Remembering Robin

I woke up intellectually when I met Robin – we all did.

Robin was my teacher. He was a truly exceptional and gifted teacher. I was lucky enough to arrive at the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex when Robin was still on the faculty and teaching in the early 1990s.  

There was a Capital reading group that you heard about almost as soon as you arrived. It was packed out – you had to find a space on the floor, on the windowsill, on a cupboard, anywhere, for an electrifying interrogation of volume I. You know with Robin it was balletic, physical and intellectual - I can still play this class in my mind and draw on it for inspiration. I woke up intellectually when I met Robin – we all did.

Robin taught a course on Public Administration. I have the pamphlet, published in 1992. It’s typical of Robin’s work: wide ranging, drawing on practice from the UK, Korea, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh – much of which Robin had been engaged with personally – intellectually brilliant and far ahead of its time.   

Twenty-five years ago Robin was already writing about the potential of open systems and the network. I have just been using this pamphlet for a book I am writing, because it remains one of the best expositions of radical thinking about public administration that I can find. I told Robin last year I was using one particular article and he told me how long it had taken him to edit and make possible – that was so Robin – it was all about making other people’s work shine.

On our course we moved into a house Robin had rented in Harlow, we divided ourselves into teams and we started to work on the future of Harlow’s services. It was full on – 24 hours a day focused and crowded chaos. It was a small house with three rooms, one of which was allocated to Robin and the male students amongst us, but Robin was moved into the kitchen because they decided he snored.

He must have been incredibly uncomfortable and foregone all his sleep, but of course, being Robin, he never complained and he never pulled rank suggesting that because he was our tutor perhaps he deserved a bed.

The team I was in worked on the waste round – we were up at dawn working bin rounds and getting a granular understanding of how the service worked. This was Robin’s teaching – he challenged us theoretically and he pushed our practical work until it resembled something that could help Harlow (I first met Geoff when he was on a testing committee that listened to our early ideas).

And then Robin challenged the system of learning: he wanted us to submit group project work which combined our practice with the theory we had been studying. Both were totally antithetical to Sussex’s way of grading students at the time.

Looking back, I realise that Robin must have really suffered fighting this corner but he won. I know that for each and every one of us on that course our lives were shaped: we knew that we had to continue to combine practice with theoretical rigour if we were to make change in the world. We, Robin’s students, are part of Robin’s legacy.

Robin was generosity personified – he would assume you knew so much more than you did, and with his gentle questioning he would make you raise your game. Later, Robin became my collaborator – although of course always my teacher – and he was my maternity cover in my role at the Design Council. I mention this because of Robin’s modesty. I don’t know any other teacher that would consider themselves as their student’s maternity cover, but Robin didn’t think about hierarchy in this way – what he saw was a brilliant team and an opportunity to make practical change.

And this was the thing about Robin - you can’t separate Robin the man from Robin the teacher/ entrepreneur and intellectual who changed so many lives. Robin was democratic to his very marrow, this was one of the many reasons I loved Robin and this is how he made change.

I don’t know how many of you here have taken a train journey with Robin. I asked Robin if he would come with me to look at our ageing service - Circle - in Rochdale. Robin got on the train – and shook the hands of everybody sitting around us before he sat down – of course they were both charmed and disconcerted. But, by the time we got to Rochdale, we not only had made an ally of a senior health leader who happened to be in the carriage, but Robin had taken Circle apart and suggested a myriad of ways we could improve it.  

Later that day we got stuck in the lift at Rochdale Borough Housing – our wonderful partners on Rochdale Circle. I felt panic and wanted to get out, but for Robin it was marvellous – in the time it took to rescue us he had worked his magic on the leaders in the lift, opening them to the next phase of work.

Robin was a visionary thinker and practitioner. He worked across sectors and across continents, changing lives and pushing for possibilities before others thought of them. Most recently Robin had been writing about economies of co-operation – about how we can grow the future through relationships and collaboration with those who share our values and principles. Economies of co-operation are the opposite of economies of scale, where the purpose is to grow the infrastructure and the organisation regardless of social purpose. This idea is just one of the inspiring legacies Robin has left us – and it's important because it reminds us of the ways that Robin’s ideas and teaching are alive in so many of us and how we can take his work forwards.

Finally, I want to say that I think it’s particularly appropriate that Frances has accepted the Albert Medal on Robin’s behalf this evening. Robin’s family was the root of his creativity – his brothers Hubert and Sandy, Beth and Mika and Joe, the very new Isabella and, of course, above all Frances – your warmth, intellect and your incredible gifts as an artist – that so inspired Robin’s creativity. Robin lived the ideals he promoted at home and in his work – it is why I admired him so deeply and why there cannot be a better more appropriate recipient of the Albert Medal.

First published by Nesta on 15th November 2017.