Sheerwater rediscovered!

Since 2014, the Sheerwater housing estate near Woking, in Surrey (UK), has been the subject of a partially completed regeneration project which is negatively affecting residents and despite some achievements. 

The regeneration project was stopped due to Woking Borough Council facing financial difficulties. At the end of 2025, some decisions were announced to refurbish dwellings that had already been vacated. Others were to be sold for redevelopment.     

December 2025 Map of Sheerwater planned refurbished/completed/to sell dwellings

(courtesy of the Mascot Hub) 

The Systemic Life Stories Project

I have been a regular visitor to the Sheerwater Parkview community centre since 2015.  In 2025 and after a very intersting conversation with a university colleague, I decided to apply for funding to organise a research project with Sheerwater residents and organisations. 

I partnered with the MascotHub (a partnership that provides aid and advice to residents) and the SurreyHistory Centre (a council sponsored organisation with more than 16 million historical records about Surrey). I recruited Dr Cecilia Loureiro from the Business School and Isabelle Kemp from the Social Science Impact Accelerator team. The project effectively ran between July and December 2025, with a main exhibition-workshop event on the 29th of October.  

 

Mr Paul Salt (left), resident of Sheerwater for 61 years being interviewed at the Mascot Office (September 2025).

 

With the help of partner organisations and personal contacts, I interviewed residents for their life stories. Using the systems thinking rich picture technique, with the information obtained from the interviews we (myself and Cecilia) produced and disseminated a visual history of Sheerwater as told by residents.  

A history of Sheerwater

We organised the picture (see above) into three (3) stages:  a ‘past’ (of resilience), a ‘present’ (of diversity) and a ‘future’ (of hope). In a nutshell, the past shows a community where people cared for each other.  The present shows the arrival of diverse community groups, supported by new facilities and by social media communication.  The reader can zoom in in the picture above for more detail.  

The future of Sheerwater

The future of Sheerwater as perceived by residents, is about building bridges between different community groups or constituencies.  

Participants at the "Sheerwater Rediscovered!" event, October 2025, Surrey History Centre. 

There are challenges and opportunities to do so.  A key challenge is to facilitated inter-group communication and understanding.   One opportunity to address this challenge as proposed by participants at the main project event (pictured above) is to design disseminate a welcome pack and restablish a community newsletter.  

During 2026, this possibility has been mentioned to representatives from some Sheerwater organisations.  There could be scope to do so, provided that there is an adequate form of leadership to take it forward, and that an appropriate format (i.e. electronic or other) is agreed between interested parties.

Hope for the future

We (myself included) are to 'move on' from what Sheerwater was: a fantastic, a very happy time (as told by many residents).  We are now in the present where, according to the philosopher Bying Chul Han (2024), it is still possible to act with hope and despite a sense of despair: to do something meaningful, to do something for others, spontaineously or in improvised forms.  To be open to possibilities as we do when we 'dream'; to positively turn to each other (positively), to trust in each other, and search for those possibilities together.  

The hope, paraphrasing the philosopher Byung Chul Han (2024) is for Sheerwater residents and groups to be open to accept that the future is uncertain, and that hope "increases our sensibility for what-is-not-yet, on which we have no direct influence" (p.27).  

With hope, the future becomes then up for the taking.  Let's try to infuse a good sense of hope in Sheerwater.  As we do when we cheer the Sheerwater Football Club team:

Come on Sheers!, Up the Sheers! 

Reference

Han, B. C. (2024). The spirit of hope. John Wiley & Sons.

Note

Further details about the event and the project “Systemic Life Stories for regeneration:  Helping Sheerwater” can be seen at: 

https://pure.royalholloway.ac.uk/en/projects/systemic-life-stories-for-regeneration-helping-sheerwater-social-/, accessed April 2026

 

In the classroom - what are we all doing here? Being seriously playful?

We now have different lifestyles that are part of our higher education.  Busier, mobile, remote, what sometimes is called hybrid. 

Students seem to be pensive in the picture, busy, and so am I as an educator. 

No doubt, social media (ever present, even in students' laptops!) has invaded our lifestryles and classrooms.  For the last few years, I get increasingly worried when I notice students checking their mobile phones, or typing fast in their laptops or tablets/  Something is going on!

What are we all doing here?

As an educator, I try to relate the exercise to concepts already explained in lectures. Some questions come and go when I check on students. It seems we all learn, or try to, whilst paying attention to our lives outside the classroom.

The technologies are supposed to help us remember, practice, get feedback, personalise. They are supposed to be the true complement of hybrid learning. Online access to material, simulations, presentations, exercises, case studies, discussions. All of these learning resources are there.

In many cases, instead, these technologies are allowing us to escape the interaction, the conversation, the reflection. They are allowing us to escape the classroom.

Like Edgar Morin (2016) says, part of the problem is that we have fragmented knowledge into disciplines. We have severed connections between knowledge, experience and learning. We need to rediscover such connections.

In one of my books (2020), I made an attempt to do so by bringing the idea that it is possible, within and outside the classroom, to play and be serious, to let our best selves come to the fore and help us be creative.  In the class, there are opportunities to be seriously playful.  

The results were unexpected. In one session, some students took videos of me playing the flute to create an association between music and numeracy. In another (an examination), others complained when the more 'serious' display (a graphic of a linear equation) did not show. I remember panicking at the time and solving the problem as fast as I could.  Some serious students said that this should not have happened.  And they were right.  Only that I felt as if I was in the wrong place trying to nurture my creativity and theirs.  

This las experience also taught me that there is still a long way to become seriously playful in management education.  Many university administrators operate too inflexibly and pass the blame to others, without considering that perhaps they are also part of the problems that emerge.   Luckily, the classroom still is a space to create, but we need to be there in body and soul to fully do so.  


After this and other experiences, I have changed focus (I also stopeed teaching and leading on big courses - 400 students and over!). I have designed exercises and assessments that aim to be more interactive, and I try my best to check the display of information.   

I have also ventured outside the classroom.  I also ask students to go around campus and observe situations, talk to venue managers or other 'customers', so that they also ask questions.

So, going back to the question

So, to the question of: "What are we all doing here?", I can only answer that we are simply here and there. We should try to be here, not try to achieve too much when we play with creativity, and be aware that social media (the gateway to the 'there' ) is also a member of our classes. 

We need to manage our technologies carefully, so that not all the attention to the here goes away.  And we need to find the appropriate spaces to be seriously playful with creativity  

References

Córdoba-Pachón, J.R. (2020). Creativity in Management Education: A Systemic Rediscovery. London: Palgrave McMillan. Have a look at the spirit of play and seriousness, and the experiences chapters.

Morin, E. (2016). Enseñar a vivir. Manifiesto para cambiar la educación. Barcelona: Paidos. A well explained vision for systemic education.

Somebody's food - paper published! - Some tips

 We finally did it!

Our project work has been published in an article for the Journal of the Operational Research Society.  It has been a great learning experience to have organised and led this process.  If I can offer some tips to authors who want to get their work published after a research project, they will be:

1) Draft whatever you can and send it.  Looking back, the very first draft version of the paper does not resemble much of the final one.  Yes, we included some diagrams at the beginning (we wanted to show some data), but even they were very preliminary versions.  We put the first draft out there and asked for feedback from co-authors (not every one contributed in the same way).  We started the process as a new stage after the project funding ended.  And asked for help, which we got in unexpected ways.  

2) Try to use the help you get in the ways it comes.  Some co-authors were good at refining the writing of ideas and adding their own.  Others were too specialised.  I had to find a way of accommodating their contributions.  I also had to adapt my schedule to theirs.   And wait patiently.  One of the co-authors wrote only a few paragraphs but they were unique in the way that they helped us position the paper in the current literature and discussions.  Another used the language of her discipline (not systems thinking).  So we had to find ways to translate contributions.  Often, we mean very similar things.  

3) Make decisions.  As much as I waited patiently for contributions, I had to shape the content of the article to what I thought was important and to meet deadlines!  Gradually, the scope of what could be changed had to be reduced and some contributions were reduced or lefr for the next paper.  Reviewers assume that there is consensus among co-authors.  So should you as lead author.  

4) Involve practitioners.  We had a project group with practitioners, so we asked for their feedback.  Like academics, they are very busy people and moved onto other projects if not their day to day job (which is not to write papers!).  They said though that the main benefit of their involvement was not the paper but the learning that came with it.  This and other insights (they have helped disseminate the paper in their networks, and they have praised it with their peers in front of me!) are definitely worth considering.  

5).  Enjoy and use it! The paper was published online a few months ago.  Am still over the moon with it!  I keep talking to people about it and it has brought me other possibilities for future research.  Whilst I decide what to do next, am contacting people who I think can benefit from knowing about it.  Not a big network in terms of numbers.  

Sadly, I have to fight back the urge to think of the next paper in a better ranked journal.  Luckily I have got busy with other commitments, but hey, I keep looking at this paper.  I am hope the joy lasts for longer !