Readers who have been with me for a while will know that I have taken great inspration from Vaclav Havel over the years. An artist, playwright, dissident and peaceful democrat, his writing on totalitarianism and post-totalitarian ways of being have influenced much of my work and thinking on working towards post-colonial First Nations communities and organizations. Yesterday in the Globe and Mail there was a great interview with Havel and it was rich with quotes about what it takes to move from the idealistic state of a dissident to the hard work of institutionalizing large scale social change. …
Northern Soul – This England Granada TV documentary about Wigan Casino, a famous Northern Soul club in Wigan. The doc combines footage of historical industry in Wigan with footage shot for the 1977 show. It’s a strange but oddly engaging trip. (tags: music) Stellarium A free open source plaetarium program. Now that the nights are warmer, and clearer around my place, this ought to come in handy. (tags: astronomy learning kids space)
Over on the other coast of Canada, Carman Pirie is documenting the transforomation of his PR firm, colour. Back in August last year, I met Carman who sat with Toke Moeller, Tim Merry, Sera Thompson and I and apprenticed in the Art of Hosting. Now he is helping his firm adopt AoH as the operating system for the organization and for their work with customers. Go friend!
Seattle, WA There is a creation story we tell in the art of hosting workshops called “The Chaordic Path” which describes the dance of chaos and order in the service of generative emergence. Today, in Seattle many of us good friends and mates sat in the audience as our friend Thomas Arthur told this story through his production of Luminous Edge. The show is about a wizard who is responsible for juggling into existence the orderly patterns of our human world and then fixing them in place with his spiral of integration. He is assisted by an …
I learned a new word this week: teechma. It’s the Nuu-Chah-Nulth word for heart, but it conveys a deep meaning when you hear an Elder in her village talking about why she thinks something will work, why she is hopeful about changing the system solely because we spoke about it from our hearts, our words coming from teechma. I was with my mates Wally Samuel, Kris Archie and Kyra Mason this week in three isolated villages on the north west coast of Vancouver Island, Oclucje, Ehattesaht and Ka:’yu’k’t’h’. We were travelling there on behalf of VIATT to hear what these …