Martin Flanagan - The Art of Pollination: The Irrepressible Jane Tewson

This book is for my granddaughter, Annie. I want her to know there is an obstinate force for good in the world, and here is an example of it.

He whose face gives no light, shall never become a star.

William Blake (17571827)

Foreword

This book offers hope in a dark chapter. It shows how compassion and curiosity can make the world a better place. It tells stories of courage and humanity, and of the change that can be ignited when unlikely combinations of people come together. It tells the story of Jane Tewson, an obstinate force for good.

Jane tried to avoid having her name on the cover of this book, and only agreed to it being written when she was persuaded her story could be useful shared. In her lifetime she has started five charities, all of them still flourishing, and she has generated hundreds of millions of dollars to support social change. But her real goal is to shift the way we think about and judge others. She is an innovator with a global reputation, who remains humble, curious and resolutely committed to understanding people who are doing it tough. The fabric of her life is woven with the stories of people whose eyes she has opened to the humanity they share with unexpected others.

She gives people who know most about isolation and disconnection a voice in the discussion about it. Daily, she makes judgement fall away when people meet without the labels that usually define them. The money raised in the process of bringing people together goes directly to the agencies on the ground that are doing brave and effective work.

The Art of Pollination tells the stories of some of the many remarkable people who work with Igniting Change. But our organisation is a hive of connections and energy. In the stories of the few, we celebrate the contribution of many.

Martin Flanagan has spent his professional life writing to make sense of lifes chaos. He has been fascinated by what guides some people towards goodness, often in the face of despair or defeat. In The Art of Pollination, he tells Janes story; and, through the stories of others, he shows that her approach to social change works.

This book is a defiant gesture of hope. Imagine what could happen if everyone who reads it started a conversation with someone different from them. What could happen if we had the courage to see our world through different eyes? For ideas, visit www.ignitingchange.org.au.

Peter Scott

Chair, Igniting Change

Acknowledgments

As the title implies, this book represents a hive buzzing with a single communal undertaking. Not every bee can be identified or have their story told, but special mention has to be made of the Igniting Change board and backers, without whose enthusiastic support this book would not have happened.

Nicole Newton joined the project late but enhanced it with her calm demeanour and fine judgment. The book represents a brave publishing decision by Sandy Grant and his firm, Hardie Grant, at a difficult time for the publishing industry. It is also a better book for the editing of Sally Moss.

MY WIFES FAMILY are not easily impressed. My father was that way too. With the years, its something I have learned to rely on. So when my wife Polly said, I met an interesting woman today, I listened. The woman was named Jane Tewson. English. Was said to have started Red Nose Day in the United Kingdom and was listed somewhere as one of the top social entrepreneurs there. Now living in Australia.

Polly subsequently went to Port Phillip Prison with Jane and came home impressed Jane was assisting a group of young inmates to set up a t-shirt printing business. Later, Polly brought home a book on bringing death to life engineered into being by Jane. Polly dropped it into my lap and said, You ought to read this its good. And it was thoughtful, unafraid, novel in its presentation. I was not surprised when I leant later that the gifted screenwriter Andrew Knight, one-time television partner of satirist John Clarke, was involved in its making.

So that was my impression of Jane Tewson. She was, as they say in detective novels, a person of interest.

.......

I finally met Jane the night I gave a speech against torture at the Centre for the Survivors of Torture in Melbourne in about 2007. In the early 2000s I had been confronted with the issue of torture in South Africa after being befriended by a peace worker, a black man who had been tortured by black men in Robert Mugabes Zimbabwe. No issue of race here, just plain old-fashioned evil.

As I gave my speech, I noticed a woman in the front row busily taking notes. Polly said, Thats Jane Tewson. We met afterwards. Conversationally, she cut to the chase, but not in a way that was intrusive or heavy. She had an eagerness to engage that stayed within the bounds of simple friendliness. Most people I have asked cant recall their first impression of Jane; I can recall mine. After youve disembowelled yourself publicly on an issue like torture, you know a friendly presence when you meet one.

With Jane that night was her husband, Charles Lane. It would be another decade before I got to see the dimensions of his character. That came when I read Barabaig, his account of spending two years in his late thirties living with a particularly fierce nomadic people from the northern plains of Tanzania, organising a legal and political campaign against their lands being taken from them, and thereby attracting, in his words, potential protagonists interested in getting rid of me. The man I met the night of the lecture was tall, handsome, blond-haired, affable. I wouldnt have picked him as being the character he is, just as I wouldnt have picked Jane. Thats one of the secrets of Janes success, I think. You dont see her coming.

In appearance, to borrow a phrase from the English actress Kate Winslett, Jane Tewson is natural, womanly and real. Her brown face beams with vitality and she has in the words of a female mutual acquaintance eyes that speak to you instantly. I met Roger Antochi when he was working for a global IT recruitment company. Antochi first met Jane in Port Philip Prison, where he was serving a sentence for armed robbery. He says, Shes non-judgmental. She gets herself on the other persons level and listens. She is commonly described as humble. She is. But that humility is also a function of her unusual intelligence. She wants to know what she wants to know the rest is like scenery flashing past the window of a bullet train. When Janes on your case, shes with you. When shes not, shes on someone elses case and is somewhere else in her head. She never stops.

She carries no sense of rank or status. Roger Antochi says, She knows some highly influential people she treats them the same as she treats me. When Jane asked Antochi what she could do to encourage the prison inmates t-shirt printing business, he said it would be good if it could get some high-profile support. The next time Jane came to see him she brought entrepreneur Richard Branson and Paul Little, then head of Toll Holdings and one of Australias leading businessmen.

Anne-Marie Sullivan, who has worked with Jane in both England and Australia, describes Jane as mercurial, then says the word is both right and wrong. I know what she means. She is mercurial, sensing opportunity like a soccer striker, but the word mercurial is usually applied to temperament and in that respect theres a great constancy about her indeed, an ordinariness. Her ordinariness is of a character that amounts to a sort of universality and is why, I believe, she connects with people irrespective of culture.

Is Jane Tewson strong? Yes. Opposing her, as I did a couple of times over matters to do with this book, is like standing in the middle of a fast-flowing river and trying to step out against the current. Eventually, when your foot works its way back to the level of the riverbed you find yourself standing in the same place.