I was watching the Cop15 conference at a distance and I have been thinking that big conferences are maybe not what it will take to shift things. Bigger and more may not be what is needed, or what works. One of the problems is the pressure and expectation that comes from big gatherings – it tends to result in a level of planning and pre-ordained outcomes that actually suppresses emergent behaviour, and emergent behaviour is the mechanism I believe we need to evolve our next level of being, if we are to have a next level as a species. An …
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As the inner climate villages unfold here and in Copenhagen, the Europeans have cracked a simple set of practices. An email from Toke Moeller in Copenhagen this weekend: Toke, Ulrik, Lisa and I were part of a workshop at yourclimate.tv today on inner climate. A great experience! The young people were excellent facilitators. They asked us to brainstorm guidelines (Toke reframed this into practices) that could immediately help people to clear the inner climate. First we were asked to brainstorm onto the whiteboard table in silence, then to walk around in silence and make additions and then to talk about …
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Almost 20 years ago I was a part of pioneering something and I had no idea I was doing that. Gathered under the creative eye of Rob Winslow at The Union Theatre in Peterborough Ontario, a small cast of us put on a weekly improvised soap opera called “The Cactus Hotel: A Western Philosophy” (My God! Here is the brochure for it!) Every Sunday night all summer we improvised a one hour show that advanced the story of a number of characters who found themselves in an imaginary world that owed its existence to the marriage of the Hotel California, …
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Yesterday I spent a day with 14 students in the Certificate in Dialogue Program at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, teaching World Cafe and Open Space Technology. Whenever I am asked to teach methodologies I always spend a significant amount of time actually talking about invitation and harvest, because it is these practices that actually contribute to a productive and meaningful conversation, rather than just using the methodology. Invitation has always been a big part of my facilitation practice. From the time I discovered the work Michael Herman had done on invitation both as a practice and as a metaphor …
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There are patterns and rhythms in invitation that help clarify the intention. Sense these and don’t force them because the quality of generative and creative space depends on how well we know and work with these patterns.