Louise Spragg

if you are softer than before they came. you have been loved.’ nayyirah waheed …. The trauma people carry is real and is often exacerbated by institutional harm and the embodied experiences of engaging with institutions they initially approached for help. The years of new public management, where cold, transactional processes and numbers trumped warm relationships and people, gave public services a soulless reputation. The sector’s image largely became one of automatons churning out services or issuing contracts, with ‘computer says no’ playing on repeat. But some local public services up and down the UK are quietly rebelling against that label and are writing new narratives with love as a central protagonist. Being moved by that affection to take action, in a way that helps not harms, feels critical to the purpose of 21st century public service. Can love and compassion be justice-seeking tools for local public servants who want the best for people and for the place they call home? Image: Oskar Schlemmer Bauhaus Stairway, 1932

An important biological discovery reveals that the larger someone's social network, the larger a particular prefrontal cortex subregion is. This means that having people to rely on doesn't weaken us; rather, it allows us to connect with others in the world around us. It's essential to understand that we are 'enough' as individuals, but we become more powerful when we act together in relation. Hannah Arendt, in her famous book The Human Condition, wrote that the revelatory quality of speech and action comes to the fore where people are with others. Arendt urged us to ‘go visiting.’ We should reckon with rather than fear the contradictions of differing value systems and embrace the realisation that no one is ever right all the time. Love brings space and time to the other outside of us but also within us so that what this other entrusts of his or her being to us can live, grow, and blossom. Let's remember the importance of human connection and the power of acting together. 'to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act' Hannah Arendt 1958 Image HILMA AF KLINT THE DOVE NO. 2 1915 #ToLoveIsToAct