This is my friend Colleen Stevenson, a lovely graphic recorder that I work with whenever I can. Here she is talking about permaculture principles, something which she knows a lot about, and talking about this large shart she drew to capture and start conversations on how these principles work in learning.
Writing from Tofino, on the west coast of Vancouver Island which is about as far west as you can go without leaving North America. I’m here this week to run an Art of Hosting training with a number of community coordinators for 14 Nuu-Chah-Nulth communities around Clayoquot, Barkley and Kyuquot Sounds. We’re going to be learning together about methods for community engagement and participatory leadership and all of it based very deeply in the concept of Tsawalk (from the Nuu-Chah-Nulth principle of “heshook ish tsawalk” meaning “everything is one.”) Last night I drove out here across the spine of Vancouver …
So we had our little learning village today with the kids at Aine’s learning centre which my partner, daughter and I designed. We explored these questions of what kind of inner climate is needed to engage around questions of climate change and the kids followed the energy. They got really interested in what kinds of things they could say to the global leadership meeting in Copenhagen. They wanted to convey a sense that, yes this is a serious issue, but how you choose to meet together matters. They were dismayed and discouraged by the prospect of a lot of angry …
My friend Robert Oetjen was a key member of our hosting team at Altmoisa. He brings a lovely capacity to the work, being the head of an environmental learning centre in southern Estonia, he understands the deep connection between human and world, and is a practitioner of the most ancient arts of human kind: tracking and fire building. He is a man who is a beautiful learner from his environment. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, USA, he moved here in the early 1990s as a Peace Corps worker, teaching English in the days in which Estonia was hungry to claim …
This group we are working with in Estonia is cracking a lovely design for a six month learning journey around hosting, harvesting and participatory leadership. They began in September with a little Art of Hosting retreat, are together now in the Art of Participatory Leadership and in February they will gather one more time. In between workshops, they are working on projects in their organizations and communities, deep in real practice and real life. As a result they have much to share with one another and it is only up to Toke and I as teachers to offer a few …