INSIGHT


Ian Orton (ianorton5@gmail.com) Chair of CILIP RPG (for those outside full time work) and former Senior Public Librarian. http://tinyurl.com/CILIPRPG


‘‘ RPG Leadership skills are for us all


It’s important for all of us to develop our leadership skills. Leadership is not necessarily restricted to those in traditional “leader roles”. There will be situations where we all need to look to the leader within us.


W


E were pleased to be represented at the recent CILIP Midlands Network meeting at which Jo


Webb discussed the challenges of leadership for Library, Information and Knowledge Professionals. To access the recording email chair. midlands@cilip.org.uk.


Even if you are retired, working part


time, volunteering, offering consultancy or on a career break you will still have leadership knowledge, skill, and experience that can help you to make any work that you do and your community healthier and more productive. Leadership often includes several different personality traits and communication skills that are useful for anyone to learn and practice over time. Jo Webb is a self-employed library consultant and interim manager with extensive experience in the higher education sector, having held senior roles at universities in London and the Midlands. A former CILIP Trustee and Visiting Fellow at the University of East London, Jo holds an MBA and a National Teaching Fellowship in recognition of her outstanding contributions to teaching and learning in higher education.


Storytelling


Helen Foster crafted the following found poem from the spoken words of those attending the CILIP Unconference at Kent’s Hill in Milton Keynes in October 2025:


36 INFORMATION PROFESSIONAL DIGITAL Jo Webb. Helen Foster.


Have you ever tried to tell a story while sitting on your hands?


Stories understand each other. Have things in common. Reach out branches to arc over roads that lead from the Beano to War and Peace;


Stories make sense of senses, sound out sounds, smell smells, hear what’s here, feel feelings. They stir windchimes and beat drums;


Stories tremble when the storyteller comes, thumping his stick, setting down the mat before the cat can sit on it and rubbing his belly where the fire is burning;


Stories drop from the trees in vivid Shades of Flora and Nature and Cuddly Moss. They soar in Burnt Blue Skies, shine coldly in charming orange, Rage in the Blood. They are Coraline and Lydia and Lilac. The Yorkshire Moors. The Deep Dive Sea;


Stories sit with us, peer down at us from tall towers, build walls around us for protection. They draw maps of places we hope to never return to;


Stories find out the unknown, revisit the forgotten, pick up where they left off, find magic in differences, cross boundaries, bring about reunions;


Stories have been around for a long time. They land by pure chance, linger on the edges of conversations, are pulled and pushed and chewed up in people’s mouths;


Stories are physically present, stable in times of change, different to ones that came before – or maybe just the same;


Stories grow. They are preventative medicine. They can heal us too. They open on Sundays and late on weekday evenings.


Stories can worry away at us. They can bite us, punch us. They can be a warning.


They don’t always read the small print.


Stories can lie fallow. And sometimes there simply isn’t enough time, but stories fight their way through, discover new ways of doing things. We find them sheltering from the rains in Africa and frozen in the Arctic Circle using words that nobody understands.


Stories never run dry. They don’t eat. They don’t sleep. They are moments and they are lifetimes. They can be silent. They can be a song. They can leave of their own accord. They can rewrite their own endings.


Helen Foster is a writer, researcher and writing for wellbeing practitioner and is currently CILIP RPG Writer in Residence. Helen is also Creative Writing Associate for the Stoneygate Centre for Empathic Healthcare at the University of Leicester Medical School. IP


Winter 2025


Leadership often includes several different personality traits and communication skills that are useful for anyone to learn and practice over time.


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