Benjamin Margetts

George, this is a thoughtful reflection on both your development as a researcher and the personal challenges involved. Eight interviews represents excellent progress, particularly when initiating conversations does not come naturally to you. Reviewing each encounter and adapting your wording and follow-up questions demonstrates valuable adaptive leadership. I also appreciate your recognition that participants are people with interesting lives rather than simply sources of data. As you continue, keep reflecting on the distinction between developing genuine rapport and building rapport principally to improve response rates: respectful recruitment should leave people equally comfortable saying no.

Your experience of coding also captures something fundamental about qualitative research. Coding is interpretive rather than mechanical, and community cohesion is unlikely to divide neatly into predetermined categories. Re-reading, moving codes and reconsidering themes are part of developing a defensible analysis; keeping brief notes explaining these decisions will help create an audit trail. I also like your observation that 'locality rules': exploring beyond downtown appears to be deepening your understanding of the settings in which community arts operate. Consider next how this developing sense of place changes, or complicates, your understanding of community cohesion.

These are three really strong lessons to take away from the LiA, Peter. I particularly like your first: communication isn’t only valuable when it immediately resolves a disagreement or produces perfect understanding, continuing to engage, ask questions and explain concerns can itself build trust. There’s also a nice progression across your reflections from feeling personally responsible for getting everything right towards recognising the importance of collaboration, shared responsibility and looking after yourself and others in order to do good work. I hope you carry that with you: leadership doesn’t require you to have all the answers or solve every problem yourself, but it does require you to stay engaged, communicate openly and enable others to contribute alongside you. You’ve clearly put an enormous amount into these six weeks, and I hope you’re able to look back with real pride at what you and the team have achieved.

This feels like quite a culmination of what you were reflecting on last week, Peter. You faced considerable uncertainty, an extraordinary amount of work and a moment when something you felt personally responsible for simply would not work — and yet the outcome was not the failure you feared. What strikes me most is that you didn’t get through the week by being individually perfect: you stopped, regrouped, worked out what was realistically possible, trusted your teammates to take responsibility for their parts, and kept going together. There’s some really important leadership learning in that. I also hope you hold onto the gap between how harshly you judged yourself in that difficult moment and how your colleagues, partners and stakeholders actually experienced your contribution. The fact that they now want to use Izcalli — and that you’ve chosen to support its continuation after the LiA — says something rather more meaningful about your contribution than whether every webhook worked on presentation day. You and the team should be very proud of what you achieved.

There’s a huge amount to reflect on here, Peter. I was particularly struck by the connection you’re beginning to make between accepting your own fallibility and still taking responsibility for how you work with and affect others. Leadership rarely gives us certainty that we have understood everything correctly or made the perfect decision; perhaps part of it is learning to act thoughtfully despite that uncertainty, while remaining open to dialogue, correction and other people’s perspectives. Your experience in Iztapalapa seems a good example: you arrived with ideas about the community, but were also able to listen, test some of those assumptions and learn from people with very different experiences. And adapting an entire presentation into Spanish with 48 hours’ notice certainly earns you Fast and Determined! I’m slightly apprehensive about what Week 5 has in store :)

There’s so much growth in these reflections, Albert, and it’s lovely to see you becoming more comfortable with the process of reflecting itself. I was particularly struck this week by how positively you responded to the uncertainty around teaching — rather than being thrown by the lack of timetable, resources or even certainty about who you would be teaching, you adapted and found a way of working that you genuinely enjoyed. There’s some real leadership learning in that ability to respond to what people actually need rather than simply following the plan you expected to have. I’m also really glad that some of my comments have been useful. Perhaps one of the most important things you’re discovering is that reflection doesn’t always have to produce a neat answer: sometimes noticing what makes you feel purposeful, connected and more comfortable with yourself is valuable in its own right. Keep enjoying the remaining time — and keep being Albert.

There’s a lot of really thoughtful reflection here, Albert. I particularly like that you’re beginning to think not just about what you might want to do, but about the kind of person you want to be and the life you want to build. I also wonder whether there has been more leadership learning this week than you give yourself credit for — perhaps not through formal responsibility, but through the relationships and trust you’re building simply by spending time with the students, listening, joining in and being present. As you approach the end of the LiA, it might be worth thinking about what it is about this experience that has made you feel so happy and purposeful, and which parts of that you would like to carry with you when you return home.

There’s a really valuable lesson in this, Cameron, about being able to contribute when the context changes around you. Your LiA isn’t turning out as you anticipated, but rather than measuring its value against the original plan, you’re recognising the opportunity to help shape something at an early stage — work that may continue to have an impact long after you’ve left. I also really like your observation about what has changed since one person’s role was distributed across three specialists: it’s a useful example of how organisational structures can enable or constrain what even very capable individuals are able to achieve. As you head into the final weeks, keep thinking about what you’re learning from being part of a programme in transition, particularly about adaptability and how you can contribute effectively without necessarily being there to see the eventual outcome. And good luck with the eco-brick presentation!

This feels like a really significant week, Elias. Last week I encouraged you to keep thinking about the connections between research, policy and implementation, and you’re now experiencing that first-hand — not only presenting your work to people involved in shaping India’s power system, but seeing your analysis develop into a decision tool that the team actually wants to use. I particularly like your reflection on how being in India changes your understanding of the numbers: seeing power cuts, talking to people involved in implementation, and recognising who is ultimately affected by policy decisions. There’s also some important leadership learning in seeing an idea you presented taken forward by the wider team — think about what enabled you to make that contribution effectively. And 4,980 metres is quite an addition to the LiA experience! I’m glad to hear the summer is proving so fulfilling.