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Participatory, beyond inclusion

December 12, 2023 By Collaboration, Community, Culture, Democracy, Featured, Football, Leadership One Comment

Folks in Mitchell County, North Carolina, working with stories of substance use to discover patterns and generate ideas for supporting folks in active addiction and recovery and prevention.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reflecting on what participatory leadership really looks like. I use the word a lot in my work – teaching participatory leadership and participatory decision-making – and of course, “participation” is one of the four practices of the Art of Hosting. Hosting meetings and contexts for large-scale work means creating the conditions for participation. And it means learning how to be a good participant.

Words like this are always in danger of being overused, but a couple of moments over the past few weeks has reaffirmed the radical nature of truly participatory design and decision-making.

We have just wrapped up a couple of Art of Hosting Participatory Leadership cohorts with in-person retreats followed by online sessions. For both cohorts – one from a group of 35 senior academic leaders at a large US university and one from a coalition of community health organizations – we did a three-hour online session on participatory decision-making. In both cases, what struck me in discussions with participants is where the heart of participatory decision-making actually lies. It is not enough to be “inclusive” in making decisions. The real work – and the real benefit – comes from an actively participatory process. Inclusion, on the face of it, while worthy in itself, has a kind of passive tone to it. I can say I have included you in a decision, and I can even let you have a vote, but have you participated in the decision? Have you had a chance to co-create what we are deciding upon?

In the right context, participatory decision-making is the most powerful way to create shared ownership over decisions. In this respect, the heart of participation lies not just in having a say in the final stages of a decision but in being a part of developing the proposals being voted upon. I was in North Carolina a few weeks ago working on a Participatory Narrative Inquiry project we’ve been running on substance use and opioids. We collected over 130 stories and, as is a key feature of PNI, ran sessions to bring the community in to make sense of what they were seeing and what needed to happen in their rural counties to address patterns of substance use and support recovery. One circle consisted of folks who were all in recovery or still in active addiction. It was immensely moving to witness them in their power, considering other people’s stories, reflecting on their own stories, and working together to not only generate ideas for local governments and health agencies but actually take the initiative to create spaces for young people to learn about addiction and recovery from those with lived experience. Their feedback was that healing and recovery look like THIS: being active participating members of their societies and communities, and yet that is something that is hardly afforded to anyone, let alone people recovering from addiction.

Perhaps I take it for granted, but on reflection, it seems to me that participation – deep, authentic co-creation – is becoming an increasingly radical act. Where I live, we tend to either consume what is offered to us or are passive participants in the social and cultural dynamics going on around us. What would you say if I ask you where you participate in the world, outside of the decisions you make for your own self or family? How many things do you do where your participation is important to the thing’s success?

Me, I make music, play soccer, help sustain supporter culture at a small semi-professional soccer club, help steward two faith-based communities and participate on teams for teaching and supporting organizations and communities. These are good practices because being a participant in the world is an important capability to keep strong. And if you are someone who hosts or leads participatory spaces and processes, it’s important to know what enables good participation and what it feels like to actively co-create.

But even still, I’m not an active participant in politics, for example, where my participation, such as it is, is minimal and even optional and yet the implications of what happens in the governance arena is deeply influential on my life.

Where are the places we can extend the continuum of participation from engagement to inclusion to participation to co-creation?

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A resource: Sam Kaner et. al. wrote perhaps the finest user guide to this work with the Facilitators Guide to Participatory Decision Making. This is a useful and very sparse collection of maps, tools and insights to help facilitators and leaders create the conditions for more and more participation in their work. Sparse is a good thing. The book is full of tools that folks with even a small amount of facilitation experience can put to work. A Fourth Edition of the book is being prepared for the new year.

Benjamin Zephaniah has died

December 7, 2023 By Featured, Music, Poetry

The British poet, musician and performer was an incredible voice over 40 for racial justice and as an advocate for all people taking their place in Britain. His version of the Tam Lyn story, retold above in a stunning performance with the Imagined Village Ensemble, is a brilliant and creative arrangement of the old folk tale but applied to the reality of a refugee living in a 21st century British city and asking that his lover hold on to him as all of the power at play throws itself at him to try to have him deported.

It’s a stunning retelling. Explore Zephaniah’s work and life here.

December 6

December 6, 2023 By Being 5 Comments

Geneviève Bergeron – Hélène Colgan – Nathalie Croteau – Barbara Daigneault – Anne-Marie Edward – Maud Haviernick – Maryse Laganière – Maryse Leclair – Anne-Marie Lemay – Sonia Pelletier – Michèle Richard – Annie St-Arneault – Annie Turcotte – Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz

It’s about the hands

October 29, 2023 By Bowen, Culture, Democracy, Featured, Power

My neighbour Raghavendra Rao Karkala has a show up at The Hearth on Bowen these next couple of weeks that is a captivating look at the images of dissent in the world. Spanning movements from around the world and from the late 20th century right up to the present day, Raghu has captured images of dissent, many of them portraits of dissenters in action. It is an unusual show for Bowen Island, in that it is explicitly political. I’m sure folks will resonate with some of the dissenters and not others. Maybe none at all.

The show portrays named and unnamed people, and while the political leaning is undeniably progressive, the longing that these images portray transcends partisan politics and points us toward dignity and self-determination in the face of power that dehumanizes and uses its monopoly of force and violence to enforce arbitrary laws and create dehumanizing situations. I think Raghu’s perspective is captured best by a pair of images of anonymous women. One shows an Iranian woman clasping a lock of her hair which she has cut and is holding above her head in defiance of the Iranian state’s enforcement of hijab. The other shows a woman in a near similar pose wearing a hijab which originates from protests in India in favour of the right to wear a hijab. The issue is self-determination and choice.

Many of these images show the dissenter’s head or face and their arms. The arms are raised or outstretched, sometimes in a fist, sometimes pointing, sometimes open-palmed. They are reaching for, pointing at, or demanding something that lies just outside their grasp. A future, a right, a shred of the dignity that has been stripped from them. It is the hands I most identify with. They are an invitation to join in the struggle from wherever we are, to do whatever we can to fully support the right of human beings to determine their futures and choose lives of fulfillment and peace.

For a privileged community like ours, I think the show poses the question of whether we can reach out to those in the portraits and join them in their struggle and dissent against the brutal use of power that dispossesses and dehumanizes them. The answer is not an easy yes. Who are these folks? Who am I in relation to them? What is the real cost of my support for them? And, hey, are some of these images directed at me?

Raghu’s show runs until November 3.

Anne Stadler has died

October 29, 2023 By Featured, Open Space 7 Comments

The first time I ever experienced Open Space Technology was at the International Association of Public Participation Practitioners in Whistler, BC, Canada in 1995.  It changed my life, to be hosted by a small team of beautiful facilitators who took a standard conference and opened space for the 400 of us to spend a day in deep practice, conversation, and community together.  

The team was Anne Stadler, Angeles Arrien and Chris Carter.  What an introduction to Open Space.  I can still remember Anne lighting a candle and placing it at the centre of a huge concentric swirl of chairs.  I figure I owe my path in life to the graciousness of Anne’s opening and invitation to Open Space. Over the past 28 years – for half of my life so far – that one experience has set me on my course, and I am forever grateful that I made the decision to go to that conference.  

Anne died yesterday at age 92.

We have lost an Elder, a steward, a mentor, and a friend.  Someone who always had our backs, someone who never wavered in her support of those who were dedicated to making the world a more humane, creative, and life-affirming world.  She called this the “radiant network.” I feel so blessed to have walked a little on this journey alongside Anne’s wisdom, grace, and fierce support.