BOB WILLIAMS
A
SHORTISH HISTORY
DEVONSHIRE ......
I was born and brought up
in the wonderful
Devonshire countryside. It is a real Rupert Bear landscape of woods,
deep valleys,
open moors, pudding shaped hills, and golden sandy beaches. Well to be
honest I lived
on the outer edges of Exeter, the "county town", but the country was
only
ever a short walk away.
Devon often gets missed out on the
tourist route
to Cornwall, but if you are ever in that part of England, slow down a
bit. You'll
be amazed how varied the county is; from the towering rocky cliffs of
the north;
the flat topped hills of the east; the Bronze Age prehistory of
Dartmoor, and the
deep drowned valleys of the south. Go in Spring or Autumn to see its
true glory.
NORFOLK ......
With adolescence out of the way, I
headed off
to the flatly rolling and flooded lands of Norfolk. I trained at the
University of
East Anglia in Norwich as an ecologist. I guess that's where my
particular interest
in systemic approaches to analysis and problem solving developed.
In 1972 I completed my University
studies and
joined the UK Department of Environment
s Coastal Ecology Research Unit as part of a large team commissioned to
study the
environmental impact of a major coastal development. I published two
papers as a
result of this work.
I also helped to establish the
Norfolk Environmental
Forum, an attempt to develop a multidisciplinary approach to
environmental issues.
I've been actively interested in the potential of multidisciplinary
projects ever
since.
MILTON KEYNES ......
I then joined the Open University's
Systems Group
to study and comment on public involvement in an inner city planning
strategy. I
was subsequently employed to design and implement the second stage of
this process.
Whilst at the Open University (based in the "new" town of Milton
Keynes)
I assisted the development of small cooperative enterprises, and
established and
ran an alternative to the local newspaper.
I also drank regular and rather
large amounts
of the local Greene King beer, mostly in a rather wonderful old local
called the
Royal Oak in Woburn Sands. A mug with my name on it is still there.
Wonderful stuff.
LONDON ....
And then of all things I moved to a place I'd previously loathed. London. For ten years.
London was a baptism of fire that honed me politically, socially and
culturally.
Life was never quite the same again. Fortunately.
I started off living in a run-down local authority flat in Islington
working on a
six month contract, and ended up owning a large three story house in
Hackney heading
a team of 20 people. Strange and wonderful times.
It all flowed from a couple of short-term contracts with local
government and voluntary
organisations designing and implementing public involvement programmes
in transport
and planning issues. However it sort-of carried on going.
From 1979 - 1985 I was employed by the London Borough of Haringey as a
social policy
worker. Here I developed ways of using community development methods inside
local government bureaucracies as well as within local communities. In
other words
we used pincer methods to bring about changes in public policies and
practices. Most
of the work was pilot project based. The work included issues
concerning the community
use of derelict land, improving childcare provision, improvements to
public services
on a large housing estate, decentralisation and devolution of services
to neighbourhoods,
equal opportunity policies and practices, a variety of health issues,
community based
adult education and the feasibility and establishment of a translation
service. I
designed, implemented and analysed two major questionnaire based door-
to-door surveys
conducted according to accepted professional standards. For the final
year or so,
I worked exclusively on lesbian and gay issues.
During this period I also served on the Executive of the National
Community Health
Initiatives Resources Unit (CHIRU).
In 1985 I joined the Greater London Council to manage the wind-down and hand-over of one of the Council s major voluntary sector funding schemes. On the demise of the GLC, I was asked to establish and manage the Employment and Training Group within the newly formed London Research Centre. The LRC was (and I think still is) a major source of information and intelligence to London s public and the voluntary sectors. The Centre s Property Register team was later added to my brief. The responsibilities of management, strategic planning, recruitment, and marketing within a large and new organisation consumed most of my time. However, I was able to produce a guide to labour market information and also to undertake a study of skill shortages in the construction industry to see if they would affect proposed £billion public sector building programmes. [They would]
NEW ZEALAND ....
Moving
from relatively secure positions to short term contracts seem to be a
bit of a patten.
In 1988 I chucked in the LRC job and moved to New Zealand. It's a long
story. The
short version is I went for a holiday and never returned. The slightly
longer one
is that my partner, myself and a couple of others were worn out after a
decade in
Thatcher's London, and were scouting out other places to live. Three of
us ended
up in New Zealand - my partner ended up in Yorkshire. C'est la vie.
My first job in New Zealand was for
the Department
of Internal Affairs. It started out as a four month contract to work on
the reform
of local government. My particular responsibilities centred around the
accountability
and responsiveness of local government to local people. The annual plan
process which
all New Zealand local authorities are now obliged to carry out in
consultation with
the communities they serve was one outcome of this work.
Four months became six months, which became nine. Then in January 1989
I was appointed
as the Wellington Region Co-ordinator for the New Zealand AIDS
Foundation. My main
job was to restructure the Wellington Branch after a period of rapid
expansion and
to develop appropriate methods of management and strategic planning.
The Foundation
was then integrating newly emerging health promotion concepts (based on
the World
Health Organisation
s Ottawa Charter) into its approach, which posed it's own management
challenges.
I also played a major role in developing the relationship between the
Foundation
and the (then) Wellington Area Health Board as well as with the local
voluntary sector.
And then back to short term
contracts. This time
permanently .....
From September 1990 until July 1995,
I was a partner
of Rivers Buchan Associates; a social assessment and policy advice
consultancy. I
also served on the Executive of the Wellington Council of Social
Service, and for
three years was the Treasurer of the New Zealand Public Health
Association.
After Rivers Buchan I started to
develop links
with other consultancies, and broadened my work out somewhat. I
currently work with
a range of organisations in New Zealand, Australia, the USA and SE
Asia, especially
those focusing on evaluation, action research and organisational
development.