Giving Voice

Tuesday 26 February 2013

An Inspirational Weekend

I’ve been looking forward to going to London for the Giving Voice residential for a little while now and was excited when Friday finally arrived! I was extremely happy that my train was running on time and I made it to King’s Cross with no problem at all J I travelled from King’s Cross to Limehouse station with fellow North East SLT, Sarah and we were extremely proud that we made it all the way from Newcastle to East London without getting lost!
I was so excited when I saw a sign post for The Royal Foundation of St Katharine (our destination) that I stopped to take a photo!

Upon arrival we checked into our room and took in the beautiful surroundings. We met as a group before dinner and the networking began! It was lovely to meet up with SLTs that my path has crossed in the past as well as meet lots of lovely new ones! J
After dinner we were welcomed by Derek, Ele and Emma from RCSLT for our first Giving Voice session. We got to know each other by drawing each other’s life stories and learning more about where each of us works. We also got a taste of what was to follow on Saturday and the room was full of enthusiasm! At 9.30pm we had a choice of entertainment; a film (one of which was The King’s Speech) or a drink and chat in the lounge, and the majority vote was the latter! This was a great opportunity to talk about our enthusiasm and begin to build working relationships.
Saturday was an early start with breakfast at 8am and the first session at 9am. We were introduced to a challenge that we would be working on in teams and then the first of our guest speakers arrived. A total of four talks took place across the day, all of which were extremely interesting and inspirational.

We heard from Sarah Corbett of The Craftivist Collective who inspired us to use craft in our campaigning. I used to do a lot of crafts so this is definitely something I have been inspired to try in the near future! We also heard from the Royal College of Nurses about the success of their Frontline First campaign and we watched the ‘This is Nursing’ video which was truly inspirational and made me even more proud of my sister (who is a nurse) and her colleagues than ever before. Lewisham Central councillor Damien Egan came to talk to use about life as a local councillor and how to make it easier to capture the attention of councillors. I think many of us were inspired by this and are going to contact councillors as a result! The final talk of the day was from Rhiannan Walton of Therapy Ideas Live and she inspired us to motivate and encourage others to get involved in campaigning.
Ria and David :-)

I feel like I learnt a lot throughout the 24 hours I spent in London, and formed new friendships and working relationships which I look forward to developing further in the future. I am keen to take my campaigning forward with my newly developed knowledge and skills and would be extremely keen to hear from anyone in the North East that would like to join me to Give Voice.   Check out the twitter hashtag #givingvoiceuk to see more pictures and comments from the weekend (and if you’re not already on twitter here’s the perfect opportunity to get involved!)

Some of the working group :-)
(thanks to Rhiannan for taking the photo and RCSLT for sharing it on facebook!)

Speech and Language Therapy Transforms Lives



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