The School of Continuous Improvement awards $178,642 under the Indicator Stewardship Seed Fund to Professor Verity Marris and Senior Lecturer Renke Sabel, for a project that names a deputy to keep a dog park's days-since-last-incident board.
The Indicator Stewardship Seed Fund supports a neighbourhood dog park's days-since-last-incident board with a named deputy and a countersigned reset.
By the gate of a neighbourhood dog park stands a whiteboard with a number on it, and the number has only ever been as reliable as the one person who holds the marker. The School of Continuous Improvement has granted $178,642 under its Indicator Stewardship Seed Fund to a project that gives that board a second hand. It is led by Professor Verity Marris, Director of the Trajectory Analytics Group, with Senior Lecturer Renke Sabel, Convenor of the Indicator Commons.
The project, Appointing a Second Hand to Reset a Dog Park’s Days-Since-Last-Incident Board, will work with the park’s regulars to name a deputy for the marker, agree what counts as a reset, and set down each change of the figure in an entry that a second person countersigns. The team will keep the entries alongside the board, so that a count passed from one hand to the next carries its own account of how it got there.
An indicator looks after itself for exactly as long as the person who started it is still coming to the park. The interesting work begins on the day somebody else picks up the pen.
— Professor Verity Marris, Director, Trajectory Analytics Group
Senior Lecturer Sabel described the board as “a small public figure with a very private history, which is the kind the Commons most enjoys being asked about.” The Fund exists to leave an indicator better stewarded than it was found, and the School reads the project as a plain and well-proportioned case of that aim.
The award runs across the park’s regular seasons and the handovers they bring. The University is pleased to support work that gives a familiar number a successor, and further details will follow as the park settles on its deputy.
Indicator Stewardship Seed Fund: Appointing a Second Hand to Reset a Dog Park's Days-Since-Last-Incident Board · $178,642 · awarded to Verity Marris , Renke Sabel