William Ury offers an elegant way of looking at world peace and the role we can all play. He offers both tangible stories of ‘how’ it is being done … and a model to support it. He calls it the 3rd Side and it’s also the role of the facilitator – known in some circles as the 3rd Communication Position. The 3rd side, in the context of war, is us … all of us. As the 1st and 2nd side argue, disagree and battle with each other with a loss of perspective, ‘we’ on the 3rd side surround them and …

If you have my previous posts, you will be aware that I spent time working with the folks from Australia’s contemporary Circus and Physical Theatre sector. The event was called the Flashpoint Forum and was hosted by the sector’s peak body ACAPTA. When the 2 days of Open Space was over on the Friday, everyone (26 plus a few others) came back together on Saturday. I’ll admit to feeling nervous about this day. I was asking myself questions like … “why don’t we simply continue Open Space for another day?”. Here’s a story the group created, performed and recorded in just …

I am big fan of story and performance based structures such as the Story Spine. These are great ways of providing a group a structure and can be used in strategic planning, project planning and evaluation. Recently I wrote my own story spine to generate new ideas about where my own business ‘could’ go in the future. These structures can invite possibility! I learned another structure last week when facilitating the ACAPTA Flashpoint Forum. This is the structure used by many street buskers … you know, they attract the attention of the crowd and then involve audience members in a …

Here are some other games we played as a group on Day 1 of Open Space at the ACAPTA Flashpoint Forum in Sydney. The games were run by Dan Aubin, Artistc Director with CirKidz. As I said in my previous post, seeing a whole group of people at a conference make room to just ‘play’ (and move other conversation topics to prioritise this) was so refreshing. I noticed a significant change in the connection between participants after this 2 hours of play – a new social-contract between people seemed to emerge. Here is a copy/paste of Dan’s Open Space offering …

Most times when we talk about ‘spaces’ to run conferences and gatherings in, we talk about the size, number of breakout rooms, location to accommodation and public transport, access to wifi and other logistical features. Rarely do we talk about texture. The texture of a space gives it a certain feel and atmosphere. It’s purely subjective I know, but it can make a big difference to the ‘experience’ that individual and group has. I am facilitating the ACAPTA Flashpoint Forum at a great venue called ‘Legs on the Wall‘ in the suburb of Lilyfield in Sydney, Australia. It is a …