Opening a wild space

Karen Sella karen at luminacoaching.com
Fri Aug 26 19:48:37 PDT 2005


".the space where no one can control anything and everyone gains
everything."
 
Lovely description.thanks for sharing your experience.
 
Warm regards,
Karen
 
 
 
Karen Sella
www.luminacoaching.com <http://www.luminacoaching.com/> 
206.780.2998
 
-----Original Message-----
From: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] On Behalf Of Jack
Ricchiuto
Sent: Friday, August 26, 2005 7:02 PM
To: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Subject: Opening a wild space
 
I wanted to share my blog entry from today on this week's 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


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