Society & Culture
Kate Arrow 0:02 Welcome to Leading Insights. Today we're joined by Cat MacAulay. Cat could you tell us a little bit about your role?Cat Macaulay 0:14 Sure. So I'm the chief design officer for Scottish Government's digital Directorate. And that's a fairly new role, I think. Well, I know for Scottish Government. First time we've had the chief design officer. And really what I'm there to do is, I suppose a couple of key things. So one of them is helping to introduce the idea of user centred design, particularly around the design of services, but not exclusively, as as one of the ways of working and thinking that we need in government in the modern government, you know, until, till fairly recently, Scottish Government in particular was a fairly benign kind of government in the sense that it didn't tend to directly deliver many services to its people. It outsourced the delivery of most services and so it was really more of a policy generating organisation. And that changed a lot with the introduction of a number of the devolved powers around things like social security, tax generating powers and so on. And so suddenly, we had to learn how to design and deliver services ourselves, as well as think about, you know, the role of policy in directing the design and delivery of services elsewhere. So, I was brought in fairly early on as one of the early sort of batch of designers coming in trying to help out with this and took responsibility for growing what was a sort of community, you know, practice community, but also a professional community, but also for helping to think about what bits of design that you know, design methodology that were largely developed in the private sector and what bits of those are really relevant for government work, bits are less relevant and how do we combine the kind of Drive for participatory democracy that is quite embedded in the heart of Scottish Government with design and design thinking as a toolset and a way of approaching service delivery in particular, and bring those two things together and really drive them into the heart of government effectively. So I've been doing that for about five years now, which astonishes me but there you know, time flies.Kate Arrow 2:22 Can you tell us a little bit about your career journey to get to there. Where did you start? Cat Macaulay 2:25 Okay. The first thing I would say is, I've never considered myself to have a career journey. It was a decision I actually made very early on when I was a teenager, because I read in this book something about the Native Americans of Vancouver Island in Canada having a saying, which basically amounted to you better do lots of interesting things in your life otherwise you will be very boring when you're old and telling stories around the campfire. Who knows how true that is? Or if it's just apocryphal, but anyway it impacted on me and so I Sort of meandered through most of my 20s and early 30s not really thinking particularly about what I was doing, other than following my nose around things that interested me. So I started out as you often do, doing all sorts of juggling three jobs and restaurants and nightclubs and things like that. And I set up a cafe in Edinburgh, I fell into doing that it was the first LGBT owned and run cafe in Scotland, towards the end of the 80s 1980s. And I meandered out of that and into a job in news monitoring for one of the Maxwell Corporation companies, which was entertaining in the late late 80s, early 90s meandered out of that into working in international age during the Balkans war, meandered out of that into a number of other kind of roles in the community sector and then eventually ended up running a small company doing information systems development and design while studying for a master's in a PhD, and then eventually that led me into becoming an academic. And then eventually that led me into becoming a consultant in industry and then that led me into Scottish Government. So it's not really been a career path. It's been a career meander. But the common thread I think, in all of them when I look back has been designed, you know, I've had a, I've had an interest in how we solve problems well, and, and how we build the solutions to those problems. Well, from very early on, and that is, that is a threat I can see in my career, such as such as it exists in the earliest days.Thomas Lamont 4:44 I love your job title. That's my favourite.Cat Macaulay 4:47 Yeah, me too. Thomas Lamont 4:51 What challenges have you experienced across those different roles?Cat Macaulay 5:00 I suppose I should contextualise by saying I'm getting on a bit now. So I'm in my 50s. And I left school and then University in the mid 80s, straight into the teeth of one of the big recessions back then, and came from, you know, well, I suppose most of the challenges that I've faced in my career have more to do with who I am than anything particularly to do with the jobs themselves. Because, you know, I've never really fitted in the world, you know, I was, as a kid, I was definitely odd. I was very, very tall. And I realised quite early on that I was gay. And that had a huge impact. So, you know, first of all, before I came out to live in the world, and then after I came out, you know, for quite a long time, it did impact my job choices and my job opportunities. I still lived during the era when things like section 28 were in force. And when we ran the cafe, you know, it was a time when we just weren't understood or accepted in the way they are today. I remember being involved in one of the first demos in Scotland Against section 28. And it's hard to remember, but this was before pride happened. You know, there was no parade back then. And there was about six of us standing on princess street in a Saturday, chanting about gay rights, and, you know, facing the kind of horrified looks of the passers by. I remember going for jobs and I always made a point of coming out at jobs because I just sort of thought, I don't want to have to work somewhere where I can't be out. And you know, you would see right away on their faces and that was it. You were either running or not. When we were setting up the cafe and we went for a loan and you know, we went to several banks to try and get a little startup loan, which was quite normal back then, because there was another recession happening. So there was quite a lot of support for small businesses starting up and you know, literally being told we wont fund perversion and showing us the door. You know, so it, so that impacted a lot of my early experience of, of work, you know, I always saw jobs where I could be comfortably out. And, you know, in many ways that was, that was really helpful and good, because it did allow me to, to live openly, but at same time, it did absolutely limit the things I could do. And later on, you know, that sort of started to flatten out a little bit, but not entirely, and, but then in my very late 20s, I was diagnosed with MS. And that, again, was another complete change for me, suddenly, I was, you know, looking at a life and something that I hadn't really anticipated having to deal with. And at that time, certainly, you know, the kind of the standard, kind of medical response to a diagnosis with Ms was, you know, don't don't exercise don't have any children, you know, prepare to retire, you know, when I was 29 at that point. So, there was very little support, very little advice on how to manage it in your career. So you know, Right away, I needed to jump into a career that had a pension. So I didn't have a pension. And so that's why I started the journey towards becoming an academic. And that's actually just driven me ever since is just holding on to a pension of some kind. But, as I said, most of the career choices that I've made have been driven by that desire to do something interesting and not to be constrained. So I've had this kind of weird tension between living in a world that doesn't accept me or that makes life really difficult for me, and unilaterally having something that made life difficult. And then that desire to just do something interesting. So I've never had a job where I've felt morally compromised. And if I ever do get to that point in any job, I walk away and happen and I've always believed that, you know, I should have work that is meaningful and makes an impact on the world. And that challenges me to do things that I wouldn't normally be necessarily comfortable doing as well. I've always had that drive and overall know that I'm in you know, in my 50s, I'm looking back on it and still looking ahead, but you know, largely looking back, I'm really glad that I made those choices. I'm glad I lived in a time where it was kind of acceptable to opt out of the career thing, because I've got teenage children, and I see thats not an option for them in the way that it was for us. You know, it was fairly common for people not to want to have a career when I was young, but now I can see this huge depression, it starts much earlier and you know, I went through most of my school, nobody really ever talked to you about your future in your career that was just sort of, you're either going to university or if you weren't you were going to go to the army or jump in and work at dairy or get pregnant if you're a girl. And that was about it. Whereas, you know, my kids grew up in a time when there was just a really strong focus on how important it was to have some kind of career. And I'm not necessarily sure that that's as healthy for them as I would wish. Although I'm certainly glad that they have Their ambition set a bit higher than we did when we were kids.Kate Arrow 10:03 Cat you speak very passionately about promoting accessibility and equity, has living with MS influencedthe kind of leader you've become?Cat Macaulay 10:14 So I mean, like everyone, your your history, your life impacts your beliefs and your values and the way you approach the world and, you know, as somebody who has never been made fully welcome in society, initially because I was gay and, and more likely, because I'm disabled. I think it has left me with a real sense of responsibility to use whatever power or opportunity I have to transfer qualities and to think about the impact of inequalities and in justices on the life opportunities of people. And so that has always drawn me to looking at you know, how are we working in ways that dont exclude people, what can we do to be effective? Improving our ability to include a much wider range of people. And it's it's given me I suppose, a sensitivity to my own biases and my own weak spots in areas where my own life experience hasn't impacted things as much. So one of the things I often say to to people about being disabled and working is that it's very easy to get lulled into the trap of thinking you speak for all disabled people, and I don't, you know, and, and so my experience of disability has a very profound effect on my life every day. Of course, it does, but, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't sort of somehow licence me to speak for everyone else who has different kinds of impairments that impact on their lives in different ways. So I think getting that balance right has been important and the older I get, the more I realise how hard that is. And so I spend quite a lot of time now working with colleagues and mentoring other people who are if you like the, in the current jargon, we talk about lived experience, but you know if you have lived experience by working in a professional capacity in a space about that lived experience and how you manage that and how you juggle that with, you know, the professional and the lived experience part of your, of your identity. It's a real challenge and it requires thought and hard work. It's not something you can just assume you have a certain moral authority because you happen to be disabled or you happen to be gay, when or whatever. You have to work at it. And so I think, I think it's not necessarily my own experiences, refining that, no, but just that sort of as I get older, that awareness of the problematic nature sometimes of some of these things, and how important it is to be reflective and thoughtful and to check yourself on a regular basis, but equally, it has meant that, you know, frankly, I just will not shut up when there's an injustice around me and, you know, I do feel a moral obligation to Do something about it and to speak up, even when it's not necessarily comfortable for other people.Thomas Lamont 13:07 How do you think that we can help people talk more openly and candidly about improving accessibility?Cat Macaulay 13:15 yeah, I think I think it's really hard. And I've wondered for a long time why it's so, so difficult because when I was younger, and I was hugely involved in gay activism, and it was a very difficult time, we did live in a very different world when I was coming in. And, and I've often reflected on the difference between my experience of that and my experience now as a single person where, you know, in many ways you sort of think, well, we're a much more evolved society, aren't we? So why is it still so hard? And I you know, I think there is something kind of quite elemental that we might have to be honest about, which is the fact that disabled people, make able bodied people feel really uncomfortable and you know, if you are encountering somebody, particularly when the impairments are visible, but even even when they're not, if you're talking about that somebody and you don't have that experience yourself, you're caught between the desire to be a good person, which most of us have. So very few people would ever like to consider themselves as ablest, for example. And yet, there's also a kind of elemental thing inside all of us, which is, we don't like anything that reminds us of sickness and death. And that's kind of an understandable normal human reaction in some ways. You know, I'm sure some, somewhere back then, you know, that old brain or whatever it is, there's a bit of us that is naturally inclined to turn away from sickness in there. And so, I think there's, I think there's a need to try and acknowledge that. I think secondly, there's such an anxiety nowadays about words in particular that wasn't necessarily there when I was younger, and we were, you know, getting early involvement in gay activism. I remember being quite shocked that a while ago I was talking to some younger LGBT people who were struggling a bit with the fact that I identify as queer. And, you know, for them, there was something difficult about that language. Whereas when I was, you know, a younger woman growing up as a lesbian, I liked the word queer people to me, and I used it a lot and so did many of my friends. So there's something about the way we are anxious about language nowadays. So for me, one of the most important things is just to be honest and talk and create the conditions within which you say it's okay to use wrong words or say the wrong thing. And I often do that by just acknowledging, acknowledging that I did that myself as well, you know, I'll stumble over words when I'm talking to somebody with a different kind of experience of disability. I'll stumble over words when I'm talking about issues to do with race equality. And so you know, I think that often its about the fact that these things are not necessarily easy to talk about. It's important to get it out on the table. And then after that, I think it's important to be more focused on what is it we're trying to do than the words we're using to do it. Because again, for me, you know, we can spend a lot of time talking about words and nothing changes. And actually what changed for us in the gay community was, you know, years and years of just reminding people that we had rights, and we were human. And that the way we were being treated, if it was done to anyone else would feel really unfair. And I think that's the same thing. for disabled people. You know, it's the constant, reminding people that it's just not okay. That it's 2020. And disabled people still have to wet themselves on trains because there's no accessible toilet. And that, I think, for most people, is just something we don't face up to very much and we don't think about very much and we do need to shock people out of complacency but equally we need to not be punitive about language because otherwise we will never get to the point where we can start to unpack the problem. Kate Arrow 16:49 So during your time as chief design officer, what have you seen,that has worked really well in Scotland to to improve equity?Cat Macaulay 16:58 So I think theres been a sort of rapid growth really over the last few years, a recognition of how important it is to engage people in designing the services that they need and use. There's always been a bit of that. And certainly in certain areas like community empowerment, that's been a much more prominent feature of how people have worked for a long time. And there's lots we can learn by looking at that. But when it came to things like designing the Social Security system for Scotland or introducing changes to the way independent, independent living fund works, they're bringing, bringing people who live day to day with those challenges right into the heart of that design decision making from from the earliest places and trying to get better at doing that. And I think tha the crucial thing is, we're not just trying to do it and tick a box and walk away. We're trying to do it and committing to getting better at doing it. And it's not consistent. It's not everywhere, and there's still lots of pockets of bad practice. But there is a real commitment to understanding that it's important that we get better at it and for me, That's a bit that gives me the most encouragement and hope not the fact that we do x y, Z. But the fact that we do believe A, it's important and B, that we're not good enough yet to get much better. So for me, you know, that that drive, certainly within government has been really important. And I can see the ways in which that kind of thinking is really starting to come to the fore in, in all sorts of parts of the sort of public services world in Scotland. So it's not just an SG, it's, it's in local authorities, you know, look at the work of, for example, the local government digital office in really sort of pushing and promoting services, I'm getting a community of people talking about it, engaging with it, trained in it, you know, getting those ideas into the everyday culture of organisations. You know, that's been incredibly powerful, same thing's happening in the NHS as well and, you know, lots of public bodies engaging with this. So I think it's that we've moved beyond thinking it's a thing we have to do and tick a box and we're in the point of thinking. We don't question anymore whether or not we have to do it. But what we do question is, how are we doing? And are we good enough? Yeah, I think that's hugely important and encouraging.Thomas Lamont 19:10 At an individual level. Is there any one thing that you think we could consider or actively do to promote equity?Cat Macaulay 19:21 Well, the one thing that I've always thought works really, really well, I come from a design background and anthropology training. And so for me, opening your eyes every day, is really, really important. And we just don't do it. I mean, one of the things I quite often use when I'm talking about particularly about accessibility and inclusion is that you know, around one in eight people in this courtry is in a wheelchair at any one point in time, and we don't know that, we don't see them in the streets and in the shops. Well, at the moment, we don't see many people but you know, in normal times, it wouldn't be at all obvious to people in the UK. I spent a lot of time in Germany. And in Germany, it is obvious that lots of people are in wheelchairs, because you do see them in public much, much more than we do here. You see them working in shops, and you see them in public transport and you see them in the street in a way that I'm always struck when I come back here that I just don't see. And I think it is that just trying to open your eyes and keep your eyes open during the day and thinking about how many women are in this room? How many black or ethnic minority people are in this room? How many disabled visibly disabled people in this room? It's always difficult, of course, because there are people with invisible disabilities. But you know, how many are here? Who's making the decisions and the who's not, you know, it's that eye opening thing. I think that all of us can do and we just don't, we really don't we walk through the world almost oblivious to, to the challenges that other people face and there's probably some You know, self preservation reasons for some of that. But you know, we are modern, industrialised economies, we don't need to be too worried about being chased by a lion every day, once we go foraging for food, we can afford to spend some of our time with our eyes open and thinking about and looking at engaging with the world around us. So I think that, for me is the single most important thing anyone can do. And, you know, I know certainly, you know, obviously, as always, when I was younger, and I was coming out, I was tragically aware of challenges that women and gay people faced in society, I was much less aware of the other challenges that disabled people faced, although I do have to say, you know, it still astonishes me because I remember back in the 80s, we would be organising events and, you know, we ran a thing in Edinburgh.... It was one of the first big gay festivals and at that we had Signers. At that meeting, and you know, every meeting we ever did, there's always somebody hired to be the signer. And I was really kind of struck as we went through the 90s, in the early 2000s, as that fell off completely, you know, to the point now, where it's noteworthy if somebody puts on a signer and, and I don't know why that happens, but it did. So I think that thing of just being aware of keeping your eyes open and being thoughtful by asking those questions of yourself, you know, because if the trouble is that if you're in a room and everyone looks and thinks and speaks badly, like you do, you don't notice because that's normal to you. And then you have to consciously make yourself notice when you're in a room full of people like you and try and understand and think about it, who's not here and why. It's very easy for us all to think we're all you know, quite well evolved. No look, we've got equalities and you know, listen for that. And if you're in the kind of peripheral minority, frankly in society where you don't have to worry about these things, then it probably feels pretty good right now you probably feel like you're quite a nice person, you probably feel like you're doing okay. You know, we're being pretty nice, but all of a sudden, and it's only when you consciously engage with people who don't live in that quite narrow minority of, you know, basically straight white middle class people, that you start to see the world through someone else's eyes. And that is one of the hardest things for any of us to do. But the first thing you have to know is that the world is different for other people, and, you know, I think the biggest thing I've always really been struck by having spent my entire adult life not fitting in, not being acceptable in society for one reason or another. there's a level of kind of daily, I think we use the jargon nowadays, microaggressions. But there's this kind of like daily grinding down of you that happens when you live like that. But it's very, it's it's not easy to understand if you haven't experienced it, but people really, if you were lucky enough not to live in one of those categories not to be one of those people, then you really do have a moral obligation to keep your eyes open and think about these things. And be conscious.Kate Arrow 24:16 Do you have an inspirational mentor.Cat Macaulay 24:19 Yeah, I've had loads, actually. And I suppose that's one of the other useful things that I kind of stumbled on quite early on was how important it was to have people that you could seek counsel from and, and be honest with as well ask hard questions. Often they would ask hard questions of you. So yeah, I've had lots lots of different people, I suppose that would have filled that role. I think, probably the, the most influential was it was an uncle of mine, actually, who was a documentary filmmaker and travelled around the world. He was the you know, him and his film crew were the only non Polish film crew in solidarity strikes. In Poland, in yards and Poland when solidarity strike was on, he knew Steve Biko in South Africa, he was arrested in just about every country you can imagine, during all the various conflicts in Afghanistan, in Iran and Iraq during the 80s 70s and 80s. You know,he was a quite incredible character. And, you know, for somebody like me from really small town, pretty limited little worldview. He was a real eye opener, but the thing that he said to me was just always look for the questions no one's asking, and then ask them, and also ask yourself why no one's asking them. And a bit later on, I had a fantastic mentor in the US, who's very heavily involved in the development of a field called human computer interaction. And I suppose was one of the first people that really engaged the idea of studying human beings is really important if we're going to design technologies that work Which in the 80s and 70s 70s 80s, early 90s was not a given, you know, people still thought that human beings were similar to computers; information processing machines, and you can study a human in the same way that you think about a computer working and the whole idea of, you know, the richness and diversity of human experience in human culture and how challenging it is to design for that wasn't at all obvious. And she was, you know, amongst a number of other women in the States, and particularly one of the people that really brought that idea to the fore. She's always been a huge inspiration to me as well. Kate Arrow 26:32 It sounds like the words of your uncle sort of set the tone for your career. Cat Macaulay 26:46 yeah, absolutely. And, you know, he said, keep your ears and eyes open, ask questions, the awkward ones, you know, it was his kind of basic mantra you know, if you see something wrong, then you know, stand up and be awkward. get in the way, push for change. And I think a lot of that has to do with asking questions of yourself and othersThomas Lamont 27:19 A light hearted question to finish up on Cat we ask everyone this and it's, In another life, what if you hadn't taken your particular life path? What else would you have liked to have been?Cat Macaulay 27:32 Oh, I can answer that in a heartbeat. I would have been an opera singer. I just love music or opera music anyway. And weirdly, given where and how I grew up. I was introduced to opera by a very astute teacher when I was a kid in school who realised that I liked music. I was really into punk in particular, I was you know, grew up in the early days of punk and hooked on to that favourite quickly and this means that this teacher was trying to get me interested in stuff beyond my immediate world. And he played me some Handel rock music, a couple of arias and they were very, very, they're really loud and intense. Like punk. I remember thinking God, this is like listening to punk. And I just got hooked on it really early on. And I was very lucky I was a student in Edinburgh during the 80s when the Edinburgh Festival used to sell or give giveaway tickets for performances, at the end of the day if they hadn't sold out, so you know, got to see huge amount of incredible stuff, but I never would have been able to afford to see other ones. And yeah, I've just been obsessed with, with music and particularly with opera and particularly Baroque opera. And I deeply admire anybody who can stand up there on stage and make that absolutely transcendental sound, with just their vocal cords and their throat and their hearts and their souls. Kate Arrow 29:09 It's definitely one of the talents I think I would have most liked to have just to be able to sing not even opera just just even string two notes together.Cat Macaulay 29:18 Yeah, absolutely and it's watching somebody perform like that being in the same room as a singer singing like them with a full orchestra is just incredible. It's something I wish, I wish it wasn't such an elite thing here in the UK, it's not in Germany, something much more normal for normal people to go to the opera cheaper. But unfortunately, here it's definitely something that's associated with being a bit rich. And it's something to be a bit embarrassed of, you know, whereas, actually, when you go from here, a great singer, performer, particularly, you know, great opera, is something to behold.Kate Arrow 29:53 I'm going to have to go and listen to some Baroque opera because I don't really know what it is. Cat Macaulay 30:00 Yeah, get yourself some Handel and get stuck in.Kate Arrow 30:03 Yeah,Cat Macaulay 30:04 yeah. And if you get a chance to go then you know definitely for sure,Kate Arrow 30:09 Lovely talking to you and really, really inspiring and I'm sure our listeners are going to learn loads. ThanksCat Macaulay 30:17 you're totally welcome.Transcribed by https://otter.ai