As a musician one of my favourite things about the web is the way we can trade music on it. I am a music junky and with the rise of file sharing technology, my ears have opened wide at what is out there.
I’ve been toying around with Webjay for a while, which is a way of compiling playlists of music all of which, in my case, is offered free and legally by artists, record labels and others. I have two playlists in the “Little Projects” section to the left, one which is a small collection of Canadian songs and another which is my ever changing top 40 of world music. To those I now add this playlist, the soundtrack of Parking Lot, in which you may find a nice variety of tunes offered somewhat in the spirit of my favourite radio show, Late Junction from BBC Radio Three.
And so I’ll launch this soundtrack with this piece called “Here we Come Around” from Dear Nora.
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The group of Aboriginal youth I have been working with, Building Our Legacy Together, have had a busy winter, and their activities were recently summarized in this report from coordinator Crystal Sutherland:
“Youth � Building Our Legacy TogetherPawatskwachilth Haiyupis, Crystal Sutherland (Ahousaht) and the 15 member provincial BOLT Executive have successfully hosted the first forum in Fort Rupert Big House located on the Kwakiutl reserve just outside Port Hardy. The purpose of the forum was for Aboriginal youth to identify issues and have the opportunity to make recommendations to federal departments as well as introduce and engage Aboriginal youth with Aboriginal Leadership and elders. Over 120 youth, elders and leaders participated in the event.
Invited guests were: Shawn Atleo – BC AFN, Patrick Kelly – INAC Deb Foxcroft – Vancouver Island Aboriginal Transitional Team, Harley Wylie – BC Aboriginal Network on Disability Society, Lorraine Calderwood-Parsons – Office for the Child and Youth, Peter Knox – Hereditary Chief, Basil Ambers – Fort Rupert Elder, Stanley Sam – Ahousaht Elder, Archie Thompson – Toquaht Elder.
One of the immediate outcomes from the Fort Rupert BOLT forum was the engagement and participation of a group of teens from the Fort Rupert reserve in a band council meeting the week following the BOLT forum.
The next steps are:
- To secure funding for the ongoing activities for 5 more forums across BC in Kamloops, Prince George, Skidegate, Chehalis and one provincial forum to follow-up.
- The BOLT Youth Executive will have a strategic planning session to determine our next steps.
- Create the BOLT for Youth Foundation to grant funds to youth designed projects in BC First Nations communities.
Many committed people worked hard to make this event a success. We would like to take this time to thank and acknowledge the supporters of the BOLT initiative:
Kleco (thank you) to the Fort Rupert Hereditary Chiefs for allowing us to meet in their Big House, Kleco to Chief and Council for donating their facilities, Kleco to the Fort Rupert Elders and singers for sharing their prayer, song and dance with the BOLT participants, to the volunteers and to the Fort Rupert community for their generous hospitality and for looking after their territory. Kleco to the Vancouver Island Youth Task Group for volunteering countless hours to design and deliver the forum, to the youth keynote speakers whose stories inspired the youth participants, to Chris Corrigan for facilitating, to leadership who listened with understanding, to Patrick Kelly for taking photographs that tell our story, to all our sponsors who made this event possible – BCAFN, INAC, VIATT, Inter-tribal health authority, sacred wolf friendship centre, Ha’sa Program, and RedWayBC. Kleco to the caterers for keeping us nourished to do this good work, to the chaperons for caring for the youth and keeping them safe and to Joan Calderhead for advising and mentoring us. Lastly, Kleco to all the young participants who took the time to share and voice the serious issues (suicide prevention, teen pregnancy, children in care, addictions, sexual abuse, decolonization etc…) that must be addressed in order to create healthier communities for future generations and the Elders who provided support, love and traditional knowledge to the youth in these heavy discussions.
On March 2nd at the Economic Opportunities Roundtable, the following supporters each donated $500.00 and put the challenge out to other Chiefs and Aboriginal Financial Institutions. The BOLT Youth Executive would like to acknowledge and thank the following contributors:
Chief Shane Gottfriedson – Kamloops Indian Band, Chief Gary Oker – Doig River First Nation, Chief Jerry Asp – Tahltan Band, Keith Matthews – Community Future�s Lawrence Lewis – Bute Inlet Development Corporation, Chief Barry Seymour – Lheidli Tenneh Band. A special acknowledgement and thanks to the BCTC for their $10,000 donation!
This whole project is youth led and youth organized. They are attracting the resources they need through invitations to work together like this one. If you would like more information about these guys, or see a way to contribute to their work, get in touch with me and I’ll hook you up.
Technorati Tags: aboriginal, firstnations, youth
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Twenty years ago, in June 1985 I remember listening to the CBC at a friend’s cottage north of Toronto when the news came that Air India flight 182 from Vancouver to Delhi had been bombed out of the sky near Ireland. Three hundred and twenty-nine people, most of them Canadians died that day, including my friend Sanjay Sakhawalkar, his whole family and four other kids from my school. The summer of 1985 was filled with grief and sadness at the loss. I sobbed far more than a 17 year-old boy is supposed to. My dreams were filled with terrible recurring images of falling into the sea. All of us that knew people on that plane felt powerless, robbed of friends and family and determined to see justice brought against the murderers.
It was the worst act of air terrorism until September 11, 2001. An investigation began which soon targetted Sikh seperatists and several men were later arrested. After 19 years, the trial of the two principal suspects began and although the case was not watertight, a guilty verdict was anticipated.
Today the verdicts came and the news is appalling. A BC Supreme Court judge found the two men not guilty. And it’s not because these men are innocent (they are far from nice guys), but because the evidence that the Crown amassed and the witnesses they called were useless. The investigation was a shambles in many ways. At one point our ironically named intelligence agency erased key tapes of phone taps.
The Crown owes a huge apology to the families and friends of the victims of AI 182. Over 80 children died that day, including my friend Sanjay, a brilliant young man who we all knew was destined for great things. That the perpetrators of this crime are walking free makes the vomit rise in my throat.
No one has apologized for these crimes, or taken responsibility for them. I am really quite angry that I may never see the day when anyone does. We have seen the mass slaughter of Canadian children and adults and no one can nail the bastards who did it. It’s an outrage.
My heart goes out to the families.
Technorati Tags: AirIndia, terrorism
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A propos of my post on facilitation and authenticity, I am becoming more keenly aware of the ways in which artists have been describing the process of “hosting.” Today, my pal Andy Boprrows posts a set of poems that speak to me, including this one by Wendell Berry:
The Real WorkIt may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.
— Wendell Berry
I’ve also been looking for songs online that describe “this work” and so far have collected a few into a playlist at Webjay. Just follow the link and click play to hear them. Additions to that list. which is composed of free and legal online media, are welcome. And if anyone can find me a copy of Alanis Morrissette’s song “Utopia” send me the link. As a poem about conversation it is amazing:
Utopiawe’d gather around all in a room
fasten our belts engage in dialogue
we’d all slow down rest without guilt
not lie without fear disagree sans judgmentwe would stay and respond and expand and include
and allow and forgive
and enjoy and evolve and discern and inquire
and accept and admit and divulge and open
and reach out and speak upThis is utopia this is my utopia
This is my ideal my end in sight
Utopia this is my utopia
This is my nirvana
My ultimatewe’d open our arms we’d all jump in
we’d all coast down into safety netswe would share and listen
and support and welcome
be propelled by passion not invest in outcomes
we would breathe and be charmed
and amused bydifference
be gentle and make room for every emotionwe’d provide forums we’d all speak out we’d all be heard
we’d all feel seenwe’d rise post-obstacle more defined more grateful
we would heal be humbled and be unstoppable
we’d hold close and let go and know when to do
which we’d release and disarm and stand up and feel safethis is utopia this is my utopia
this is my ideal my end in sight
utopia this is my utopia
this is my nirvana
my ultimate
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I’ve been facilitating groups for as long as I can remember, going back probably 20 years to high school when I ran both informal and organized youth groups with my peers. It has probably been about twelve or thirteen years ago that I started to actually pay attention to what I was doing. But only in the last five or six years, as I have been facilitating full time, have I noticed a deepening in my practice.
Work as practice. And by practice I mean something akin to a spiritual practice, whereby one undertakes a life of value and meaning through living in a particular way. When I feel my facilitation practice deepening, I notice that what I do is becoming more and more aligned with who I am.
I am starting to see just how important that is in the work I do with groups. When I was first starting out, I used to collect “tools” for working with groups. I had what amounted to a cookbook of ideas for working through different processes. I got some success in simply following the instructions and helping the group get to where they wanted to go. For most groups, and perhaps even a lot of facilitators, this is enough. It certainly served my work for a number of years.
The thing that changed that, and caused me to deepen my practice, was noticing what happened when things went wrong. Occasionally groups strayed far from the expectation I had for them and when the movie departs from the script, the facilitator’s REAL work begins. In these situations What I noticed was my own anxiety and panic about being in the unfolding chaos. I had very little idea what to do, and on a couple of occasions, things just went very wrong.
In reflecting on these experiences I realized what I was lacking was chaordic confidence, a term I appropriated from my friend Myriam Laberge. Chaordic confidence describes the ability to stay in chaos and trust that order will emerge. It’s a subtle art, but it is essential to working with groups who are themselves confronting chaos. If you can stay in the belief that order will emerge from what Sam Kaner calls “The Groan Zone” then the group has something to hitch its horse to, so to speak. But if you are married to your tools, and things go off the rails, you feel like a fish out of water, and you flop around unable to deal with the uncertainty around you. I’ve seen it happen – we probably all have – and it’s not pretty.
Developing chaordic confidence is more than acquiring more tools. It is about integrating an approach to life and work that is anchored in a a set of principles and values that serves our clients. For me these values include believing in the wisdom of the group, trusting that chaos produces higher levels of order and seeing conflict as passion that can be harnessed in the service of progress.
I began looking at some of the tools and processes and approaches I was using and started to realize that the things that worked for me and that brought a better experience to my clients, were processes rooted in the same values that I try to live. This weblog,tagged as “living in open space” is largely about that journey to live and work with the principles of Open space Technology – principles that amount to creating a practice of invitation. Living a life of invitation is a blast.
And there is more. My repetoire of approaches is expanding into a full range of what Toke Paludan Moeller calls “hosting practices.” And as I adopt and work with things like the world cafe and appreciative inquiry, I realize that the values and principles underlying those processes feel authentic to me. When I use those approaches to working with groups, my clients are getting ME, and not just a set of tools. I try to bring my whole self to this work now, with a large dose of chaordic confidence rooted in principles and values that link what I do with who I am. Doing and Being meet in the board room or the retreat centre.
We facilitators don’t talk much about this stuff, but I think it actually preoccupies a lot of our time and thinking. My own preparation for group involves many hours of design and reflection on process and principles so that I can go to work offering the highest level of service to the people with whom I am working. And for me, this means reflecting on what is core to my life and work.
So this is a long winded way of offering some insight into facilitation practice, perhaps mostly for those who are new to this path and who are realizing, as I am, that there is a life time of learning about oneself involved in this work. So as a service to those who might be interested in developing this deeper connection between life lived and tools used, I offer a set of links to principles underlying the processes I work with (and some I don’t work with!) in groups and communities. I offer these up both as a guide to group work and as a compendium of principles and teachings about living. See what you think…
Principles of process and life
- Open Space Technology
- Appreciative Inquiry
- Dialogue
- Circle
- World Cafe
- Dynamic Facilitation
- Chaordic principles
- Four fold way
My recipe book is changing. It’s no longer about tools for group work, but is instead a collection of teachings about living a true and good life of service to heart and community.