Yesterday, I reflected lightly on re-branding. It had come up in a collective discussion about the future and direction of Paces Campus. As interesting as the discussion was, the notion of re-branding seemed to be advocated as a panacea for what we were not getting right rather than as an expression of where we aspired to be. In short, it was to do with the past rather than the future.
One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire Cat in a tree. ‘Which route do I take?’ she asked. His response was a question: ‘Where do you want to get to?’ ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the Cheshire Cat, ‘it doesn’t much matter.’ Lewis Caroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
In a week in which I was called "an old fuddy-duddy", I nevertheless continue to find the question "Where do you want to get to?" fascinating and that the answer does indeed matter a great deal. For instance, Whither Paces Campus? Whither Conductive Education in the UK?
Recently I spent a very pleasurable lunchtime and sunny afternoon at Cowley Manor in Gloucestershire. The occasion was the christening of a great-nephew. Lewis Caroll is said to have been a frequent visitor to the nearby Vicarage and to have been inspired by the grounds of Cowley Manor as the setting for "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland". From the terrace where we sat outside after lunch, across the lawn, dropping steeply down the path to a lake and, beyond, passing a wood, then rising up across a field to the far side of the grounds, our gaggle of children played. I half-expected to see the waistcoated White Rabbit, "Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be too late!", scurrying across the field and into the rabbit hole.
And no, there's no great thread or conclusion to this post except that if, just as the Cheshire Cat says to Alice, you don't know where you are wanting to go with a blog posting, it matters not much which route you take, then a detour via Cowley Manor is as pleasant as anywhere.
Whither Paces Campus? Whither Conductive Education? Important questions, both.
