Cat Duncan-Rees

Cat works with a wide variety of people and organisations including Be More Pirate, the National Co-production Advisory Group (NCAG), Think Local Act Personal Partnership, BBC Sport, Health, social care, community groups and independent businesses.

Cat doesn’t shy away from the ‘difficult conversations’.

Her ability to fuse traditional methods of facilitation with a range of creative methods (often including the contents of her kid’s craft box!), mentoring and coaching has influenced national, regional and local changes in policy, strategy, organisational structure and culture, recruitment processes, community development and much more, for people with long term conditions; physical and sensory disabilities and mental health challenges.

The aim is always to encourage more holistic and human-centred change.

Cat also has years of personal experience learning about her own mental health and wellbeing.

Current Roles: Founder of Curators of Change; Be More Pirate; Ideas Alliance and Peoples Voice Media

Cat founded Curators of Change in 2017 based on years of insight and experience of managing and observing the effects of good strategic and change and organisational development in public sector organisations including health, social care, BBC Sport and a range of community and voluntary organisations.

Curators of Change is driven by the desire to shift the emphasis from what matters to systems and processes, to focus first on what matters to people and communities.

Current work includes: Mentoring the community development fieldworker team with Winning Hearts and Minds (Manchester Active) to push their boundaries in terms of how they work to improve physical and mental health in ways that make sense to people.

Development work with Be More Pirate; How to Be More Pirate is due to be published in September in which her work is featured.

She is also working as an associate with other creative organisations including the Ideas Alliance CIC (Oct 2017 onwards) and Community Reporter Training for Peoples Voice Media. Specific work with these organisations includes learning from peoples experiences of Covid19; support to ForHousing Housing Association in the North West, to deliver community centred change;

Cat is working with a range of Local Authorities to re-design their Personal Assistants market, self-directed support, and domiciliary care, and community-based support.

During the Covid19 she has also developed a range of creative methods for engaging with people via platforms such as zoom.

Previous Experience:

From 2002 until August 2019 Cat worked to develop creative approaches to change and organisational development most notably for Stockport Council including social
care, health, neighbourhoods and communities. This included co-designing strategies on day services, dementia, autism, strategic housing, integrated health and social care services, mental health. Coaching rapid testing programmes, co-design of integrated working with health and neighbourhood care and curating spaces for conversations that supported the collaborative approaches.

From Jan 2017 to June 2020 part-time coproduction advisor for Think Local Act Personal. Supporting the National Coproduction Advisory Group to develop co-production approaches nationally, locally and regionally.

Highlights Include:

• Working alongside the National Coproduction Advisory Group (NCAG) to develop their relationships and agenda, and support engagement in more than 100 events nationally, regionally and locally over the last 18 months (including online during covid19).
• Supporting the relationship between NCAG and the TLAP team to ensure that the experience of people is at the heart of everything that TLAP is working to achieve.
• Working with CQC, skills for care, LGA, ADASS etc to support the co-design of national policy.

Education and Vocational Qualifications:

• Diploma in the Art and Science of Neuro-Linguistic Programming – Awarded through The International NLP Trainers Association
• Institute of Leadership and Management. Awarded through DH Associates
• NVQ Level 5 Change Management 100/5302/5
• Pinpoint Facilitation Introduction to graphics
• Pinpoint Facilitation Facilitation Techniques
• University of Teesside BSc Hons Social Policy 2:1