How do we bring groups together and create “these unexpected openings when you feel life breath come back into the room?”
I’m happy to share the final episode of Season 1 of my podcast about The Spaces Where We Come Together. In this episode Learning with Friends, Reflections on Episodes 6-9, Nancy Gabriel and I discuss what the podcast stories show us about:
– How to create conferences which create transformational moments
– The power of intergenerational collaboration
– What generosity looks like in practice, and
– How we can weave the arts into how we gather and work together.
Here is a quote about integenerational collaboration from Liz Miller:
“Belvie and Dedan’s work has rippled through our lives and our experiences and now into this other generation that we’re lucky to work with. One of the deepest impacts is these unexpected openings when you can kind of feel life breath come back into the room.
And it isn’t because there’s an instruction for how to do that. There’s no manual saying “follow these steps and this is how this will come to life.”
There’s a really deep trust that we experienced with Belvie and Dedan that shows up when you’re able to believe in that space in a new way. What I see that create for young people is an animacy that I think is deeply missing. In most spaces for learning and living right now. No matter how old or young you are, I think it’s hard to be a human being in this time. So there’s a breath of joy that is the ripple effect of their work. And there’s a ripple of realness.”
And a quote from Eimear O’Neill about the value of art and creative expression:
“Play is where a lot of kids do their creative thinking and creative working through. Then those of us who are artists then carry that forward into our everyday life. The arts and the capacity for individual and collective creative expression are so important. Words are in our dominant language, in English. Art is in everyone’s language. It can hold all sorts of complexities and paradoxes. It can be seen in a moment, and then it can be unpacked over time. Think about what we’re still learning from great artists who have been previous to us. Even your own art, you can understand it more or get epiphanies about it later.”
The SeaCHANGE Conference we discuss will be held again on August 25-27, 2023. Still room to register!
