Creating a circle

Don Ferretti dferrett at placer.ca.gov
Wed Jan 19 10:18:26 PST 2000


What a great idea. I really like the image I got of people working together to size up that circle. I'll use this someday!..../Don

>>> Peg Holman <pholman at msn.com> 01/19/00 09:25AM >>>
To the Open Space listserv,

I thought you might enjoy this idea from Rich Henry and Peter Donaldson who
opened one of the community meetings for the Arts Commission work:


----- Original Message -----
From: "Rich Henry" <RHenry at bcc.ctc.edu>
To: "'Peg Holman'" <pholman at msn.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 18, 2000 12:31 PM
Subject: RE: Arts Commission Meetings Reflections to date


> How big is a circle?
>
> Here's an idea for dealing with the number of chairs in the circle,
> especially when there is great potential variability in the number of
people
> showing up. Peter Donaldson and I came up with this in preparation for the
> Bellevue WSAC OS on Thur. 1/13.
>
> We were expecting anywhere from 20 to 100 with most early guesses at
50-60.
> The space we had could accommodate about 60 max. in a single squashed
> circle, but with no room for "milling about" while eating before the event
> started.
>
> At our facilitators' OS in Seattle, Peter introduced the idea of everyone
> entering the circle together as a conscious act. We wanted to incorporate
> that idea. And we were committed to the significance of the circle being
> present when participants arrived.
>
> So we created a circle of chairs that was smaller than we expected to
need,
> with more stacking and folding chairs nearby. In this circle we placed the
> chairs facing out. This way, people could use them for eating, visiting,
but
> without actually entering the circle yet.
>
> At the time to begin, we circulated asking people to stand outside the
> circle by a chair, or get a chair from the reserve if all chairs in the
> circle were taken. Then we all could easily and dynamically resize the
> circle to the right size while also turning each chair to face in, and, on
> invitation all enter the circle together.
>
> In practice, we actually only had about 20 participants, about half as
many
> chairs as we had set up. So we still asked people to stand by a chair on
the
> outside of the circle. Then asked each person to pick up their chair, turn
> it around, take two steps forward and create the correctly sized circle,
> leaving the extra chairs behind us. Then all entered the circle together.
> This worked well and seemed much less disruptive with everyone working
> together than only a few people trying to resize the circle.
>

And this addendum from Peter:

More on the intentionality of chairs. Rich's idea, but he forgot to mention
it. As the circle formed and people sat down, Rich made sure there was one
empty chair, and, speaking to it's conscious emptiness, manifested a place
in the circle for the people who could not be here, or should be represented
in our hearts. The empty chair is full of spirit and asks of us to be
generous to the larger work and not our interests only.

Peter



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