Adventures in facilitation (in London!)

I like this cartoon by Hugh MacLeod (you can subscribe to his daily cartoon here) because it captures how I’m feeling about a visit to London and surrounds in September and October. It will be an adventure in many ways.

You might have heard me bang on about facilitation from time-to-time. Okay, a lot then. I find facilitating endlessly fascinating. There’s a different group, a different dynamic every time. Hence my own response is different. Changing. Evolving.

So I’m excited to be able to share some of what I’ve learnt about facilitating at a Facilitating With Confidence course in London. Let me say that again, just in case you missed it: Facilitating With Confidence in London! Woot! And best of all, for me, and anyone who comes along, is that I’ll have two brilliant co-facilitators at my side: Johnnie Moore and Trish Stevenson.

And what if nobody comes says that little voice in my head? No problem, I still get to spend time with Johnnie and Trish, and who knows what else we might cook up?

It will be an adventure no matter what. And it’d be really cool to share it with you or people you know. I can guarantee some fun, some laughter and you will even learn a few things about facilitating – just as I will continue to learn from you.

Everything else you want to know can be found here (including registration details). Or if you want to skip the blurb you can go straight to registration.

Part 1: 20 – 22 September 2010

Part 2: 4 – 6 October 2010

Wallacespace Covent Garden, 2 Dryden Street, London UK

Early-bird rates till 31 August, group rates available and special rates if you ask us nicely.

Sustainable is Attainable

In May, I was involved in a conference called Show Me The Change – all about sustainability, evaluation, behaviour change and complexity. There were lots of expectations regarding the conference and its outcomes. But here’s one that was probably unexpected.

It was a conference about sustainability, so we concluded that the conference itself should be as sustainable as possible. A no-brainer really. It was catered for by students from Swinburne University and it seems they were inspired. So inspired that they have since created this event called Sustainable is Attainable.

Here’s the details. If you’re in Melbourne this August try to get along.

Mecanix Restaurant and Swinburne Event Management class, Derby, are holding a sustainable dinner called ‘Sustainable is Attainable’.

Our dinner is to promote a healthy lifestyle that is ethical and environmentally friendly to the planet and our lives. The night will serve a three-course meal as well as tea and coffee and a presentation on how to live a sustainable life. Lucky door prizes will also be up for grabs. ‘Sustainable is Attainable’ is being held on both Tuesday 17th and Tuesday 24th of August at Mecanix training Restaurant (located on the Prahran campus of Swinburne) Building PE 144 High St Prahran.

Tickets are $27.50 and doors open at 6.30pm.

Booking are essential – please contact Mary Zougoulos on 92146589 or email Mary on mzougoulos@swin.edu.au.

The surprising power of open space

Regular readers will be aware that I’m a fan of open space. And this week I was inspired by Stella Duffy and her experience of using open space to make theatre. Made me wonder if I’ve been limiting my own use of the form, and gave me a few ideas to chew over.

Stella has been working on a new theatre project and shared with the open space list the report she returned to the National Theatre Studio who generously gave 30+ people the space to work on the new project in OS. Here’s Stella’s story.

I’m emailing to thank you all so much for your support for the Chaosbaby Project Open Spaces this weekend and last.  To give you some idea of what happened, and how valuable it was :
36 people attended over both days (many of them came to both).
The age range was from 21 to mid-60′s.
They were 11 actors, 2 actor-musicians, 4 actor-writers, 1 choreographer-dancer, 6 directors, 1 designer, 1 film-maker, 2 musicians, 2 playwrights, 5 writer-directors, 1 photographer.

In the two days, using the Open Space form, various groups & individuals :

• wrote a 14-page traditional/’straight’ narrative for the piece
• developed character breakdowns
• worked on the physicality/movement for a number of characters/spaces
• held many discussions about the nature of the piece
• discussed the nature of chaos (as a theatrical concept, as a dance/movement concept, and in terms of chaos theory and mathematics)
• created/drew up initial design ideas
• wrote 3 new monologues
• worked on the (two, brief) pre-existing texts
• wrote and recorded a lullaby
• documented the work on camera and video
• made a puppet show, with live music accompaniment

Above all, I think, we showed ourselves it is not only possible,but perhaps preferable to work in Open Space, with a wide range of theatre-makers, across many disciplines, which generated an enormous amount of work/material, led not by a single director or writer, but by the whole - and that in doing so it is still possible  to have a cohesive idea of what we are making and where best our skills might be used. I’m really excited about taking this on further, I especially loved that, having met Slav (on the door, doing security) the first Saturday, he took (wonderful) photos for us on the 2nd Saturday.

We’re looking at a full weekend/three day Open Space to further the work later in the year.

I’ve worked in made/devised/improvised theatre for the past twenty-five years, this was one of the few times I’ve felt that it was TRULY a shared group endeavour and not, at least in some ways, a director or writer-led experience. And happy though I am to work as both a director and a writer, a working form that uses ALL the skills in the room, to the utmost that can be offered, feels like a much better use of time, space, money and, most importantly, the full range of all the artists’ abilities.

And I loved Stella’s comment on my earlier post about scriptwriting and facilitation: “Improvising / writing / facilitating – they’re all the same thing as far as I’m concerned.” Indeed!

A lost opportunity

Apologies, this is a bit ranty…

An information sheet for a local community group arrived in my letterbox today. Here’s a few exerpts:

The [group] requires your input and support in order to maintain its vigour and effectiveness and to ensure that it is accurately representing your views.

and

Please provide us with an up-to-date email address as this facilitates communication and assists us in keeping costs to a minimum. If you do not wish to provide an email address, we ask that you regularly check our website to keep yourself informed of our activities.

Maybe it’s just me, but I’m unlikely to become involved with this group. The tone of their information sheet is demanding. I’d prefer an invitation. The group came together to tackle a particular issue and has extrapolated that they need to continue to tackle further community issues as they arise. So now they have a President and a committee and regular meetings and membership fees and voting rights. Yawn.

Oh, but look, there’s a website and a blog. Maybe all’s not lost. I can contribute on-line. Sadly no. I can send an email and the blog page comes up as not found. Oh well.

Just after receiving this I watched Clay Shirky’s video on TED about the generosity economy and the uses of the vast amounts of cognitive surplus made accessible because of technology. I wrote down a few key points: we like to create and we want share; design for generosity; social constraints make us more generous than contractual constraints; add community value and civic value. You can watch it here.

Back to my local community group. I’d follow them on Twitter. I might even join a Facebook Group or maybe a private group site. I’d contribute to blog discussions. In fact there are many ways in which I’d like to be involved. And I could do so from wherever in the world I happen to be. I’d happily sit around and talk about issues over a coffee or a glass of wine – real or virtual (skype is such a boon). Attending a monthly meeting and sitting through an agenda with items submitted to the Secretary seven days in advance? I don’t think so.

What a lost opportunity for engagement and participation – and to tap in to the cognitive surplus that no doubt exists around here.

Collaboration

There’s been an interesting discussion amongst facilitators about whether or not collaboration is more complex now than previously.

I can’t speak for organisations, or anyone else for that matter. All I can say is that for me collaboration has never been easier. I can find people to collaborate with – whether they live nearby or on the other side of the planet – and we can communicate using a whole range of media, with my particular favourites being  skype, blogs and Twitter. All of the people I collaborate with are friends first. We get to know each other, learn of each other’s skills and contributions, find opportunities to collaborate, challenge each other, have fun and provide something as collaborators we couldn’t each provide alone. Given the choice, I wouldn’t work any other way.

A more satisfying way of working

We’d just finished working together face-to-face for a week. We gathered in one of our apartments, too tired to venture out for dinner. We opened a bottle of wine, a few beers to celebrate and ordered pizza. Someone suggested a song. Two guitars, a group of friends – singing, laughing, improvising.

What were we celebrating? Our friendship. Our collaboration. A new way of working.

We come from Australia, New Zealand, UK and Canada. We share a love of improv, are skilled facilitators, blog, use open space, are curious, adventurous and love to travel. We like to do risky, edgy work. We each have our own businesses and work, naturally, in different parts of the world. We’re generous, with what we know and what we share. We each bring different, and complementary, perspectives. We play together. We work together. We’re individuals. We’re different. We agree, we argue, we struggle, we care.

Are you seeing a theme here?

Before we worked together we were friends. Separated by oceans. Connected by ideas. Inspired by an audacious plan. We’re still friends. Maybe even better friends. Family. Love. This is what binds us. This is what makes working together a joy. This is why we’ll do it again.

Open data movement afoot

At last year’s TED conference, Tim Berners Lee called for the an open data movement with the free sharing of raw data and all the benefits that would come from that. You can watch the original talk here.

Last month, he gave an update in this six-minute talk. He shows how mashable maps are being produced from the raw data. What I found most interesting was the way information was gathered and shared about the Haiti earthquake. It’s about 4 mins in.

Hat tip to Johnnie Moore and Ton Zylstra

Touring with the band

While watching this excellent trio of talented Quebecois musicians known as Genticorum I was musing the nature of collaboration. Each of these musicians is no doubt talented in his own right, yet together they can do so much more. I saw this time and again over the last few days watching various bands perform. I saw them looking out for each other, building on each other’s strengths, creating something together that they couldn’t do alone. It reminded me of the challenge of working alone – of looking for others to collaborate with and the fun, energy and creativity that can emerge; the difficulty of explaining that to clients; and the expectations that, of course, musicians collaborate, but facilitators don’t need to. This facilitator prefers to be a band member rather than a solo performer.

Crumbs!

With shared interests in facilitation and open space, and a passion for improv, conversation, and exploring ideas, it was really only a matter of time before Johnnie Moore and I developed a workshop that brings all of that together in some way.  It’s called Crumbs! and you can read about it here on Matt Moore’s (no relation) web site.

Matt has invited us to Sydney to offer Crumbs! on May 13.

It’s about the tyrannies that oppress us and limit our capacity to be creative and innovative.

These tyrannies are the Tyranny of the Explicit, or the fear of not knowing; the Tyranny of Excellence, or the fear of not being good enough; and the Tyranny of Effort, or the fear of failure.

It’s going to be fun to explore these with Johnnie, and even more fun to explore how to bust them. We’d love you to come and play.

How might we design a conference?

I’ve been reading Tim Brown’s Change by Design and I’m surprised at how much the principles in the book about design thinking resonate around what Johnnie Moore, Chris Corrigan, Anne Pattillo, Geoff Brown and I have been doing for a national conference on evaluating behaviour change.

In collaboration with the conference organisers and hosts we’ve created a design team to bring some edgy thinking and practices to the delivery of what could have been yet another predictable conference. We’re thinking this conference will be anything but predictable.

Tim says “design thinking relies on our ability to be intuitive, to recognise patterns, to construct ideas that have emotional meaning as well as functionality, to express ourselves in media other than words or symbols”. And while design thinking has mostly been applied to objects and their functionality, more and more the principles have been applied to services and experiences.

He also explains some other principles of design thinking:

• building on one another’s good ideas
• direct engagement with people
• genuine reciprocity of interests
• investigative learning
• exploring questions around ‘how might we…’?
• the challenge and excitement of applying design thinking to problems that matter
• finding ways to encourage individuals to move towards more sustainable behaviours

So it seems that a conference that explores complexity and the art of evaluation within a context of behaviour change for sustainability just calls out for design thinking.

Geoff Brown does a great job in this slideshow of describing some of the key principles that underpin this Show Me The Change conference.