Runningstories #11

27 November 2024

Stories inspiring systemic change

This has been a first workshop hosted by IFF, a registered charity with a mission to enable people, communities and organisations to flourish as effective agents in powerful times. Together with the IFF community (around 10 people including Margaret Hannah former director NHS Fife and now IFF Director of Health programmes) and Runforever's friends (around 15 people), we offered Runforever as a starting point for opening conversation on prison and walls with the intention of creating awareness on our work and possibly insights not just on prison but in the related fields of health and education. 

Conversation: IFF community in conversation with Paolo Maccagno, Mark Hope and Stephanie Morrison

0:00 Introduction and welcome

1:00 Paolo Maccagno (CEO Runforever) – Sharing stories about Runforever for creating awareness on our work. “We need to be organised but we don’t need necessarily to be an organisation”. The prison as a microcosm for understanding how institutions work and know about systemic change.

3:45 video about Runforever – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbi7JK6Kbcg

6:10 Marathon running and Feldenkrais as forms of art with the potentiality of healing. The wall of the marathoner (7:50). What is to run the wall of the marathoner inside the walls of the prison (9:10). How Runforever was born (10:15). One story “Inspiring beauty – Running along walls” (11:45).

13:45 Stephanie Morrison (honorary Runforever) – some background about herself and her experience working in prison. Running and Feldenkrais help building relationships (15:15). Health symposium at HMPG in September 2023 where prisoners have been empowered to help organising it and participate into the photovoice (16:00). Working in Maine as example of humanising healthcare (17:50).

19:30 Mark Hope (Chair Runforever) – prison similar to description from Dickens as a place of punishment and disempowerment (20:45). Running with them (21:15). Stories from runners (22:40)

23:50 Paolo Maccagno (CEO Runforever) – inside and outside, trying to create a bridge. About The Silent Run as a way of building a bridge and clarifying running beyond the fitness culture and being a ritual (25:30). The Silent Run as a common goal for 2025 (28:15). Running marathons and Feldenkrais as practices of the unknown and mystery (29:10).

30:20 Samara Leibner (GLGDGG) – about To Absent friends festival and The Silent Run.

31:45 Alec Thomson Miller (Ace voices) – meeting at the Healing Arts event in August 2024 and about The Silent Run in the community at Heathryburn school, Northfield Aberdeen. Recording a song to be played inside the prison. Reading a poem from a young child (34:20).

36:00 Margaret Hannah (IFF Director of Health programmes) – closing thoughts underlying the organic growth of Runforever over the last two years.