So, the final residential blog post for another year….and it was quite a finale, with each of the ‘Dartington sets’ (groups made up of students from across different programmes and schools) doing a presentation based on their SSE, residential and own project experiences. It was a fantastic display of creativity, teamwork and lots of laughs….and I’ll try and get some video highlights up as soon as possible. The exercise is much more about the working together with new people, coming to consensus, allowing everyone to contribute etc. but the end products were great as well, with the winning presentation giving a unique SSE-themed twist to a classic formula (Dragon’s Den). Congrats to all for entering into it with such gusto.

The night before was open mic night and disco, and once the students had recovered from the horrific sight of some of the staff’s dance moves, it was a great evening. It’s always pretty inspiring to get a sense of the amazing talent people have, be it Liverpool’s choir (ably directed by Bernadette), or London’s acapella and dancing efforts. This could well become a fixture at future residentials….although the bar has now been set pretty high.

Personally speaking, as I mentioned briefly before, the highlight for me was the conversation with the set I was facilitating following Vaughan’s witness session. The points they were raising after having heard Tim Smit and Vaughan speak, and from learning from each other’s projects, demonstrated clearly to me the effectiveness of the expert witness approach. Each had taken something different that was relevant to them personally or to their organisation, and the respect they showed each other in listening and building on each other’s ideas left me on an absolute high. A slug of inspiration to see me through the policy documents that await!

Here’s a slideset of photos that tell a bit of the story of the SSE Residential 2008, and below that a video from the first night where each person says one word that defines social entrepreneurship for them.