Telescope: the next phase
May 2024 marked 5 years since we started thinking how we could bring together policy and practice, so that they could better inform one another and build a better world. We started playing around with Post-Its, doing research, and having countless conversations to explore our what, how, and why. That’s how Telescope was born.
Since then, we’ve run 15 learning and leadership programmes with over 300 participants across 30 organisations. We’ve measured our impact through individual development and empowerment for change. 88% of our participants gained new skills and 84% made new professional connections. Most importantly people came away feeling empowered, with participants on average giving a score of 4 out of 5.
Our first online “Connect” programme in 2020
It thrills us to think of this growing cohort of people working across policy and frontline roles who are building their skills, connections, ideas, and confidence. We know that between them, they will make real change in policy development and delivery, and how it supports frontline practice to provide the best service for people across the country. We have a real sense of a ripple effect, and a strong belief in the long-term potential of our participants.
We know that continuing to work towards Telescope’s aim - connecting policy and frontline - is still important now, just as it was 5 years ago. We’re seeing great examples of connective work happening at the local level, such as the innovative partnership working like Rebecca Towers’ place-based approaches in Southwark. It’s also happening in certain parts of the policy sphere, like the brilliantly successful Cabinet Office Policy School. But there’s still not enough of this great work going on.
As we move into an election period in the UK, Telescope is well-positioned to support newly-forming policy teams within a new government, focusing on how they can really listen to frontline insights and leverage those for meaningful policy change. This is an exciting time to build on our previous work and take Telescope to the next level.
We’re so passionate about the mission of Telescope - and, as Lauren Irwin-Szostak wrote in Forbes, “passion can positively affect success”. But we also know that relying on passion can be a slippery slope - as the Year Here team wrote at the time of the programme’s closure, “...difficulties were often overcome by the herculean efforts of our team, working late into the night or over the weekend to keep us on track. We asked huge amounts of our staff and Fellows, and they delivered. Year Here was propped up by their passion”. Taking inspiration from Year Here, as we’ve always done, we think now is the time to consider how we might make Telescope more sustainable going forward.
Closing our in-person workshop for Grand Avenues in 2022
For us as co-founders, at this stage in our journey, we’ve also each independently decided that we’re interested in exploring new challenges. So how can we make Telescope less reliant on our time and energy, and more self-sustaining outside of us as individuals?
Right now, with an exciting project pipeline and an election that could change the whole policy landscape, it feels like the right time to explore how we could bring in more capacity and a new energy to really drive this next phase of Telescope's development. That development may build on our recent experience with the Royal Borough of Greenwich to do more place-based work in London boroughs, as well as taking on new projects in probation re-design. There’s also the possibility of pivoting our work more to focus on civil service and local authority training programmes, embedding ourselves alongside brilliant trainers like COPS and the Public Service Transformation Academy. All of this can happen whilst leaning into opportunities for thought leadership and policy influencing, exploring different ways to share our insights and translate them into systemic change.
It’s an exciting time, and there are lots of different ways we could go. We’re interested in the possibility of bringing in someone new who could take a leadership role in the organisation from day 1, and start to take steps towards scale. We’re also interested in exploring other options for our future leadership, such as co-leadership (as modelled by Sneh Jani and Zoë Whyatt for Year Here), or a longer transition period working with co-founder Hebe Foster as the pipeline grows.
We’ll be sharing a job description in the coming weeks which outlines the kind of profile we’re looking for, so keep an eye out and share this widely! We also welcome anyone who’s interested in our work to get in touch directly and find out more - you can email us on hebe@wearetelescope.org.
We think Telescope has such potential to grow and scale, and we’d love to work with creative and passionate people to design the next steps - together.
