You know you’ve got the right partner in a project when you can say safely and confidently in a meeting, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
This was the situation in one of our Future Lab meetings as we were discussing, with our partner, the Heritage Innovation Laboratory Oxford (HILO), the methodology for sifting and sorting all the data we have gathered over the first seven months of the project.
We’ve been working in partnership with HILO for a long time now, developing the project together and then, after what seemed like a long time, launching the project in October 2025. From our side, I know we have learned so much from the partnership already. Thinking about how we explain our working practices to our partner has helped us interrogate what we do. Having their critical thinking applied to our operations and, with an academic partner, being able to draw on their wealth of contacts and expertise has been invaluable.
It’s not unusual for me to email the HILO team with a vague idea of something I need, only to find that I’ve got an email answering the question, solving the problem, and introducing me to the right person to meet with, all within a day.
I hope that HILO is learning as much from the partnership as we are, particularly about the way a small organisation operates and how we work within charity guidance. They have put so much work into learning not only about us and the staff, but also our Trustees, who are such a key part of any charitable organisation.
The real key to this partnership so far has been communication, and all those communication skills will come into play as we look at all our information together next week. We will be using the methodology that HILO patiently explained to me, one that is often used for PhD research, and it will be yet another chance for me and the team to learn a new technique that we can apply to our working lives going forward. As we go through the Future Lab project together, we are learning different ways to think together, work together and plan together.
