Dear Being Luminary Community,

 

There's a profound difference between movement and transformation. And as I reflect back on 2024, I'm struck not by how many things we did, but by how deeply we've grown.

 

In March, I headed out to Bangkok to work with one of my brilliant clients, Bangkok Patana, and to establish new relationships with schools who have now become clients. The trip was fantastic, but on arriving home, I ruptured my Achilles. When I look back on the year, what I reflect on most is the way in which I have been taught about vulnerability in ways I never expected.

 

My Achilles rupture really forced me to experience the rigidity of my self-concept. Suddenly I was starting out in a wheelchair for the first time, in a cast for 12 weeks, and navigating spaces I thought I understood, but had never truly inhabited, from the perspective of somebody with accessibility challenges. As I learned to move through the world differently during this very tiny window, every aspect of accessibility work became visceral, rather than theoretical.

 

My mind during that period was challenged by the very humaneness and sense of fragility that also comes as a consequence of being in my late 40s and recognising that the body that I've relied on for years to do everything was not able to do that. 

 

Simultaneously, my journey through menopause and exploration of neurodivergent patterning has brought very interesting insights into how we as a company think about inclusion. 

 

Running a business while processing all of these things about my health, wellbeing, and mind have been ‘interesting’ and illuminating, but ultimately have reinforced what we have always known in Being Luminary: equity work begins within.

 

Our keynote work this year has taken us across continents and countries, with significant engagements at FOBISIA, BSME, and EARCOS conferences. These weren't just presentations - they were opportunities to deeply engage with a range of educational communities about how equity work operates across different cultural contexts. 

 

Speaking to packed halls in Bangkok and Qatar, working with educators from Australia to South Africa, New Zealand to the USA, reinforced something profound: the hunger for meaningful equity work transcends arbitrary cultural boundaries.

 

Many of the keynotes I delivered this year have evolved into ongoing partnerships, with schools moving from initial engagement to deep, sustained work with us. These experiences have enriched our companies' understanding and approach, helping us develop frameworks that resonate across different cultural contexts while remaining sensitive to local needs and challenges.

 

Over the course of the year the Being Luminary Programme has worked with around 260 leaders, each bringing transformation back to their settings. 

 

One Multi-Academy Trust started with the BL Programme and has now established a network of DEI leaders who use our DEI Maturity Evaluation as their structure. The group of heads I've been working with in Oxfordshire for two years continue their partnership with us into year three and are now engaging in deeper work as a community of heads who will work through our BL Programme together. And we have seen leaders move to new roles, who are taking our partnership with them into their new settings. I feel so blessed when this happens!

 

The impact of our Global Leaders Programme continues to deepen. Our participants aren't just learning - they're actively transforming their communities. One leader's journey exemplifies this transformation. After engaging with our materials and teaching on power and positioning, they implemented their learning, sharing in our course slack channel: "I finally completed my first reflection session with our pastoral leaders on Positionality and Leadership. It went very well and opened up a great discussion about positionality and power dynamics at our school."

 

2024 has brought the company its challenges and opportunities for growth. Being Luminary's three values - wisdom, beauty and excellence - have been both our compass and our test.

 

While our redesigned curriculum and resources beautifully exemplify these values, we've also, at times, faced some challenges in our service delivery and response times. In particular, the growing demand for our work has tested our capacity to maintain the deep, personal touch that characterises our approach.

 

We've listened carefully to our community's feedback about what's working and what isn't. What we have picked up is that there is still more tailoring some of you want and need to ensure that our training materials truly fit the contextual issues you are working with. For some schools, this means more focus on specific cultural contexts; for others, it's about addressing particular institutional challenges. 

 

These moments of imperfection are teaching us something vital about equity work - it's not about presenting a flawless facade, but about showing up authentically in the messiness of growth.

 

As schools present their lists of initiatives - anti-racist workshops, unconscious bias training, Pride Month events, Disability Awareness weeks - we recognise that while these activities matter, they must be part of a deeper, more systematic approach to transformation. 

 

It felt like 2020 was a catalyst to so much of the DEI work that schools have been engaged in over recent years but for us it's the daily reoccurrence of events, that mirror all that happened in 2020, that tell us that this work still matters and is still vital to the health of our schools and wider communities.

 

We've witnessed the consequences of surface-level equity work in educational institutions. From discriminatory uniform policies to inadequate responses to racism, from safeguarding failures to racist attacks - these aren't just news stories, they are wake-up calls. They show us what happens when we mistake activity for transformation.

 

As we enter 2025, we're excited about the evolution of our Being Luminary frameworks and methodologies. The DEI Maturity Evaluation has grown from its initial conception into a comprehensive tool for organisational transformation, informed by our work with schools across different contexts and challenges. We're maintaining its price at £1,800 through January 2025, moving to £2,000 afterwards - a decision validated through careful consultation with heads and CEOs who have experienced its impact.

 

This isn't just another audit tool. It's a framework that helps schools understand their organisation's soul across all touchpoints, from governance to classroom practice. Through our monthly meetings, we model the use of this framework, creating a community of practice where leaders can learn from each other's journeys and challenges.

 

I really think that if this work is to be truly liberatory, we have to start by giving ourselves less of a hard time and taking great care of ourselves. 

 

The transformations I've witnessed this year - in myself, in our community, and in our work - remind me that our greatest impact comes not from perfection, but from authentic engagement with the complex work of change.

 

Thank you for being part of this journey - not just as clients or colleagues, but as fellow believers in a more equitable world. As we began this letter noting the difference between movement and transformation, I'm deeply grateful for a community that consistently chooses the harder, deeper path of genuine transformation.

 

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