Noel Hatch

Island-hopping in Sweden: an enchanted maze of tiny isles – only a bus ride from Gothenburg From a bioluminescent nightime sea to rare wildlife, natural wonders are on tap in the Gothenburg archipelago

Island-hopping in Sweden: an enchanted maze of tiny isles – only a bus ride from Gothenburg www.theguardian.com/travel/2026/... Loved it!

Alternative Editorial: War Does Not Make Us Secure — THE ALTERNATIVE As European leaders gather for the  Munich Security Conference , rendering many speeches about  the ‘New World Order’  and  commitments to arms spending , we’ve yet to hear what is meant by ...

How secure do you feel? thealternative.org.uk/dailyalterna...

Go where the people are I have been remembering Transeuropa not as a network, but as a gathering of voices that refused to stay in one place.

Go where the people are noelito.medium.com/go-where-the...

Displaced or reconnected? I don’t think we talk honestly enough about displacement.

A huge amount of belonging used to come from what you might call incidental proximity. Seeing the same faces often enough that they stopped being strangers. Sharing space without having to perform friendliness or justify your presence buff.ly/JOdSm6W

What local places can learn from random acts of kindness Every so often, something small interrupts the day.

What local places can learn from random acts of kindness noelito.medium.com/what-local-p...

The fight to get a road fixed in a Bedfordshire town takes a bizarre turn as it emerges that nobody actually owns it, and residents are forced to take ever more desperate measures to force the… 'Potholesville' - the road that can't be fixed

Potholesville, the road that can't be fixed www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKiV...

Technology, Friction, and the Reimagining of the World I miss the witches

Technology, friction, and the reimagining of the world medium.com/counterarts/...

What British Social Attitudes tells us about the limits of public service reform Public services are facing a legitimacy challenge as much as a performance one.

What British Social Attitudes tells us about the limits of public service reform noelito.medium.com/what-british...

LinkedIn Pulse

French stickers turn aging devices into badges of honour www.linkedin.com/pulse/weekly... Love it!

Learning to work with my ego (instead of pretending it isn’t there) My previous coach, Mary Gregory, has written a book called Ego.

Learning to work with my ego (instead of pretending it isn’t there) noelito.medium.com/learning-to-...

Jobs-pocalypse or productivi-splosion? The AI data is in • Resolution Foundation Morning all, Resolution Foundation is a great place to work – albeit not a guaranteed route to the OBR despite what you may have heard – and if you know of any bright young sparks who might be suited…

Jobs-pocalypse or productivi-splosion? The AI data is in www.resolutionfoundation.org/comment/jobs...

Well, hello world!

State of the Future is a new think tank (from @gavinfreeguard.com) for public servants and others who believe data, digital, openness and innovation can deliver better policy, better services and better outcomes for people.

sotf.org.uk

(Quiet news day to soft launch, eh?)

Pattern principles in the welfare sector Finnish designer, Janne Mattila, explains what makes something a public design pattern.

When our diverse group of international government design teams couldn't find common patterns, we pivoted towards something potentially more valuable: a shared framework that helps any government think systematically about design at every scale publicpolicydesign.blog.gov.uk/2026/02/05/p...

What can public services learn from Valentine’s Day? Valentine’s Day always throws something into sharp relief: who feels seen, and who doesn’t.

I’ve watched people celebrate it with joy. I’ve watched others dread it. And in both cases what sticks isn’t intention — it’s experience. The awkwardness of a gesture that missed. The warmth of one that landed. The silence that hurts medium.com/@noelito/wha...

Make yourself big! | Relationships Project by David Robinson | 23 Jan 2026 | Our thinking | 1 comment

In the places where enlarging the human element in the system breaks the rules, or at least breaches custom and practice, we need more than ever the skills and the will to step forward – and a manager bellowing support from the bench relationshipsproject.org/make-yoursel...

State and structural capacity — what it is, how it affects cities, and why city funders and… By Ruth Puttick

Are we funding outcomes, or are we also funding the capacity and capability required to achieve them? Are our accountability requirements strengthening institutions — or overwhelming them? medium.com/iipp-blog/st...

When have you felt really listened to? I don’t remember the moments people agreed with me. I remember the moments they stopped trying to steer me.

The Behavioural Insights Team has shown that paying close attention to how people actually experience letters, forms, and services — confusion, effort, frustration — often leads to changes no amount of optimisation would surface noelito.medium.com/when-have-yo...

Make 2026 the Year Of Neighbouring Let me show you how it makes everything better

We can all find ways to resist the isolating, dehumanising tides of our time attempting to turn us into machines. We can all figure out a few small ways to be together more, in our bodies, to call a friend to ask for help, to offer a cup of tea buff.ly/j3DSB76

The role of relationships in modern government - Heywood Quarterly Ray Shostak, Richard Bell and David Robinson explore the power and importance of human connection in public services.

Frontline workers need support to develop core ‘relational skills’, such as listening deeply and fostering psychological safety heywoodquarterly.com/the-role-of-...

When have you felt really listened to? I don’t remember the moments people agreed with me. I remember the moments they stopped trying to steer me.

People don’t experience organisations as strategies or systems. They experience them as encounters: a meeting, a form, a letter, a phone call — or the absence of one. Each encounter teaches them something about whether their voice has weight noelito.medium.com/when-have-yo...

‘It feels as if I’m in a Richard Curtis film’: readers’ favourite romantic trips in Europe Romance is in the air on a roof terrace in Venice, rowing across Lake Bled and a fairytale garden in Stuttgart

Love these romantic trips www.theguardian.com/travel/2026/...

Dm Threads People are often curious about our work at Dark Matter Labs. From a distance, it can look intriguing — ambitious, even inspiring — but…

Rather than explaining our ideas in the abstract, we tell stories — of projects, places, people and moments where new economic logics are being tested in the real worl provocations.darkmatterlabs.org/dm-threads-5...

Four futures for the relationship between councils and their staff When we talk about the future of local government, we often focus outward: residents, partners, technology, funding, governance.

Teams are given space to organise their work. Learning is prioritised. Flexibility is real, not performative. Leadership focuses on conditions rather than control noelito.medium.com/four-futures...

Lineages of Systems Practices Saskia Rysenbry and Laura Winn visually explore their understanding of how different currents of systems change thinking had come about, the lineages they have formed, and where the tools and…

What does it mean to feel into lineage? www.schoolofsystemchange.org/blog/lineage...

Five relationships, one pattern: what I keep noticing about councils in 2026 Over the past few days, I’ve been writing about different relationships at the heart of local government.

Part-time work, self-employment, hospitality, care, admin — entire sectors now sit on the wrong side of security. A labour market that relies on poverty wages quietly exports its costs to families, councils and charities noelito.medium.com/five-relatio...

Head towards the North Star We are calling our strategy paper our ‘North Star’ paper* — the thing that will set out our intention as to where we want to be as an…

"We have lots of signs and signals of something new, the problem is that they are often disconnected, the thing that is missing is doing ALL the future things together" so true! curiouscatherinehowe.medium.com/head-towards...

Reading the signs when the system keeps changing This week, on my way into work, every train on the board was cancelled except one. I could wait for it — or walk forty minutes to another…

Stay close to what’s really happening. Be clear about what you’re asking of people. Make power easier to see. Treat skills like infrastructure, not extras. Stop pretending things are simpler than they are noelito.medium.com/reading-the-...

Walk a mile in each other’s shoes I noticed it on an ordinary walk. Same street. Same houses. Same corner shop I’ve passed for years. But this time I was paying attention to…

What if the starting point wasn’t how do we help people cope? But what do people need, locally, to live well together? That moves the conversation beyond income alone to time, care, safety. It asks institutions to focus more on conditions buff.ly/izWdfT3

Living standards are still the biggest issue We did our first Data Insights event in the summer of 2022. We’d been looking at the numbers coming out of our front line service, watching…

Living standards remain the biggest issue because they’re felt daily, not debated abstractly.
Citizens Advice on what people are really carrying right now.
wearecitizensadvice.org.uk/living-stand...

Arundhati Roy is right, not Wim Wenders – here are eight films that have changed politics From ‘honour’ killings to nuclear war, some screen works have led directly legislative action – despite what jury head Wenders suggested at the Berlin film festival

From ‘honour’ killings to nuclear war, some screen works have led directly legislative action www.theguardian.com/film/2026/fe...