The four practices of Open Space
While I was in Prince George, David Stevenson and I rejigged the OST practice workshop that Michael Herman and I have been delivering around the world over the last two years. We changed it from two days of mostly open space, to four half days of focus on the practices of opening, inviting, holding and practicing. I sent the design to Michael and he pushed the parts around a little and came up with this riff:
2. practice of inviting. it’s about goodness. finding benefits TO others, as in what’s in it for them, and also benefits IN others, as in recognizing what they can add to the process of achieving what is desired personally in the first practice. it makes that first practice social, collective, organizational, and cultural, but also documented in invitation emails, letters, posters.
3. practice of holding. it’s about supporting movement and change. providing space and time, structures that support without making decisions for people, giving attention, carrying in awareness or carrying forward, holding in one’s heart or home or conference room. it creates room for others to expand, explore, experiment… to bring new things out in the world. it is simultaneously logistical, mental, and emotional.
4. practice of practicing. it’s about sustaining, returning, realizing, and making real. this is action, taking a stand, making progress, going somewhere, documenting results. this implies the continuation and diffusion of the above. standing ground, staying the course, seeing things through. it is the personal and individual (I, me, my) pursuit of the good that WE invite, in the space that WE provide. It can look simply mechanical and become deeply meditative, as we go round again, starting with Opening. (note… this might also be called the practice of ‘participating,’ perhaps ‘making,’ or simply ‘doing’ or ‘changing.’ stay tuned”
The first time we offered this workshop was with our friend Judi Richardson in Alaska with a bunch of middle school peer mediators in 2002. This iteration was offered to street involved youth in Prince George. There is something about working with youth in the north that brings out good training designs!
Not only can we offer it in two days, or in a couple of hours, but it lends itself to a four day iteration with a number of somatic exercises built in to anchor these practices in the body. It could be an organizational development workshop, a personal development workshop, Open Space Technology training or a short cut to a deeper practice of facilitation.
We offered the workshop Monday and Tuesday this week. In London, Johnnie Moore has already picked up on it. In four scant days, it has travelled half way around the world. Amazing.
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