Phil Kirby has never had a proper job. Until his mid-twenties he was a full-time political activist campaigning for the likes of Anti-Apartheid, Youth CND, The Right to Work Campaign, and The Anti-Nazi League. He says he's never been so busy since. After University he became a volunteer for several mental health charities where he did everything from wiping bottoms and mopping vomit to handing out powerful neuro-toxic, anti-psychotic medications to his long suffering clients with absolutely no training or proper supervision whatsoever. This experience led him into the Advocacy movement. He spent the next fifteen years as an independent advocacy consultant, mainly taking on projects that the bigger and less imaginative organisations thought could not or should not be doable. He worked for several health authorities in Northern England and many Third Sector Organisations. Most of the consultancy was around "hard to engage" groups. Phil always argued there is no such thing - there are simply unengaging services and unresponsive, bureaucratic structures. Once people are encouraged to tell their stories engagement is more likely.

 

The biggest project he was involved with was the reprovision of a long-stay mental health ward into the community. His role was to engage the patients in the process of choosing a service provider to take over from the NHS, relocate outside the hospital walls, and build an entirely new multi-million pound facility. Many of the elderly patients had lived the majority of their lives in care. They were not used to being asked when they wanted a cup of tea or what they fancied for dinner never mind what kind of future they saw for themselves. Phil successfully involved most of the residents in the reprovision process, enabling them to be part of the team that interviewed the candidate organisations and eventually oversaw the architects who designed their new home. He also reestablished links between patients and their families and set up a volunteer project which encouraged members of the local community to spend time and do normal things with their new neighbours. Again this was often achieved through the exchange of stories.

 

Phil was central in setting up a nationally recognised beacon project, Dial House, a user-led, mental-health crisis service in East Leeds. He supported/facilitated a consortium of service users to develop their idea of a service run by and for survivors of the traditional mental health system. He helped them gain the confidence to bid for funding, and he coached the group through the grueling process of competitive tendering, eventually securing finance from the Sainsbury Centre.Through most of the 1990's Phil was on the editorial board of Asylum, a national (albeit tragically obscure) alternative mental health magazine. As editor he promoted arts based initiatives as a means to foster individual and community well-being. He has an abiding interest in narrative and story as a way to reveal truths that would otherwise go unnoticed, insights that don't get collected with the hard data. Recently he set up a business that offers consultation in narrative approaches to community Regeneration. His clients have included Leeds University, Bradford University, Leeds Music College, Wakefield Social Services, Bradford ATL, and Ings Resource Centre in Hull.

 

For the past twenty five years Phil has also taught creative writing and life story workshops in various community settings, working with a diverse range of client groups from depressed teens to older unemployed ex-miners to senior management teams in a large property management business. He is currently working on a novel based in South Leeds, provisionally titled LS11, which combines his passion for the psychogeography of our great Northern cities with his love of Gothic comedy and dark humour. The novel features a bunch of real local characters so he advises everyone he meets to be nice to him or they may end up as a villain in a very nasty plot development.