so, let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start....

Though not really sure how far back to go, I could talk about how I have always been involved in community work, personal development organisations, running large events and projects, 




and thinking up new enterprises having had my own assortment of businesses for 33 years. 

How I have always cared passionately about our beautiful planet and all lifeforms on it. 

 I could talk about how I have been involved in the 
co-operative movement for the last 15 years, plus I could talk about my early spirituality and involvement in organised religion.

But, I will talk primarily about how all this led towards my running a community 
co-operative called Revival Lincolnshire, and what that is now leading towards!

Let's go back to 2005, I left my employment at Lincolnshire Co-operative to become a Social Enterprise Development Worker at Lincolnshire Co-operative Development Agency (LCDA), supporting the creation and development of co-operatives and social enterprises across Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire.  During this time I assisted with the creation of a wide variety of community projects all the time gaining knowledge, training and experience - and LOVED it!!  Around 2010 the economic climate in the UK meant that funding for business advice was reduced and our client base for free development and support was lost, being replaced with paid for consultancy work.  We were therefore tasked by our Directors with actually setting up community co-operatives in partnership with the community.

I had been fortunate prior to this to have been tasked with setting up a Creative and Cultural Activities Cluster Group, where creatives were being prepared to offer workshops to those paying with a proposed Personal Budget (Independent Payment), I became well aware that creativity was seen as therapeutic and this knowledge stood me in good stead when in 2011 I was diagnosed with a chronic illness which initially I feared was life threatening.  I turned to creativity to support me through the few months of adjustment to this life changing knowledge, and was relieved and delighted to find that it did indeed give support and benefit.  I realised that I was now well placed to try and share creativity as therapy with others who were going through difficult personal health journey's through the development of a community co-operative for skill sharing art and craft - and even better, the LCDA Directors agreed with me!!  I was given the green light, and the instruction to 'just get on with it'!

And so I did....   I also just got on with the 'illness'....I knew I had to do this .....

I undertook feasibility, networked, planned, plotted and prepared and later in 2011 launched the Revival Lincolnshire project in the Involve@Lincoln centre with pilot workshops and a number of new friends who I had engaged with during the preparation phase (and was bemused to find that the majority had names beginning with either A or J  (my initials too!!)  (Photo shows our first workshop - making a 'bug hotel' with Jay!)