il faut cultiver notre jardin
We used to live near Ferney Voltaire in France a few years ago. We had a wall sticker in our house above the garden door with a Voltaire quote: ‘il faut cultiver notre jardin’ (we must cultivate our garden). I tended to take its meaning at face value though presumed Voltaire meant more.
This week’s events have focussed my mind on what it means. With global trends right now, I see that it could mean ‘mind your own affairs’, or perhaps a fatalistic reflection of individual agency (or lack of) within a less than perfect society – ie tend to what you can. On the flip side and with Spring in the UK air, perhaps it’s a reminder to nurture what you want to grow.
The latter fits with our experiences this week, putting in effort to help grow and support community sport around us in Leeds and further afield. Listening to Tom share his deep-rooted expertise of building impactful, scalable and sustainable organisations with This Woman Runs, Run for All and WildStrong reaffirmed for me the value of supporting growth for good. Hearing from them about their common values, ambitions and challenges created a deeper meaning for me in Voltaire’s words, that the community sport garden (to broaden the metaphor) takes individual and collective effort to realise its full potential. And that reassuringly, we can together cultivate something positive regardless of the wider world around us. Which leads me to India.
We had fascinating discussions this week with officials and organisations in India to explore whether we could help support projects there. A few years ago, I worked a little on UK India diplomatic relations. I would love the chance to return to this and to find concrete ways to contribute to such an incredible country, further growing the impact of community sport and adding to the evidence that from grass roots we can cultivate a global community.
More broadly, I was grateful this week for Karren Webb Moss’ time on Thursday to learn from her experience of working to embed legacy in major sports events. We spent time with Chris and Sally Corander at Interact whose organisation works to embed healthy activity into communities in the UK and in the Gulf. It was also a pleasure to catch up with colleagues at the Scottish Government and with Simon Lansley at Connect Sport to explore further the potential to showcase community sport across the Commonwealth, building on the Commonwealth Debate last week.
All that said and done and with the sun shining in North Yorkshire, I might now go tend my garden.
