The aim of the follow up day was to give space to people to share some of their experiences of hosting conversations and working with some of the tools and practices that had been learnt in the 2 day workshop.  

How have you been getting on with hosting conversations out there 'in the real world"?  

How have you been developing the projects you brought to the design lab? 

Have a look at  this short video that captures some experiences and learnings about how things are already beginning to change,
then have a read about the whole day below  

 Andy and Linda welcomed us all back into this follow up day the purpose of which was to share our experiences since being together last time and to talk more about how to develop our practice and the social movement around health and wellbeing in Morecambe Bay.  We checked in with some images of our journeys over the last couple of months and words of what was present for today :  Hope, contemplation, audacity, care, excitement, focus, heart, joy, purpose, me, snowballs, education, relationships, dedication, support, impatience, love and contentment.  
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Jon offered a mini teach on harvesting - it should always be participatory, inviting everyone in the conversations into making sense together and recording results rather than it being the facilitator who does this.  Harvesting should serve learning, is the harvesting we are doing contributing to the collective learning about the topic we are exploring?  Another good question is how do we make it useful for the people who are using it? Choosing the right vehicle for the harvest is important, from paper to social media that can record both tangible and intangible results of the process.  Finally its good to be aware of when we are overly controlling things and not allowing for emergence to come through 

Story telling harvesting 

 4 stories of real application of hosting practice and how it had gone to work in different context were offered by the hosting team.  Everyone choose one story to listen to and one listening thread to listen out for and to harvest as a way of really focussing the listening and getting to some of the gold nuggets of learning. Working with stories is a great way to bring to life more information about a community or a project.  " if you want to learn about a place listen to the story, if you want to change a place change the story" 
  • Local conversations on health and wellbeing in Morecambe
  • A large scale assembly gathering that made a collective decision
  • How AOH practices has spread across Scotland and what it takes to build a community of practice 
  • Poverty Truth Commission in Leeds - using hosting and dialogue to work on big stuck issues 
Listening and Harvesting Themes 

What challenges did you hear and how did they get round them?
Working with resistance
Dealing with formality and toxic atmosphesres
Fear of handing over decisions 

What worked well ?
Having a good sense of timing- time was right
Relationships, building shared trust and passion
Building a common interst- sharing and recognising when you need support or training 

How did harvesting show up?
You need to enable individuals to input together to the harvest
Like tributaries falling into a river
We need to develop practice and tools for this

What did you learn that you can apply to your context ? 
Identify the key assets in common 
Don’t try to do it all yourself – build relationships' and share experience
Stick to your values, don’t change or compromise


 To close the morning session we heard stories of peoples experience in hosting their own conversations and meetings or where they had been introducing new ways of working into their communities, asking good questions or beginning to experiment with some of the things they had been learning.  Small groups met and came back with a harvest

WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR LEARNING OVER THE LAST COUPLE OF MONTHS ? 

You have to be prepared to work to get the right question, sometimes its better to let the group come up woth the question
Its often necessary to be willing to be awkward – you need courage to be awkward
You need really good prep – what can you play with?
Ask a few questions to get to the real question
This disorentates people, how much should I explain or just let them experience it?
It takes time, lots of time
Don’t do too much, you can start really small 
Don’t go alone
Risk small and fail early 
Hold the discomfort 


WHAT DO YOU NEED NOW TO GO FURTHER? 

A deeper dive to really get comfortable – how do you take stories to places of power?
Time bank – sharing space and time
Support with design, developing questions for real events
Making films of real stories
Getting feedback on how we are doing
To grow our community 
More opportunities to grow our network
Involve more young people – use the well
Coaching support
Platform to bring people together

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After a delicious lunch Bronagh offered a short body work session, explaining that every interaction you have with someone is an exchange of energy.  

How do you work with energy that comes at you and sweeps you off your feet?  - an energetic attack for example.  She showed us how to centre ourselves and then move out of the way to allow the attack to pass through, then to come alongside the person and work with them to help them see another point of view.  

​This is about holding a perspective of " I won't fight you and you can't knock me down"  It comes from the practice of Aikido - which means harmony, spirit path
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Knowledge expeditions 


The hosting team offered 4 knowledge sessions, an opportunity to dive into some hot topics to explore a bit more in depth.  Everyone choose to go to one group or the other. 

7 little helpers for a simple start  - Bronagh

Recap on the tools and how they blend together - Linda

Working with powerful questions - Mike 

Harvesting and developmental evaluation - Jon and Sue

The four fold practice 

Mike explained that hosting is a practice, something you learn to do by continually doing it.  He spoke about how you can learn a lot about a cafe or hotel by the way it is hosted, so it is with hosting conversation spaces.  All you can do is create good space where something might happen but you cant control it.


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  He talked about how when you begin to learn you learn fast then you usually forget what you learnt and return to old habits but eventually with practice you get so that it becomes a part of you.  He introduced the 4 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 fire? Be hosted, your can't broker this if you yourself cant do it this is about learning the art of conversation, remaining open, asking questions and not rushing to judgement.  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.  Co creating communities of practice, becoming a community that learns together and continues to meet and support each other 

Sue and Bronagh invited everyone to walk round  the four practices, really to experience them  and talk about what this practice could be for them ​
The journey round the 4 practices proved to be revealing and some reflections were shared from the small groups.  Some of us don't have the experience of being hosted, we are so busy hosting others.  "Where are the opportunities to be hosted"?   Some felt that co creating was the only way to sustainability, that putting our resources together makes us stronger. "The time of the lone heroic activist is over".  "Co creation is more exciting, self hosting is hard".  Some asked  "Am i giving too much of myself, what's left over for me"?  "Being hosted might be exciting if I'm in the right frame of mind".  "Hosting others takes a lot of work".  "Hosting others is exciting but makes me anxious".  "Hosting myself means loving myself and being kind".  "Hosting ourselves is the basis for all the other three, how do you host yourself when you don't know who you are"?  The reflective nature of this session was felt to be really useful and something we rarely get the opportunity to practice, being in good reflective time.  
Check out : Some final reflections and next steps as we leave 
  • Being brave – all here are.  I Will talk with my team about building what now.
  • Lovely bunch to work with,  we are building the path as we walk it.
  • Nice to be in the room. Lots of going in the same direction. Ill find my next step to put into practice.
  • How important storytelling is. Being asked is a real gift. Next step – wait to be asked.
  • I realise I've lacked opportunities to be hosted, Im going to find opportunities.
  • This is doing the right thing. AoH is right. Next step is to keep going and advocate this way of working.
  • Im very pleased to come back to this group. Value the sharing. Not sure of next steps.
  • You’ve got it! Next step is to connect this up to other places.
  • Felt Ive stretched myself too thinly today, attempting too much. I want to find ways work better with others on harvesting.
  • Connecting. Next step connecting in with CCG.
  • I feel I have a working community that practices. Next step is to enable more 
  • Reviving ideas, next step is to put theory into practice
  • Excitement – Didn’t know this group of people well 6 month ago, now feel like a group with the same drive and goal. My next step is to start the movement in our own places.
  • Reflection – stand still – not going in with a set agenda
  • Common purpose – sense of belonging – Get on Facebook and stay connected.
  •  Left 2 days trained, felt like that came out today. Want to see a shared resource of people’s time to make this happen, in a structured way.
  • Hopefull that things will change. Small movement is good. Good to speak to people who are willing to share their stories.
  • Concern for burn out. Make sure there for others, and Im in for the theme of aging well!
  • Easy to let the harvester be sidelined. How to incorporate harvesting more so that all can get involved. I will draw up timeline for how this can roll out.
  • Here there is a common purpose. Long journey, take time, keep connected and sharing.
  • Struck by the 3% statistic – and the research about the importance of Joy. Fascinated that researchers and scientists are backing up what known intuitively for years. Wanting to open up space for more of this 





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We closed our time together with a conversation about what now - how do we stay connected and build this social movement of people who care about health and wellbeing in Morecambe Bay?  How do we begin to host more conversations across the town and invite more people into thinking about how things might change?  Andy explained that we were looking for have 5 themed conversations around the Bay asking the following questions  

How to we begin well?

How do we live well?

How do we work well?

How do we age well?
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How do we die with dignity?


He invited everyone to be involved in planning and hosting these and realised how important it would be to create a strong community of practice and support for everyone. 

Elham offered to set up a further meeting for this group and there will be some future training opportunities as well.  

Matt explained he would be looking for some collaboration around the theatre project that had been born in this group last time. 

Linda offered some one to one coaching for people who were trying out new things and wanted some support