[OSList] University training for Open Space Technology?

[Chris Corrigan via OSList]

The problem with a university level course in facilitation is that our standard ideas of "facilitation" are usually the first things that needs to be unlearned when learning how to do Dialogic works for emergence, self organization and participation. Most facilitation program taught within management schools for example, have a linear and predictive approach to both the art of facilitation and the theory of strategy and collaboration. 

So the first imperitive would be disrupting that. 

The second thing is that the skills required to practice OST well are not technical but artisanal. Knowledge needed to practice this work well comes from mentorship, practice and artistic rigour. So if I was looking for a model I would look in a high quality fine arts program. How are painters and writers learning at their masters level. 

But that will only take us so far too because knowledge production and practice in this field is more of a traditional artisanal approach. I N in the process of designing a program in complexity and facilitation and I'm thinking seriously about having participants visit and interview people who are masterful practitioners of traditional arts: chefs, winemakers, carpenters, potters, musicians, actors and dancers. It is important to understand what a journey of artistic mastery looks like. 

It has been my experience that many people in our particular field of experience and practice have an aversion to hierarchy and mastery of practice. In some communities of practice this conversation about mastery and hierarchy is all consuming and it misses the point. 

For me the way I have learned and grown as a practitioner is to learn from real masters of the arts as an apprentice, and I continue to apprentice I have learned both theory and practice from them, watching them work, working alongside them. It turn I have played that role with others out of a kind of obligation to pass on knowledge which was given to me. 

Some of this can go on in a university masters program but it's important somehow to remember that formal school in these arts does not make you a masterful practitioner. A person graduating from a Master of Arts program in OST with high marks is not guaranteed to be good at it. Without space for the lifelong development of the artisanal knowledge of the practitioner, I feel like such a program would be like an MA in anthropology of North American west coast indigenous cultures: you would be very clear on why salmon are important to the cultures but no one is going to assume you know how to catch and cook one, much less rely on you to feed their family with your skills. 

Universities play a role in this work, but they are a small slice of the ways in which humans share knowledge and develop quality. A program in OST - and this conversation - highlights what some of those limits are. 

Chris. 

Chris 

___________
CHRIS CORRIGAN
www.chriscorrigan.com


> On Aug 25, 2016, at 10:27 AM, l33t.79 at gmail.com via OSList <oslist at lists.openspacetech.org> wrote:
> 
> There is an opportunity, an opening, an invitation to make something wonderful.
> 
> What would a Master level University accredited training for Open Space Technology look like?
> 
> I posted a session in the last NOSONOS in Sweden at Två Skyttlar with the title "10 ECTS" representing some 300 hours worth of training and studies on the topic. 
> 
> An idea was born in the session, and many signed up for it, that we should make a mentor program for the facilitation students in a course where they would do find their own sponsors and a theme, organize with the sponsors to invite to the event and document the proceedings, the student would facilitate the event and later review with the sponsors post-event. Naturally some compensation would be paid by the university to mentor for coaching the student with his first sponsored facilitation event in the program.
> 
> The second idea was to invite other universities in the European Higher Education Area and possibly other places to co-create a full program of one years worth Masters diploma including the global mentor program and the many professional trainings that are happening all over. many universities where named, and it is exiting.
> 
> This is an invitation to contact me or to reply with ideas or next steps or connection and suggestions.
> 
> Best greetings
> 
> Kári Gunnarsson
> Hringbraut 46, IS-101 Reykjavík, Iceland
> Phone (+354) 864 5189
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