CREATIVE FACILITATION
Exploring creative and embodied facilitation practices for activist spaces.
Creative facilitation for regenerative futures Reflection on a workshop - Developing a language and a vision for the future Dr Sue Stack
We are in the final stages of a zoom workshop - Developing a language and a vision for the future that I am facilitating. The participants are reading a shared google document, made up of mini narratives of the future that we have just each created in 15 minutes. I am astonished at the stories that have emerged. My breath slows, my heart opens, and I feel tears in my eyes. Somehow, together, we have captured essences of moments, quality of being, and philosophies of life that are deeply healing and working with the earth. They offer a glimpse into a future that my heart is yearning for. We share comments on the stories - what stands out for us, what patterns we notice and what we experienced in the process. We are surprised at the cohesiveness between the stories as if each person is giving a glimpse of a larger whole. Several people say they did not expect to be able to project themselves into a future and see it enough to write about. They are astonished about where the writing came from. One says, she felt the earth’s energy coming up body into her hands and she was writing as the earth.
Creating a language of the future – workshop prompts • Imagine what words might be in use if the world was a different place. What words might express what our hearts are yearning for? • Choose a word from the list. • Imagine connecting deep into the earth and allowing the earth’s energy to come through you. • Allow for stream of consciousness as you write a narrative – a story, a moment, a poem – where this word could be a character, a plot, a message, or a theme. • Read other people’s stories. Reflect. • Invent new words for the future
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Chain Reaction #141
December 2021
Image: Sue Stack
As I reflect weeks later on the workshop, I wonder how much the framing of the activity opens doorways to the possible. So often in our workplaces and our decision-making we rely on the cognitive; on dialogue/debate, on agendas and outcomes, on our individual thoughts. How often do we allow another part of us to come to the table - the dreaming self, unconscious flow, or the somatic self? Writing narrative, particularly inviting stream of consciousness, can help one tap into not just one’s own wisdom but collective social-eco-spiritual wisdom. I offered two prompts in the writing exercise. One was to choose a word from a list of about 30 words that I curated as contenders for a language of an aspirational future. There was an invitation to write a story that could illustrate that word, perhaps set in the future. Some of these words come from old languages, nearly forgotten. Some are made up, each with a definition. A prompt like this offers a seed and a doorway. In hindsight, I wonder what seeds we are offering
