Natural Innovation » facilitation

Lego Serious Play at FoAM

admin — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 12:21:26 +0000

Originally posted by Dave Griffiths on Thu 3rd Nov 2011 at FoAM’s Blog

Last weekend it was the annual FoAM gathering to discuss long term ideas, some self reflection and consideration of external perceptions. We were guided on this mission by Simone Poutnik and Hendrik Tiesinga, members of FoAM and founders of Natural Innovation. They decided to trial a new method on us all, Lego Serious Play. Now, I’m a bit battle hardened when it comes to alternative business management strategies as I’ve been exposed to quite a few in various places over the years, but despite Lego’s high scoring buzzword bingo website, I can independently verify this approach as very much a success.

You start by building personal models that represent different aspects of the organisation in various states, and then work as a group to bring them together in different ways. This is done in a structured way, leading to certain questions at different stages of the process.

The core idea was to “think with your hands” and indeed the normal problem you get in these situations, a tricky question leading to an utterly blank mind, was removed as soon as you started searching for plastic bricks. Things seemed to build themselves somehow, while the indirect method of having to explain your odd constructions (usually in quite an abstract way) said a lot more than I would have managed in a more traditional situation.

The Art of Collaborative Leadership ~ cultivating our capacity for hosting systemic transformation

admin — Thu, 07 Apr 2011 20:37:00 +0000

Norfolk, United Kingdom, 9th June 6pm - 12th June 4pm 2011.

For those hosting emerging movements, networks, or systems change and asking how to deepen them or scale up. For those holding projects and visions beyond our own local reality who want to connect up the dots and see the bigger whole. For those of us interested in taking our lives and work to the next level and seeking to seed or scale up our initiatives. For people who are already practicing art of hosting and want to go to their next level.

Change is on! It’s time to come together!

This participatory learning and practice space offers a training in hosting and harvesting conversations that matter; noticing and shifting individual, team and systemic ‘patterns’; learning principles and practices for taking social innovation to scale; experiencing working with complexity and emergence – and connecting with others leading change, innovation and systemic transformation in Europe and worldwide.

Transformation is essential, how do we live it wisely and fully?

Hosting Team: The Hara Practice Collaborative is a group of international practitioners who are themselves experimenting with working as a “field” in two systemic transformation projects in the UK: The Finance Innovation Lab and Tasting the Future. This event is a collaboration between all three

Click here for the full invitation and here for the registration form

To register, please send the registration form to aocl2011@natural-innovation.net

The Art of Collaborative Leadership Training 25-27 September

admin — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 11:12:25 +0000

Belgium, September 2010

Many of us are leading transformative initiatives in civil society, business, government, culture and the arts. Across sectors and organisations to improve the well-being and sustainability of our communities, and places of work. Bringing movements for the common good together in new and collaborative ways.

As our initiatives grow and meet new challenges, of complexity, diversity and rapid change, we are challenged to work on many levels simultaneously. We need to cultivate perseverance and resilience – practices for strengthening and deepening, ourselves, our communities, and our movement.

We sense the need to bring together our initiatives, and to share our learnings and questions in the context of a highly engaging training, with diverse participants. We invite you to the Art of Collaborative Leadership, part of the family of Art of Hosting trainings, we create a transformative space for collective learning and practice.

Click here to download the full invitation (pdf)
Click here to register

World Café at the European Consumer Summit

simone — Fri, 21 May 2010 12:32:41 +0000

Brussels, March 2010

The European Consumer Summit is a multi-stakeholder event in Brussels organised every year by the Health and Consumer Directorate (DG Sanco) of the European Commission. This event used to be, what we would call a ‘classical conference’: with lots of plenary presentations, little opportunities for participants to contribute and networking happening only in the breaks.

The conference was 1.5 days long with ca. 420 participants in total, which were split up in 6 workshops of 35-75 people on topics as diverse as ‘Banking fees: how to ensure transparency and choice?’ to ‘How to improve urban sustainable mobility?’. We were invited host these parallel workshops using the world café method. We designed and facilitated the 6 workshops in collaboration with colleagues form the Art of Hosting network and practitioners from within the European Commission. Each of the workshops had its unique challenging context either through having very polarised stakeholders in the group or being very broad and open. However participants were very enthusiastic about the new approach taken by this more participatory way of working pioneered by the European Commission.

As the regulator of the world’s largest economy, decisions taken by the Commission often have a global impact, improving its engagement with stakeholders is not a minor issue. This was the first time that a more participatory approach was taken in such a large conference with external stakeholders.

Read more about this on the World Cafe online community

Transition to Resilience Training

admin — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:49:17 +0000

A European Learning Partnership

Through the Hub Brussels, Natural Innovation is one of 8 partners in this EU financed project, together with GEN Europe (Germany), Center for Human Emergence (Holland), Permakultur Institut (Germany), Transition Network (UK), Damanhur (Italy), Findhorn Foundation (UK), Sustainable Projects Ireland (IR).

We are developping a 2-year learning programme to support those people who work in local government, NGOs and the community in the creation of sustainable living environments, both urban and rural.

The Transition to Resilience training concept is built around action learning communities.

Facilitating peers in collaborative learning and supporting each other on their journey towards becoming effective change agents, in their various fields of endeavour.

Whether a Learning Communities forms for a day, a weekend, a week or a series of meetings over one or two years, T2R is a growing European wide network of flexible experienced sustainability facilitation practitioners at the cutting edge of the global resilience movement. For more info stay tuned on www.Transition2Resilience.org

Culture¦Futures @ COP15

simone — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 14:28:42 +0000

Copenhagen, December 2009

During Cop15, the Climate Summit, we were invited by the Asia Europe Foundation ASEF, to facilitate a 2 day meeting for leading Asian and European artists and thought leaders from the cultural sector to collectively understand their role in the Climate Change debate. This gathering was part of the Culture | Futures conference, bringing together 100 artists and leaders of cultural organisations form around the world. The purpose of this meeting was to come up with a vision for the Culture sector’s response to the Climate Change debate and some policy recommendations.

During our remaining days of in Copenhagen we volunteered at the Meshwork during the Klima Forum, the people’s climate summit, joined the Survival Academy and the Inner Climate Learning Village.

Spaces for Social Innovation

simone — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 10:58:57 +0000

Since 2006 we are actively supporting the Hub Brussels, Hub London, Hub World and other start-up Hubs in Europe and around the world as advisers, community builders, hosts, facilitators of co-creative meetings, strategists, co-founders and members.

The Hub is a social enterprise with the ambition to inspire and support imaginative and enterprising initiatives for a better world. It is a global community of people from every profession, background and culture working at ‘new frontiers’ to tackle the world’s most pressing social, cultural and environmental challenges.

The Hub believes that there is no absence of good ideas in the world. The problem is a crisis of access, scale, resources and impact. It felt vital to create places around the world for accessing space, resources, connections, knowledge, experience and investment. There are currently over 20 Hubs on 4 continents and 50 more in the making.

One on One with Nature

simone — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:46:20 +0000

Copenhagen, 13 December 2009

A mini nature solo, which we co-hosted with Rowan Simonsen from Upstream. The purpose of this day in nature was to get an embodied experience of understanding our place in the larger ecosystem of our world allowing us to take better decisions, keeping our children and grandchildren in mind and being aware of the effects of our actions on all species and the grandchildren of these.

This event was part of the Survival Academy. The Survival Academy ran from 8-17 of December during the COP15 climate negotiations in Copenhagen, and explored the human dimension of climate change.What if I were the solution? The Academy includes a series of learning events including live teleseminar with Otto Scharmer, Book Release by Adam Kahane, A training in Visualizing climate strategies, Theory U workshop, World Changing input, a Deep Democracy workshop and an exploration of why Inner climate is important. To see the full programme, visit www.survivalacademy.org

Supporting Organisations

admin — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 14:11:40 +0000

We support organisations to build their capacity to innovate and learn on a systemic level. We design generative and safe containers or ‘labs’ where the collective intelligence and creativity that exists in a system and its people can be harnessed to tackle a particular question or challenge. To do that we incubate and host learning and innovation spaces where a social ecology can come together, experience and learn about itself and the wider systemic context of its challenge. From there we provide support and empower the participants to innovate, co-create and implement the life-affirming solutions that they themselves believe in.

These cross-sector or interdisciplinary labs can be short lived (several days up to several months) and focussed on a clearly defined challenge such as a strategic review, a conference, workshop or a design challenge. Or they can be (semi) permanent and focused on a broader theme such as a sustainable financial system or urban agriculture.

In each case we will make use of a combination of participatory research, design and innovation approaches to convene, design and facilitate these spaces, such as: the U-process, art of hosting, story telling, bio-mimicry, systems thinking, action research, improvisation theatre, nature retreats, deep democracy, rapid prototyping and embodied learning.