On Monday/today, Girlguiding launched its new interest badges. Let me backtrack a little so you understand the significance. It’s been the messiest roll-out that was supposed to be a massive PR show – the BBC put out their news article somewhere around 2am, CBBC, Wales Online and the Telegraph somewhere around 6am, which is about the same time Girlguiding Scotland put everything on their online shop but Girlguiding themselves kept their mouths shut until well after 10.30am, which meant 80,000-odd volunteers seeing things on the news first thing that they – the people effectively running this organisation! – knew nothing about themselves.
The background to it all…
Girlguiding has messed around with the programme for the last twenty years. By and large, we all did much the same thing for the first 70 years of the movement’s existence but around 2000, that changed, along with the uniform and every section had their own brand new programme. Then it changed again. And then in 2018, the entire programme top to bottom had a massive change. In their wisdom, Girlguiding decided that every section, every age group, should be doing the same programme. Previous to that, the Rainbows, the littlies, were doing something called the Rainbow Roundabout. I’ve never been a Rainbow leader so I don’t know what that was. Brownies were doing the Brownie Adventure, which had three steps, not entirely unlike the pre-2000 Footpath/Road/Highway that millennials, mums and grandmas remember but with no structure that I ever understood. Guides had a programme of Go For Its, a series of themed activities sitting alongside their interest badges, and The Senior Section, the 14-26s, had Look Wider, which had eight Octants, eight themes into which just about any activity could be fitted. But Girlguiding liked the idea of everyone doing the same thing and so the current programme was brought in, largely on laminated cards that units were expected to buy and store and never ever photocopy. Nowadays, they’re available as free downloads and the London shop and county offices are trying desperately to give them away.
In the new programme, there are six colour-coded themes, the idea being that you’re forced to cover a wide and varied programme, from taking action to having adventures. When you complete a theme you get a Theme Award, which is the shield-shaped badge on my blanket below. Two Theme Awards makes a Bronze Award, four a Silver and all six a Gold Award. There are three elements to completing a theme. The most complex is the Unit Meeting Activities, aka UMAs, “yoomas” or “oomas”. These are colour-coded cards each with a time on them. Each section has to complete a certain number of minutes in each theme – for Brownies it’s three hours, for Rangers four. Then there are Skills Builder badges (the hexagonal ones) – six levels to work through from Rainbow to Ranger and two options for each theme. And last, the bit we recognise, interest badges. These are meant for the girls to do at home as and when they catch their interest but because it’s really hard to get girls into it, Girlguiding eventually gave permission for them to be completed in the unit if we had to.
Rainbows and Rangers, admittedly, didn’t have interest badges before the current programme. Rangers lost them in the shuffle of 2000 and Rainbows never had them. But for Brownies and Guides, their massive and wide-ranging selection of interest badges suddenly plummeted to 18 and 24 respectively – three for each theme for Brownies and four for each theme for Guides. Bearing in mind to complete the programme, you have to complete at least one from each theme, that doesn’t give you a wide range of interests anymore.
And finally, Girlguiding took that on board and that’s what happened today. A second batch of interest badges, doubling the options. Now Rainbows have four badges for each theme instead of two, Brownies and Rangers have gone from three to six and Guides have gone from four to eight. I admit, I got the quickest of sneak peeks a while back – the full list, from Rainbow to Ranger, read out at breakneck speed, too fast for me to absorb anything except that the Rainbows were getting a Sparkle interest badge, that the Guide ones seemed to be variants on the existing badges and the Ranger ones didn’t sound any more inspiring than the existing batch. We all got a few sneak peeks as teasers over the last few months – World Book Day brought a relatively big media release about the book-inspired badges and recently Girlguiding have been showing off the new Ranger Gardening badge. And then I got a massive sneak peek on Friday night when a leader on a Facebook group discovered all the new badges had already been added to our online membership system, if you dug deep enough in the right place. So instead of writing this hastily on Monday morning, I’ve had the entire weekend to think about it!
And at last, the new badges! (old ones in brackets for a fuller picture)
Rainbows (age 4-7):
Know Myself: Guiding sparkle / Hobbies (Animal lover / Family tree)
Express Myself: Get grooving / Present maker (Drawing / Storyteller)
Be Well: Laughter / Courage (Fruit and veg / Healthy mind)
Have Adventures: Sleepovers / Great outdoors (Agility / Nature)
Skills for my Future: Toys / Tasty treats (Book lover / Construction)
Take Action: Bee rescuer / My thoughts (Helper / Recycling)
Brownies (age 7-10):
Know Myself: Folklore / Guiding glow / Passions (Collecting / Local history / My rights)
Express Myself: Celebrations / Crafts / Imagination (Baking / Painting / Performing)
Be Well: Book reviewer / Safety / Sportsperson (Dancing / Grow your own / Mindfulness)
Have Adventures: Birdwatching / Holidays / Wayfinder (Archaeology / Aviation / Space)
Skills for my Future: Games master / Kitchen creations / Mechanic (Inventing / Jobs / Languages)
Take Action: Animal helper / Kindness / My voice (Charities / Speaking out / Zero waste)
Guides (age 10-14):
Know Myself: Bookworm / Food critic / Historian / Personal bests (Aspirations / Guiding history / Human rights / Personal brand)
Express Myself: Artist / Entertainer / Music / Stitcher (Confectionery / Media critic / Photography / Vlogging)
Be Well: Athlete / Friendship / Healthy sleep / Journalling (Fitness / Meditation / Mixology / Natural remedies)
Have Adventures: Day tripper / Entomology / Overnight / Pioneering (Backwoods cooking / Geocaching / Navigator / Whittling)
Skills for my Future: Codebreaking / Engineering / Happy habits / Interior designer (Fixing / Investigating / Saver / Upcycling)
Take Action: Biodiversity / Clean planet / My views / Thrift (Be prepared / Campaigning / Conscious consumer / Craftivism)
Rangers (age 14-18):
Know Myself: Booktivist / Fandoms / Guiding world (Genealogy / Morals and values / Women’s rights)
Express Myself: Creative writing / Nostalgia / Personal Style (Animation / Blogging / Costumes)
Be Well: Calm spaces / My health / Wanderer (Cooking / Self-care / Sports)
Have Adventures: Gardening / Micro-adventures / Wildlife (Bushcraft / Festival goer / Travel)
Skills for my Future: Chef / Interests / Life Skills (Digital design / Entrepreneur / Event planning)
Take Action: Challengers / Environment / My say (Protesting / Volunteering / Voting)
So, thoughts…
Well, I wrote them out by theme and section in Excel and when you do that, suddenly you see things you don’t see in lists. For example, between an existing Guide one and new ones for the others, suddenly there’s a full set of Guiding Know Myself badges – Guiding Sparkle for Rainbows, Guiding Glow for Brownies, Guiding History for Guides and Guiding World for Rangers. Similarly, from Brownies up to Rangers, you get My Rights, Human Rights and Women’s Rights, although those are all pre-existing badges. There’s definitely a through line from Rainbows’ new Hobbies badge to Brownies’ new Passions badge, skipping over Guides and ending in Rangers’ new Fandoms badge.
I’m not seeing anything quite like that in Express Myself but I am seeing more old-fashioned, potentially more open-ended badges making an appearance like Crafts and Imagination for Brownies, Artist, Entertainer and Music for Guides and Creative Writing for Rangers – to be honest, I assumed the pre-existing Ranger Blogging badge was a 21st century update of the old Writer badge, so that one was a bit of a surprise.
I don’t think there’s anything particularly worth commenting on in Be Well. I suppose there’s a link from Rainbows’ pre-existing Healthy mind to Brownies’ pre-existing Mindfulness to Guides’ pre-existing Meditation up the new Rangers’ Calm Spaces but you could also say the pre-existing Self-care badge filled that gap.
Have Adventures is the first one I look at and I see two themes running through this. The first is the travel one: Rainbows now have a Sleepover badge, Brownies have Holidays and Guides have Day Tripper and Overnight, to go with the Rangers’ pre-existing Festival goer (surely a 21st century version of the old Camper) and Travel, but they also now have Micro-adventures, which I think is the same theme. Then there’s the more outdoorsy ones, from Rainbows’ pre-existing Nature and new Great Outdoors, to Brownies’ new Birdwatching, Guides’ pre-existing Backwoods Cooking and Whittling and new Entomology and Pioneering and Rangers’ pre-existing Bushcraft and new Wildlife. I also think there’s a link between the Guides’ pre-existing Navigator and the Brownies’ new Wayfinder badge.
Skills for my Future has no obvious link. I’ll be interested to see the difference between the Rangers’ pre-existing (Be Well) Cooking vs the new (Skills for my Future) Chef. Interests and Life Skills both sound nice and open-ended.
And last, Take Action. This is the one where my Brownies struggle – we’ve had three in the last year alone who’ve delayed achieving their Gold Award because they hadn’t done/didn’t want to do an orange badge. Well, among the new ones we’ve got another full set – running from youngest to oldest, My Thoughts, My Voice, My Views, My Say. I think we’ve acquired an environmental thread that wasn’t previously there in Bee Rescuer, Animal Helper, Clean Planet and Environment respectively. I would bet My Voice and Kindness are more appealing than the previous orange badges for Brownies and I’m hoping that some of the new ones are less “worthy” and less “worky” than the previous Ranger ones too – Protesting, Volunteering and Voting. I’m intrigued by Challengers, which could be just about anything.
On the subject of appearance, I haven’t yet really seen an actual badge, just the images of them, and we all know the crisp clean pictures won’t look like the actual embroidered badges. Nonetheless, I adore how the Guides’ Codebreaker badge has its name written on it code (A=Z, Z=A etc), and I’m amused and slightly surprised and also slightly not-at-all surprised that the Rangers’ Fandom badge has an Eras-style friendship bracelet on it. Guides’ overnight has a lovely smore with the marshmallow melting out of it and I’m very fond of the way the Rainbows’ Courage badge has a lion on it.
What don’t I like?
Well, I’d be interested to know whether Guides’ new Thrift badge is significantly different from the pre-existing Upcycling. All sections now have a book badge – Rainbows already had Book Lover in Skills for my Future but Brownies have now got Book Reviewer in Be Well, Guides have got Bookworm in Know Myself and Rangers have got Booktivist also in Know Myself. I’d have liked the big girls to get a badge just for enjoying reading – well, you know, more to it than just that, but the fact that unlike everyone else, they can’t just read and have to turn it into a political issue bothers me.
Which badges am I particularly interested in?
As a leader, I don’t do the programme. As a badge enthusiast, I absolutely do. When my girls do a Skills Builder, I buy one for myself – I’ve probably done more work facilitating it than they have completing it! Mostly I award myself an interest badge if we’ve been doing it together, although I usually have to finish it off myself at home. And there are a few among the new ones that are catching my eye.
I’m interested in all the “Guiding xx” ones – Sparkle, Glow, History and World. Brownies’ Folklore, naturally. Fandoms. Rangers’ Creative Writing, absolutely. Brownies’ Craft. I’m intrigued by Rangers’ Wanderer. Definitely want to do the Holidays / Day tripper / Overnight / Micro-adventures series in Have Adventure. Interests, Life Skills and Challengers in Rangers all look intriguing.
What else is going on?
There is one more thing I need to mention. The old badges are colour-coded by theme and each section has a different shape – that is, they’re circular for both Rainbows and Rangers but the way they’ve filled in the circle is very different, and the graphics are more grown-up and monochrome for Rangers. Brownie badges are diamonds and Guides’ are squares. They’ll still be those shapes but the new badges will be colour-coded by section, with the border colour indicating theme. Rainbow badges will be pale blue with theme-coloured borders, Brownies yellow, Guides dark blue and Rangers purple. I think some of them are currently look really weird with the combined colours but give it a year or two and we won’t even blink. And yes, the existing badges are going to be phased out and replaced with the new design too, which includes the new colour-coding, the graphics updated to fit in with the new section branding and the new Trefoil. I assume this will happen when stock starts to run low, so don’t expect to see it immediately but it’ll happen eventually.
In conclusion
I’m feeling a lot more positive about it than I did a few months ago when I first heard the list. The Guide ones aren’t quite as repetitive as I thought and the Ranger ones are more inspiring than I thought – I already actively want to do eight of the eighteen new Ranger badges and six of the new Brownie ones.
To be honest, having seen the media reaction to any Girlguiding news over the last decade, I was fully expecting certain newspapers to deride the new badges as “woke” – the Telegraph won that by about 6am with the headline “Girlguiding ‘hostess’ badge gets gender-neutral makeover” – or as it should be, “Girlguiding releases new badge inspired by beloved old classic” (it’s in reference to the new Celebrations badge for Brownies, which is “inclusive, meaningful for girls today and lets Brownies express the full range of their creativity).
In fact, without having seen the syllabus, if anything, a decent number of these badges are more of a step back to “the good old days” – particularly the new Guide badges, like Artist, Entertainer, Music and Pioneering. Perhaps they can throw a tantrum over the vaguer and more obviously modern ones, like Passions, Fandoms, Imagination, Laughter, Courage, Friendship, Interests, Life Skills and Kindness but I reckon you’re not going to win by trying to call that sort of thing “woke”. In fact, that’s another “set” I hadn’t noticed before. Yeah, you know what? The more I look at this list, the more I see and the more I see, the more I like.
Oh, I can’t wait to see the response from the wider Girlguiding community! 80-odd people spent Friday night discussing it on a certain Facebook group and the tone was generally gleeful, and more about having found it before it was released than too much discussion about the actual content of the semi-illicit lists. However, once it’s announced officially via official channels, it’s going to get widespread criticism just because volunteers criticise literally everything. It changes nothing, other than that girls get a bigger choice of badges! If you don’t like them, you don’t have to do them in your particular unit. The pre-existing ones aren’t going anywhere and nothing else is changing. But I would put money on the response being generally negative. Girlguiding can’t win.
But over here, I’m quite pleased with the selection. Even just doubling a fairly small list has given everyone a lot more choice and I like a lot of them.
I Am A Polar Bear 