On Monday 23rd March 2026, the FLIC (Future Lab Innovation Committee) met for its second meeting. FLIC is part of the governance of Future Lab but is designed to be a space for blue-sky thinking within the project. The group is made up of HB&P trustees, staff, and the Future Lab team, bringing together a real mix of perspectives on what the future might hold for HB&P.
One of the challenges of thinking differently in a group like this is that we need to work online, with committee members located across England and Wales. How do you make a meeting creative, fun, and inspiring when using the medium of Teams?
To make the best use of the two hours, we first asked the group to do some homework, looking at the ICCROM Driver Cards as a starting point for our discussions about the future.
From this, we began to think about what people might be saying about HB&P in 10 years’ time. What might HB&P mean to people? How might we be engaging with them, and what might that engagement be about?
Working with our excellent co-chairs (Kate Solecki and Clare Knowles), and with a well-planned agenda, the meeting was ready to go. The next question was how to capture the session. Future Lab is not a very visual project at the moment, with lots of research, discussion, and thinking underway, but not much to show yet in terms of images.
After some research into what might be impactful, we decided to engage a graphic illustrator to document the meeting. Laura Sorvala seemed the right fit for us, and throughout the meeting she listened and drew what she heard. We are not quite ready to share the image yet, but as soon as the Board has seen it, we will share it with you.
Not only did having Laura with us produce a striking piece of artwork, it also helped us focus on clearly expressing our ideas and feeding them back to the group.
The next FLIC meeting will take place in person, and we are already planning how to make the day engaging, creative, and productive. My mentor likes to say, ‘None of us is as smart as all of us’. With FLIC, that really feels true – a brilliant and creative group of people in one space, working together for the future of HB&P.
Words By:
Liz Power, Director HB&P
