Conductor Hugh Gibbons says: unsurprisingly, Just1 is just one person - me.

(And so is happylandings.org - the URL under which you'll see my home-grown websites' pages, channelling the story of Thanksgiving Field, below).

"Die of service, not of rust" was one of the things my old school song urged on us. In recent years, one way to achieve that has been by creating some sideways-thinking activities that all sorts of people could enjoy and put to use - tens of thousands have been involved.

Some activities listed below are local - the Galleries, for example. StandUp/SingOut is national. And Open Books is global in its implications.

 Just1 is a not-for-profit independent organisation created, funded and run by me. There are no committees, minutes, mission statements, newsletters or staff meetings. The Just1 international corporate headquarters, media and IT centre are my desk and laptop.

Activities Past & Present

New in 2024, a WhoArtful Gallery is a simple idea - a school’s collection of The Lord’s Prayer in different languages found among their pupils, families, friends, and parishioners. Schools will have good ideas on how to put theirs to use – eg displayed on paper or screen; illustrated; read out in assembly or class. Pentecost in May would be a good aiming point.

You can find full information and a briefing document as a PDF here.

A timely 2024 page of Just1 nudges, reminders & suggestions to help Catholic & other parishes...  

• get or renew the Places of Worship Award during 2024

• be a good example of applied synodality by Mass approval

• acclaim 30 years of Fairtrade in the September 2024 Fortnight

• measure up clergy for a gift of a Fairtrade cotton clerical shirt!

There's full information including a PDF Briefing & Talk at www.just1.org.uk/fairtrade2024

StandUp/SingOut Against Poverty
is a revival of my 2008-10 events in which hundreds of schools of all sorts and tens of thousands of pupils, staff, families and other took part around 17 October - the annual UN Day for the Eradication of Poverty. Anyone, anywhere is invited to find a few minutes at any time and setting that suits - to share the Promises to the Poor and the Count On Us Song. The Promises are based on the Sustainable Development Goals, examining different forms of poverty. On the StandUp/SingOut website everything for 2023 and later years is there - the words and music as PDF and Word files, and also a PowerPoint slideshow.

The OpenBooks Project
is a unique - and eyebrow-raising - contribution to the understanding of  financial transparency & accountability in Catholic parishes and dioceses, mostly in the UK but reaching far and wide. The main research resource has been free to anyone - the contents of 1600+ of their websites, looking for evidence of the observation of Canon 1287.2.This requires parish priests to provide finance reports to their parishioners rather than keeping things within their obligatory finance committees or PPCs. There's little sign of these reports or committee minutes - giving rise the terms Webful Blindness and Cliqueralism. But there are easy opportunities for improvement.

You'll find PDFs designed for easy reading on screen or page at the library at the OpenBooks Brief page.

Thanksgiving Field & Uplifters Celebration Park
is the tiny park with a mighty heart behind the barn at Tally Ho Farm in Winkfield, close to Windsor Great Park. It's a wonderful and warm-hearted story. In October 2013 I found a handful of fragments from a battered USAAF Flying Fortress that ended up there after the ever greatest air battle - a day with great humanity in the air on the ground. To celebrate the happy landing, we made a little park whose visitors have included families of the crew. Many of the fragments have been sent not only to families across the USA, but also museums in the UK and Germany. For the range of surprising PDF Guides, go to www.thanksgivingfield.org. NB And to round off a visit, there's now an Honesty Cafe!

Galleries of Good Examples
are a collection of the simple artwork I've produced over the last decade for schools and churches.

They include: the large Romero Cross for St Francis of Assisi parish in Ascot, as a thank-you for 50 years of support for CAFOD;  the Romero Galleries for St Margaret Clitherow Primary and St Joseph's church in Bracknell - both with figures specified by young people; and the Gallery of Greeters & Inspirers and World School Wall right along the railings outside St Joseph's Church, and glimpsed by tens of thousands of people.

There's information on all of these at the Galleries page. 

FYI The galleries provided a lot of copy for local and wider press - including several Thought for Week articles in the East Berkshire weeklies.

The Adelante Gallery
is a unique piece of public art - good simply to look at or study its four sides turned round. It's an artful gallery of Unofficial Saints. Adelante - Forward - was made to celebrate the canonisation of St Oscar Romero in 2018, but was updated in 2020 to include a panel on "the saints next door".

Adelante is designed to travel happily in the back of the car, take up little floor space, and be wheeled around. It has been seen by several thousand pupils and parishioners, having long stays with big secondary and primary schools. Handy for a school workshop is the A-Z of Unofficial Saints, with pupils adding their own. Adelante is happy to be handled - the detachable panels encourage that - and includes dozens of quotes and stories, some spare socks for Romero donated by Churches Together in England, a sickle, and a 20mm cannon shell.

Full details are the PDF Guide at www.just1.org.uk/adelantegallery

The Paternoster Gallery

is a collection of the Lord's Prayer in about two dozen different languages - including Broad Yorkshire, Cheyenne, TXT, and Maori. The Gallery is on small wooden plaques with a graphic alongside the words. On the back is a detailed commentary on the language; and the sides have the translations for Water and Thank You. The Gallery can be happily handled or simply displayed on a table top using small stands, or on hung two at a time on wooden staves. The Paternosters have been used in school workshops and church displays.  You can see full details on a PDF at www.just1.org.uk/paternostergallery. 

Moseley & Me
is a set of personal recollections from my time in Birmingham, where I lived and went to school 1938-58. As well as on-line material, much of the content came from suitcases of family memorabilia. Each of the PDFs was written to be a good general read - with plenty of learning and laughs. All are here.

• Reminiscing the Reddings is a history of Moseley Rugby Club's long-time ground.

• Reconstructing No71 is the first-hand family accounts of the night the bomb took the front off the house, and what happened to our family afterwards - shared with the current occupants of the new-build there!

• Who Was/Is My Neighbour is the poignant story of the family next door - involving Ukraine and Lithuania, mining communities in Derbyshire, and an RAMC grave in Assisi.

PPhunnybones
is a collection of a couple of dozen fun articles I was invited to write as an end-column for Pharmaceutical Physician (PP) - the bi-monthly magazine of the association for doctors in the pharmaceutical industry. Given carte blanche (with a 400-word limit) by the editor, I was able to produce a big range of articles as a good general read - with lots of stories, jokes, people and surprises.

They still feel like a good read, and you can browse all of them at the PPhunnybones page.

Flying-Crooked & Other Tales
It was a surprise to find that I've given well over 100 talks, presentations, assemblies, workshops, tutorials and after-dinner speeches - to all sorts of clubs and societies, school and university students, academic historians and RAF pilots, museums, church communities, NGOs, and Winemakers. In the UK, Spain and USA. Many have been return visits. Happy still to talk about talking. Fee? Any donation to any humanitarian charity has been welcome but not required. Some of the favourite topics?

• Roman Military Medicine - including fitness measures, battle treatment and hospitals

• Waves of Kindness - my report on how CAFOD and DEC funds were being spent a year after the Asian Tsunami in 2004, based on a fact-finding visit to Banda Aceh

• The Art of Visual Illusions -

• The Flighty Women of White Waltham: about the civilian air force who ferried the fighting aircraft during WWII - full of humour and human stories

• Happy Landings - the slideshow version of the story of Thanksgiving Field from 1943 to today; packed with people's accounts

• Flying-Crooked Tales of the Unexpected - including the WAAF who sat on the tail of a Spitfire as it flew a circuit; falls without a parachute; the 16-year old RAF bomber pilot; and those cake tongs...

Schools Speak Out For FairTrade
was created as a resource for schools and churches in support of the FairTrade movement - including FairTrade Fortnight and renewal of commitments. Everything is at www.just1.org.uk/fairtrade. And there's a YouTube clip of all 60 pupils at St Joseph's School at Hurst Green singing We're For FairTrade to the tune of Big Ben - aimed at their MP!

  And Just1 is FairTrade, btw!