Life is noisy or at least it is for me. It can mean losing sight of what is important to us, what is important collectively. I get to participate as a facilitator in an upcoming Future Skills Award ‘summit’ in which we explore novel ways to cut through the noise. Details in post.
I’m involved in a Future Skills Summit on 9 July, and I’m excited and nervous.
I’ve written before about the Future Skills Award. It is a program designed to help students build evidence-based, future-focused skills that support study, work, life and whatever comes next.
It replaced the Horizon Awards, which had a similar vibe. Do training and upskill (additional to your degree), get recognised for it.
The Award is built across three levels:
Level 1: Spark — short, bite-sized online courses you can complete in your own time.
Level 2: Go Deeper — workshops and masterclasses where you explore skills in action and connect with others.
Level 3: Connect the Dots — summits, hackathons, volunteer gigs and wildcard events where you bring the learning to life.
Until now, I haven’t been directly involved in delivering any of the Future Skills workshops or events, because they already have a crack team of trainers.
But that changes on 9 July, thanks to an invite from Adele Liddle, a very cool human being.
I’m part of a unique Level 3 Summit activity called Signal + Noise.
The Future Skills team describe it like this:
“A day of noise, silence, story and song.” (which could also be the title of an upcoming Game of Thrones novel).
Now Adele is much better at metaphor than I am (I’ve got one too many robot genes), but there is a nice theme in this training. How to find the important stuff in the noise of everyday life.
Across the day, participants will move through three different sessions:
Stillness — with my colleague Chris, exploring mindfulness and the capacity to pause, notice and regulate.
Sound — with Alana, exploring voice, music and what happens when separate contributions become something collective.
Story — with me, exploring the threads of connection that shape our wellbeing.
For my session, I am excited to present something I haven’t presented in detail before.
You see, I trained as a psychologist largely within a Western individualistic model of mental health. In that model, wellbeing is located primarily within the individual and so wellbeing-focused interventions tend to focus on the thoughts, feelings, memories, perceptions and choices of the individual. The model isn’t ‘wrong’ but it is incomplete.
Over the last few years, Indigenous philosophy and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander understandings of social and emotional wellbeing have had a significant influence on how I think about mental health. If I understand them correctly (and I apologise if I have not), wellbeing also sits in the connections and relationships we have with family, kin, community, culture, Country and place, spirit, story, history and the more-than-human world.
So, in my session, we’ll be doing a mapping exercise inspired by social and emotional wellbeing frameworks (Gee, Dudgeon et al 2014). Participants will map some of the visible and invisible connections that shape who they are, then explore how those connections can be held in story and shared through listening.
Here is the session description from the CareerHub and Future Skills websites.
“A day of noise, silence, story and song
There’s so much noise. In your head, your feed, in the chaos of being a person in 2026.
This session is about finding the signal… in your body, your voice, your stories. Three stops. Three ways of cutting through.
It isn’t a solo project. Your body knows things your feed doesn’t. Your voice gets stronger when it’s part of something. Your story becomes more real the moment someone else holds it. And your ability to keep going, to show up fully, to persist through the hard parts, is built in relationship, not in isolation.
Inspired by Indigenous pedagogies, ancient roots, collective voice, and the science of what actually makes people thrive: this is not a summit in the usual sense. No panels. No laptops.
What there will be is some silence, some music, map making and a conversation where you do most of the talking and the other person actually listens.
If that sounds strange, that’s probably why you should come.”
So, I really encourage you to register and take part. Places are limited because of specific workshop elements, so get in quick if this sounds like your jam.
Oh and lunch is included 😊🥗
