot. Animator is more in the cetre of the process of animating, facilitator only ficilitates...
• Nobody works here - everybody runs the projects :).
• I heard that in Japan they spend 80% of the time planning project and 20% putting it into practise - and that it is a kind of an ideal. Here you spend 40% on planning, 10% on carrying out and 50% on evaluation and reflection - the new ideal I am learning.

(And it is also my job here - I am collecting stories about good practise: how to involve poeple, how to cross the border between the university and the rest of society/community [the differance between this two words is difficult to explain as it turned out today...].)

One of the bigger event was the Heart of Engagement Cafe that tought participants how to use the World Cafe method - how big suprise when a few days later I saw the effects of this workshop during 10th anniversary of REACH (tables covered by paper that poeple used for writting down their ideas, feelings etc.). What I realised during REACH meeting is that here you do not divide problems into more and less important - solving even the smallest helps to tackle with the general one.

During the weekend I visited the second theatre (I guess o.o. has just written about it) and the second time I was in the backstage (that is unbelievable how my experiances here connect with my classes at Warsaw University - the comment for my not-forgotten here lecturers from Section for Theatre and Performance). And on Monday we watched in Film Theatre "The Titfield Tunderbolt" - amusing Ealing commedy from 1953, the great atmosphere of this place. I am still surprised that all of the cultural institutions I visit are "commited to the community" (as it stayed in presentation about REP Theatre).

I still do not remember that "Thank you" does not mean "No" (spoken in a polite way), so my colleagues in CCU are a bit confused with my replies for questions about tea... When will I learn that?

o.