Menu

Music on Bowen Island tonight

May 6, 2022 By Bowen, Featured, Music

There are two musical offerings on Bowen Island tonight. At 7pm, The Ladies Madrigal Singers (“The Mads”) will be singing a program of choral arrangements of Irish songs and other pieces for spring including Deer Song, from the oratorio “Considering Matthew Shepard.” I’ll be joining the choir on Irish flute tonight, the first time I have played feadóg mhór with an ensemble in performance for literally years. The event is at Cates Hill Chapel, and tickets are $15 at the door. The Mads are a Bowen Institution, a women’s ensemble that is the beloved project of my friend Lynn Williams …

Read More

Change the face of policy and governance

May 5, 2022 By Democracy, Featured, First Nations, Leadership, Power 2 Comments

There is no really easy way to write this, so perhaps its just best to be polemical about it. I am no longer going to be supporting cishet white men who are running for office. Basically guys that look like me. We’ve had our run, we have propagated genocide, mass destruction and murder, war, criminal economic inequality and the destruction of the life support systems of the planet we live on and now I think it is time to stop. Of course folks will “not all…” me on this, but just stop. Our role now is to support different people …

Read More

Measurement, colonization and the inefficiency of community

May 4, 2022 By Community, Complexity, Culture, Evaluation, Featured 3 Comments

A crowd of people moving

It’s an old post by Henry Mintzberg from 2015 but he tweeted it out today and the message is as current as ever. If Mintzberg is retweeting seven year old essays, it’s probably worth paying attention to them. Here’s the essence: Someone I know once asked a most senior British civil servant why his department had to do so much measuring. His reply: “What else can we do when we don’t know what’s going on?” Did he ever try getting on the ground to find out what’s going on? And then using judgment to assess that? (Remember judgment? It’s still …

Read More

New videos on working with complexity and using Participatory Narrative Inquiry

May 3, 2022 By Complexity, Evaluation, Organization 3 Comments

Laureen Golden is one of those people that is able to just get me talking. From the first time we met back in 2015, she and I have had dozens of great conversations about complexity, facilitation, participatory design and leadership. I’ve supported her in her work with leaders and Montessori educators and also in teaching a course on system work and trauma. Here are a couple of offerings from her YouTube channel, where she has edited some of our conversations into teaching pieces that we are happy to share with you A playlist of four short videos on working with …

Read More

Remembering history

May 3, 2022 By Bowen, Featured, First Nations 3 Comments

An inscription on a confederate soldier statues in the denton, Texas town square.

May Day came and went, a day to celebrate both the beginning of Celtic summer, lighting the fires of Beltaine to burn away the previous year, and a day to remember the international struggled for workers rights. My friend and neighbour here on Nexwlélexwm (Bowen Island) Meribeth Deen wrote a beautiful and thoughtful article about the bloody labour history of Vancouver Island and the story of Ginger Goodwin. (Meribeth is a beautiful writer, by the way and you should hire her for things.). Goodwin was an organizer of coal mine workers who was killed in the bush by a police …

Read More