Welcome back and check in - what am I hopefull about and grateful for?
We began the day with a check-in, to bring everyone back into focus having been away from each other for a number of weeks. The question came in two parts, from which Mel harvested using the words and phrases that she heard from around the circle.
FEELING THE BUZZ; MEANINGFUL & PRACTICAL; ENERGY; EXPERIENCE OF CONNECTEDNESS
Then Linda and Andy introduced us to the four fold practice Host yourself: you are the tool, you cannot host others if you cannot be present and show up yourself. How do you welcome yourself, how can you be present and feel like you are not in a rush or distracted. How well do you sit in the middle of the conflict and yet not rush to fix things ?
Be Hosted: Participate your can't broker this if you yourself can't participate and be in conversation yourself. This is about learning the art of conversation, remaining open, asking questions and not rushing to judgement. It's about learning how to be in good conversation but even better listening
Host others: This is the scary bit, stepping up to create the space for good conversations and actions by other people. Having the clarity of purpose, preparing the space well. Its also about convening or calling a conversation or project that you feel so passionately about, that you step forward to make it happen and see who comes with you.
Co creating: communities of practice: becoming a community that learns together and continues to meet and support each other. Learning how to collaborate with others and co create together.
We each experienced all of the practices and talked about our strengths and weaknesses in each area in mini triads - what sense am I making of all this?
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Following a delicious lunch we moved to a world cafe to share stories and experiences of how and where we had been practicing our learning from the training. Sue started us off with a great story about some events she had run where the quality of listening and speaking had made such a difference to the meeting and Andy spoke about the gathering of the 300 people who came in response to a call out to talk about poverty in Morecambe. We then shared all our experiences and finally harvested the learning and also some new calls for new conversations in Barrow - A BIG BARROW CONVERSATION
Finally we checked out with a strong commitment to keep in touch and keep meeting up to support each other