I’ve been away for a few days to celebrate my birthday with my best friend, who is staying in Venice for several weeks and invited me to join her.

I had been to Venice once before – in the Summer – so it was really interesting to see the city without hordes of tourists.  I’ve come home inspired in many ways.  Here are a few thoughts…

1) Prior to this trip, I didn’t love Venice.  Not the way I love Florence and Rome.  Spending time in Venice with someone who LOVES the city, gave me a different perspective on it and dispelled most of my previous antipathy.

Inspiration: seeing something through someone else’s enthusiasm is definitely catching.  Where else can we use this insight?

2) My birthday treat was a visit to the Opera.  Not at La Fenice, but in a Palazzo, where three singers (soprano, tenor and baritone) and three musicians (piano, violin and ‘cello) delivered a wonderful performance of ‘La Traviata’.  Each act was in a different room and we had front row seats for two of them.

Inspiration: in the right setting a small team can deliver a fantastic experience just as successfully as a large one.

3)  This photograph was taken in the Fortuny Museum and it shows the famous Fortuny pleated silk dress, worn with a variety of jackets and tunics, which I stood and admired for a long time.

You may not know that before I concentrated on Learning and Development, I had a career in fashion retail and that my first business was making wedding dresses and ballgowns.

What I didn’t know, is that Mariano Fortuny was a painter, photographer and theatre set designer as well as the developer of unique textiles and fashions.

Inspiration:  the modern world reveres experts and specialists but many of the world’s greatest thinkers and creatives have explored multiple disciplines to great effect.

4) This final image shows the interior of La Fenice – Venice’s famous opera house.  La Fenice has burned down twice (perhaps that’s a consequence of calling it The Phoenix!) and twice been rebuilt in the same rococo style as the original.

Inspiration: we don’t always have to ‘build back better’.  Sometimes what we had was great and we just need to do it again.

5) As I wandered around the streets of Venice and crossed the bridges over countless canals, I saw a lot of peeling paint, broken shutters, missing render, leaning walls and dirty glass.  If I walked down a street in England that looked like that I would be very unimpressed but because it’s Venice everyone thinks it’s romantic and atmospheric.

Inspiration:  context is everything!