Creative Conversations
We've been hosting gatherings on the themes of Collapse and Emergence and Reimagining Power Together, with a view to growing our resourcefulness and honing our consciousness as we navigate these times of radical uncertainty. Check out the project page to see what we've been up to, and signup to the mailing list to hear about future events.
Sociocracy
We've been looking at and applying processes from a branch of sociocracy known as Sociocracy 3.0 (S3). The creators of S3 have built on the classic framework of sociocracy, with its lineage stretching back nearly two centuries, to evolve a wide range of practical guidelines to support effective governance and collaboration.
We are planning to continue to work with S3 and offer learning opportunities, to help inform our decision making and to help with other aspects of our work. S3 offers readily actionable ways of accessing the ancient wisdom of the circle, and a discipline to help us refrain from polarising.
It promotes maximum autonomy within agreed constraints, balancing the freedom of the individual with the needs of the wider collaboration; and it facilitates decentralised, distributed leadership and self-organising systems.
Power-with
We are looking to other live inquiries for inspiration as together we seek new ways of collective organising and decision making that enable a more balanced distribution of power. We want to place authentic connection and relationship front and centre, with wisdom emerging from trust, supported by good information and facilitation.
Building on the work of others in this field (such as Grassroots to Global and Trust the People) we also want to look at how we can become more trauma-aware, with a focus on personal processing and mutual support, as we explore how we may transform potentially disruptive responses into empathy and compassion.
Unlearning
We sense that these labs will involve an element of ‘unlearning’ as well as learning, as so much of our way of life is up for revision at this time. We may also consider how we can restore some of the lost dimensions of our shared heritage as humans on this planet.
All this we envisage will invite an ethic of questions, helping us maintain an open fresh edge in our seeing as we reign in our cultural tendency to impose macro-solutions which can tend to reinforce patterns of domination that no longer serve us.
In this way, we may also bring to light unconscious bias arising from privilege, and gently challenge the colonising mindset that thinks it knows for everyone.
Renewing Democracy
We envisage these labs will offer opportunities to ignite, grow and harness our enthusiasm for a more uplifting and healthy way of life, establishing a common language and a framework for growing community and collaborating effectively.
The idea is to introduce processes that will enable us all to get as fully involved as we want and are able to; and to evolve a joined-up culture, drawing on expertise from a range of sources as well as looking to our own experience and innate wisdom to guide us.
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The overall intention is to play our part in laying the foundations for wholesale systems change and for re-imaging and renewing democracy from the grass roots up.