Inside Iriss

What we're up to right now!

What did we learn from our Learning Week?

Learning Week is over at Iriss now. We spent three days in person, eating pastries and chatting about how our year was, things we celebrate and learn, how we keep aligned to our new strategy, using our new evaluation process, showcasing our skills and impact and what the next year could look like for us. 

Evaluation - Invisible String

As part of our learning week we had a day where we focused on our internal evaluation process, as well as how we can better use the data we already collect to show our impact to partners and stakeholders.

Exploring the intersections of our work 

In a fast-paced environment, the instinct can be to act quickly, but without a shared understanding of where we have been, we could move in directions that are not fully aligned or as effective as they could be. In having a learning week, we are valuing and including reflective practice into our work, to help us be more strategic, more collaborative, and ultimately, more influential in the change we seek to create.

Research alongside social care practice

Exploring the approach of Research Practice Partnerships

Back in 2009, I was a fresh faced researcher, working as an intern in the Office of the Chief Researcher in the Scottish Government. I was at an event listening to a talk by the then Chief Social Researcher, Diana Wilkinson. She was presenting on what influences policy makers to make the decisions that they do. There was a very sobering slide on how much politicians were influenced by evidence within their decision-making.

Why should I care about ethical commissioning?

“What matters isn’t if people are good or bad. What matters is if they’re trying to be better today than they were yesterday. You asked me where my hope comes from? That’s my answer.” Michael ‘The Good Place’ Season 4 episode 6. 

Change – the only constant?

We have been reflecting on our last year (and more) and looking forward to this year and our future, and it got me thinking about change. We (people not just Iriss) talk a lot about how we need change, how to create the conditions for change, how change is the only certain thing. 

A Day with Iriss: reflecting on our conference

Last week, we hosted our annual conference - A day working with Iriss. The hopes of this day was for attendees to hear about how Iriss does things (the ins and outs), see some project examples on how our partner created change and work through some of their own challenges. We wanted participants to be able to take away something tangible and practical from the day, a solution or step towards implementing their own change.