Learning to Lead Together

Never before has there been such strong recognition of the importance of community-based green spaces to local communities and urban redevelopment. This book is an autoethnographic account of the challenges and breakthroughs of learning to lead together. The interwoven stories provide first-hand, evocative examples of how an ecological and community approach to organisational development and urban regeneration helped shift the business as usual paradigm. It will help you identify and step beyond individualistic and ‘heroic’ notions of leadership, and will inspire you to find your own way of embracing natural and shared authority.

The book focuses on the experiences of developing an environmental education charity in London; Global Generation. It shows how action research, nature practice and storytelling has successfully grown shared purpose, trust and collaboration, both within Global Generation and in the wider community.

The style and structure of the book reflects the participatory approach that it presents. The author, Jane Riddiford, deliberately challenges the norms of authorship, which is shaped by the dominant Western narrative – objective, authorless and ‘othered’. This book goes beyond this narrow framework, combining different styles of writing, including traditional and autobiographical storytelling, diary entries and co-writing. Along with practice accounts of what happened, challenges raised and lessons learned, each chapter will also include other people’s descriptions of their experience of being involved in the process.

Jane Riddiford co-founded Global Generation in 2004. She has more than 30 years of experience in setting up and running environmental, arts and educational projects within urban communities in New Zealand and the UK. Her doctoral inquiry focused on leadership framed within stories of ecology and cosmology.