Welcome to the 900th week of March 2020, 3 years since we entered quarantine. I hope you have many masks and your bathtub hand sanitiser is boiling away nicely. It’s been a year, right?
In the time since our last newsletter, we shipped the latest Ethos Magazine out to subscribers across the world - issue 12. We realised a week ago that we have a big birthday coming up for Ethos soon so if you’re a subscriber, watch this space. Hint: we’ll probably have a party of sorts and there will be alcohol. Although you’ll have to buy it yourself (from a local brewer or distiller, we hope.) And, if you’re not a subscriber yet, you could be in mere moments after you follow this link.
After finally recovering from what I suspect was a mild case of Coronavirus, I was glad to tune into a series of great online events in the past week or two. The team at Kindred are hosting a series of peer-to-peer conversation for socially-trading businesses and organisations in the Liverpool City Region. The first one was titled Together we are mighty and was a reminder of how resilient and creative the social economy in the city region here is. They have more events coming up including this one tonight. Further afield I was invited to watch a discussion by the Impact Hub in Moscow who had a conversation with some social enterprises in Australia.
After a full day of inspiration at last week's Impact Summit, I then spent last weekend watching the first of two Hay Festival talks online. Monday evening's talk was from Alain de Botton from the School of Life. I feel informed and inspired.
I’ve felt grateful during all of these to see that despite the pandemic and lockdowns, there is still activity happening and the world is still turning. We are still finding new ways to connect, to teach and inspire one another and to learn, to have conversations about what might come next and to reassure one another that we’re here to help now and will still be there to help when we get there - wherever there is. And also we’re also not alone in this either - in Liverpool, Scotland, Moscow and Australia we're all having these conversations and asking what we might like to come next?
Below I’ve shared some articles that I’ve enjoyed reading over this period - a couple from our partners at the Good Business Festival and Kindred, and one from Ethos 12. I hope you enjoy them.
Until next time,
Andrew x
This blog was first published in the Wordscape newsletter on 28th May 2020