We recently celebrated our CEO John Linn’s 30th Anniversary with Flourish House, John is the Founder of Flourish House having started with GAMH & then making us an Independent charity. Flourish House was established in 1997.
Operation Pineapple Smoothie
Members & Staff worked together in the Background to organise John’s 30th Anniversary Celebration, Operation Pineapple Smoothie was launched & we all had to be careful not to give away the secret, we wanted it to be a surprise.
Planning Commenced
A video was planned as part of the day. Here is a member chatting about her role in Operation Pineapple Smoothie:
I asked Zoey if she had anything interesting to say about the movie we produced for the celebration; she had this mini-rant to contribute.
“Beth came up with the idea of including a scripted segment featuring staff as a way of breaking up the footage of people congratulating John because of how emotionally heavy the footage was on its own. Problem was Beth wasn’t sure what to do, originally suggesting a tiktok dance. On the day of filming Beth wasn’t in for me to ask so I went in a slightly different direction.
My instincts told me that what Beth meant by tiktok dance was that she wanted a true crime style fake intro to try and frame John’s achievement as something negative. That entire segment was written, filmed and edited with just 2 days until the premiere was due.
The real show stopper though was dropped on me just as I was editing the scripted intro skit. The morning before the film needed to be finished, I was handed a three minute long piece of footage of a spider delivering a monologue. It was as touching as it was unsettling and I wanted to include as much of it as possible. I decided the best use of the footage was to split it into parts, presenting the viewers with a progressing narrative weaved between the more traditional messages of thanks.”
Cards were made & signed
James S also hand drew a special Anniversary football themed card as well featuring John Playing with his favourite team Greenock Morton.
Morag said “Because of my showbiz connections I googled Billy Braggs social media & found that he was referring people to Bragg central & his shop the Bragg emporium, Zoey designed a card which she said was intentionally attention grabbing, she wanted him to look at it and say wtf is this? The card was sent to Bragg central & posted to him & after a little delay with him being stateside, it was sent back to us with a message and his signature.”
Billy Bragg Card
Johns speech
John said Thanks to everyone for coming to this special occasion & for making it the last 30 years
He went on and said: This is actually the day when i started with GAMH 30 years ago, I remember my first day & i remember i knew nothing about the voluntary sector as it was just getting off the ground then & i was a bit like a fish out of water.
A lot has changed in the last 30 years, In that time I’ve loved this building & I’ve loved the people. Its been an honour & privilege to be part of this community, its an absolutely incredible place & i am certain it will be here for another 30years, 50 years even. Thanks very much for everyone for making this celebration.
Here’s what members had to say about the celebration:
Neil P said “even though it wasn’t a surprise any more he was still surprised about the amount of people that was there & Colin made a lovely speech”
J.E. said it was great but I think John wished he’d been told beforehand.
Laiwah said “it was good, well organised, the buffet was nice & it was a good turnout, it was a good surprise”
Lorna – “it was awesome seeing old staff and all the members gathered together was fantastic, the video was fantastic with the Flourish house production.”
James S said “I was quite pleased to be there, it was a great night & i met others I hadn’t seen for a while. It was good to see Leah & the video was really well done, I was pleased to be a part of it.”
Stuart said: “I loved seeing Sophie B & Kim again & also the 2 recent students. The crowd was a bit much for me at first but I managed to see most from near the backdoor. The video for me was the highlight. John looked really touched by it all & I enjoyed chatting to Leah as well.”
Prominent recently retired staff member Leah had this to say about John:-
“John and I worked together for over 20 years and I was always impressed with his vision for the clubhouse and his commitment to making it work as well as being fun to work with. As a Clubhouse we did a lot of exciting things like hosting two European clubhouse Conferences, opening the courtyard Cafe and starting the allotment.
I don’t really miss Flourish because I come in as part of being on the Board and people always make me feel welcome.”
Colin is a long time Board Member here at Flourish House and he had this to say:
What’s it like working with John?
“We’ve worked together on and off for around 23 years and been through some tough times with budget cuts and the subsequent need to reorganise every now and then and I can say without hesitation that John is truly one of the most honest and trustworthy people I have met, he has a balanced view of the world and a pleasure to work with.
There is also no question that he is well respected across the mental health community and has great contacts all over the place!”
What is John really like?
“First and foremost I would say that John is a family man and I reckon he is a great dad. You’d have to ask Kelly if he is a great husband, but I suspect she’d say that – on balance – he is!
He supports great football teams and is apparently not bad at the golf.
He also loves his mum…I reckon he is a great son to her.”
If you want to tune into our radio show interview with John then please follow this link, Johns Interview starts at 4.52mins https://shows.acast.com/theletsflourishshow
John – thank you so much for your hard work and dedication. From all Flourish House community members, past and present