Opening a wild space

[Jack Ricchiuto]

I wanted to share my blog entry from today on this week¹s Open Space with a
very hostile community group.

____________________

So this week I facilitated community meetings in my neighborhood aimed at
authentic community engagement around a housing development proposal. The
context: the most demographically diverse neighborhood in the region of 4
plus million where voices polarize between support for high and low income
housing.

In spite of near violence, proposal sponsor near-hijacking of the process,
and participants shouting objections to giving input (the stated event
intention!), the 300 plus participants - in our meager 45 minutes of time -
interacted on what matters to them relative to this actually very complex
situation. (The more vocal) People were livid at being asked to talk as a
community about their issues and ideas instead of enjoying the usual public
fare of public hearing grandstanding that we offered later that produced
zero actionable content.

In Open Space where I very simply introduced and invited and held the space,
we had over a dozen topics drawing genuine contributions harvesting 8
printed pages of proceedings.

It was the usual and beautiful reminder of what happens when a community is
invited into a premier launch from historic victimhood to authentic
engagement. Their mythic proportion resistance to their own empowerment was
based on a stated preference for positional grandstanding and verbal
pie-throwing against perceived persecutors. I stopped counting the number of
people who remarked at the amazing and palapable difference in the energy of
the community during and after Open Space ... the space where no one can
control anything and everyone gains everything.



(Thanks to Lisa Heft for gorgeous spiritual support throughout ...)


Jack


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jack ricchiuto
two.one.six/three.seven.three/seven.four.seven.five
www.designinglife.com / www.appreciativeleadership.com


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