Here's a report on an OST meeting that I did on the weekend for a really interesting project which got youth to monitor violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in the city of Vancouver.

The project was the brainchild of a number of organizations in the Vancouver, who came together to ask about how the UN convention could be used to draw attention to some of the pressing issues faced by children and youth in Vancouver. These issues included experiences in the child welfare system, poverty, lack of equitably funded education opportunities in poor neighbourhoods, safety and treatment by police, transit security and others in power.

The project lasted over two months during which youth facilitators working with a team at the City of Vancouver set out to hold focus groups to educate youth about the Convention, and to gather information from youth themselves on rights violations. More than that though, the youth were also invited to create visions for the future and for the society that they wanted to see, and these visions were harvested through words and pictures.

All of this work through local neighbourhood organizations culminated this past Friday and Saturday. Thirty-five youth gathered on Friday, to meet one another, build community and most importantly, reflect on their experience in the process and create a performance piece that would express a summary of what the project had learned. The performance itself involved the construction of a mural, some spoken word and rap, music and playback theatre. Parts of the performance were in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew and Russian.

Saturday morning, leaders from various levels of government and organizations were invited to join the youth in Open Space to figure out where to go forward. The project was officially over on the Saturday, and so we wanted to create a space in which the messages would get sent and an invitation made from the youth to the adults to work together to keep alive the spirit of what was happening. Fifty-five people gathered Saturday morning, and the youth did their performance which kicked off a short and intense Open Space. There was some significant power in the room, including two Members of the Provincial Legislative Assembly one of whom is the the provincial child welfare critic. Topics raised included what to do to help youth live independently and in safe conditions, stopping police harassment of Aboriginal and Latino youth by working with the police, and educating youth and adults on rights. All of the groups were composed of both youth and adults and the feeling in the room was one of possibility and optimism, despite the huge nature of some of the changes that were being discussed. To have provincial politicians sitting in the room with street youth, working together to move forward the learnings from the project was a powerful experience.

Increasingly I am seeing the possibility involved in bringing creative expression into play with youth working in Open Space. I know there have been many conversations about playback theatre in the Open Space community over the years, but, being a little slow on the uptake sometimes, I'm just now beginning to see how it integrates with OST work. The creative pieces, and the process of creating something together, is another practice ground for passion bounded by responsibility, and youth find their voices in many different ways when they are invited to work together to create art which is used as an invitation for action. There are a number of places in which I think this can be a significant combination and I'll be looking for opportunities like this over the next little while. In the meantime, if you have had experience combining youth, creativity and Open Space together, let me know so I can continue to expand my horizons on this a little bit. 

   

  In February 2005, working with Karyo Communications and the City of Vancouver Sustainability Office, I conducted a World Cafe meeting with nearly 200 youth on the subject of action for sustainability. The meeting was held in an evening and contributed momentum, ideas and engaged youth to the One Day Vancouver campaign.

One of the results of that meeting was a further conversation between myself and Nicolette Brinkhoff and Tracy Vaughn, two of the youth in attendance at the World Cafe. They were so inspired by the gathering that they wanted to see what they could do to sponsor a bigger conversation, deepening the work that youth could do in the sustainability field.

The result of their planning was a one-day Open Space Technology event held in June in concert with the International Conference of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. At the Open Space event, 53 youth came together to create project teams and action plans relating to sustainability. The youngest participant was nine years old.

Among the result of that gathering was a wiki where you will find the proceedings of the event and a growing network of youth in Vancouver dedicated to the working with each other to pursue environmentally sustainable agendas. 

  In August 2005 I was hired by the Centre for Native Policy and Research (CNPR) to contribute to a one day community gathering intended to feed into the CNPR's policy development around youth engagement. A special part of this project was working with two young emerging Aboriginal facilitators who undertook a large part of the work of the day.

The project was many months in the making. The Centre has targeted youth issues from its founding. A group of community groups and individuals who work with Aboriginal youth assembled in the spring of 2005 to create a template for youth engagement for use by Aboriginal organizations and communities. The group also developed a draft protocol which youth could use to frame the conversation with their communities or with organizations in which they are involved.

On August 18, a meeting was planned to gather youth input on these two products. Two facilitators, Curtis Clearsky and Kris Archie stepped forward to work with me in holding space for the day.

I spent a day with Curtis and Kris as we co-created the process and discussed essential facilitator skills for deliberative process. We chose an approach that focused the day on learning for both the Centre and the youth in attendance.

On the day itself, we began with a playback theatre presentation from a youth theatre company which illuminated the issues contained in the documents. Following the playback theatre, we used the "interview matrix (.pdf)" process to elicit data from the youth on needs regarding youth engagement. The interview results were processed in groups which were facilitated by volunteers from the forum itself. Presentations back to the plenary ended the day and a closing circle finished off the process.

Results from the forum will be posted on the CNPR website in September. 

  In February 2003, Natural Resources Canada approached me to assist with a facilitated session at a conference on Aboriginal apprenticeship. The delegates looked at current models followed by a number of presentations. Participants then took part in a facilitated session to create some concepts to address a new strategy for the province. We used the interview matrix process to enable people to get to work very quickly on four questions that looked at common ground to address the looming shortage of skilled trades people.

A summary of the forum is online including power points of the presentations.

 

  I was hired with my partner Chris Robertson to facilitate a one day session for the British Columbia Ministry of Advanced Education using Open Space Technology. Over 150 people involved in Aboriginal post-secondary education to a conference at the First Nations House of Learning at the University of British Columbia (UBC) to engage with each other around issues and opportunities for the future of Aboriginal postsecondary education and training in British Columbia. The invitation stated:

Your insights, skills and experiences are needed to help shape the future of
Aboriginal post-secondary education and training. AVED released the draft Aboriginal Post-Secondary Education and Training Policy Framework (APF) for discussion in November 2003. The draft APF outlines AVED'’s proposed approach for the future of Aboriginal post-secondary education and training. AVED is seeking your opinions on key issues, options and strategies to ensure that this important topic is discussed from a variety of perspectives resulting in a list of recommendations for action.

The participants met using Open Space Technology in which they self-organized an agenda based around 29 small group discussions. These small groups met throughout the day, took their own notes, and created a number of recommendations in 28 discussions.

The report contains a summary analysis of the recommendations and a complete set of the day’s proceedings. Specific recommendations are listed with each group'’s report.

• Download the final report (.pdf)
  
• Download Ministry's response to the recommendations (.pdf)
  

 

  Cross-cultural regional visioning in Open Space

In the fall of 2001 I was invited by the British Columbia Treaty Commission to help design and facilitate a regional visioning process in three areas of British Columbia (see page nine of this .pdf newsletter for a synopsis). This process would bring together First Nations, local governments and citizens, companies and other stakeholder to imagine futures in a post-treaty negotiations world.

In two regions of British Columbia, the organizing committees opted to use Open Space Technology. The Katzie First Nation in association with the Greater Vancouver Regional District, convened a 2.5 day leadership summit in Open Space to look at what issues could be tackled together by the First Nation along with local government, industry and community organizations. The proceedings from that conference included several major initiatives in opening up local governance, creating strong industry-First Nation resource sector partnerships and undertaking more sophisticated communication around First Nations issues in schools and throughout the community.

• Download the proceedings of this event (.doc)


• Download a local newspaper article describing the summit (.doc)

In the Cariboo region, in central British Columbia, the Cariboo Tribal Council and its local partners sponsored an Open Space workshop in April of 2002 which spawned a series of further workshops around the issues of wildlife, land use planning. Cultural tourism and land and resources. This month I returned to the Cariboo to facilitate a one day Open Space meeting which brought together the elected leadership of the four CTC member First Nations with the elected mayors and councilors from the neighbouring municipalities and the Cariboo Regional District. They gathered to set the agenda on issues that only they, as the holders of power in the region, could address.

You can view the proceedings of these Open Space events and the follow up workshops at the Cariboo Tribal Council Treaty Office homepage. Look for the regional visioning reports on the left hand side of the page.

Other sources:

• Indian and Northern Affairs Canada page on regional visioning


• Regional Visioning Report from the BCTC 2003 annual report


• My own story of the Cariboo process from the Open Space Institute of Canada newsletter