Prince George, BC
Four years ago less a month I was running a huge Open Space event here in Prince George, in fact in the building that right outside my hotel room window. Called “Seeds of Change” the event was a kick off for the urban Aboriginal Strategy, a community driven and led process intended to begin and seed projects that would make a difference in the lives of the urban Aboriginal community in this northern city of 80,000 people.
One of the participants at that event was Ben Berland, who was at the time working with the Prince George school district as an Aboriginal coordinator. Ben had a vision of doing something really different within the education system here in PG. He built upon a long standing recommendation to start a different kind of school. He attracted a number of interested folks at the Open Space and moved his project idea forward.
A couple of years later, a task force was struck to study options for systemic change in the school system and one of their recommendations was to establish a primary Aboriginal Choice School within the school district.
The choice school idea is based on some very successful models in Edmonton and Winnipeg. Getting it rolling has been a lot of work for many people here in Prince George, but tonight was the first of four consultation cafes we are running with four inner city school communities to find out what it would take to make a choice school successful in this city.
Ben, who is now working with the local Carrier-Sekani Tribal Council showed up tonight to hold some space with us and help run some small group conversations. When he saw me the first thing he did was to remind me that this whole idea – four years in germination – had started at the Seeds of Change event.
This whole choice school initiative is a huge undertaking and it feels like in many ways the community here is just beginning its work, starting to engage in earnest with the complexities of finally implementing the idea that gained momentum across the street four years ago.
Things take time. It’s interesting that we know that and we forget it at the same time. We crave immediate results for our ideas. When we forget that things take time, we forget everything that has gone on to take us to the point where we are finally able to start something and we forget the people that laid the groundwork for things. So tonight I am sitting here grateful for Ben’s reminder about where things come from, and what it takes for big shifts to happen. It takes hard work, and a firm conviction and most of all, it takes time.
My friend Carmen Pirie writes from Halifax about an Open Space event he facilitated in Newfoundland last week. To harvest proceedings, they used ning and a short video clip from each host.
I like what I see here.
We’d like to invite you to join us for an Art of Hosting workshop here on Bowen Island in September. Myself, Monica Nissen, Caitlin Frost, Tenneson Woolf and David Stevenson will host you here at Rivendell Retreat Centre for three and half days of learning, exploring and playing with the art of hosting and harvesting conversations that matter.
Please grab the invitation, share with others and consider joining us. You can also register online through the Berkana Institute website. And if you are already registered, leave a note in the comments to let folks know who is coming. Confirmed participants already include bloggers, facilitators people working in business, tribal communities and in the food sector.
Day three at Shambhala and I’m humming. The artists staged what I heard was an incredible improvisational performance today that took the idea of being together in a field to a whole new level. I was in a conversation with some Art of Hosting mates at the time that was alos about fields and we were cracking open some deep learning about the ways in which we work together as friends, but the upshot was the same.
At the faculty retreat last weekend I sat in with the artists and had a conversation that was about the kind of work that art makes possible. I posited the assumption that fields cannot be created without art, an assumption we explored both in conversation and with an improvisational piece. Today one of the artists in that conversation, Wendy Morris, told me that one of her takes on the rock balancing thing was that the rocks make visible the very fine lines of balance. In the same way, art can illuminate the fine and subtle dynamics in systems and in seeing them crystalized with beauty another level of awareness and possibility becomes visible. This is certainly true in my expereince using poetry and graphic recording to harvest meaning from conversational process.
I am learning this week to enter deeply into the practice of “process artist” and to invite other who might be deep practitioners of conversational arts to explore other forms as well and integrate it with their practice. It’s simply a way of seeing differently, and sense making in a way that invites collaborative beauty.
As a taste, my rock balancing student, Jean-Sebastien posted lovely video today which is worth a look – and yes this means you Thomas.
Wicked fun day here today at the Shambhala Institute for Authentic Leadership in Halifax. I’m here as faculty teaching a module on the Art of Hosting with Toke Moeller and Monica Nissen. Highlights of the day included being asked to create a slam poem harvest from a World Cafe with all of the participants today, running the first day of our module and then singing tonight on stage with Judy Brown, Tim Merry, Mark Durkee, Shauntay Grant and Mary Jane Lamond (whose music I have loved for 15 years) and others. We were up on stage tonight in a mixed spoken word and song cafe performance, the highlights of which were Basia Solarz’s version of “over the Rainbow” and Shauntay’s incredible spoken word reminiscences about her childhood. We finished the night with a sweet jam on Tim and Mark’s “Switch it On.”
I’m loving how much actual art is in my life these days, especially as it relates to hosting work. One participant shared with me that she felt my impromptu poem harvest was as vivid as a graphic facilitation, which is high praise indeed, but also points to the power of words to evoke a shared meaning, if they are put into a poem. I continue to play intensively with this form of harvest.
Our module is based on the journey of the practitioner from individual to systemic work, and it looks at things that are constant at every scale. Today we started with the journey of the practitioner, opening with a check in circle, going to the chaordic path teaching and then finishing with some aikido to capture the learning of what it’s like to move with ground and centre. There were rocks balancing in the centre of our circle, an activity which is a very fast teacher about artistic hosting practice. One of our module participants, Jean-Sebastien Bouchard came alive with this practice, and he’s been balancing rocks all over the campus.
So a great week so far, following on a really interesting faculty retreat and some time with friends down at Tim’s place in Carleton. It’s a long stretch to be on the road but I’m in heaven here, learning tons, making lots of friends and playing at the edges of my life, art and work.