As I reach the end of week four of my Leadership in Action project and look back at the work we’ve done so far, the biggest thing that sticks out is the fact that no two days have been the same. 

Working with Make_Sense in Marseille, France, my days for the past four weeks have been jam-packed with meetings: with our Laidlaw group, with community members, with our project leads and with the Make_Sense team. Between these, we can likely be found at our coworking space, visiting somewhere in the city with our local referent, or lost in the aisles of Intermarche.

For three of us in here in France, our project focuses on Les Jardins d'Haïti, a local elderly residence (EHPAD) and “third space”, where we are trying to encourage community engagement with the residents and establish a community garden. This is only one feature of the residence, which also features a creche, music room, restaurant, coworking space and student accommodation. We’ve been spending a lot of time there, getting to know the building and staff, and have really been blown away by how welcoming and enthusiastic they are. We’re in a tricky situation with the garden development, as the Mediterranean midsummer is unfortunately not the ideal season for planting, meaning a lot of our project relies on us providing ideas and networks to be developed later in the year. It’s therefore reassuring to feel that they’re happy with the work we are doing and keen to build on it in the future. 

This week in particular we had a great meeting at  Les Jardins d'Haïti with the director of a local community group to discuss the feasibility of their organisation being able to use the garden space to host their own events, to encourage more intergenerational engagement in the residence. While we had similar concerns about the accessibility of the site, it’s satisfying to be able to report back to our leads the steps of engagement we’ve taken and increase their network, something that can be incredibly time consuming. On that note, this outreach is not without frustration, especially during the summer period: we’re currently waiting on over ten organisations to reply to our emails, which there’s not much we can do about at this stage.

While we’re only here for six weeks and hence unable to witness the long-term evolution of the space, we’re really keen to have a tangible impact on the garden too. We’ve spent time this week organising our own gardening event, where we hope to clear up some of the debris and weeds to make the site more appealing to future volunteers. If we can get hold of a rake (and some boules), it may even be a chance to play a game of Petanque!

Our project has been a great way to get to know the local Marseille community, in particular the cultures of caring for the elderly and community gardening. A key driver for our the diversity of our days, though, is our involvement with the other programme Make_Sense is running in Marseille. Because it’s the first time they’ve held a Leadership in Action scheme in France, we’re a relatively small group of six and hence very much aware of the details of the two different projects we’re working on. Alongside our group trips to the beach, Bastille day celebrations, welcome parties and general sightseeing, we’ve all gone on beach clean ups and helped categorise waste for their other partner organisation, MerTerre, and all made use of the coworking space at Les Jardins d’Haiti (with rare air conditioning!) on many a hot afternoon. It’s interesting to compare how we’ve organised our group work to fit our deliverables, as our project is much more collaborative compared to the multiple strands of the work with MerTerre. 

It’s strange to think we have less than two weeks left here. Much of that time will now be dedicated to writing up reports - hopefully including analysis of some survey results - and making sure there’s not any key features of Marseille that we’ve missed. Our local guide Marie and Laidlaw coordinators Emma and Jade are keeping us entertained: this weekend will feature a tour of a convent-turned-art-exhibition, a football match and open air cinema trip! Hopefully every day will continue to have something unusual to look forward to, with lots of sun to go with it (and no more fires….)!