Jo Orchard-Webb

she/her

Collective Learning Steward

Jo joined the CoLab Dudley team in autumn 2016 and swiftly co-created Detectorism as an approach to experiment with. Since then Jo has stewarded hundreds of local people who have engaged in our network through creative and joyous collective learning journeys.

Jo's work with CoLab Dudley involves encouraging curiosity and experimentation across our network, creating spaces for reflection, gathering and composting insight from experience, and supporting integration of learning. Stewarding knowledge weaving and knowledge commoning are critical practices in Jo's work.

Jo leads on our Principles-Focused Evaluation approach, and stewards learning of our collaborators in Dudley People's School for Climate Justice work.

Role cards currently held by Jo

• Collective Learning Steward (this is Jo's key role)
• Network Guardian
• Regenerative Futures Storyteller

Jo's CoLab Dudley role is around 2 days per week. Get in contact with Jo if you want to chat about diversifying the data we gather as part of our transitioning to alternative futures via shared learning, noticing change, and the meaning making processes that are entangled.

In relationship with place: The Inhedge, Dudley Town Centre

The Inhedge is a place in Dudley that Jo pays attention to. She says...

The Inhedge is a rare glimmer of lush green near Dudley High Street and a place I visit often, sensing and valuing its slowness, an anomaly in pace in an otherwise busy part of town. Walking through on the way to, or from the lab space on the High Street, I pay attention to seasonal change in leaf cover of the grand old trees that seem to oversee this space, and how light and wind moves around them.

Surrounded as it is by dark urban infrastructure materials, in different stages of care or decay, this is a space of calm and respite from the angry honking carhorns on the High Street, and a gift of shade on a sunny day. It feels less oasis and more edgeland - a place of multi-species possibilities with temporal links to its medieval edge of town function.

As you move from the verdant green of grass and tree cover, you transition to the concrete and metal amphitheatre of public seating to reach the top of the High Street.  Here you share the space with Bumblebees and Butterflies dancing on abundant Buddleia blossom, while a flock of chatty Woodpigeons coo and weave as if players on the stage, or as if an animated congregation emerging from Sunday service in ‘Top Church’ just opposite. 

I reflect on the multiplicity of stories this place has witnessed over millenia, and the stories it is yet to hold for future generations of beings.