{"id":5150,"date":"2016-03-21T04:42:04","date_gmt":"2016-03-21T12:42:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/?p=5150"},"modified":"2016-03-21T15:18:09","modified_gmt":"2016-03-21T23:18:09","slug":"the-basic-invitation-to-the-art-of-hosting-community-of-practice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/the-basic-invitation-to-the-art-of-hosting-community-of-practice\/","title":{"rendered":"The basic invitation to the Art of Hosting community of practice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Depending on who you ask, the Art of Hosting<\/a>\u00a0as a community of practice has been around since about 1999. \u00a0Since that time, it has evolved and morphed and changed and developed. \u00a0It does so based on the inquiries that come from practice and that are captured in the workshops that are delivered by various people all over the world. \u00a0It is a community and a movement of learning that I have never quite seen the likes of, although I am sure that there are others. \u00a0It focuses on dialogue, participatory leadership and making tools for these things accessible to everyone, while at the same time disrupting the field of facilitation with strange terms and language and ideas that are drawn from everything from organizational development, to sociology, psychology, anthropology, complexity theory and a variety of spiritual paths and experiences.<\/p>\n

It’s is really hard to pin down, so I appreciate the efforts of the researchers out there who have been trying to understand the shape of this morphing mycellium of a community.<\/p>\n

Elizabeth Hunt (@elizpercolab<\/a>) is one of these researchers. \u00a0Grounded in Frierian pedagogy<\/a>, she has just submitted her Master’s thesis in which she explores the Art of Hosting pedagogy. Her research was based in interviews, reading and through being a practitioner with percolab<\/a> in Montreal, one of my favourite groups of professional colleagues in my network. \u00a0(Full disclosure: I really love these guys!).\u00a0In her thesis she identifies four assumptions that underlie the bigger invitation that the Art of Hosting embodies:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. We are living a crisis of immense complexity;<\/li>\n
  2. Finding appropriate solutions requires us to shift our thinking;<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Dialogue enables us to access collective intelligence;\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. We can identify and learn from recurring patterns in our work<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The more I look at these assumptions, the more I recognize them in my work. \u00a0I can reflect on how each of these live in me and my work. \u00a0The crisis I feel drives the urgency of my work, but it’s probably a different version of the crisis than it is for you. \u00a0The shifts in thinking for me reflect my own shifts in thinking. \u00a0I try to embody the changes in mindset that I speak up for without becoming an evangelist and a fundamentalist. \u00a0that’s a hard line to tread when I believe so strongly that complexity thinking and conscious action are critical for survival in this world at any scale.<\/p>\n

    I also have often said that “I might be wrong, but I’m basically staking my life on the idea that dialogue is the social technology we need to all become good at.” \u00a0At this point in my life, I’m pretty far down that road, and I’m not sure I’m going to be doing much else in the next half of my life. \u00a0So that’s my bet. \u00a0You go ahead let my epitaph be a pithy assessment of how well that worked.<\/p>\n

    And finally on the fourth assumption, I think the dynamic nature of this is what keeps this community of practice so rich for me. \u00a0It is always changing and the patterns of dialogue are shifted by context, technology, thinking and the new challenges. \u00a0Showing up at Occupy Wall Street is as illuminating for me as watching a Trump rally, helping organize participation in the supporter’s section of my beloved Vancouver Whitecaps FC, or sitting in the Snug Cafe here on Bowen Island, kicking around ideas with my neighbours. \u00a0It is endlessly fascinating to see how participation, dialogue and leadership intersect. \u00a0The richer my experience observing and experimenting in a variety of contexts, the more I learn. \u00a0And that’s what makes this a worthy pursuit for the rest of my life.<\/p>\n

    So a huge thanks to Elizabeth for this research and being a high level observer of our community. \u00a0And good luck with the thesis!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Depending on who you ask, the Art of Hosting\u00a0as a community of practice has been around since about 1999. \u00a0Since that time, it has evolved and morphed and changed and developed. \u00a0It does so based on the inquiries that come from practice and that are captured in the workshops that are delivered by various people all over the world. \u00a0It is a community and a movement of learning that I have never quite seen the likes of, although I am sure that there are others. \u00a0It focuses on dialogue, participatory leadership and making tools for these things accessible to everyone, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"The basic inivtation to the #ArtOfHosting community of practice (with a shout out to @elizpercolab)","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[29,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-of-hosting","category-invitation"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-1l4","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5150"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5156,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5150\/revisions\/5156"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}