Text A: an original contemporary practice extract.

Our community meal project used to begin with instructions called across the kitchen. Sometimes two volunteers prepared the same ingredients while the tables remained unset. The coordinator introduced numbered task cards, which we collected from a tray and returned when each job was complete. Within a week, fewer tasks were duplicated and the meal was ready earlier.

I first admired the cards because every completed job was visible. Then I noticed what they concealed. Experienced volunteers exchanged cards until they had the tasks they preferred, while newcomers repeatedly cleaned surfaces or carried boxes. Nothing on the tray showed who was learning or being overlooked. We kept the cards, but added a short conversation before work so that volunteers could request a task they wanted to practise. The system brought order; it could not decide what counted as a fair opportunity.

Text B: an original contemporary practice extract.

Volunteers at the town archive were scanning a collection of postcards. At first, people selected items from several unmarked boxes, so some postcards were scanned twice and others could not be traced afterwards. A shared record was introduced to show which box each postcard came from and which details had been entered. The total completed each afternoon soon increased.

For a while, I treated that rising total as proof that the project was succeeding. However, volunteers tended to choose clear, modern postcards and leave those with faded handwriting. The record measured how many items had been processed, not whether the collection was being explored fully. We began each session by selecting one neglected group of postcards together. I still valued the record, but as a way of organising decisions rather than making them for us.