106391161534387675

Here for the annual conference of the Council for the Advancement of Native Development Officers (CANDO) where I am facilitating two Open Space sessions. Today’s is about new direction in economic development and tomorrow we will look at caring for our communities and the role of economic development in healing First Nations communities. The proceedings from both of these conversation will be online somewhere (probably mirrored at
OpenSpaceWorld.Net where the conversation can continue.

At any rate, it’s one of those conference where one runs into old friends and colleagues from around the country, including folks I was with in the Native Management and Economic Development Program at Trent University in the early 1990s. We all graduated just before everyone got email addresses so it’s only now that some of us are catching up and sharing news of the triumphs and tragedies that have unfolded over the past 15 years.

But I wasn’t going to write about that stuff, at least not today. Today I wanted to capture the impressions I was left after attending an Open Space Technology meeting facilitated by Bill Cleveland for the EARTH project. I’m sure there will be an online presence for the notes at some point, but this is my record of a session I convened, and my impressions of what I learned.

The theme of the gathering was something like “how can we use our art and activism to empower the voices of youth to build a just and sustainable world.”

I proposed a session that was titled: “Invitation, self-organization and the art of community building: what can we learn from artistic practice about engaging with community.”

It was a far ranging discussion that began with me outlining the practice of Irish music as a social and community building activity and went from there. There was much to learn about the way in which various art practices (including theatre, painting, dance and music) lend themselves to the process of engaging in community building activities.

Artistic practices were outlined in the session and illustrated with stories, but learnings now come to me in bullet points, so here goes:

• “The ability to make metaphors is what makes us both artists and humans.” David Diamond from Headlines Theater uttered this gem starting us off on a conversation about meaning-making


• Art-making is inquiry. It requires a critical interpretation of the world. It develops the capacity to both connect with the natural world and understand and reflect on one’s internal responses to that world.


• Two women in the group who had worked with abused women described a process where they did not raise painful issues in process but instead invited the women to make art together. Pain got dealt with as participants grew to trust each other and responded to each other’s art. This was a private process between the women, negotiated in the safety of a space which they created together. The overall benefit of this process was that women described feeling empowered by the fact that they had unlocked their own creativity.

A fascinating discussion all round.

Anyway, back to work up here. It snowed two inches last night. Summer North of 60 is always fun!