“Whenever knowledge connects with knowledge, new combinations spontaneously take place. Ideas spark ideas, which synthesize with each other until more knowledge results. It is completely natural… Sharing knowledge means bringing more people into the conversation.”
~ Verna Allee
David Isaacs, co-founder of the World Cafe, reads a letter, written by Chris Ahrends about his experiences during the “Ubuntu Cafe”.
“… held in the gentle embrace of intentional community and enlivened by energy of uniqueness – for me, the Cafe experience was a profound homecoming…”
This is a personal blogpost – grateful for the space we have co-created here for practitioners, sharing questions, experiences, insights.
I am writing on Saturday morning, November 14. Shabbat.
The morning after another night of horrifying attacks. This time in Paris. Before, in Beiroet, Ankara, Copenhagen, so many places.
And there are many, many other places where family members are grieving for their loved ones: so many died on their journey to safety, children and adults, drowned, sometimes very close to the shore.
All lives matter.
This story was written Nov 7th, 2015:
I’ve just returned from 10 days in Japan (my first time in that beautiful country), where I was co-hosting and participating in the World Café 20th Anniversary celebrations. As I take the time to recover from the travel (a mind and body-bending journey ending in San Francisco 3 hours before I left Tokyo!), I want to share a bit about what happened, my reflections about the experience, and the impact it has already had on me.
As pretty much “communications central” for the World Café Community Foundation, I hear a lot of stories about what is happening with the World Café around the world, but it is very different to see and be part of these stories in person. There are the facts … and there is the experience – feelings, impressions, insights, learning; some of which can be shared in words, while others are more subtle and difficult to convey.
So. Here’s the story; I’ll try to mix fact and experience with some degree of coherence!
Japan led the international World Café 20th Anniversary celebrations with four Impact Café events in eight days, each one unique and all of them historic occasions in one way or another.
My hosts were the IAF (International Association of Facilitators) in Japan, who sponsored or co- sponsored all four of these events, along with FAJ (Facilitators Association of Japan) and Qualia Co Limited.
The team taking care of me was Kazuaki Katori, popularly known as the Father of the World Café in Japan (although he jokingly insists his title should be “Grandfather” given his age of 72, but he has more vitality and energy than any grandfather I know!), his colleague Masako Arakane, whose sensitivity and thoughtfulness was ever-present, Natsu Iwaki, who seemingly effortlessly managed many of the high level “behind the scenes” details, and my very special translator Yumi Fukushima.
This delightful core team had many helpers and the IAF community in Japan took extremely good care of me. I have never experienced the kind of personal hosting I received in Japan, and I have been deeply impacted by this in a number of ways. The sense of deep care and respect I received from my hosts in Japan is still finding its place in my psyche, and I know it will leave a lasting impression on me. In many ways, it feels like the ultimate expression of what hosting – and hospitality – can be.
The personal hosting and hospitality that came from Kazuaki Katori, in particular, was extraordinary. As a man who is curious about everything, Kazu has found many special places to love throughout Japan so he was not only an exemplary co-host for these official 20th Anniversary events but an excellent personal tour guide as well. He showed Masako and I (and others who joined us at different times) many hidden treasures in Tokyo, Osaka, & Kyoto.
(I was lucky enough to spend my last day in Japan with Kazu and the incomparable Bob Stilger in Kyoto visiting many very special temples and gardens, and it was absolutely magical – all I had imagined Kyoto to be and more.)
Sometimes in my everyday life I imagine I am “too busy” to give the care and attention that true hospitality takes on an everyday basis, and yet Japan’s culture is the busiest, most fast-paced one I have ever experienced (I thought the pace in the US was fast – the pace in Japan is MUCH faster!!) and Japanese hospitality is incredible.
The Japanese are natural World Café hosts, and I had much to learn from their example.
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IMPACT CAFE #1
The Japanese World Café 20th Anniversary celebrations started with an unprecedented collaboration between the IAF in Japan and GLC (Global Leadership Community).
Kazuaki Katori from the IAF and David Nevin from the GLC co-hosted this bi-lingual Impact Café for both Japanese and non-Japanese facilitators and World Café practitioners in the Tokyo area. While both organizations had been talking about collaborating on something like this for a while, this celebration was the perfect occasion to make it happen.
The purpose of the Café was to deepen relationships in the World Café community in Tokyo, with a theme of fostering conversation among strangers. As it was a bi-lingual event, there were little markers on each table to indicate the language being spoken there. Everyone was encouraged to “challenge” themselves – to speak English and meet new people – and there was a palpable sense of excitement in the room as participants did just that throughout the Cafe.
Both intimate (30 – 40 people) and moving – this was a perfect start to the celebrations and the ideal introduction to World Café in Japan for me.
As one of the few people in the room who didn’t speak Japanese, I was touched by the enthusiastic interest among Japanese-speakers in joining the English-speaking tables, which seemed to increase in popularity with each round of conversation. “Challenge yourself!” became the joyful greeting at each new table along with welcoming smiles.
I was part of several really good conversations; I remember one in particular when our question was about what makes for good conversation among strangers… A young woman at our table said she thought shared values were important, and mentioned how much easier conversation was with her peers than with her parents. That idea led us into an exchange about the Wiser Together World Café work that draws its power from inter-generational collaboration, and in the process expanded all of our ideas about what is possible.
It was incredible to feel the genuine interest in me as a representative of the World Café Community Foundation and the outpouring of kindness and hospitality, which as I was soon to learn, was typical of this community.
The graphic harvest for this Impact Café was perfect – a long banner with the harvest from the English tables at one end (done by Tanja Bach) and the Japanese tables (by Tomohide Oshima, aka “Tommy” aka “Pooh-san”) at the other, all captured as balloons to go with the theme of World Café as a rising balloon in Japan, which came together in the center.
When the Café was over, a large group of us went to a little “hole in the wall” a few blocks away for drinks and food, where I was presented with a bouquet of flowers in one of the lovely, unique little plastic-paper vases from the World Café table set-up.
This was my first exposure to the post-event party practice, which turned out to be part of virtually every event. A large jocular group ranged around several tables and shared dish after dish of local delicacies while prodigious amounts of Japanese beer and sake were consumed.
I was still very tired from the long journey and left a bit early that night, but not before several deep conversations – both personal and professional – that made me feel as if I had already made several new friends, and entered a wonderful new community of shared meaning and purpose on the other side of world.
IMPACT CAFE #2
Two days later, I hosted an all-day “MasterClass” for World Café practitioners in Japan.
There were about 25 people participating in this Master Class from all over Japan – some had flown in from across the country – and it was one of the most wonderful and powerful learning program experiences I’ve ever had the honor to host or be part of.
First of all, and I don’t underestimate the effect this had on the entire program, I had a very talented professional translator – Yumi Fukushima. Yumi was like a more dynamic version of me – I felt that she understood me perfectly and conveyed everything I was trying to say without omitting even the smallest or most subtle nuance. It was an extraordinary experience to be mirrored so beautifully.
The participants were eager to learn and generous in responding to my invitation to share their learning with each other, as the group included both very experienced World Café hosts and those who were brand new to World Café. That combination can often be very challenging, but somehow this time it worked, due in no small part to the kindness of the more experienced hosts and their willingness to care for their newer colleagues and help them learn.
I had created a workbook on the World Café Seven Design Principles for this course (in English), and as a special surprise Yumi translated it into Japanese, so that was a great gift to everyone.
At many times throughout the workshop, I felt that there was a deeper understanding of World Café emerging among the participants – not only of the relationship between the Design Principles and the practice of hosting World Café, but of the deeper meaning beneath the World Café and how it is a metaphor for the way human beings learn from and with each other in the circles of conversation we are all part of throughout our lives.
As a presenter, I had the unusual and very pleasant experience of having my knowledge and contributions drawn from me effortlessly by the depth of the participants’ listening. They were avid learners and really wanted to deepen their understanding of World Café. There were many unexpected discoveries and questions and comments at the end of the day were thoughtful and insightful. We all left feeling that we had learned something new (me as much as anyone!).
The same attention to detail I was becoming to count on resulted in a beautiful bento-box lunch (wrapped in paper so lovely I still have it!), and we ended the workshop with a great after-event party, where the questions and learning continued with beer, finger-food, animated conversation, and LOTS of photographs taken and posted on FaceBook! 🙂
If I haven’t said this before, I was very impressed by the World Café community in Japan!
IMPACT CAFE #3
The 3rd event was entitled “The Power of The World Café”, and it was very powerful indeed! This ambitious World Café was the centerpiece of the 20th Anniversary celebrations in Japan and quite an undertaking! Many months had gone into planning it with a very large distributed team of hosts, technicians, designers, logistics coordinators, translators, and administrators.
The Power of The World Café, like the MasterClass and the GLC collaboration there in Tokyo, was held in Labo 3 x 3, a large, impressive shared work-space in the old Nippon Building in downtown Tokyo. Everyone there was friendly and helpful as we took over the whole place for this central World Café, filling it to capacity.
But it wasn’t just Tokyo! Nine locations across the length of Japan – Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Sapporo, Kanazawa, Sendai, and Okinawa – were linked together through an elaborate technological hub on Google HangOut, with cameras and projectors strategically placed in each location so that we could all see what was happening in the other 8 locations as we shared large portions of the all-day program.
For all its complexity, execution of this ambitious World Café was almost completely flawless, despite many challenges – not least of which was that the guest of honor, World Café co-founder Juanita Brown, was unable to be there at the last moment. Juanita was planning to join us from her home in North Carolina via internet connection but a family medical emergency that came up while she and her husband (and co-founder of the World Café) David Isaacs were traveling in California, made that impossible.
Under great stress in-between hospital visits, with only a few days before the event, Juanita managed to complete (with the help of two wonderful technicians in California) and send 20-plus minutes of video message that Latino (Tadashi Hirai) and his team were miraculously able to translate in time! So Juanita was there with us after all, in spirit and through her message, which brought a great many people to tears as they listened all across Japan.
There were almost 500 people present between the 9 locations, and over 150 of us there at Labo 3 x 3 in Tokyo.
Excitement and anticipation was very high for this special World Café, and we were all very pleased that everything went so well.
A great surprise for me was when they brought out a huge birthday cake for the World Café’s anniversary, and asked me to say a few words and blow the candles out. Then, each of the other locations spoke a few words of congratulations in turn, and there were many other cakes – one beautifully drawn on paper with candles blazing!
It was a great thrill for me to co-host (with Kazuaki Katori) one of the day’s two World Cafés and be a part of this historical moment as people all over Japan gathered to honor World Café and talk about the power of its impact in their lives and work.
In the afternoon, I was given the floor to share some stories about the breadth and depth of World Café impact around the world and the evolution of online World Cafés, followed by three outstanding storytellers sharing the impact of their World Café work in Japan. There was Itsuo Tasaka, on the ground-breaking use of World Café in the country’s disaster recovery efforts, and how they sparked a rippling effect for other empowering responses to the disasters; Daisuke Kawaguchi, with an extraordinary story about a visionary application of World Café in business (see Daisuke’s story elsewhere here in StoryNet); and Takeaki Udou on World Café and the exciting “Imagine Yokohama” project.
It was very moving to hear each of these stories, and I wished we had time to hear much more from each of these inspiring storytellers. I also know that their stories are just the tip of the iceberg and that World Café is being used throughout Japan in many innovative and inspiring ways. I hope we hear many more of them in the future.
The harvest of the 2nd World Cafe of the day, where people shared what kinds of collaborations and conversations they would like to see using World Café in Japan, was wonderfully imagined in each location and conveyed through the magic of technology in a collective harvest. In Tokyo and Sapporo people were playful – imagining Cafés wherever people gather: on the trains – especially during rush hour – on buses, and in lines for the women’s restroom! 🙂 Other locations including Kanazawa, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, and Okinawa were more strategic and wanted to see World Cafes embedded in political elections, in congress, addressing the country’s energy issues, the role of women in Japanese society, peace, poverty, social services, and children’s issues. In Nagoya, college students shared a fresh vision of what World Cafes could do to make a difference in their region.
Being able to hear the voices from different regions around Japan added immeasurably to the richness of the harvest, which was beautifully rendered graphically in each location (in Tokyo we had the talented artist Osamu Fukui, supported by Tomohide Oshima, who was also Master of Ceremonies!).
The visual and verbal connection between the locations made the experience very powerful, and I think we were all inspired and a little awed by our ability to stand together as a whole nation in celebration of World Café – and by what’s possible through the power of the indomitable human spirit in Japan.
A small team led by Kazuyuki Kose managed the technology for this whole 500-strong World Café: Kose, Latino (Tadashi Hirai), Saeko Noguchi, and Kohei Onozawa. None of them, including Kose, were professionals – they were all volunteers from different IT sectors who came together in a perfect microcosm reflecting the promise of World Café itself – each one of them bringing a unique skill that, when combined and offered together, created something truly extraordinary and much better than any of them could have created on their own.
I have never heard of anything like this World Café ever having been done before – so as far as I know it was a first, not only for Japan but also for the international World Café community. Congratulations to all who were part of this impressive Café, whose success opens many opportunities for others around the world!!!
See more photos of this and the other World Cafe 20th Anniversary Celebration events in Japan in this collaboratively-created FaceBook photo album.
IMPACT CAFE #4
The last of the four Impact Café Anniversary celebrations in Japan was an online event – World Café Asia – held two days later. We hosted this Café from the very modern Coaching Labo office in Osaka, a little over three hours away from Tokyo on the shinkansen (bullet train), where we were warmly greeted and made comfortable by CEO Masahide Motoyama.
World Café Asia was an experiment, held in the spirit of adventure. It was co-hosted by Kazu Katori and myself, introduced by Natsu Iwaki, and supported by the IAF in Japan. Twenty-five people from all over Asia – Japan, India, Malaysia (and one ex-pat living in Geneva who woke up at 2 am to join us!) – came together to experience this new way of participating in World Café and explore opportunities to collaborate with other facilitators across Asia.
English was not the native language of the majority of participants, but it was our common denominator, and we all pitched in to make it work. Latino and I created an “Easy Peasy Guide” to the technology that he translated into Japanese, and there were many people on hand to help.
All the attention to creating hospitable space online resulted in a wonderful rich World Cafe with generative conversations about what kind of collaboration is possible now in the World Café’s 20th year, with new technologies that have the potential to make our work together even better.
Special thanks to David Nevin who helped with the technology test sessions and provided a solid anchor during the online Café. Here are some screenshots he sent:
My co-host, Kazu Katori was a seminal part of this Café’s success. He brought Master-level hosting skills to a new medium where he proved to be as welcoming and inspiring as he is when hosting face-to-face. I was very pleased to have the opportunity to co-host with him and look forward to many more Cafés working together.
Finally, we had a crack technology support team with Adam Koren from MaestroConference and the indefatigable Michaela Sieh who also woke up at 2 am to help everyone navigate this unfamiliar medium. My deepest gratitude to them both, and to Rachel Smith (our graphic recorder from Grove Consultants International), who wowed us all by harvesting the online Café digitally in real-time so we could see it emerge before our very eyes!
Here is the result of her handiwork:
In spite of my own feeling that the experience was a bit chaotic at times, with the uneven sound quality that came from so many different languages, locations, and the varying quality of internet connectivity, the feedback from this Café was actually quite positive. Many people remarked on having made unexpected networking connections that led to collaborations that they couldn’t have otherwise foreseen, and there was a lot of excitement and hopefulness expressed about the potential for online World Cafes to connect the facilitation community throughout Asia.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I cannot possibly do justice to the once-in-a-lifetime experience that these 10 days in Japan gave me, much less tell the story in its entirety. I hope that the many people who helped make it what it was will add their own stories and memories, comments, and photos to my beginning attempts. If you were there (and even if you weren’t!), I warmly invite you to add your voice in the comments field or add your experience as a separate story here in StoryNet. The story isn’t complete without you.
In closing, I once again send my deepest thanks and gratitude for all my friends in Japan, new and old, who have been such good friends to the World Cafe for so many years. You have much to teach us all about the true meaning of World Cafe.
For the last 25 years, the State of Vorarlberg has been pioneering different methods of public participation. Since 2008, they have been working intensively with Jim Rough’s process, originally named Wisdom Council or Creative Insight Council, which in their context they have named Bürgerrat or “Civic Council”. Austria is currently among the three most preferred destinations in Europe for refugees, next to Germany and Sweden. To deal with this situation adequately, the government of Vorarlberg organized a Civic Council to address the question “How do we deal with the rise of refugees well.”
This short video by Martin Rausch documents the work they did in June 2015 to help create a “Culture of Collaboration”, using World Cafe for the Citizen Cafés at the heart of the Bürgerrat. Their work is ongoing.
The Civic Council (“Bürgerrat”) in Austria on: “How do we deal best with the influx of refugees” – June 2015 from Martin Rausch on Vimeo.
We at the World Cafe Community Foundation have been feeling the concern and empathy that the rest of the world feels for our brothers and sisters in Japan during this challenging time. Our prayers and thoughts have been with the entire nation as it goes through this difficult re-adjustment period, and especially with our many dear friends in the Japanese World Cafe community.
We got this beautiful letter from our friend and colleague Daisuke Kawaguchi that reveals the invincible charachter of his countrymen and women, even during this time of tragedy, and the courage and valor in his own heart. His words inspire me, as I know they will you:
As you know, Japan has been facing a severe tragedy of Tsunami.
Fortunately, my family and acquaintance were safe, however, we are spending a sad moment to recognize the fact that estimated 20,000 people have died.
Still, we see a good sign in this tough situation.
Although there are a lot of problems to solve, this experience has reminded us of the importance of social capital and the beautiful human dignity at the same time.
People are helping with each other more than ever here in Japan, and we are relearning the spirit of sharing and volunteering. (Some impressive twitters are on this site)
Foreign media surprisingly reported that there was almost no robbery even in this severe situation.
A lot of courageous people in a self-defense force rescued tens of thousands of people (Yesterday an 80-year-old woman and her grandchild were rescued from the rubble after 9 days!).
Lack of electricity in Tokyo has changed our life totally. We are saving the electricity as much as we can. There are no neon lights even in the downtown. Now I go back home from my office earlier than before, which enables me to spend more time with my family.
All of this might be opportunities to think about energy savings and what is important to us in global level.
In addition, we are encouraged by billions of prayers and support from all over the world every day. I just want to say thank you, thank you for letting us know that we never walk alone!
I believe that when we get over this situation, we can be stronger, more gentle to the people and environment, and create the better society which we can be proud of. In order to realize this, conversational leadership will play the most significant role.
I am determined to dedicate myself to the recovery of our society by creating space for reflective and generative dialogue such as the World Cafe offers with our networks of practitioners!
This from Jean Kluver of the Explorer Elementary Charter School in San Diego:
“I thought you might be interested to see how we use World Café at our school with children from K through 5th grade. We learned it originally from Nanci Cole, a master teacher from the California Association for the Gifted (we don’t use that term, or separate our children – we like their strategies but think they are for all children) but she never told us where it came from. Now I have found your website and shared it with all of our teachers. Now that we know who you are we will credit you and link to your site.
Have a look at our website and you can see how we use it”I have another example of how it is used in first grade.
We are part of a network of nine charter schools and a graduate school of education, so I am spreading the word of your resources.
Thanks, Jean!
This story is reprinted from the You Learn Something New Every Day blog, thanks to Gillian Martin Mehers from The World Conservation Union in Gland, Switzerland:
This morning our Director General invited the headquarters staff for a World Café on our institution’s Organizational Development and Change process. Fifty-four of us met in the cafeteria to participate in the process. Here are some of our “hot” reflections on the event.
World Café is an innovative way to think collectively about an issue, with conversation as the core process. In our case, 12 conversations happened in parallel, and after each of the four rounds we took some highlights from these conversations. With interesting, rather iterative questions, you could feel the energy build as people made connections and meaning for themselves and others. Here are the questions we used:
•What is your vision of a highly relevant, efficient, effective and impactful IUCN?
•What underlying assumptions have you had about how we, in IUCN, work? How might these need to shift?
•What can we do to help identify and embrace opportunities for IUCN’s organizational development?
•What patterns are emerging from the three earlier conversations? What are the implications for you and for us?
The results of the discussions will feed into our organizational development and change process, through the people in the room, their teams and our individual action. Additionally the process itself will help us move towards some of our articulated goals around creating a culture of dialogue, interaction, and an enabling environment for innovation and cross-pollination of ideas.
Since we (the Learning and Leadership Unit) are the ‘process people’, we captured some of our learning about holding a World Café in our institution. Here is what we thought went well, and what we would do differently next time. We are also sharing our learning with the World Café online community at the request of David Isaacs, one of the authors of The World Café book. (More knowledge resources on The World Café can be found on the Society for Organizational Learning‘s website here.) [note: there are free hosting guides and other resources available on the World Cafe website]
What worked well with our World Café:
• The process brought lots of positive energy to a conversation about change;
• People appreciated being listened to;
• Mixed groups combined different teams and levels within the organization and gave opportunities to get to know new people (when we asked the group if this process had given them a chance to speak to someone they did not know, almost every hand went up);
• It was hosted by the Director General and connected to a real internal process where people had questions and a desire to contribute;
• It linked with an in-house tradition – Wednesday morning sponsored coffee – a weekly coffee morning for staff supported by our Learning and Leadership unit and the Human Resources Management Group to promote internal dialogue and informal learning;
• We held the World Café in our cafeteria, so instead of trying to transform a formal space (like a meeting room) for informal conversation, we went right to the organization’s kitchen literally for these conversations, which changed the interpersonal dynamic. There was kitchen noise and the sound of coffee machines making it all the more real;
• We did not use a flipchart to take down the “popcorn” ideas between each round. We wanted to avoid to externalising the ideas and actions too much and directing the focus away from the group. Instead the comments came from within the group, were given to the group (and not a flipchart), and stayed with the group. We did, however, record them all for future use, which we will share with participants, among other ways through the use of a wordle (take a look at this application that creates beautiful word clouds, if you have never seen one)
• We distributed an “ideas form” to give everyone the opportunity to share some of their top ideas with us afterward. We handed this out just before the end and also sent an email for people who wanted to send us some ideas electronically. People did a great personal prioritization for us and themselves, and the act of writing it down also helped people to go through the synthesis process and create a set of potential next actions that might help them remember what was most useful for them.
• We put flipchart-sized graph paper on all the tables as grafitti sheets. People used them for recording ideas. Added benefits: the gridded paper (instead of plain) made it seem more like a checkered table cloth, and the white paper reflected on people’s faces making the photos better!
What we would do differently next time:
• In a room not made for speeches (i.e. a cafeteria), acoustics can create challenges for facilitating and hearing ideas from the tables between rounds. To address this we used a soft whistle to get people’s attention and asked people to stand up when sharing their ideas. Next time we would get a louder whistle (!) and we would contract lightly with the group in advance to quickly conclude their conversations when they hear the whistle.
• In our briefing, we would emphasize further that the host is responsible for ensuring interactive conversations, but not necessarily for recording or reporting back. At the beginning, making this clear would have helped our host volunteers come forward more quickly.
• Whilst the vast majority of participants stayed throughout, a few people trickled in and out due to other commitments, which was fine. We might have created better messaging to ensure a crisp start.
Only a few people had participated in a World Café before, out of our 54 participants; now that people know how it works the next time we might not notice this.
We got some terrific ideas and comments out of our World Café, including many thanks for running such a process internally. People seemed to be happy to take this kitchen table approach to connect and make new meaning together around our organization’s future. And this open process provided plenty of opportunity for everyone’s ideas and concerns to be laid on the table – besides the kitchen sink – which was nearby anyway.
A few weeks ago my/our friend Michael Jones (yes, the brilliant pianist) shared a remarkable story of his innovative work integrating the arts and a sense of place into the unique World Cafés he hosts. I asked him to please write up his experiences so that others can learn from what he’s doing, and this is what he sent:
Meetings Among the Many
A Dialogue on Community Wellbeing and The Significance of Place
“When every place looks the same- there is no such thing as place any longer.”
James Howard Kunstler – Geography to Nowhere
Beginning the New Conversation
Around the world a consensus is growing about the need for a more holistic and transparent way to measure societal progress, one that accounts for more than just the economic indicators such as GNP and takes into account the full range of concerns of the community.
In the context of this global movement, in November 2008, leaders in health, culture, public administration, the aboriginal community, students and many others in the Simcoe Muskoka region north of Toronto, Canada met together at The Fern Resort for an historic occasion. Through the day they engaged in conversations as part of the pre-launch of the Canadian Index of Wellbeing, a new and transformational initiative founded by the Hon. Roy Romanow that will report on the wellbeing of all Canadians.
The introduction of music, art, time in nature, story-telling, seeded dialogue, small table conversations and personal reflection shifted the focus from strategic planning and priority setting to a more generative process that allowed time and space to come into the moment, to listen and to speak from the heart and to engage the questions that mattered most to their communities. In this respect the day offered a new and emergent model for what could be possible in future CIW – community partnerships and collaborations.
At the heart of these collaborations is the commitment to bring together diverse members of the community in cross sector and multi-generational dialogues to inquire into the significance of place, arts and culture, identity and the other domains of the CIW. Through creating a ‘conversation commons,’ communities will have the opportunity to imagine and reflect on questions that will influence the quality of their well being now and into the far future. For example;
All Place is Meeting
Sherry Lawson was our opening speaker. She is a highly regarded local native writer and storyteller.
To help us truly appreciate the significance our meeting for the day, I wanted to share a few words about how the story of place has been passed along in Sherry’s community. This framing may bring to life the depth of conversations we shared together. In the narrative of her community ‘all place is meeting’ – it is held in the mythology of Mnjikaning, the home of the Chippewa First Nations on the land where the conference was held and the place that Sherry calls home.
Mnjikaning means “ keepers of the fish fence” The fence or weirs, as they are also known, is located in the Narrows, a small channel that links two large lakes; Simcoe a broad bowl like and wind swept lake to the south and Couchiching a narrow, long, winding finger lake to the north. The Narrows is just a mile or so down along the shore from the site of our meeting.
For 5000 years the tribes traveled long distances to gather at The Narrows every winter and survived on the fish that were caught in the weirs there. It is where they met the first European settlers many of whom were suffering from physical, emotional and spiritual impoverishment and distress. For years the Indians helped restore them to health. Over centuries the story of meeting was carried not only as a bridge to unite the diversity of tribes and cultures – this story also animated their environment – carried along in the gentleness of the soil, the wind, the water, the light and the sky.
Their land is also a meeting place – an ‘ecotone’ that marks the edge of the limestone plain and warm shallow lakes to the south with the deep granite cold trout lakes of the pre-Cambrian shield to the north. Sherry’s people learned to be masters of two worlds- to learn to hunt and fish and know intimately the complex ecology of each domain with its distinct fish, fauna, vegetation, and animal life.
So when Sherry introduced her story with the words “Welcome! You are now on Indian land and need to learn in Indian ways ” – it is this 5000 year story of meeting together that holds the ground of being of which she speaks.
As conference participants were invited to step outside in the natural environment for a time – to find a place of aliveness that attracted their interest and let it speak to them- much as Sherry in her introductory story of place let her ancestors speak to her through the gravestone – it was to engage this ancient story of meeting again. It is the perennial story that could be felt in the fresh warm breezes and waters of Lake Couchiching that early November afternoon. (Couchiching in Chippewa translates as the Lake of Many Winds)
For the communities that make up Simcoe Muskoka, the regional pre-launch of the Community Index for Well Being, it is also an invitation to listen again for Mnjikaning’s timeless story of the ‘meetings among the many.’ It is a reminder, and an invitation, to a way of being together that may serve as our new ground of being as well.
Postscript
If there is a parallel to the keepers of the fish fence in the non-native tradition it may be the stewardship of the commons – the plaza, the village green, the front porch are a few examples of the commons – a possibility space for chance encounters and meetings among strangers. In recent years the community of Orillia has been host to The Orillia Commons, The Community Cultural Roundtable, The design of the new market/public square and a spacious light filled learning commons located in phase one of new satellite campus for Lakehead University… And the community of Mnjikaning/Rama has developed Casino Rama the most financially successful casino in Canada and a meeting place for visitors and entertainers from around the globe.
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Many thanks to storyteller and author Sherry Lawson, our panel; Architect Paul Whelan, Dr Charles Gardner, Medical Officer of Health for Simcoe County and artist/ educator Joanna McEwen, Project Director Gary Mahan, Lynne Slotek, Project Director for the CIW and The Atkinson Charitable Foundation, The North Simcoe Muskoka CIW Working Group including; The Local Health Integration Network, United Way, The Simcoe Muskoka Public Health Unit, Barrie Community Health Center, Georgian College as well as the contributions of Saragrafix, Rowan Media, and Lauri Prest at Providence Care. And also a special thanks to Mark Douglas Biidaanakwad (Cloud Approaching) from whom I first heard the story of the keepers of the fish fence and to the World Café Community, which inspired the architecture for the day.
Michael Jones is a dialogue facilitator, leadership consultant, speaker, author and pianist/ composer. He was retained by the CIW national project director at the Atkinson Charitable Foundation and the Simcoe Muskoka CIW working group as the principle designer and creative facilitator for the pre-launch of the CIW at The Fern Resort near Orillia this past November.
New World Café host Victoria Throop did an incredible job reporting on the first of two community-wide World Cafés organized by the Youth Awareness Coalition (YAC) in the beautiful and remote town of Valdez, Alaska.
Here’s how Victoria describes Valdez:
“We live at the edge of the mountains––on the sea. There is only one road going out of town. There are more than 10 bears for every person in these mountains and the salmon runs bring the bears out of the forest. Bald Eagles are everywhere. We are very isolated from the rest of the state. We have 6 feet of snow each year (Here’s a slide show of what it looks like in winter). The snow and wind often close the roads and airport. If we can get through the mountain pass, by car we are 5 hours from Anchorage and 6 hours from Fairbanks. This isolation is one reason that depression and suicide are community concerns.”
The Valdez World Café was introduced as a way for the entire population to come together and talk about the key issues and challenges that face them as a community. They scheduled the events for Fall 08 and Spring 09, with the first Café on National Family Day, September 22. The Café questions focused primarily on family health and well-being. Although the issues of suicide and isolation were not explicitly mentioned in the series of questions, it turned out they were part of the conversation at every table. As a result, the Spring World Café will focus explicitly on depression and suicide prevention.
Victoria and her team distributed flyers and ads designed to attract all sectors of the community. They wanted everyone to be represented and involved. These promotional materials are attached below, along with Victoria’s detailed report with statisics taken from the extremely informative exit surveys she did with Café participants.
Here’s what Victoria had to say about the World Café, in summary:
“It was a fantastic success. We had 20 families in attendance – 87 people that bridged a wide range of ages and socio-economic groups, and an amazing 17 volunteers that helped us that night. For a small community, that is a lot!
Our Family Day celebrations included a lovely catered meal with great door prizes to liven things up and set the mood. Our supporters were very generous and each child went home with a door prize!
Having it a family affair created an atmosphere of joy and reminded the adults that it is our job to create a healthy and safe community for these children.
People were very engaged in the conversations and several stayed past the two hours to
wrap up their conversations.”
This brief exchange came from a conversation Victoria overheard as she was walking around the room during the small group discussions:
“The question on the table was: “What makes a family strong? Is a strong family the same as a healthy family?”
The table group consisted of 3 men and a woman. All were professional and leaders of the community. One of the men at the table related a story about his wife’s family. He wondered how the same family can have 3 healthy daughters and one daughter who was so unhealthy.
Three of the daughters were professional women and the other bounced from job to job—in and out of rehab—but never could take care of herself. How could one family have three successes and one loser?
At this point, the woman in the group leaned forward toward him and interjected—“No one is a loser”. She stated that we all have times in our lives when things go bad for us, but that doesn’t make us a loser. She turned it around on him. “What could you do to help her improve her life?”
The man became angry. He said, “This isn’t about me.” He sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. She said, “If it is about your family—it is about you.” The other two were silent. It was as if the two speakers were totally alone in the room.
There were many interesting conversations, but this one seemed to focus on how baffling mental health issues are. And, how in a venue like this, people open up to express differing views.”
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Jason Floyd, the Executive Director of the Valdez Youth Awareness Coalition (YAC) was instrumental in finding the funds for this World Café, which was supported by community grants from Alaska Tobacco
Prevention and Control, SAMHSA Drug-Free Service and Alaska Behavioral Health.
Full Report with Surveys
Download world_cafe_overview_and_statistics.doc
Promotional Materials
Download AProgram.jpg
Download postcard_invitations_portrait.docx
Listen to this podcast of a wonderful report on The Business of Doing Good — and how it can also be powerful and profitable , by Jonathan Greenblatt, co-founder of Ethos Water and a former VP of consumer products at Starbucks Coffee Company.
A new generation’s convergence of sustainability and social justice, Johnathan Greenblatt is now with GOOD, a magazine for people who want to live well and do good.
