Friends -- I would like to share with you an experience I had last week -- I am still mulling it over.
It was a success, but my mind is still sifting what occurred and what my part may have been in it. Memories of dear Chris Corrigan's recent post about becoming a goat farmer come to mind. I learn the most when you all share the 'crumbly' moments as well as the perfect ones. I shall do the same here. I facilitated a less-than-two-day Open Space for members of organizations and non-governmental and governmental health and service agencies working with and serving incarcerated people in Central California. The over 60 participants included prison Captains, county department of public health educators, representatives from organization working with people with issues surrounding HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, hepatitis (the top three killers in US prisons), family violence, transitional housing, homelessness, death and dying, Laotian community services, African American community services, womens' groups, Latino (Hispanic) community services, deaf and hearing impaired services, and more working with people in prisons, jails and youth authority centers. My client was one of the local agencies training and coordinating inmate peer health educators within one of the major state prisons in the area. They recognized an entire community of service providers and agents who did not work together, never networked, did not trust each other and had some hard feelings over who got what money from funders. My client felt that an opportunity for networking, collaboration and seeing each other through new eyes was needed. Hence, a perfect situation for an Open Space. They thought they were all coming to a conference. That's what they usually do. Panels, speakers, some of it interesting, some of it boring, hopefully a good lunch. It was billed as 'an energizing, interactive summit' and when they walked into the room without banquet tables, podiums and microphones they were shocked indeed. (One woman was mad because she had worn a short skirt and now had to sit in a circle worrying about crossing her legs just so -- she'd wished we had told her to wear pants. Sigh... but she turned out to be an energized and committed participant, happy as can be. In future I must make a note to include emergency fashion consultants on-site...) They said the message was clear as they entered -- we are going to do business in a whole new way today. Perfect. Day 1 (roughly 1:00 in the afternoon until 5:00 in the afternoon) went wonderfully, with a broad range of topics, energizing discussions, great reports and great learning and weaving together of people formerly unknown to each other in this manner. Closing circle comments were full of all the right things, including deeper learning, deeper communication, and really feeling safe to discuss sensitive feelings and matters amongst each other (such as racism, lack of documentation of people served between agencies, access to people without English or the spoken word as their main language, and other deep and important issues not always discussed out in the open. That evening we were treated to an independent film festival with a video made by male inmates and their partners preparing female partners for the issues and diseases inmates may bring back with them after incarceration. (I say that crudely but it was a very thoughtful, frank piece on how the world 'inside' has different rules than the world 'outside' and people live changed and different lives from what they return to 'outside'. Also several short award winning films from national and international gay and lesbian film festivals -- a real eye-opener to many folks in this community. Overnight we prepared the booklets of proceedings for everyone and set up for the theme of 'next steps' with a collage of bright colors on the theme sign with the words 'collaboration', 'projects', 'programs', 'next meetings', 'services', 'new ways to work', and a lot of other images recommended by the previous night's closing discussion. The room for Day 2 was awful, for OS purposes. Not a closed room, not enough light, no posting possible on the walls, everyone squished together, warm, room for food and beverages only on the other side of the partitions...I could go on. I opened with some time for storytelling, as these people have experienced having their spirits erased over and over again when good ideas and trusting energy are stepped on by uncaring supervisors and failing momentum. I asked them to think of something they accomplished in their personal lives that they never ever dreamed they could ever do in all their wildest dreams... but indeed they did do those things. Out came touching and funny stories of personal 'bests', from coming from homeless and single parenting to having an advanced doctorate degree and owning a home...to raising beautiful and special children...to winning a stand-up comedy award. Really a diverse set of miracles. And I reminded them that all these things were hugely challenging, but each was accomplished with time and a lot of little bitty steps. Teeny ones. You know -- anything is possible with passion and personal responsibility. Then I opened the circle and people started posting agenda items. And that is when things went very strangely. As soon as the first or second person stood in the center to announce their issue, people started talking, and getting up, and leaving the room to get food, and talking right out there, and standing around. I was shocked, and personally, culturally, it is really disrespectful and offensive to me to break a circle and to speak over someone else's moment. People in the center kept at what they were doing, and so I went with the flow and encouraged them -- they did not seem to mind and kept at their announcements and postings. Then I stood for a second in the center, with my control ego on my sleeve, trying to 'will' people to re-enter the circle and to focus on the postings and subsequent signing up. In my head I repeated the mantras "let go", "maybe they need this time to talk to each other more than they need it to post issues" and "trust the process". So I smiled at myself and b-r-e-a-t-h-e-d and sat down in the circle as everybody was talking, and I talked with people. Okay, my control button was slightly (heh) on, so I went to talk with people who looked uncomfortable at the lack of 'familiar' structure (everyone knew how it worked from participating in Day 1). Of course my mothering instinct was to 'take care' of them if they looked uncomfortable. Heh. (heh, by the way, for those of you non-English as a home language speakers, is a slightly shoulder-shrugging laugh). Eventually the groups that wanted to got together, the same deep learning and communication ensued, and in the closing circle all the right comments came out. We even did written evaluations after this event, and the evals underlined peoples' delight with this new process, wish to use it again although in a longer conference (a full 2 days, for example or 2.5 days), and overwhelmingly positive comments on how networking and finding out things in common was one of the biggest benefits of their experience together. There was even an announcement for a next similar meeting. And even better, there were a few comments on how, if this group was waiting for a leader to tell them when to begin, maybe that was reflective of their current situation in the California Central Valley -- nothing is being done because everybody is waiting for some outside leader to tell them when to begin -- when in reality *they* are the leaders -- *they* are the people they have been waiting for. I couldn't have hoped for a better outcome. My instincts tell me I did the right thing, given the circumstances. I was physically and spiritually exhausted holding that kind of wiggly space, and I had to rest and replenish for some days after. And I am very happy. But wow, what a ride! Love to hear your comments. Lisa - - - L i s a H e f t Consultant, facilitator, educator Experiential learning and Open Space Technology 2325 Oregon Berkeley, California 94705-1106 USA (+01) 510 548-8449 www.openspaceworld.com * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected], Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
