The Open Space Practices
An email on the OSLIST today prompted me to find the story of the Open Space event I did in Alaska with Judi Richardson and Michael Herman. The event was a gathering of 200 middle school students, teachers and counsellors and the theme was “Becoming a Peacemaker.” Over the months that followed Julie sent stories about Open Space blossoming all over Alaska and Michael collected and posted them at his site.
That was also the first time we offered the Open Space practice workshop together in a two day format. We had 60 people in that initial training, and in the next year Michael and I offered it together and separately in Canada, the USA, Ireland, India, Nepal, Australia and New Zealand.
Last week I was with 15 remarkable people near Nanaimo on Vancouver Island offering the most recent iteration of the workshop, a three day version that really builds on the practices of Open Space. We feel now we are truly moving into the realm of practice in a deeper way, teaching learning and writing about it.
So here’s a marker to remember where it all began.
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Following the focus groups, we conducted a large 1.5 day community meeting to gather issues and challenges from the community itself. The first day was an Open Space meeting which brought 60 people together including a number of homeless and virtually homeless folks. This was followed on day two with a World Cafe which we called an “Action Cafe” aimed at discovering strategies for keeping this process alive within the larger development agreement process. We knew we had the right people in the room when at lunch an announcement was made that “a shopping cart was illegally parked!”
Following the conclusion of the cafe, we had fiddling and dancing from some Metis performers and Coast Salish and Kwagiulth drum songs from Victoria’s Unity Drummers.
It has been a rich experience working on this project. For more information, see what one of the community groups, the Inner City Aboriginal Society, wrote about our work. And for more photos, visit the Flickr page for “A Community at Work.”
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Victoria, BC
My two favourite processes of the moment, and there are people all over the place looking at ways to combine them.
Today, Christine Whitney Sanchez sends the report from her latest effort, which used OST and World Cafe to work with up to 2000 people at the National Girls Scouts Convention in the USA. The proceedings are online.
Tomorrow I am about to do the same thing, beginning a two day conversation with the Aboriginal community of Victoria. Christine’s efforts are my inspiration tonight.
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After a couple of conversations around the practice workshop I am offering in two weeks, and a lot of midnight interruption on his part Michael Herman has distilled the thinking again on the practices of Open Space.:
3. Offering (and Holding) Space – the offering is important, no push, no grab, just letting what we have, our attention and our space, be there for the taking, for the use and support of what wants to happen in front of us, and all around us, within the circle of space that we circle and name as “us” and “our time together.” The tool(s) here are structures, but specifically those structures that support movement, rather than restrict it. Rules, if you will, that say what we can do, rather than what we must or must not do. Shapes of organization that create, and offer, choices. The workshop conversation is about space and support for movement. The product is Organization, Invitation in the sense of Space for Movement.
4. Grounding� making it real. making it touch, as impact, and imprint, a difference. and making touchdowns. score! making tracks, traction, and action. taking the steps, in the space, aligned with the vision, as guided by an open heart. showing up. on the ground. The tools are actions, steps, or perhaps gifts. The workshop conversation might be about gifts and giving. Assets and Exchange. Self and Others. Ground. Ground that is bigger, less theoretical, more sensational than Common Ground. More like Ground of Being. Which brings us back to the first practice, and how we are being “Aaaahhhhh”.. and the Product is Peace.
This is going in the ever simpler practice guide, and this is the fundamental structure of the workshop.
I’m with him on the idea that we need to get this into a book pretty soon.
There is still space in the workshop by the way, which is being held near Nanaimo on Vancouver Island.
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There is a great flowering of dialogic facilitation training this month around these parts in southern British Columbia and northern Washington State. First Peggy Holman and Tom Cato are offering an Appreciative Inquiry training in Seattle from October 18-21.
Following that, Toke Paludan Moeller and friends will be right here on Bowen Island offering the excellent Art of Hosting gathering which I can highly recommend. That workshop will run October 30 to November 3 which is a great time to be here on our island, as we celebrate Hallowe’en as a quasi-national holiday. That workshop will also feature an alumni gathering that I’ll be at on November 2 and 3.
Finally, you can top off your learning month with an Open Space practice workshop offered by myself and Wendy Farmer-O’Neil in Nanaimo from November 15-17.