Resonance - Twenty Years Of Impact - Report - Page 10
REFLECTIONS OF THE EARLY YEARS
REBECCA BREWER
“WE SET UP RESONANCE
IN AN OLD LISTED
BUILDING AND WE LIVED
UPSTAIRS. IT WAS THREE
TIMES THE SIZE OF OUR
LONDON FLAT AND
NEEDED LOADS OF WORK.”
First, there must be failure
Daniel and I sat on his bed one afternoon at his
parents’ house, after he had been to several interviews.
We were engaged, I’d graduated and he was about to.
We were in deep discussion about whether he should
take on the apprenticeship in entrepreneurship with
Peter Dawe, which had no real structure or predicable
outcome, or pursue more conventional offers in
manufacturing and management consultancy.
and getting distracted by theories of change. We were about to face the stony
realisation that being an idealist is wonderful until the rent is due. Then idealism
starts to get annoying. So, he soon started serving many different social enterprises
as a consultant and rolled his sleeves up and got grafting. He worked within
incredible East London based voluntary sector organisations and things often were
stressful and went wrong, but they also demonstrated to him on a small scale how
something could be scaled up and benefit so many more people.
We chose the less predictable option, which at the time felt exciting and like
choosing adventure. Once back from honeymoon, we moved to East London, and
Daniel engaged in political lobbying regarding the poverty trap in the UK, under
Peter’s direction. He successfully gained attention of significant policy makers,
developed alternative statistical models for how the tax and benefit system could be
better designed to give incentive to move in to work. Daniel was already wide-eyed
at inequalities in society and working from Centrepoint offices gave him visibility
of the sharp end of these issues. His lobbying was written about in the Guardian,
where they compared him to Beveridge (whom we had no idea about and had to go
look up on the early version on the internet).
“There are no instant successes, but I believe most of our
wisdom is often formed through some kind of difficult
personal experience. We certainly learnt things from this
sometimes painful period, that meant Resonance benefited
and could more easily survive and grow.”
We were also running a music publishing business together which only fleetingly
took off and then failed and closed as we faced hard choices about my time and
energy commitments as well as giftings once I got pregnant in 2002. However,
this is intrinsically linked to how Resonance began: we learnt some hideously hard
lessons throughout the rise and fall of this first business and although Daniel writes
the experience off as a minor personal disaster, I see it differently and wear it with
pride. There are no instant successes, but I believe most of our wisdom is often
formed through some kind of difficult personal experience. We certainly learnt
things from this sometimes painful period, that meant Resonance benefited and
could more easily survive and grow.
Resonance?
The two of us were riding in the back of a car before we were married and it
suddenly started to slightly shudder and vibrate inside. Daniel started talking about
resonant frequencies. He said he loved the idea that when something travels at a
certain speed the natural response is for the entire thing to dramatically vibrate with
energy. The idea that there is a sweet moment – resonance - where everything is
travelling at an optimal speed and naturally moves - a physics phenomenon. Later
I think he wanted to create his own moments within organisations, where the
money, skills and needs of a community all found the perfect balance and that’s
how the name Resonance was chosen.
Using our imaginations
After working on Peter’s poverty trap lobbying, Peter agreed to fund Daniel’s project
- and he started Resonance. I think there was also a discussion about an idea
involving a wheelbarrow, but thankfully, the idea of money being made to work
hard won the day.
By August 2002 we were now a family of three living in a tiny two up and two down
house in East London and Daniel biked each morning to CARE in Westminster,
where he hot-desked as an entrepreneur with shared values, advising social
enterprises. Much of his work was working through what the purpose or aim or
shape their enterprise may take - it was deeply theoretical. Daniel did not take
long to burn through Peter’s money in his first year, spending it on legal advice
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We would debate at dinner: Why are people in the same organisation paid different
amounts? What impact does this social enterprise really have on those people
employed? How long does that impact last? How can you measure impact? How
do you audit what a neighbourhood may need in terms of social change? We
would spend hours when the baby was asleep upstairs talking about the potential
momentum we could imagine if more people developed the mindset of a social
enterprise, rather than thinking of either traditional charitable or business sectors.
It never occurred to either of us to stop the graft, question whether we were perhaps
daydreaming into disaster and go get a normal job. At every point, and I am aware
this may sound like a fairy tale retelling of the time, but I am certain this is true:
when things got tight, something would happen to encourage us to keep going.
Daniel would get another few days a month employment from another person
needing advice and work.
We were offered places to go on holiday for free from godparents or family, we
were encouraged by family who really had no idea what Resonance was (his Mum
would ask me in a whisper every time to explain it again) but they knew Daniel was
verging into something that lit him up and was somehow making a living as well.
No box to tick
Entrepreneurs run in Daniel’s family. Every time we tried to explain Resonance to
someone it felt more and more like the business was inventing a new sector. It just
wouldn’t stay in a box. And this idea seemed so important it was worth the hard
work to be there at the start of its conception. And slowly things started to look
more futuristic. In 2004 as we were expecting our second baby, we were offered
a Peabody Trust share ownership flat just down the road, which looked a lot like
a yellow shiny spaceship had just landed. No one else wanted them but we loved
them! We considered this a real gift as we were two people in the public sector (I’m
a teacher; we weren’t sure what Daniel was, they just listened to what Daniel did
and couldn’t find a box for him to tick and put him down as charity worker. He
had to bite his tongue). This is not irrelevant to the Resonance story. Without the
Peabody Trust itself, the housing market would have driven us out of London as
prices went crazy and potentially cut out the chances for Resonance to incubate
within London as it did. The very issues Resonance was and is trying to address,
could have easily derailed the Resonance in its most vulnerable state.
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