Guest Blog: Opening New Spaces

Guest Blog by Petra Počanić

Part 4 (Click here for Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 5)

 

DAY 4 – SUMMARIZING AND OPENING NEW SPACES

Even though it felt like month four, it was only day four. There are people, places, and things you co-create that make you feel unstoppable, energized, and motivated. The Hosting Eco-Social Innovation Workshop is one of these pluriverses. Cultivating and supporting this kind of collective energy — which is accepting differences and embracing transformation — can bring meaningful (and positive) change.

But how do we sustain these moments and places?

How do we connect and scale up these small and powerful islands to make a greater impact and trigger innovation-friendly cultures?

Also, how do we keep motivated?

Day four was about summarizing what had been done til now, opening spaces to discuss new questions and about exploring future steps between the two modules (and beyond). Some of the questions we discussed were:

• how to keep a beginners mind (even if you are not a beginner)
• how to create an innovative atmosphere
• how to make (social) innovation financially sustainable
• how to build an open (peer learning) community

And we discussed the ethics of trainers/hosts/facilitators.

Each of the topics, questions, and methods deserve an article for themselves, but that was not the intent of these short blog posts, which are only a brief teaser of the journey.

Partners of the Hosting Eco-Social Innovation project are working on a Methods Database, a searchable online database of tools and methods for guiding groups of people through innovation processes and it will be open source.

Also, an e-learning course about eco-social innovation will be launched as part of the project. Keep updated about future events of the Hosting Eco-Social Innovation project at hostingtransformation.org.

Below are a few comments that came up during the first module of the training.

“Facilitating change is more about lowering the barriers that prevent change

than about pushing something into motion.”

“There is a hidden/forgotten potential waiting to be discovered. We need to trigger society to start noticing and recognizing what treasures are already here.”

“Tell more stories! Use them to get people to open up, to connect them to each other, and to inspire new ideas. Stories help in one way or another to get attention.”

Above: Tools/methods used during the first module. The ‘Innovation Phases’ cloud is getting bigger.

Above: Find the unexpected during the ‘Medicine Walk’

Nature is a powerful source of inspiration and solitary time in the natural world has long been used (and is still used) across different cultures and traditions for its educational, therapeutic and spiritual effects. The aimless wandering of the ‘Medicine Walk’ helps to focus on the present moment and to let go of everyday problems. It encourages participants to wander around, to explore the unknown, to enjoy the beauty of nature, to walk through brushes, explore trails, or climb trees. It encourages us to go beyond thresholds and challenge our mental barriers. It can be a catalyst for new ideas and ‘AHA’ moments.