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Psychoanalysis and History: Vol 20, No 3

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Sally Alexander, London Harold P. Blum, New York Carlo Bonomi, Florence Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, Seattle/Paris Jose Brunner, Tel Aviv Alain de Mijolla, Paris Rotraut De Clerck, Frankfurt Karl Figlio, Essex Lawrence J. Friedman, Cambridge, MA Stephen Frosh, London Sander Gilman, Chicago Ilse Grubrich-Simitis, Frankfurt Robert D.

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Shhhhh!
I swear they are out there.
They are coming for you, they are here,
independent,
mind,
revolution!
Women know hope <-> (how) to live a dream.

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Interviewing an artist then professor, though what's more: an engager of SURREALISM

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Interviewing an artist then professor, though what's more: an engager of SURREALISM

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SO slow. I do have questions for Matthew Rose, sincerely I do. They are still lurking in my back log. I put Parisian jazz on to riffle the images and unspoken language up. stir

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I must get on with my artistic workshop planning and implementation. I'm going to other workshops to learn the stuturing - observing what tactics work and those drag out parts that don't// but also I can connect and contact the most free minded ppl for my own workshop. I also need to get a patent for my workshop as the skill sets are unique to my art practice. i'm all for artists stealing but this would impact my progress at the initial stages if say the bigger orgs,social entreprises , ot establish artists, even institutions in any way copy what i do . sorry, no.I must be careful in all disclosure. until the concept is planted it must remain a secret for further developments to take place. i'm emerging dear friends. Please be patient with me as I am trying to be patient and reliable --trusting myself. You won't be disappointed love.

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“… this holds out hope for the future in that by such a morbid and roundabout route, nature is not seen as the dead, soulless object of European modernity but as something roused into life through the wounds and war conducted against it. Like the swamp, death, or more specifically disfiguration, makes it alive and more than alive churning with vitality.” Michael Taussig, Palma Africana, 104

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"The real Sigmund Freud was a socially engaged progressive who changed the paradigm of “helping” from power and authority to insight and discovery."

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"The real Sigmund Freud was a socially engaged progressive who changed the paradigm of “helping” from power and authority to insight and discovery."

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This way of psychoanalysis will play an important part in my upcoming art workshops.

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Elizabeth Danto: In part, it can be explained by Freud's own divergence from convention. Few traditional narratives - if any - attribute to Freud his rightful place in the history of free clinics or adequately describe his historical role in shaping universal mental health care. In this way Freud has been treated like other providers of free services and considered untraditional because free clinics have occupied the historical role of providing health care to poor or socially disenfranchised people.
Q: Why do many people view Sigmund Freud as an elitist whose psychoanalytic treatment was reserved for the intellectually and financially advantaged?
ED: Everyday knowledge tends to make one think that the psychoanalysts reserved their treatment for the rich and that mental health treatment demanded the luxury of time. But this is not true. In fact, I found concrete evidence in the clinics' statistical reports that the social range of the psychoanalysts' patient base was really very wide. I unearthed Freud's personal checks endorsed to the Ambulatorium (the Vienna Free Clinic), his letters to colleagues thanking them for supporting the clinics, awards he received for his commitment to social welfare, and newspaper clippings reporting on his public advocacy. There are also photos, letters to friends and family, and excerpts from his writing. Freud's own caseload was 50 percent men, 50 percent women.
Q; Did the psychoanalysts believe specifically in free mental health clinics?
ED: Freud's own circle of analysts did. In 1926 the N.Y. State Board of Charities denied the early psychoanalysts permission to open a free clinic. Since then the American medical mental health establishment has tried to use increasingly elaborate justifications for maintaining a private practice model. But building on the discovery that even simple storefront clinics helped children, adolescents, older people, and families, I show that, in the 1920s psychoanalysis gave rise to a new kind of community-based urban mental health services. Erik Erikson, Erich Fromm, Anna Freud, Wilhelm Reich - some of the most popular thinkers of the era (and still today) - made psychoanalysis accessible to students, artists, craftsmen, laborers, factory workers, office clerks, unemployed people, farmers, domestic servants, and public school teachers.
Q: Did the psychoanalysts disparage women?
ED: The idea that psychoanalysis is antifeminist because it was targeted to a small group of frustrated bourgeois women has long been a legend - especially since Jeffrey Masson's controversial 1984 book (T he Assault on the Truth). In fact, the mid-1920s saw the Vienna clinic treat more men than women. People of all ages and social classes were treated at no cost. Many of the clinicians were highly activist women. Among them were Karen Horney, who openly refuted Freud's biological determinism in the lives of women, Helena Deutsch, who examined the psychology of motherhood, Edith Jacobson, who later delved into female depression, Hermine von Hug-Hellmuth, who - along with Melanie Klein and Anna Freud - introduced child therapy, and Theresa Benedek, whose later work correlated mood and menstrual cycles. Situating psychoanalysis within a new historical narrative based on the political and cultural contexts of Weimar Germany and Red Vienna (not on fin-de-siècle Vienna), I show the limitations of earlier, erroneous class-based analyses. We must start thinking of psychoanalysis in terms of twentieth-century modernism and refute the allegations of Victorianism that has triggered the spate of "Freud bashing" in recent years.
Q: Why is psychoanalysis so complicated?
ED: Underlying mental health treatment there may be simple models for everyone. Throughout almost the entire history of modern social science mental health itself has been viewed as something fundamental - but treatment for mental illness is not on a par with treatment for physical illness. I suggest that mental health treatment as we perceive it is in fact not so complex, but is instead the large-scale limit of the original psychoanalytic model. The free clinics were founded on this basis - a synthesis of efficient clinical approaches and socially conscious mental health policy - and their work led to new ideas about human sexuality, childhood depression, the nature of psychosis, and the validity of short-term treatment, crisis intervention, task-centered treatment, active therapy, and clinical case presentations. In this way, my book informs the current debates in urban mental health care in the U.S.
Q: So Freud was a liberal?
ED: The real Sigmund Freud was a socially engaged progressive who changed the paradigm of "helping" from power and authority to insight and discovery. In his personal life Freud was traditional, but he voted with the Social Democrats. The clinics' innovations were the work of a more political but less well-known Freud whose commitment to free treatment reflected his own personal involvement with Social Democracy and the place of psychoanalysis in the history of social reform.

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An Interview with Elizabeth Danto | Columbia University Press

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Freud's Free Clinics, by Elizabeth Ann Danto, tells the surprising story of how Erik Erikson, Wilhelm Reich, Erich Fromm, Helene Deutsch, and other psychoanalysts created a network of free outpatient clinics and pioneered important innovations in psychoanalytic treatment and method. In emphasizing the ways in which psychoanalysts implemented their social activism and their commitment to ...

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I spoke with the waiter at the Best Western hotel about a cookie. A whole 5 minutes devoted to exploring the relationship status between a cookie and a wedge of fudge placed on the teaspoon which accompanied my cup of tea. Living in surreal times. He was more about art than service. In the end, I gazed at his name badge and desired to know more.

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Progress in autonomy cannot be - nor historically has it ever been - measured in quantitative units. Rather, the need for autonomy is repositioned in relation to society's political, economic, and cultural developments on an ongoing basis. What do we mean when we speak of 'autonomy' and 'reproduction' in the field of contemporary art?

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Notes on Speculation as a Mode of Production in Art and Capital

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Notes on Speculation as a Mode of Production in Art and Capital

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I've been thinking more about where I "fall" into within the arts. I know I am drawn more to dance and my latest friends who I’m learning from are 'dance artists'. They have had rigorous dance training since they were little and are now in there late 20s, 30s and 50s. I think why am I here? I’m not graceful like the swan in Black Swan or Swan Lake. However, I am stunned and stilled, actively rested by mirroring the dancer’s performance. When I perform myself I jerk and everything is conceptual, relationships from the previous conversations I’ve had with "others" come through in a profound dialogical memoir of movement. It's a performance of insight I'm living. The dance artists tell me their biggest fear is wanting to be liked and, how this impacts every stage of their performance, like a rabbit in the headlights, the stage detains them. I say the world is my stage the spot light is the sun, have you seen John Cage’s work? He say’s “all that we do is music”.  I respond to their fear with my own, pretty opposite to theirs as in I don’t give a 🤬. My fear is becoming too excited by what moves me, art which is hybrid, trans and social does this. Oh well that would be heaven and less chaotic than 🤬 up because of being preoccupied with being a people pleaser they say. Oh well yes there is freedom of the imagination sure, but there is a disconnection never desiring to conform.

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A wee warm up from this morning. Thanks to Cath,Julia and Dance North Scotland for making the 'Reflections' workshop possible.

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A wee warm up from this morning. Thanks to Cath,Julia and Dance North Scotland for making the 'Reflections' workshop possible.

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A wee warm up from this morning. Thanks to Cath,Julia and Dance North Scotland for making the  'Reflections'  workshop possible.

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Psychoanalysts increasingly find themselves working with patients who seem to defy verbal and dialogic engagement. Such patients are challenging for a psychoanalytic approach that assumes that the patient relates in the verbal realm and is capable of reflective functioning. Both the classical stance of neutrality and abstinence and a contemporary relational approach that works with mutuality and intersubjectivity, can often ask too much of patients.
Robert Grossmark's The Unobtrusive Relational Analyst introduces a new psychoanalytic register for working with such patients and states, involving a present and engaged analyst who is unobtrusive to the unfolding of the patient's inner world and the flow of mutual enactments. For the unobtrusive relational analyst, the world and idiom of the patient becomes the defining signature of the clinical interaction and process. Rather than seeking to bring patients into greater dialogic relatedness, the analyst companions the patient in the flow of enactive engagement and into the damaged and constrained landscapes of their inner worlds. Being known and companioned in these areas of deep pain, shame and fragmentation is the foundation on which psychoanalytic transformation and healing rests. Public Seminar interviewed Robert Grossmark about his new book, The Unobtrusive Relational Analyst: Explorations in Psychoanalytic Companioning. Read the conversation below

Public Seminar [PS]: Why did you write The Unobtrusive Relational Analyst: Explorations in Psychoanalytic Companioning? Is there a gap, or hiatus, in psychoanalytic thought you wanted to address? In other words, what do you hope it might contribute to the field?

Robert Grossmark [RG]: More and more we psychoanalysts find ourselves working with patients who do not seem to be able to fully utilize contemporary psychoanalytic techniques. We are confronted with patients who struggle with a disrupted sense of self and identity, for whom time and space are fluid and disjointed phenomena, whose sense of self and other are fractured and blurred and who are often floating in altered states of consciousness or other worlds of experience. Such patients need not be manifestly disturbed individuals but we often find such phenomena tucked away in the inner private spaces of patients who have other areas of quite developed and adaptive functioning. These states are not available for verbal description because they are not represented or symbolized in clear thought and language, but reside in the realm of sensation and the unformulated. They are, if you will, deeply unconscious. Here I utilize the idea of the non-repressed unconscious and unformulated experience. This is to be distinguished from the customary conception of the unconscious as made up of thought and feelings that have been repressed due to the conflict and psychological pain that they cause. Freud himself hinted at other dimensions of consciousness and in this book I am addressing inner life that has yet to take form or to be represented due to ongoing or massive trauma and neglect.

Such patients and states have presented a challenge to psychoanalysis where there is an emphasis on the patient's ability to reflect on their experience and to utilize words and thought in their treatment. This applies to the more classical approaches that lean on the analyst's interpretation as the primary clinical intervention and agent of change as well as more contemporary relational and interpersonal approaches that, while offering a refreshingly egalitarian and collaborative approach to analysis, often rely on the patient's ability to consider the interaction and experience of the analyst and to reflect on what arises in the clinical relationship. For the patients I am encountering and describing such approaches may not address their wordless pain and confusion. Such approaches may, in fact, cause the patient a degree of shame and hurt and may cause the patient to feel a private despair that their inner suffering will ever be known and engaged with by an other.

The book outlines an approach that tries to meet these patients and states in their own register and idiom and welcomes expressions and communications that arrive outside of the dialogic and cognizable. Primarily the book looks to the expression and emergence of these hidden areas of inner pain and confusion in the dimension of mutual enactment that emerges between the patient and analyst (or in the case of group psychoanalysis, within the group and between the group members and the group analyst).

This approach situates the analyst within a field that emerges from the analytic couple (or group), rather than on a perch outside the interaction with a "view from nowhere". Hence the analyst is available to be moved and drawn into the world of the patient and to experience phenomena that arise as the treatment progresses. The analyst companions the patient into the expression of their inner worlds and idiom in a lived and shared space within the treatment. Rather than hurrying to understand such phenomena and put things into words, to make analytic material out of this, as is the tilt of most psychoanalysis - and most therapy interventions for that matter - the unobtrusive relational analyst will hear the call of the patient to be known in their inner world and will thus lend themselves to unobtrusively companion the patient in this world as it emerges in the treatment.

The analysis belongs to the patient, not the analyst, and is to be oriented to the patient's needs and modes of self-representation. So rather than seeking to quickly move the patient out of their inner pain, confusion and disorganization into the world of supposed consensual reality, the analyst can enter into the patient's world and seek to know that world from within, as it were, to know the patient on their own terms and in their own register. This process itself is at the core of what heals and what fertilizes the growth of mind and the expansion of human functioning that has been constrained and thwarted.

I offer this as a new register of psychoanalytic practice.
PS: How did the project evolve over time? Did your original idea go through many stages and changes? Can you describe them for us?
RG: These ideas developed over many years of practice working with many diverse populations, from Bellevue Hospital, a state psychiatric hospital, a public health clinic in the South Bronx, a college counseling center and eventually to many years in my private practice in Manhattan. The central focus is so simple and straight forward: when patients - whether in the South Bronx or the Upper West Side - feel respected and known for who they are, on their own terms, when they feel that it is their treatment, and they come to their own inner realizations, wonderful and surprising healing occurs.

Since the original papers on "The Unobtrusive Relational Analyst" I realized that when I could unobtrusively allow the emergent enactments to flow, unimpeded, and could companion the patient on these journeys in the treatment, I found myself living through uncanny, often disturbing and sometimes revelatory lived narratives. These were narratives that were not told in words but found expression in the lived, enactive dimension of the treatment. Often these were enacted "tellings" of early, unremembered trauma and neglect and sometimes enactments of parts of the patient's inner world that had never found expression. It was as if patents were telling me - in action and evoked sensation that involved both of us - things about themselves and their lives that they were yet to even consider themselves. I call this "enactive co-narration" and describe such occurrences in the book.
PS: You began your psychotherapy journey in a resolutely behavioral program but found your way to psychoanalysis, to relational psychoanalysis in particular. Can you relay some of the experiences, events and realizations that prompted this transition?
RG: Yes: my original clinical training was in the early eighties in the UK. At that time the field of clinical psychology was largely undeveloped. There was no doctorate in clinical psychology and all the Masters Programs were Skinnerian behavioral in orientation. I found myself engaging in treatment relationships that can best be described as Monty Python-esque. For example I found myself standing with a patient on top of the highest building on campus in blustering wind and rain conducting systematic desensitization for fear of heights. After screaming through the elements as he answered the protocol questions about his current level of anxiety we returned to ground level and relative sanity and he talked and talked with much emotion about his life, his family and so forth. Over the short course of treatment he improved greatly and he and I were well aware that it was not due to the behavioral intervention, but rather through the meaningful and felt relationship that developed between us. I had countless other experiences like this with individual patients and with groups and became aware of the powerful potential for healing and transformation that human engagement contains.

This realization was embellished and expanded in so many ways as I completed my doctoral training and subsequent psychoanalytic training in New York. I always found the psychoanalytic convention of the neutral or abstinent analyst to be a jacket that never quite fit for me and for the patients I was treating. Like so many other psychoanalysts and also patients I found the relational turn to be a refreshing and enlivening development in the field. Psychoanalysis was now embraced as a mutual and egalitarian enterprise and the theory glowed with the input of post- modern theory, queer theory, feminism, trauma theory and multi-culturalism. However I have always taken much from psychoanalytic literature as a whole and have never sought to simply off-load older theory. Rather, as the books attests, I have sought to integrate, embellish and contemporize some of the classical psychoanalytic ideas, such as regression, free association, object relations, transference and so forth.

I am now proud to be a part of a psychoanalysis that is new, even hip, smart and on the cutting edge of culture and thought and most importantly, open for everyone. It is this psychoanalysis that I now live within, that enlivens my work and that I engage with as I try to find ways to expand our practice and engage with patients and states that have often struggled to find a place in psychoanalysis in the ways that I describe in the book.
PS: Reading your work, it becomes apparent that unobtrusive is polysemic. To borrow a turn of phrase from Wallace Stevens, how many ways are there of looking at what being unobtrusive in the analytic context might mean?
RG: Indeed, being unobtrusive is a psychological orientation of the analyst rather than a code of analytic conduct. The analyst is unobtrusive to the field that emerges in the treatment, to the full expression of the patient's idiom and register, to the flow of mutual enactment and to the developmental needs of the patient at any given time. Hence being unobtrusive might mean waiting quietly and patiently as the patient talks or it could mean being very active and joining the patient in a register of expression or playfulness that emerges. From my perspective what is obtrusive is to tell a patient who is, let's say, walking around the office while talking in session and fiddling with ornaments on my shelf, that he or she should sit on the couch and try to put what they are feeling into words. That might, actually, sound like ordinary psychoanalysis, but think about it. From my perspective, I would unobtrusively welcome this behavior as an expression and communication of the self from another dimension: the motoric and non-symbolized. Given that it is being expressed in this register, I would not seek to bring it into the dialogic register of words and relatedness. Quite the opposite: I would regard it as a call from another dimension within the patient, precisely, a dimension that cannot utilize words to find expression and representation. Hence I would be welcoming and unobtrusive to this and I would pay careful attention to what feelings this is evoking in myself. For instance I might feel uncomfortable, scared, entertained, angry and so forth. Further I would not expect to know what I myself felt immediately. After all, if one can answer the question: what are you feeling?, by definition one is not connecting to what is unconscious. Thus I would be unobtrusive to this and other expressions in these different dimensions and find where this takes us an analytic couple over time. Often, I have found, patients may continue with these kinds of expressions and over time, a narrative of peculiar, painful, or otherwise disturbing experience will emerge. And the remarkable thing is that it may emerge in my consciousness, the patient's mind or in interactions that are totally unbidden and unpredicted. In a way, I would suggest that this kind of unobtrusive companioning of patients into these emergent enactments is a new royal road to the expression of the unconscious.
PS: Finally, which books, thinkers and ideas beyond psychoanalysis have inflected your psychoanalytic and writerly sensibility?
RG: I'll keep this answer quick, but recently I have been reading the six-part novel, "My Struggle" by the Norwegian writer Karl Ove Knausgaard. I have found it mesmerizing and perplexing. I particularly appreciate the ordinariness of the tales of his development. The rendition of ordinary lived life resonates with how I conceive of psychoanalysis. The truth emerges on its own, as it were, without contrivance, plotting or interpretation. It is revealed in its own expression, unalloyed and unobtruded.
The Unobtrusive Relational Analyst: Explorations in Psychoanalytic Companioning is available for purchase on the Routledge website here, and on Amazon here.
Robert Grossmark is a psychoanalyst working with individuals, couples and groups in New York City. He is Adjunct Clinical Professor and Consultant at The New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. He teaches at The National Institute for the Psychotherapies, the Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program at The City College of New York, and the Eastern Group Psychotherapy Society. His publications include The One And The Many: Relational Approaches to Group Psychotherapy and The Unobtrusive Relational Analyst: Explorations in Psychoanalytic Companioning.
Joshua Maserow is a PhD student in clinical psychology at the New School for Social Research and an editor at Public Seminar. His scholarly interests include Relational Psychoanalysis, therapist and common factors in psychotherapy research, and global contemporary literature.
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When Psychoanalysis Needs to Adapt to the Patient

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Psychoanalysts increasingly find themselves working with patients who seem to defy verbal and dialogic engagement. Such patients are challenging for a psychoanalytic approach that assumes that the patient relates in the verbal realm and is capable of reflective functioning. Both the classical stance

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The "bicameral mind" 30 years on: a critical reappraisal of Julian Jaynes' hypothesis

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In 1950 Erik Erikson created the term generativity to explain the Care stage in his theory of the stages of psychosocial development. The Care stage encompasses the middle ages of one's life, from 40 through 64. Generativity was defined as the "ability to transcend personal interests to provide care and concern for younger and older generations."

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What stood out most from the short doc I watched yesterday "Becoming Animal" is that animals use all their senses to form language,embodied language which understands or speaks to 'space'; the environment in which they live in and to be aware of their surroundings to aid survival. Humans on the other hand use 'time' measured by events in the 'past,present,future' to confirm their existence, one ( in mind) that is detached from the ecosystem, the earth. So an artist I would argue is more interested in space than time, because space is visceral like how the animals perceive it to be from the body. For example, if I look at a bird flying and follow its movement with my eyes I see from the bird's movement a new perception, I can move my arms in the same way in space. Feelings of experiencing this motion is how humans learned to invent the aeroplane. Similarly when I touch a tree, the tree is touched by me, there are two points of view being crossed in relation to each other. So nature is life full of living organisms, living from thousands of povs in space. Creativity expresses the intimacy of these multiple perceptions, a language to form or change what was "known" b4 time exists. It then would explain why art and music are seemingly "timeless" . Even when the body and mind is sick, music linked to memories cannot be forgotten as noted in the case for those with dementia.

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An inspired collaboration between filmmakers Peter Mettler and Emma Davie and philosopher David Abram, BECOMING ANIMAL is an urgent and immersive audiovisual quest, forging a path into the places where humans and animals meet, where we pique our senses to witness the so-called natural world — which in turn witnesses us — prompting reflections on what it means to inhabit our animal bodies.

https://www.becominganimalfilm.com/

Festival screenings:
CPH:DOX, Copenhagen, Denmark - World Premiere, Nominated for Best Feature
Documenta Madrid - Nominated for Fugas Feature Film Competition
Docs Against Gravity, Poland - Nominated for Grand Prix
Bildrausch Filmfestival, Basel, Switzerland - Nominated for  Best Feature
Edinburgh International Film Festival, UK - Nominated for Best Feature Documentary
Filmfest München, Germany
La Semana del Documental, DocMontevideo, Uruguay
Dokufest, Kosovo
Open City Documentary Festival, London, UK
Hebrides International Film Festival, Scotland, UK
Imagine Science Film Festival, New York, USA
Planet In Focus, Toronto, Canada
Kinoatelje Film Festival, Italy and Slovenia
Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival, Czech Republic 
Festival del Popli, Firenze, Italy 
Duisburger Filmwoche, Germany 
Recontres Internationales du Documentaire de Montréal 
Masters Selection, International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam
Porto Post Doc, Portugal 

For theatrical screening announcements and more updates visit https://www.becominganimalfilm.com/

Distributed by:
World Sales & Distribution - Maximage GmbH - info@maximage.ch
UK - Scottish Documentary Institute | SDI Productions Ltd - rebecca@scottishdocinstitute.com
Switzerland - Outside the box - info@outside-thebox.ch

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In 2021, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tests a sample of 15-year-olds across the world every three years, will include an assessment of creative thinking. For the last two years I have been working with the team developing this new test at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Arts professionals, teachers, parents, students and employers should be up in arms about the unwarranted narrowing of the school experience

That it will be included alongside the more well-known tests of maths, science and reading is a huge boost in status to a topic that, although increasingly valued globally, is not yet seen as important enough in the English education system.

Creative thinking and creativity

Creative thinking is what you do when you are being creative, and creativity is the outcome of this. The study of creativity is some 70 years old and most researchers trace its beginnings to the work of Joy Paul Guilford in the middle of the last century. Guilford suggested that there are two kinds of thinking: convergent (coming up with one good idea) and divergent (generating multiple solutions).

Building on this line of thought, Ellis Paul Torrance developed four sub-categories: fluency, flexibility, originality and elaboration. More recently, Robert Sternberg has argued that creativity is three-dimensional. It requires synthesising (the ability to see problems in new ways and escape from conventional thinking), analysing (being able to recognise which ideas are worth pursing and which are not), and contextualising (having the skills in different settings to persuade others of the value of any specific idea).

Creative thinking is both a solo and a collective activity, and most often has a social component. Creativity can be viewed as domain-specific (being creative in science, for example) or domain-free (being creative in any situation). Anna Craft reminds us that while only a few may aspire to be an exceptional genius, all of us can show a more ordinary form of creative thinking that she termed 'little c creativity'.

With my colleagues at the Centre for Real-World Learning, I have developed a five-dimensional model of creativity.

The five-dimensional model of creative thinking

A creative education

A creative education is one in which schools provide ample opportunities for young people to develop all the elements of this model through the formal curriculum, in after-school activities and in the school's wider community role. In creative schools there is a clear message that, while not all pupils can be world-class dancers, makers or players, all can develop their small c creativity in ways which will help them to thrive and grow, and enjoy their own emerging creativity.

Working with schools across the world we are now able to show how certain kinds of teaching and learning are likely to foster creativity. These include the use of case studies, problem-based learning, an approach known as philosophy for children, role play, games, deep questions to which there are no easy answers, authentic tasks, peer teaching, self-managed projects and enquiry-led teaching.

Most of these shorthand descriptions are self-explanatory or at least indicative of their intent. They have one in thing in common: they seek to harness young people's imagination and curiosity to develop, rehearse, practise, shape, redraft, critique and re-conceive their ideas in response to a range of different stimuli and in many different contexts.

For many people, the arts - music, art, design, dance, drama, literature and so forth - are synonymous with creativity. But creativity is actually much bigger than even these important subjects. It is to be found in every subject on a school curriculum and in every facet of our lives. It is as much about the unravelling of the human genome as it is the composing of a piece of music, as present in the hadron collider in Cern as in street theatre.

Nevertheless, the arts have a contribution to make to creativity specifically and to education and life more generally. The arts offer a specific way of knowing about and being in the world. When we use our imagination, we make new connections, see and feel things differently and develop our own humanity. We can expand our horizons without actually moving from where we are. The arts are a critically important part of any civilised education.

Dwindling numbers

Right now in schools in England they are under threat. The Cultural Learning Alliance has charted the dramatic (pun intended) reduction in numbers of students studying arts subjects at GCSE from 673,739 in 2010 to 435, 784 in 2018. These are shocking statistics. While art is just about holding up, design and technology, dance and performing arts have suffered huge reductions between 45% and 63%. The Department for Education's own statistics, published this June, show a reduction of 21% in the hours of arts teaching in schools and a reduction of 20% in the number of arts teachers.

Arts professionals, teachers, parents, students and employers should be up in arms about the unwarranted narrowing of the school experience. It is worth reminding ourselves of Article 22 of the UN Declaration of Human Rights that states that mankind is 'entitled to realisation of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality'. The Convention on the Rights of the Child (Article 31) talks of the right of the child to participate fully in cultural and artistic life.

In many primary schools there are no specialist arts teachers. In secondary schools the EBacc's emphasis on so-called academic subjects is squeezing out both the arts and other practical subjects.

Bang the drum

But all is not lost. As well as the promise of enhanced status through PISA, there are thousands of arts professionals, creative practitioners and curious scientists working in schools. In Wales, to take one example of promising practice, more than 500 schools are working with the Arts Council of Wales, the Welsh government and Creativity, Culture and Education to explore aspects of our model of creativity.

Or at the level of policy, the Durham Commission for Creativity in Education, led by Sir Nicholas Serota, is consulting widely with many stakeholders about the multiple benefits of creativity in schools, with a view to laying out a compelling agenda for creative change.

Whatever your role in schools, whether an arts professional or a parent or both, I strongly urge you to bang the drum for creative learning and for the arts in any school to which you are connected.
Bill Lucas is Professor of Learning at the University of Winchester. He is Co-chair of the PISA 2021 Test of Creative Thinking and an academic adviser to Arts Council England on creativity in education. He is also the academic adviser on creativity to the 14-18 NOW WW1 Centenary Art Commissions. Bill Lucas and Ellen Spencer are authors of 'Teaching Creative Thinking: Developing learners who generate ideas and can think critically'.
www.winchester.ac.uk

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In 2021, the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which tests a sample of 15-year-olds across the world every three years, will include an assessment of creative thinking. For the last two years I have been working with the team developing this new test at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

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Terry Gross says that "Tell me about yourself" is the only ice-breaker you'll ever need. Credit Credit Daniel Dorsa for The New York Times

The NPR host offers 8 spicy tips for having better conversations.

Terry Gross says that "Tell me about yourself" is the only ice-breaker you'll ever need. Credit Credit Daniel Dorsa for The New York Times

It's fair to say Terry Gross knows some things about talking to people. The host and co-executive producer of NPR's "Fresh Air" has interviewed thousands of personalities over the course of her four-decade career.

It all started in the early 1970s, when, floundering a bit in her post-college life, she landed a gig at WBFO, a radio station in Buffalo. There she would call subjects and interview them for the program she hosted, "This Is Radio." She moved to Philadelphia in 1975 to host "Fresh Air," the brainchild of a colleague from WBFO.

Ms. Gross brings a combination of empathy and rigorous preparation to the job. "I read, watch or listen to as much of the person's work as possible, so I have an understanding of what makes them, or their story, important," she said. "I try to clarify in my own mind why this person matters, and why it's worthy of our listeners' time."

One thing she does not allow of her interview subjects, however, is input on the edit. "When the interview is over, you don't have a chance to call back and say, 'Well I like my answer to this, I don't like my answer to that, can you edit that out," she said. (As someone who has been interviewed by Ms. Gross, I would like to say that I wish I hadn't insisted that her cats hate her. That said, I never asked for my comment to be removed from that particular episode of "Fresh Air.")

In a subsequent chat, our roles reversed, Ms. Gross offered her thoughts on how to have a good conversation.

Those are the only four words you need to navigate a potentially awkward conversation, whether on a blind date or at a cocktail party. Ms. Gross avoids asking more pointed questions (for example, "What do you do for work?") that presume information to be true.

The beauty in opening with "tell me about yourself" is that it allows you to start a conversation without the fear that you're going to inadvertently make someone uncomfortable or self-conscious. Posing a broad question lets people lead you to who they are. As an interviewer, Ms. Gross's goal is to find out how her subject became who they are; as a conversationalist, make that goal your own.

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Ms. Gross in the WHYY studios in Philadelphia. "A good conversationalist is somebody who is fun to talk to," she said. Credit Daniel Dorsa for The New York Times

Interviewing a person and having a conversation with them are two different things, but a common thread that can help you to excel at both, according to Ms. Gross, is "being genuinely curious, and wanting to hear what the other person is telling you. I can respond to what somebody saying by expressing if I'm feeling sympathy or empathy, and explaining why."

"A good conversationalist is somebody who is fun to talk to," she said. Ms. Gross, it's worth noting, is very funny. If you can't be funny, being mentally organized, reasonably concise and energetic will go a long way in impressing people.

Most of us will never find ourselves in the position of being interviewed by someone like Ms. Gross, but most of us will certainly find ourselves in the position of being interviewed by someone. Preparation, she says, is key. "It helps to organize your thoughts beforehand by thinking about the things you expect you'll be asked and then reflecting on how you might answer," she said.

A place where this can be especially helpful, particularly when meeting someone for the first time in a social setting, like a date, is considering how comfortable you are with opening up on certain topics. "It's helpful to think through where your boundaries are, so that you're not paralyzed agonizing over whether you're willing to confide something or not."

In a job interview, organizing your thoughts by thinking about the things you expect you'll be asked and reflecting on how you might answer can help you navigate if things start to go badly.

Ms. Gross offered help for how to handle a job interview that's going badly. "If somebody is asking you questions and you don't feel that you have a strong response for it, say, 'let me share an experience.'" From there, you can share an experience that points to your talents and areas where you excel.

An interview is a two-way street, which can be hard to remember when you're the applicant who desperately wants to land the gig, but Ms. Gross gently reminds us that as an interviewee, you're there to do some sussing out of your own. What is the job really like? What would be expected of you? Being prepared, too, can help you avoid getting caught off guard, or help you to more easily pivot the conversation to a subject that you've prepared yourself to talk about in a way that plays to your strengths.

"Well, I don't think it is in my self-interest to tutor people on how to dodge a question," Ms. Gross said. But, when pressed - perhaps regretting the previous advice she gave to this interviewer about how to get people to answer questions they don't want to answer ("keep asking") - she suggests using honesty. Say, "I don't want to answer that," or, if that's too blunt, hedge with a statement like, "I'm having a difficult time thinking of a specific answer to that." Going the martyr route with something like, "I'm afraid by answering that I'm going to hurt somebody's feelings and I don't want to do that," is another option.

Ms. Gross wishes that everyone would pay attention to other people's body language. "Try to pick up on when you've kind of lost somebody's attention," she said. That way, you can avoid boring your fellow interlocutor to death or holding someone up from getting to wherever they may actually need to be. If the person engaging you in ceaseless chatter won't take the hint, Ms. Gross again recommends honesty. "Well, there's the truth, which is I'd love to talk some more, but I'm really late," even, she says, if it feels rude to cut things off. "If a person is being insensitive to you, you don't have a commitment to be beholden to their insensitivity."

Ms. Gross prefers to interview artists and creators over politicians, and she approaches those baskets of interviewees differently. Politicians, she believes, "owe us an answer," and so she, in her own very Terry Gross way will "keep asking and re-asking and asking, and maybe I'll ask it in separate ways, and maybe I'll point out that they haven't yet answered the question." She prefers, however, to interview people who work in arts and culture, and offers those subjects more leeway to set parameters for the conversation. "I tell people that if I ask them anything too personal they should let me know and I'll move on," she said. "I want the liberty to ask anything with the understanding that if I'm pushing too far, my guest has the liberty - and they know they have the liberty - to tell me that I'm going too far. And once you told somebody that, you've committed to it, and you better fulfill the commitment."

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page ST4 of the New York edition with the headline: A Master Class in the Fine Art of Conversation. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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How to Talk to People, According to Terry Gross

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The NPR host offers 8 spicy tips for having better conversations. Terry Gross says that "Tell me about yourself" is the only ice-breaker you'll ever need. Credit Credit Daniel Dorsa for The New York Times It's fair to say Terry Gross knows some things about talking to people.

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" Writers are deeply invested in the work of metaphors and myth-making; people carry these metaphors around, live by them, often subconsciously: hence the influence they have on our political lives. “The premise of democracy is that we have to be self-aware,” Tokarczuk continues, “in order to make decisions.”

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Polish novelist Olga Tokarzcuk recalls her shock when, on a writers' scholarship on an old estate in Scotland, she discovered some of the furniture dated from as far back as the 16th century. "We don't have such a stable reality," she says. "Poland is in the central corridor of Europe." With people, wars, and regimes all passing through, such an object could only be found in a museum.

For many years, Tokarczuk, 56, has been showered with awards in Poland and across much of Europe, but she has been less lauded in English. This changed in May, however, when her novel Flights won the Man Booker International Prize, dramatically amplifying her voice in the Anglophone world. A few months later, her ecological thriller Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead was published in English.

I met Tokarczuk last month in her agents' offices, tucked away in a mews in Notting Hill - a leafy, affluent part of London. From a small foyer I was ushered into a room where the high ceilings drew my eyes to the tops of old oak shelves filled to the brim with books and scattered folders. In the centre was a sprawling wooden table, at least a hundred years old. It took a while for me to notice Tokarczuk herself, almost lost in this reader's paradise. She sat alone on a low chair, dwarfed by the table and huddled in a shawl, a pair of round, thick-rimmed glasses reflecting the low autumn light and hiding her eyes from view.

Speaking in English, we touched on a variety of difficult topics, including border politics, which are particularly contentious in Central and Eastern European. Tokarczuk herself lives in a small house about 200 metres from the Czech border, in Silesia, a region that includes parts of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Germany. "I am fascinated by the concept of borders," she says. "Another one of my books, House of Day, House of Night, was kind of a study of borderland, because it was at that point that I realised the borderland is always in between two things - that dawn is much more interesting than day or night." In 2015, Tokarczuk won the Brückepreis, which is given to people of any discipline - other winners include politicians, actors, and historians - whose life work contributes to greater mutual understanding between cultures.

"This mythology of moving borders is very strong in my family - can you imagine, my grandmother was born near Lvov, which is now Lviv in Ukraine, and, living in the same place, her citizenship changed three times? She was Austro-Hungarian, Soviet, and Polish." It is this kind of fluidity - the absence of which she found so unsettling on the Scottish estate - that comes up again and again in . When I ask about the connection, she mentions Polish philosopher and emigré Zygmunt Bauman, who developed the notion of "liquid modernity". In a book of the same name, he states: "What has been cut apart cannot be glued back together. Abandon all hope of totality, future as well as past, you who enter the world of fluid modernity."

"I realised the borderland is always in between two things - that dawn is much more interesting than day or night"

Her observations on fluidity in Central and Eastern Europe cast my mind back to a decades-old essay by Milan Kundera, in which he writes: "A French, a Russian, or an English man is not used to asking questions about the very survival of his nation. His anthems speak only of grandeur and eternity. The Polish anthem, however, starts with the verse, 'Poland has not yet perished...'" Yet, we wonder aloud if this same instability has brought new possibilities to literature, birthing original forms of magical realism and surrealism - from Kafka to László Krasznahorkai to Tokarczuk herself.

Like her prose, Tokarczuk exudes energetic curiosity. Just as I was settling into our interview, she flipped the dynamic by questioning me ("do you think this book was a study in madness?") and I had to dig my heels in to avoid becoming the interviewee. It's no surprise to learn Tokarczuk was a trained psychoanalyst who practised for several years before turning to full time writing.

"Reality is something that we can perceive from many points of view - and this is the very first definition of literature for me," she says, when I ask how psychoanalysis influenced her writing. "We are in a special position that each of us can look through our eyes and describe what we see - this is already a novel." Her background in psychology is unmistakable. Her characters lose their "characterness" and become more like real people, with the capacity to grow, transform, and surprise. She presents characters not by looking at them, but by looking through their eyes and perceiving the world as they do.

"If you will ask me if I am still Freudian, I will, of course, say no! It doesn't work like that," she smiles. "But I cannot imagine a contemporary intellectual who doesn't know the main ideas of Freud. I don't think of them as empirically true - I think of them as essential metaphors, as myths." Writers are deeply invested in the work of metaphors and myth-making; people carry these metaphors around, live by them, often subconsciously: hence the influence they have on our political lives. "The premise of democracy is that we have to be self-aware," Tokarczuk continues, "in order to make decisions."

Tokarczuk herself is a vegetarian, feminist, and Green Party advocate, positions that are all at odds with Poland's increasingly conservative ruling government

I ask her about translation and what it means to be read in a different language. The question is especially relevant to Flights, a philosophical novel about travel. The original Polish title, Bieguni, is the name of an old Russian cult that believed the only way to avoid evil was to be in constant motion. Bieguni is also a play on words, as it hints at the Slavic root word biegać, which means to run or escape. With no English equivalent, it was clear the title needed to be changed. Translator Jennifer Croft came up with "flights" and Tokarczuk was delighted that this, too, had a range of meanings - not only a journey by air, but also the passage of time, a hasty departure, an exodus, an escape, or an extravagant idea (flights of fancy). However, by changing the title, the book lost a part of its metaphorical and metaphysical meaning.

Sentence structure in Polish is very flexible, which makes it easy to be ambiguous. But ambiguity is useful, Tokarczuk argues, not only for poetry but also for criticising politicians: you can say something meaningful without really having to say it. Politicians and prominent pressure groups have attacked Tokarczuk in Poland for her supposedly anti-nationalist and anti-religious ideas. But when I ask about this, she reminds me that Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead (2009) and Flights (2007) were written in a very different political climate. Just over a decade ago, she states, everything was opening up; this was before globalism became a dirty word. "But now we are living in a period of closing - I can hear the doors shutting," she says. I respond pessimistically since I, too, hear the doors closing, but to my surprise, she has hope: "I really do believe that democracy has an inner self defence mechanism... one that can fight back against today's anachronistic governments," she says.

Storytelling has a great part to play in democracy's self-defence. For Tokarczuk, self-awareness, or the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, is foundational to democracy. She lauds the recent film for its work exposing the corruption of the Catholic Church in Poland, which is already having a clear effect on public opinion ahead of parliamentary elections next year. , the 2017 film adaptation of Drive Your Plough Over the Bones of the Dead, may have a similar effect in ecological circles. The name of its protagonist, Janina Duszejko, recently made an appearance at demonstrations to save the UNESCO-protected Białowieża Forest from loggers - one demonstrator carried a sign that declared "Janina Duszejko won't forgive you", an allusion to the character's brutal revenge on those bent on destroying nature for profit. Tokarczuk herself is a vegetarian, feminist, and Green Party advocate, positions that are at odds with Poland's increasingly conservative ruling government.

Tokarczuk has proven herself to be one of Europe's foremost writers and thinkers. Her books resonate not only for their compelling narratives, but for their moral and philosophical affirmations. Her commitment to exploring themes of feminism, borders, and ecological crises means her work is both a joy to read and a call to arms. In light of the contemporary political climate and looming environmental devastation - "like the Titanic," in her words - the implications have never been so far-reaching, or so urgent.

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Olga Tokarczuk: the meteoric rise and political urgency of Poland's pre-eminent novelist

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Polish novelist Olga Tokarzcuk recalls her shock when, on a writers' scholarship on an old estate in Scotland, she discovered some of the furniture dated from as far back as the 16th century. "We don't have such a stable reality," she says. "Poland is in the central corridor of Europe."

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I hope I can get through it all. so much to do and so busy life wise. Mainly socio-economic pressures honestly i need a miracle right now. If i fail i hope i can still continue. Not giving up just yet. I might be out of my depth here but i've got nothing to lose.

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Went into UHI today for the first time. Slightly shocked at the lack of people in the art department and v. little resources. I taught in a preschool room once which was the same size and yet had more art supplies. I don't know y ppl would honestly bother doing a BA in art there. It made LJMU look like a palace in comparison. I then felt lucky. On the plus side the two art students I met were inspirational in that they just got on with it.

One student was informed. From him I learned there are sad rules like if you want to loan a camera you have to get your lecturer to come with you to witness you take equipment out.  Also there was one wall for exhibits but you had to get permission if you wanted to stick up a postik note.

I think i'm missing something here.

I did have a dream a week ago about mentoring some  fine art students there. I dunno, I mean at the time I didn't know whether to laugh or cry or simply make do.

The cleaners talked a lot. I wanted to clean with them. They exchanged smiles as I tuned into my online seminar. As I left, I used the sleeve of my coat to dust the banister until I had reached the bottom of the stairs.

I felt a sense of relief knowing I can use this physical space, although the virtual learning environment is a much happier one.

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My work isn't a "project" in a world full of projection . My art is formed through social immersion and subversion. To experience: nature, the unconscious, dance. The transformation throughout life is the art itself. The formation of transformative art emerges from an endless series of captivating dialogues between a couple dozen players supporting different teams, who regardless of background, come together on fields of
grass & goals.

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We all need psychoanalysis - it would make Britain a happier, kinder place | Susanna Rustin

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With one in four teenage girls being depressed, it's clear that there is no shortage of people needing help, says Guardian writer and editor Susanna Rustin

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Diane from Dance North Scotland recommended the 'Into the Mountain' project in response to my email this morning. It's simply stunning. My mind has been blown away by all the intricate components and diversity of the terrain, activity & participants involved.

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Commonplace Book is a way of sharing extracts, fragments, notes and reflections throughout the development of Into the Mountain. It creates the possibility for containing multiple voices and experiences involved in the project.

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Commonplace Book is a way of sharing extracts, fragments, notes and reflections throughout the development of Into the Mountain. It creates the possibility for containing multiple voices and experiences involved in the project.

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At "On sharing, separations" I met the artist Tako Taal, plus curator Sean Elder who is originally from Nairn,  which I found interesting. Again too tired to type up what I have learned just now. Eve smith programme manager from LUX Scotland spoke about two opportunities for artists to collaborate with  eachother and with BBC Sct . I'll look into it but reckon it's far too early days for me yet to participate. Highlight of the night was when I was sat at the front and the artist's mum started a convo with me b4 the performance started. She's a herbalist and gave me her contact details. When I saw her in the film I felt like I was in a dialogue between the moving images, her mother, artist & curator. Physically we formed a
landscape in the inhibited space itself.

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'Conversant dialogue' between artist Tako Taal and curator Sean Elder, making public a series of interactions between the two.

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Had so many incredible coversations with ppl recently. my general rule is to write them up the next day or else they become a distance memory and then too vague to recall. I've lost about 5 potential stories but it's ok coz i'm focussed on assignments, and learning new practice techniques. The suppression of dialogue is frustrating but i'll hold up.

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Incredible screendance workshop with dance artist Natalia Barua today. Was a pleasure to dance with her and all the others on stage, around Eden Court and outdoors in public. Exhausted but will write up what I learnt soon. 100 % the best activity i've done in Inverness so far!

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Incredible screendance workshop with dance artist Natalia Barua today. Was a pleasure to dance with her and all the others on stage, around Eden Court and outdoors in public. Exhausted but will write up what I learnt soon. 100 % the best activity i've done in Inverness so far!

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Nothing is old, nothing is new. Everything already exists. It/art just hasn't been created yet.

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Swearing means 'process is here to stay'; until something is resolved or unforgivingly changed.

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Swearing means 'process is here to stay'; until something is resolved or unforgivingly changed.

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#embodied artivism

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Good news: I am no longer avoiding Padlet.

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Good news: I am no longer avoiding Padlet.

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Bad news: I've substituted by addiction to FB for Padlet! Nae - er saw THAT ONE COMING [jokes].

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A weekend of action and networking ahead. 1st to Aberdeen to the LUX event "On sharing, separations". Then on Sunday I'm taking part in a screendance workshop with the inclination to improve my video art practice, which tbh is looking a bit flat right now. Nonetheless, I need to upload my 'rituals' up to Vimeo at some point.  Since doing a social media detox I'm realising most my ritual vid are online embedded in that format.  So technically Instagram and Facebook own my work as I can't get it back by way of downloading it again Onwards and upgrading to tbc!

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A weekend of action and networking ahead. 1st to Aberdeen to the LUX event "On sharing, separations". Then on Sunday I'm taking part in a screendance workshop with the inclination to improve my video art practice, which tbh is looking a bit flat right now. Nonetheless, I need to upload my 'rituals' up to Vimeo at some point.  Since doing a social media detox I'm realising most my ritual vid are online embedded in that format.  So technically Instagram and Facebook own my work as I can't get it back by way of downloading it again Onwards and upgrading to tbc!

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I talk in surrealist manifestos. Still the same tone.

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Missing Laurie Stone posts on FB }sob{ virtual loss.

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Missing Laurie Stone posts on FB }sob{ virtual loss.

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Alas, I have an atlas of stories to respond to, and equally, a shared social responsibility to present my own material. Not forgetting the non material that those cannot bear witness to. Yes to make material so people can understand or to create a space so ppl can feel they can be understood is important yet understanding isn't the outcome; the in/action is. Side note: distractions are my only competition.

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"The programme seeks to revive collective social responsibility and common purpose through deliberation and public commitments."

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"The programme seeks to revive collective social responsibility and common purpose through deliberation and public commitments."

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"Bruguera is also Tate Exchange’s Lead Artist for its 2018-19 activity year, which is inspired by the theme of ‘movement’. Her residency at Tate Exchange addresses not just the physical movement of people, but the emotional journey from the far away and unknown ‘other’ to the close-by neighbour."

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Our Neighbours: With Tania Bruguera - Workshop at Tate Modern | Tate

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Visit artist Tania Bruguera in residency at Tate Exchange as part of the Hyundai Turbine Hall Commission, from 2-28 October.

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The New Yorker article by Joshua Rothman

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The New Yorker article by Joshua Rothman

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If there’s a big idea in “Becoming Freud,” it’s that psychoanalysis is about communication—about what Phillips calls “sociability”—more than it’s about a cure. It’s a way of helping people speak for themselves (or of helping them figure out how they are already speaking). There’s a sense in which, for Phillips, Freud’s work was a kind of rebellion—against medicine, against society, against one’s own false sense of orderliness. (Freud sought “to account for—something starkly pertinent for the Jews of Freud’s generation—what one makes of what one is forced by.”) But Freud’s rebellion differed from that of the modernist artists he was surrounded by. It was more like the subtle, ambivalent rebellion of the translator or the critic.

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Video illuminates well rounded public interaction.

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Video illuminates well rounded public interaction.

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Psychoanalysis is deeply rooted within culture and language. People in Vienna are asked to talk about what they think psychoanalysis is and who Freud was.

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In terms of structuring the reading lists. I'm going to read one chapt a day of 3 books, 1 for each module early in the morning. Articles for responding etc I'll study on the day of the seminar while the questions that emerge remain still fresh in my head. I have to read for pleasure too so will do this in the evening. When I've stop reading for the joy of it I struggle with processing text to form meaning and lose focus quickly. Words then "are meaningless  and forgettable " - 'Enjoy the Silence' by Depeche Mode. Ive read a lot recently  and forget 90 per cent of content when I stop reading essentially  for my well-being.

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Barefoot guide 4 exploring the real work of social change final

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Issuu is a digital publishing platform that makes it simple to publish magazines, catalogs, newspapers, books, and more online. Easily share your publications and get them in front of Issuu's millions of monthly readers.

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Miki has linked to this page from every newsletter since March 2014, to add whatever celebrations and mournings didn't fit in the newsletter. You can get to the newsletters through the links in the first paragraph after each month's heading below. As of Sept 2017, the years 2014-16 have been archived so go here to read them.
September 2018

These celebrations, mournings and other happenings accompany Miki's September newsletter, " What can happen in seven years?"

Web of Support. For a while now, I have been aware of a growing need for support around the unruly proliferation of materials I have created, many with my late sister Inbal. I am celebrating that, slowly and consistently, an organic team of folks is forming, committed to these materials being carried forward even when I am no longer here. Now that the Nonviolent Global Liberation community is beginning to function and to occupy its structure, there is a clear home for holding this effort. Emma Quayle, who I secretly believe has unlimited energy, has offered to coordinate these efforts and support me and us in organizing and indexing everything. I imagine this will be many moons in the making, and I am already grateful beyond measure. Dave Young and Christina Honde have been slowly chipping away at transcribing some of my public calls, and I anticipate others will join. WOW.

Sabbatical. Despite intense travel this year, I am still managing to do a significant amount of creative work in addition to my blog. My sister Arnina and I have written an article on nonpatriarchal parenting for Tikkun. I wrote a piece for the "Blogging Carnival for Nonviolence 2018." I came up with a number of twitter messages that Cleona has been posting on my twitter account (which I don't even visit!). I started working on an essay about feminist leadership for a UN-sponsored e-book. I am working on a book review for Tikkun of David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs . And I am working with Leonie and our beloved consultant Aaron Soffin on the self-study NVC course I have put together. And I am still not accepting any new requests for 2019 beyond the three trips that I am already committed to. In this moment I am home, not going anywhere on a plane until mid October, and relishing the slow dissipation of stress.

Nonviolent Global Liberation (NGL). This month I am celebrating two things about NGL. One is about how we function. For example, I am so touched by how much those of us on the design team are modeling staying within the limits of our capacity. I wish I could say that we all recognize immediately when we have exceeded our capacity. That is still in the future. What is true, though, is that when we recognize it, it seems that at least many of us take action - to change agreements to create more spaciousness; to initiate dialogue to explore options; or to simply ask for support. Honesty and care flow in this nascent community remarkably well, alongside a deep and ongoing inquiry about the nature of power relations and how to maintain everyone's capacity to put their needs, perspectives, ideas, and disagreements on the table. We are overturning millennia of patriarchal functioning etched into our psyches. The second thing I am celebrating is that we now have members from four continents, whose work in their own projects is supported within NGL, such that learning emerges from the field and is immediately available to all members. Exactly what I was hoping for, and much more.

California NGL retreat. There is so much to celebrate here that I am trimming a lot. I don't even know how much I am not sharing, because more was being created and put into flow within this transient community than I could track. Celebrating that the money pile extended beyond the retreat support team into others in the community and even beyond; that almost all participants engaged in building and sustaining the systems that supported all of us; that many people participated in providing core content; that so many of us learned palpably what sharing needs and responsibility within a community-based flow of resources could mean; and that integration of what so often is held as either/or kept happening: theory and practice, getting things done and caring for relationships, thinking and feeling, big vision and nitty gritty details.

Mary Parker Follett. In July, I had the pleasure of meeting a whole group of others who, like me, are profoundly inspired by the work of Mary Parker Follett. This was a conference to commemorate the 100 th anniversary of the publication of her book The New State . I have a chapter in an upcoming 100 th anniversary anthology in which I apply Follett's thinking and insight to questions of global governance. In keeping with Follett's legacy, we co-designed the epilogue and the introduction to the book on the last day of the conference. I truly hope that this small community, the gathering, and the upcoming book will finally put Follett's depth of visionary thinking back to broader use to assist us in responding to the global crises we are facing.

Meg Wheatley. Also in July, I attended a workshop by Meg Wheatley on the topic of "Who Do We Choose to Be?" which is also the title of her latest book. I was with a group of dear friends, and thus the conversations we had in between sessions deepened the experience of the workshop and of our friendships. The material was difficult for most: an invitation to face what Meg Wheatley and many others believe is an inevitable social collapse in the near future, and to choose how to become leaders within that reality. I remain humble in the face of all the information, without capacity to . I see collapse as incredibly likely and becoming ever more likely by the day. And still I don't know. Within this uncertainty, I celebrate being with others who are just as willing to look reality square in the face without shying away from the immense suffering that is already happening and is so likely to increase manifold. I feel ready to be present and to serve.

Mexico workshops. Going to Mexico has a special meaning for me because of my personal history there. Growing up, I lived for two years in Mexico City, arriving shortly after the student massacre of 1968 and just in time for the Olympic Games, and leaving shortly after the World Cup in 1970. I speak fluent Spanish that's been getting more and more fluent as I have travelled and taught in Spain and Latin America. Teaching my current core offerings in Spanish to a large and diverse group of mostly Mexicans and some people from other Latin American countries was incredibly joyful. About 1/5 of the participants were women working with vulnerable or marginalized communities, and I felt humble and grateful to be able to offer them insights, principles, tools, and practices that can assist them in their incredibly difficult work. Being in a country that has suffered so much from US policies, especially at this time in history, I noticed a heightened awareness and a willingness to challenge internalized norms that was profoundly moving for me. And, in the end, when we engaged in a gift economy process, the solidarity within community that came to the foreground there, as several people within the temporary community of participants received money in addition to the event team, I landed in a temporary heaven.

Convergent Facilitation. This past period I learned that the publisher I was hoping would take on my manuscript is delaying his decision by long enough that he suggested I go elsewhere and come back in the spring. I am back to square one about whether it makes sense to go for a publisher, a literary agent, or self-publish. Personally, the question of whether anything that is within the world as it is could be a home for me keeps coming up, and often painfully. Meanwhile, other exciting developments are pulling me in a celebration mode. First, with the incredible help of Jean Meier and Lisa Rothman, who've held my hand about CF development for a long time, a handout is now available for on a gift economy basis. Second, the first CF online course started. Over 300 people registered for the free course, and over 200 for the continuing course. This shows me just how much this is wanted in the world. I've also had a chance to update the PowerPoint presentation I have, and to put into use the muscles I built through the stretching into lecturing I talked about last time. It's not too late to , and you get recordings from the sessions you will have missed.

The gift economy. I am deepening into my celebration of the growing capacity of so many to step into the unknown waters of experimentation in restoring the flow of resources through some semblance of the gift economy. This is happening at events, both between participants and event team and within event teams, using the "money pile" approach pioneered by Dominic Barter, where money is distributed based on needs and availability of resources, not based on concepts or rules. I am both doing these experiments and writing about them, and I have a palpable sense of a growing circle of people who are willing to step outside the seductive logic of transaction and into embracing life in all its mystery and complexity. The emerging NGL community's approach to resources is fully structured around the gift economy. I have more and more capacity then to offer more and more things to more and more people without any expectation or sometimes even request to give money to BayNVC. In parallel, more people are giving to BayNVC, and to my work in particular, than ever before. I recognize that what we are doing may not be replicable, and is specifically dependent on there being enough people who know enough about me and what I give for there to be enough collective willingness to support the work. And, despite its evident limitations, this ongoing experiment is still, for me, a small beacon of light in very difficult times. Here's what we shared at one NGL team call: "As we emerge from thousands of years of debt and exchange and deserve, it is gonna be like emerging from a swamp. We'll be full of mud and we don't get cleaned right away."

Recent Inspirations. A free call participant sent me some information about deep canvassing , a method used by the Knock Every Door organization to help volunteers go door-to-door inviting people toward more progressive stances on issues, campaigns and candidates by non-judgmentally soliciting their views, actively listening, sharing vulnerably and connecting around values. They've found that a surprising number of people from across the political spectrum have shifted through a 10 minute conversation conducted in this way. I'm including this here as a very charged election season is in swing, so those of you who are engaged in electoral politics might want to know this exists or choose to get involved. If you do, please let me know how it goes. I also recently learned about the work of Jem Bendell , and his way of presenting what he considers the inevitability of near term social collapse. The combination of willingness to tell truth and ample care for the readers, in a way that seems entirely personal, really speaks to me of what is needed in these times. I am touched and called to clearer willingness to serve after discovering his frame of deep adaptation to climate change. I have also been touched and called, for years now, by the work of Genevieve Vaughan, who grounds the gift economy in the relationship of mothering: the unilateral giving in response to needs to support survival. This, extended to a whole society, is her frame of reference for the gift economy. For me, these ideas are simple and inspiring. Now I found an article of hers that gives access to her ideas without hundreds of pages of text. http://gift-economy.com/beyond-capitalist-patriarchy-the-model-of-the-maternal-gift-economy/

The Humility Corner. Since the last newsletter, I have had one more loss, at least temporary, of a close friend who chose to step back from connection. At the rate of one or two a year, the ongoing trauma is intense. Given that I have such a commitment to take responsibility for the whole and to always look at what can do to make changes, I've been thinking, yet again, about what I have contributed to so many losses happening, and what I can do about this one, about my other existing relationships, and about my own ability to keep trusting people and relationships. In the end, after talking with several people, where I am in the moment is with the thought that the most transformative and honest thing I can do is simply mourn: this loss; other losses; the complete ultimate enigma about why they have been happening, and the futility of trying to make sense of it; and the fracturing of communities that the common-ness of such occurrences points to. May we all live to see our sense of being in interwoven communities restored.

July 2018

These celebrations, mournings and other happenings accompany Miki's July newsletter, " What's money got to do with it?"

Web of Support. Just as I was settling into a solid acceptance that I am unlikely to significantly increase my sphere of influence - that if my efforts are to bear fruit on the more systemic plane it would happen indirectly - I am learning of several people, in several places on the planet, who are actively pursuing possibilities that would connect me with people with the power to make decisions with large-scale effects. I am hoping that their efforts will bear fruit, and down the line I will have exciting stories to tell. For now, I am purely celebrating that there are people who want to support me in this way.

Sabbatical. I am celebrating that, in the two months since the last newsletter went out, I have managed to stick to my plans for 2019. I have not accepted a single request to go anywhere outside my already planned activities for 2019. It gives me a modicum of self-trust in my ability to persist in this way and have an entirely different year in 2019. Nonviolent Global Liberation (NGL). There is so much to celebrate here, that I could literally write an entire newsletter dedicated only to these celebrations. For now, I am focusing only on two. One is the first NGL retreat in Poland. It was a giant step forward in making my work less and less dependent on me. This was a fully co-created event, where participants designed systems and agreements based on the work done by the online design team, with changes and feedback that will inform both the next retreat and NGL as a whole. This was an environment in which I could mostly focus on coaching and dialogic teaching, where other trainers taught most of the core sessions. We created more of a culture of feedback than I ever before remember. And we stepped deeply into interdependence, most especially in the way that we handled the challenges of being in a venue that was clearly not designed to be wheelchair accessible, while one of the participants uses a wheel chair. Many of us had the experience of living in the world of the future even while knowing we were in the present and pretty brutal reality of late capitalism. If you have any capacity to travel to California for the next one, please do join us as we take what we learned in Poland one step further. The second big celebration is that our pilot launch is proceeding, and we have about 25 applicants who are showing me, in what they wrote, how so many people are already working to bring about nonviolent global liberation, and what an amazing service to them, to all of us, and to the world, we are doing by creating this program. It's a little while longer before our full official launch, and I invite your patience, as we set up systems to increase the likelihood that everything functions well when we open our doors fully.

Stretching into lecturing. It's been a goal of mine to grow in my capacity to lecture rather than being as dependent as I am on interaction with participants. In these two months I had two opportunities to practice. One was entirely unexpected. I was conducting a webinar for those who are considering attending my workshops in Mexico in a few weeks. I knew that 600 people had signed up for this webinar - the greatest number ever for any event of mine. I didn't know that technical difficulties would mean I couldn't hear or see anything except myself. Without planning for it, I was suddenly thrust into lecturing to a large number of people (about 250 at any given moment during the call), in Spanish, without notes, and with only the chat to guide me about where to go. That it went well, apparently, is entirely a miracle. The other opportunity was planned, and it's a celebration all its own: I had an event in London in which I mostly lectured in front of a camera. There was an audience, for which I am deeply grateful. And, still, it was more lecture than my usual. I am itching to see the edited portions of the video of this event, all of which are designed to be widely shared.

New Future Process. This item is a major mixture of celebration and mourning. The mourning is that the unfolding of this process has not been smooth. Some relationships within the global NVC community are strained, some structural constraints are difficult to transcend, and those of us who are passionate about the possibilities are in a deep exploration of what it exactly means to respond to these conditions with full nonviolence. What does the combination of courage, truth, and love look like in these circumstances? The celebration is that, in parallel with the challenges, some of the work continues to unfold. More and more people are joining the emerging new way of organizing the global community, and you are fully invited yourself: http://nvc-global.net/join/. Once you join, soon enough there will be opportunities to contribute if you so wish, including to an emerging curriculum being put together on the topic of power, access, and inclusion as part of aiming to reduce the chances that patriarchal norms of separation, especially in the form of race, class, and other differences, will affect our organizational functioning. Stay tuned.

Responding to the Call of Our Times. This course, now in its second year, has evolved into an ongoing lab in a way that is fully intertwined with its central purpose of coaching and supporting participants in stepping into more leadership in more ways with more care for the whole. In this lab, I regularly bring my own learning edges, ranging from theoretical topics that occupy and fascinate me, to places where my own capacity is challenged. We then explore them together as others reflect on their own engagement with the topics. And we emerge, regularly, with new insights, deeper understanding, growing individual capacity for many of us, and the continued building of community in this most unlikely environment of seeing many little faces on the screen. It's never too later to join as there is no set curriculum and you will have all recordings available to you.

The Humility Corner. This month, the humility corner is about the role of humiliation in my unfolding journey. Recently, I participated in a very difficult online meeting during which I was challenged, more than once, in ways that both I and others experienced as intense and shocking. So much so, that I ended up leaving the meeting before it was over (after checking with all that they didn't see my leaving as affecting the purpose of the meeting). I remained deeply affected, on a physical level, for the rest of that day until I went to bed. I had little energy for anything that required even the smallest amount of effort. In the course of that day, I understood two things. One is that my experience of humiliation in those moments means that I still give others the power to grant or not grant me dignity, instead of experiencing it as inherent to who I am as a living being. In that, then, I could see how my own power of choice to respond in full nonviolence diminishes. Although I didn't do anything I regret, and I managed to remain calm and to continue to engage, I was in protective mode. It's crystal clear to me that, until I manage to fully inhabit, within me, my own dignity, in key moments I will remain less capable of traversing the gap with another person and meeting them with love and empathy even when they are not finding a way to treat me with care. Wrenching as this was, I am glad for the clarity of the task ahead of me and its crucial role in the healing of patriarchal wounding.

May 2018

These celebrations, mournings and other happenings accompany Miki's May newsletter, " Radical and Practical."

Web of Support. This month I am celebrating the existence of people on my various calls who are mobilized to support my eventual capacity to convert some of what happens into writing. It's not always the same people. It's the easy presence of willingness in the larger group that I am particularly celebrating. People have stepped forward to collate and share notes, post recordings, track topics, and transcribe calls. When (not if!) I dramatically reduce my travel schedule and take on the endless task of creating articles and books from all that I have taught in these years, the materials are ready for me. They are no longer getting lost as in the past.

Sabbatical. It's time to recognize that this year I am simply not able to maintain any semblance of the sabbatical and focus on writing that I have longed for. I still have the two days a week discipline of not scheduling meetings, and I am home little enough that these days serve mostly to keep up with my growing backlog and to do minimal writing. I am not making progress with any of the larger writing projects that I am so eagerly longing to engage with. With this, my resolve to change things is growing. Starting in 2019, I plan to focus on three regular trips a year - one to Israel and Europe, one to South America, and one to the East Coast of the US - and to add at most one more trip.

Empowering Palestinian Women Leaders. Last month, I launched, together with Amal Hadweh from Bet Jalla, Palestine, a project that we are committed to seeing continue indefinitely, with annual gatherings in person and more in between. This experience was a profound celebration for me in so many ways. You can read the impact statement that was written to the dozens of people who contributed close to $32,000 to this project. On a more personal note, the human connections that I made with so many women with such dramatically different life circumstances, women who are oppressed along so many dimensions, including the 50-year occupation of the government of the country where I was born and raised, is one of the most transcendent experiences I can remember. Several of the women are planning to come to the upcoming retreats in Poland or the US. The friendship Amal and I developed, and the shared long term vision about the powerful role Palestinian women can play in their society feed my soul whenever I think of it.

Nonviolent Global Liberation (NGL). Life continues to take its twists and turns, and the soft launch of this apprenticeship program and community now seems likely to happen by June 1, with the official public launch anticipated later this summer . One of the formats that this program includes is dedicated coaching calls to one individual or team that others can be part of for their own learning. This format allows multiple purposes to unfold, and I am excited to see how it's already supporting people in various parts of the world. In particular, I am excited to see an entire team of consultants forming in India to work with me on a major project there, with the plan that all of the coaching I'll offer them is designed to be done through NGL. Even before official launch, it's already global in scope. Click here to read the description as it currently stands, and watch for a special email that announces this program when we are finally ready. The program is closely connected to the two upcoming retreats I am doing, one in Poland and one in CA, where NGL members and others are invited to come together to co-create a meaningful week of learning, collaborating, and scheming to bring about global liberation.

Global Governance. Some of the group of us that worked on the submission that didn't win the competition came together to explore what we might do with our entry. What emerged from it is a possibility of bringing this project to the Nonviolent Global Liberation program/community to work with. I indeed have some confidence that as the group of people that comprise the learning community emerges clearly, some will be ready to take on the quest for creating a pilot project, in some local context somewhere in the world, to experiment with the radical and practical ideas that we worked out.

Free calls. The free calls, which I started along with the Circle of Support, remain a consistent highlight in my life. I now offer five different topics, and the only reason I don't have more is that I have other needs, too... I am already itching to add two more, and I know I can't until I am done with travel. What most appeals to me about these calls is that the focus on learning and exploring together. I come with no agenda of my own, only responsive to the topics and longings that emerge from the group that configures itself as we come together to learn and explore. There is collective resilience and presence with the discomfort that often arises, and a growing willingness to engage more and more honestly with the personal and collective issues of our time. Please consider joining us to see for yourself what I am talking about. Click here to look at all the offerings.

The Humility Corner. Last month I mentioned that I am in ongoing conversation with a potential publisher. It has been deeply instructive to see how, each time he comes back with more questions and things for me to look at and engage with, my first reaction is total doom. Without the support of Lisa Rothman, who is holding my hand through this process, I don't know if I would have been able to continue. I have a deep internal habit, born no doubt of trauma, to see certain forms of feedback as insurmountable obstacles that "prove" there's not room for me in this world as it is. This is an ongoing lesson for me, and one that I welcome delving more deeply into learning about and transforming. I sense it is utterly related to some of the mystery of why what I have created isn't getting further in the world. For that to happen, I probably need to grow my capacity to see and feel the continuity between me and everyone else.

March 2018

These celebrations, mournings and other happenings accompany Miki's March newsletter, " Stretching our imagination across differences."

Web of Support. I am wishing to celebrate the support of more than 20 people who've been actively part of designing the infrastructure of the about-to-be-launched new Nonviolent Global Liberation apprenticeship program and learning community. They are from multiple countries, none of them know all of them, and since September, in multiple self-organizing teams, every aspect of this infrastructure has been attended to, mostly without my active involvement. I am beyond awe with this one.

Sabbatical. I am mostly mourning this time around in this category. The amount of travel I have this year is not providing sufficient time at home to really benefit from the discipline of having two days of unscheduled time. Also, more evening time is now taken to connect with people I am working with in Asia and, overall, I am not finding as much spaciousness as I long for to sink into writing and creating new things. I am celebrating one thing, though: I am absolutely saying "no" to new travel requests, and have even canceled one tentative plan for 2019.

Convergent Facilitation (CF). I have four celebrations here! I am in ongoing conversation with a publisher and have a positive feeling that this will lead to a contract to publish my manuscript (fully written and edited already) on the topic. It's my first choice publisher: Berrett Koehler, whose mission mentions creating a world that works for all. The second is that I am scheduled to do the first ever online course on CF, through the NVC Academy, in the summer/fall. The third is that there are now several people in various stages of getting ready to share CF with others. I am sure to announce those events when they materialize. Lastly, I had a major opportunity to apply CF in a high-stakes situation about child labor research and policy, working with a group of people from the UN, some governments, other international agencies, and a group of academics. The result: 15 common principles and a list of 24 research questions to form an initial draft of a shared research agenda. Considering how much strife and mistrust there is in the field, this was a major milestone. Verene Nicolas from France/Scotland and Franca Onyibor from Nigeria were co-facilitators with me. I am beyond pleased to have had their wisdom, perspective, and capacity to attend to things that would have been far harder for me to do all on my own.

Nonviolent Global Liberation. One of the principles that are core to my vision of how to create human systems that work for all of life is the principle of willingness. As it relates to work, it includes honoring our limits and capacity. We have had a planned launch date of March 1 st for this new program, and it became clear that that would result in getting into work patterns that mimic the world we want to change. We celebrated recognizing it, and pushed the launch date back by one month. We are now aiming for April 1 st, and so far this seems real. Click to read the description as it currently stands, and watch for a special email that announces this program.

Twitter. I have a complex and very ambivalent, mostly negative, relationship to social media. Still, within this complexity, I have accepted a presence on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram that is managed by two volunteers. Then, one day, I realized that there's something really fun about being able to say something of meaning, even something that challenges modern capitalism, and to do so in 140 characters or fewer. So I've taken, from time to time, to writing tweets and sending them to Cleona for posting. Although I am less than fully happy about being on Twitter at all, I am more than fully happy about having, now, eleven tweets. If you are curious enough, you can find it here.

The Humility Corner. This time I have a deeply meaningful celebration to share. As I was talking with Verene and Uma - the two friends, colleagues, and co-holders of the Nonviolent Global Liberation vision with me - about when and how to expand our circle of providers within the program, Verene said something about it taking years to integrate what she is learning about my work. Without losing a beat, I said: me, too; it's taking me years to integrate the things I am learning. That's when I got the image that captures so deeply the experience of humility I truly aim for: Verene and I are drinking from the same fountain. I am just the one excavating and articulating what I find; it's not mine at all, what I am discovering. Then we all grapple with it, together, as we move closer to the radiant vision that calls to us.

January 2018

These celebrations, mournings and other happenings accompany Miki's January newsletter, "Why do we care about others?"

Web of Support. This time, I am celebrating the totality of the experience of having so much support, the steady stream of it that keeps coming, and the miraculous ways that the offers and the needs can coincide as much as they do. I am excited about the prospect of becoming more systematic about this with Leonie's support, so that my own erratic memory is not the only engine driving this abundance. It's so heartening, and I am so grateful to all who are offering various forms of support.

Sabbatical. As this new year is beginning, I am continuing to plan my gradual shift into even more focus on writing, projects, and providing the foundation for my work to outlive me. I am actively in the process of designing three two-month periods of being in the same place with my sister in 2019. Right now it's looking like these will be in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oakland, CA, and an as-yet-to-be-decided town in Costa Rica. Can you see the enthusiasm and delight in the picture of us doing the planning with our friends in South America?

NVC Academy. Last month I led a mini-intensive course using the principle-based teaching approach for sharing NVC basics. I was very pleased in particular with the last session, when we, together, scratched our heads about how to plan an introduction. It was so clear that planning such an event is an empathic activity: if we want to create something that will be engaging for, say, teenagers, we need to be able to see the world from within their eyes. Surprisingly, it doesn't come so easily, and we worked hard on it. Next month I am starting, again, Responding to the Call of Our Times: A Leadership Coaching Course. It's the first time that I am redoing a program through the NVC Academy. It feels fresh because it's generative, organic, emergent, and responsive to who's there and what's happening within and around us each time. I hope you join us. The first one was really an exceptional experience for all, and I am so grateful to have the NVC Academy to work with.

International Intensive Training (IIT) with a special focus on Power, Privilege, and the Body. It took the training team - Roxy Manning, Jeyanthy Siva, Sarah Peyton, Bob Wentworth, and myself - many moons to make this event happen, and much effort on the part of many people to make it possible for all who wanted to come to attend it. We had about 60 participants from 8 countries on 4 continents. We managed to take substantial steps towards our dream of integrating the needs-based, blame-free, dignity-for-all framework of NVC with a critical understanding about power and privilege, and with the science that helps make sense of how power differences affect our bodies. We emerged with several plans, including creating a version of the BayNVC Leadership Program that's entirely for people of color, as well as enthusiasm for continuing curriculum development. The stories of people - 1/3 of them people of color from around the globe - and what this meant to them continue to nourish my resolve to persist in doing this work that so often brings loneliness with it. For once, we were surrounded by people who cheered us on, and this gives me and all of us a boost to continue.

Free calls. It's an incredible joy to be offering six calls every month (sometimes fewer when I travel) that are available to people without any request for money. There are regularly between 25 and 40 people on these calls, with deep discussions that leave me and others wide-mouthed with awe. How can people who, often, have never even seen each other's faces, speak with such trust and authenticity? How can it be that we keep getting to more and more core layers when it isn't a committed group of the same people every month? There's a core group of people who show up to as many calls as they can, and many others who come here and there. I find these calls some of my best moments of every month, for so many reasons. I am able to challenge the institution of exchange that gives value only to that which is commodified; I get to play with ideas, feelings, and often taboos, with people who want precisely what we do; and I co-create, with people who think with me, challenge themselves, each other, and me, and join with others in taking seriously the challenges of our times and responding with our full being. Click to look at all the offerings. And click to read about the new addition to the calls: once monthly talking about money, exchange, gifting, and whatever else arises as we face the economic underpinnings of our social structures and conditioning.

Passing my work to others. One of the celebrations from the IIT was that there were three sessions in which someone else, Roxy Manning in this case, was sharing with others work that I developed, leaving me free to focus elsewhere. Even as I write this, I know of plans for several people to share Convergent Facilitation with others, and an emerging plan for others to lead a Principle-Based Teaching workshop in Europe. And, most exciting of all, the Nonviolent Global Liberation Apprenticeship Program and Learning Community is just about ready for launching. Click to read the description as it currently stands. 20+ people are already within the program/community working on the design and infrastructure of the program to make it launch-ready. It will literally be announced as soon as it's ready. It's such a delight that the very tools that the program is based on are being used to create the foundation of its own systems and infrastructure, making it a lab in itself.

The Humility Corner. Through the first few months of the process of creating a transition at BayNVC designed to pass on the leadership of the organization and its vision to Margo and Leonie, I learned something new about the dynamics of power. I now know, with much gratitude for my colleagues who engaged with me through discomfort on all our parts, that, when I am in a position of power, expressing concerns and following them with a proposal for change without first connecting with all the needs is likely to register as lack of care and as an act of power-over. As someone who teaches others about how to collaborate across power differences, I was duly humbled and decided to share this with others. I am now ever more keenly sensitized to how much emotional cost there is to the experience of not having power, and how much more is called for on the part of those of us in positions of power in order to create the conditions for true honest engagement and collaboration.

November 2017

These celebrations, mournings and other happenings accompany Miki's November newsletter, " Keeping Our Eyes and Hearts Open."

Sabbatical. The sabbatical works when I am home. Since Sep 30 th, I've been home for only a few days, and the incredibly delicate balance that allows me to function with little to no stress collapses very easily. While I am excited about everything I've been doing on the road, it's not the same as being home and concentrating on writing and creating. This is a piece of clear mourning. The only celebration that I can come up with in this moment is that my travel days are numbered. I have a finite number of locations that I am planning to bring myself to in the coming months, after which point I've already committed myself to an entirely different rhythm and plan for living. I am in the process of working with a group of about 30 people on putting together the infrastructure for an ongoing apprenticeship program that I hope to launch with the new year, at which point I plan to do work in person in only a handful of locations and do all the rest of my work mostly from home. For now, I am inching my way in this direction.

Global Governance. (For those who don't know: I have put together a group from around the world to submit an entry for the competition put on by the Global Challenges Foundation.) With this newsletter, the documents that, together, comprised the submission for this competition are now available for anyone to . In about a month, we will find out if we are one of up to 100 entries selected as semi-finalists from among the more than 2,700 that were submitted (of over 13,000 people who registered to submit). Regardless of whether or not we are selected, we are committed to take practical steps with the ideas that informed the submission.

Responding to the Call of Our Times. The first season of this class officially closed on Sep 29 th. This program surprised everyone, including me. I did not imagine how much coming together, how much shedding of constricting habits, and how much capacity for embracing vision and taking risks in life in service of that vision would happen in eight months of being together. Meanwhile, the plan for next year is already in place: instead of eight months, the program is designed to last ten months, every week. About once a month a guest speaker comes, a feature that was enthusiastically welcomed by the 2017 group, and the rest of the time it's me and the many small faces on a screen. You can check out if this is a fit for you by visiting the course page.

International Intensive Training (IIT) in Chile. My biggest celebration of this period is the trip to South America that revolved around my sister Arnina and me participating in the first IIT in Chile. Over 70 people from all around Latin America and beyond participated in this groundbreaking event. It was an extraordinary treat to see people so eager to learn and spread the teachings, and to do it in Spanish, carrying the spirit and vision of these events as Marshall Rosenberg conceived of them. We were in a unique location that supported our work and connection with each other and with life. Our extended team included four trainers and six assistant trainers, a structure we chose to support the growth of local leaders instead of reliance on others from outside. I loved co-leading with Arnina and being immersed in the culture of Latin America, which is familiar to us from having grown up partly in Argentina and Mexico. Connections were built that we plan to sustain and nurture over time. I was exhausted and well nourished by my days there.

The Humility Corner. The first weekend this month I led a workshop in Rochester on the topic of Working for Transformation without Recreating the Past. Towards the end of Saturday, there was feedback from one participant which led to a full conversation on Sunday: she had felt that people who were more familiar with Nonviolent Communication and with me had more space to speak and more of my attention. As someone committed to attending to group dynamics and power differences, this was definitely surprising and somewhat uncomfortable to hear. It also wasn't the first time to hear such input. Somehow, in the context of what I have started calling being "intentionally naïve", I have not been tracking closely this dimension of people's experience. With this being a workshop for change agents, we focused more on what blocked this person from speaking earlier and making requests. Still, my own lesson is about learning that even though I hold a deep commitment to everyone's needs, I have been less aware of how people might relinquish their own care for their needs if I don't actively and explicitly invite everyone's participation. I hope this time, and writing about it here, will be enough for that to sink in.

September 2017

These celebrations, mournings and other happenings accompany Miki's September newsletter, " Islands of Inspiration in Dark Times. "
Web of Support
Back in December I received the notice about the Global Governance project from four different individuals. I then began to build the web of support that would take on this project with me. It was a bold move for me, because I was clear I already had a template (the governance model from Reweaving Our Human Fabric), and it was more about developing and refining it than creating from scratch.

The emerging group of people that has worked with me on this project spans continents and many countries, including people I didn't know from before. I couldn't possibly name all of them, though I want to single out those who've been the closest collaborators: Elkie Deadman from the Netherlands (originally UK); Uma Lo from the US; Franca Onyibor from Nigeria. More on the project itself below.

For now, I am just marveling at the new connections, the ways people stepped forward to offer conversation, brainstorming, feedback, feedback, feedback, technical support, and just plain companionship and encouragement. Although I was quite adamant I would finish it even if I was the only one, I am well aware it would have been an entirely different year without them.

Sabbatical. I have only celebrations this time. This summer I had two months, July and August, in which I was mostly home, without much client work or intensive teaching until late August. During this time I really got a flavor of what life post-travel is likely to become. In terms of what I have to show for it: my Convergent Facilitation manuscript is now ready along with a book proposal that is soon to be submitted to a potential publisher. The intensive work on the Global Governance project was made possible because of this spaciousness. I participated in other writing projects and materials creation. And I did it all without stress.

Global Governance. (For those who don't know: I have put together a group from around the world to submit an entry for the competition put on by the Global Challenges Foundation.) The editing and feedback phase of the work is now complete, with feedback coming in from so many sources I cannot even count. It's been a continual affirmation of the ideas and the audacity of our approach. We're now in trimming, production, and graphic design mode (only two pages of illustration are allowed by the competition rules.) I am most in celebration about feedback from Ron Ngata, an NVC trainer from New Zealand who is Maori and whose feedback meant the world to me. My sense of integrity is much more solid for having had this perspective to affirm the work. Submission happens later this month, and some time next month I hope to make the documents available.

Responding to the Call of Our Times. The first season of this class is coming to a close at the end of this month. It's been a remarkable adventure for all of us, learning and community and transformation, and much that is unexpected. It's clear to many of us that we want to continue, and I am already in communication with the NVC Academy to see how we can turn this into a year-round class. For now, though, we are about to take a long break until February. Meanwhile, about twelve or thirteen of the participants came to the Art of Facilitation retreat in California, and we celebrated being together in the same room, not just as little squares on a screen, though it's truly amazing how much connection and community can happen with those little squares. I hope you can join us next year, and I trust that information will be available by the next newsletter in November.

Art of Facilitation. This retreat was a long string of celebrations of so many kinds I can't imagine I will remember all of them. I will start with the BayNVC team coming together and participating in the holding and support of the retreat. More on this in a moment. I continue with being again at Quaker Center in the Santa Cruz mountains and eating the most amazing food of Tod Nysether. Then there was the growing sense of true co-creation and learning together day by day, as participants stepped into more and more shaping, design, facilitation, and more. It was also extraordinarily demanding, as Uma Lo, who co-held the retreat with me, and I navigated the very complex territory of attending to issues of power and privilege in our midst even while learning about how to facilitate such challenges. While perhaps not everyone fully embraced the perspective we brought forward, and some people were overwhelmed for a while by how much attention is necessary in order to fully open to the light the anguish and separation that exists underneath the veneer of civility, I am still in awe and delighted. More than anything, by the last full day we had managed to cross over to what so many believe we can just decide to inhabit without doing the work first: we were mostly people together, laughing and crying and learning and being vulnerable and strong together. It was a true experience of Beloved Community. I am also satisfied with how much learning about facilitation, the topic of the retreat, happened as a result of attending to the challenges. May we all learn even more relaxedly how to meet the challenges of our time with grace and courage.

Update on Miki's Match: As of the writing of this newsletter, we have received enough new donations to make the total match of $45,000 for the year. I am grateful to all who have contributed, from the smallest amount to the largest amount. And I am so grateful to Margo Dunlap who's stepped into the role of managing fundraising and partnerships for an invigorating and rich collaboration in getting us here. This match was intended for the whole year, and is fulfilled by September, well before giving season. I would love to imagine that someone reading this will consider stepping in with a significant pledge joining the matching fund energy to seed the giving season. My increased capacity to do the longer term work that I've been engaged with this year is directly related to these funds coming in, and we have an amazing opportunity to create more capacity for the coming years. Even without a matching fund to double your contribution, any amount given, especially as a monthly contribution to the Circle of Support, directly increases this capacity.

Team News. As a continuing part of the transition into an organization that is less and less dependent on me, we are in the process of mapping out our systems, creating a better sense of team, and adding people, both to staff and to board, that will support us in doing the work we are more and more taking on. This is still in process, and more "official" news will likely come in a while. For now, what's important to share is my deep trust in the people I am working with, my growing sense of relaxation, clarity about purpose and direction, and an experience of partnership I haven't had since Kit Miller left in 2009. These are good times.

The Humility Corner. I am continuing to learn, in layers and layers, how much I have been expecting me to compensate for whatever wasn't working. For example, I didn't, in the past, create group agreements, because I was holding myself responsible for attending to everything, and thus, unconsciously, agreements weren't necessary. How I could have not been aware of this for so many years is amazing to me. I am celebrating bringing alignment between my inner self, my organization, how I teach, and what I teach.

July 2017

These celebrations, mournings and other happenings accompany Miki's July newsletter, "Tenderness, Vulnerability, and Mourning as a Response to Patriarchy".

Web of Support. This month I want to honor the work of two individuals who've taken on maintaining my social media presence.

One is Leo Proechel, who was an intern here two years ago and started, on his own initiative, to look after and enhance my Facebook page.

The other is Cleona Lira, who, a few months ago, stepped forward to offer support in managing my twitter and Instagram accounts.

To be clear: except for a very few times that I have asked Leo to post something on Facebook, and one time that I labored to create a tweet (at right) with the stringent requirement of 140 characters or fewer, they are 100% on their own. (Stay tuned for another one soon! And meanwhile you might want to follow the ones Cleona does for me.) It's the most amazing kind of support that I can imagine, because I don't even look at what they do. I don't even know my password on Facebook, that's how far I am personally from social media. And the feedback I get from others is super positive.

Sabbatical. I have both celebration and a mourning here. The celebration is that the sabbatical is yielding the very outcomes I was hoping for in terms of what I produce. In May, for example, I wrote a chapter for a book that's coming out next year to mark the centennial of Mary Parker Follett's The New State, and a major article that connects human evolution, patriarchy, parenting, and global warming. I am currently shopping for where a 30-page academic paper like this could be published. (If you are interested in a condensed set of ideas, I created a comparative table of before, during, and after patriarchy that you can peruse.) I am mourning that even with all that I am doing to set aside this space, more astonishing opportunities and challenges that demand my attention arise, and I remain with a plate larger than I can manage. Then I am celebrating that the infrastructure to attend to all this is coming together more and more, as you will see below. In the end, my biggest celebration of all is that I now have reliable, regular space to engage in intensive intellectual activity, which I now know beyond any shred of doubt that my organism needs in order to thrive.

Overcoming Patriarchy. I am writing this after the 3 rd call on this topic. It remains the most popular of all the free calls. I have a sense of it leaping forward with speed, urgency, and love that take my breath away while at the same time giving me renewed breath and life. The most moving thing that happened on the last call for me was that a man wanted to know how he can learn what he does to make it harder for women to speak, and four women responded to my call and are making themselves available to him for support, education, and feedback. This is a definite step towards joining together in mourning and transformation, exactly what I believe is needed to transcend the legacy of patriarchy with its focus on control and eradication of weakness. Please come join the Overcoming Patriarchy calls, offered monthly for now.

Responding to the Call of Our Times. We are now in the 2 nd half of the course. With 140 people registered, and about 45 coming every week for the calls (not necessarily the same people, though some are amazingly reliable), a community of commitment is now clearly present. Between the weekly coaching that happens with me, and the occasional visits from guest speakers, I am simply in awe of how much transformation, joy, openness to grief, and stepping into power are happening. Exactly what I was hoping for, and much more. It's really not too late to join, and the NVC Academy has just lowered the price again: you can and get access to all the recordings since we started in February. If the cost is no barrier, there's really no reason not to join "because it's too late". It isn't, because there's no sequence of materials, so you would have nothing to catch up with, only yourself.

Snippets from Europe. I am writing this newsletter about 10 days after returning from my annual trip to Europe. This time I was in Poland, Czechia, and Spain. What I am celebrating more than anything is that the local organizers successfully issued invitations to the world that brought into the room people who were there for reasons fully aligned with what I wanted to bring to them. As I am more and more mindful of the numbered days I have as a person in my 60s, this was pure grace. Together, we explored the nuts and bolts and many subtleties of facilitation in Poland; the spiritual and conceptual shifts necessary to work for transformation without recreating the past; and the rigorous practice of Convergent Facilitation in Spain, twice (in Spanish, too!). I am glad for having been there, and for the many seeds planted and others watered into blossom.

Update on Miki's Match: As Margo and Rose are both on vacation, I do not have an exact number to offer. Still, I couldn't wait for another month before you are invited to celebrate with us the magical success of our work this year. Our matching grants of $45,000, which were for the entire year, are nearly matched half-way through the year and only three months from officially being announced. We lack only a few thousand dollars more to complete what seemed near-impossible to me a few months ago. I want to acknowledge all the gifts of this year, from the match donors to the gift of Margo supporting this work; from the smaller donations of $10 each to the largest donation of $25,000 that came in last month. I am in awe. I can't wait for Margo to be back and to discuss the possibility of inviting others to offer additional matching funds as we move into the fall and the end-of-year period. Stay tuned.

Team News. For about 8 years now I've been longing to find ways to step out of explicit or implicit leadership within the BayNVC team. This past two months have seen that longing materialize. During one of our weekly co-working days, at an impromptu lunch meeting, Margo and Rose took in more than ever that I am quite desperate about being involved in fewer and fewer decisions about organizational and administrative aspects of the work. They stepped forward, took charge of a complicated staff transition moment, and are now fully driving the team together. Just before they both went away and while I was in Europe, they envisioned the development of the team, and the results are materializing. They started defining a new position that they plan to announce next month: someone to lead the programmatic aspects of BayNVC, so that I can shed this responsibility, too, and focus more and more efficiently on what only I can do. Stay tuned for a job announcement coming soon. In parallel, we became clear on my own needs for support, and Rebecca Sutton, who's been supporting my work as a personal assistant and strategic advisor behind the scenes, and who is also my housemate, is now taking more responsibility and stepping forward to manage my schedule, my to do lists, and the overall shape of my work. I am extraordinarily happy for this development.

The Humility Corner. I am adding this as a permanent section so I can track and share transparently the least glamorous aspects of my trajectory. These past two months I became aware of two elements that I now am giving more of my attention to. One is that in my zeal to take 100% responsibility for everything, I also have acted as a bit of "Prozac", plugging holes in unsustainable ways, and thereby preventing feedback from showing up in the form of organizational chaos in several projects I've been involved with. The other is that I have not had a solid practice for reliably recharging myself outside of the times when I absolutely need to be "on". The two are related: I have acted with some unconscious hubris, and it's time for me to honor my limits more fully and attend to them with love.

May 2017

These celebrations, mournings and other happenings accompanied Miki's May newsletter.

Sabbatical. I have both celebration and a mourning here. I am celebrating that I continue to find ways to make writing and certain projects a core priority. I am celebrating that the rest of the work I am doing these days is very much aligned with core mission, as you will see below. And I am mourning that at present, as of the writing of this newsletter, I am definitely in a moment of stress about juggling all that's on my plate. I was really hoping for that not to be the case this year. It's been a lot less than in the past, and, still, it's work in progress. I treasure having this space of celebrations and mournings that serves the purpose of keeping me honest and knowing what I need to do to increase my capacity in this area.

White Privilege Conference. Last month I co-presented with Victor Lewis at the White Privilege Conference which was held this year in Kansas City, Missouri. I had never before been in an 1,800 people strong, multicultural group of people where there was no effort needed to have a shared agreement that white privilege, and privilege more generally, are vital topics for conversation and, more importantly, action. The sense of relief about that was palpable to me even in the midst of the anguish about how massive the challenges we're facing are. I continue to offer my twice monthly Facing Privilege calls.

Overcoming Patriarchy. After years of subsuming my feminism under my commitment to NVC, my deep concerns about patriarchy as a system that feeds all that I find troubling have recently increased. I finally decided to start holding monthly calls in this area in addition to the others I have. On May 7 th, we had our first call. I am celebrating that it happened; that I was present with my nervousness about it; that some 35 people attended; that we had lively conversation on multiple topics ranging from the historical to the most practical tips about how to lead as a woman; and that the thread of clarity and presence didn't leave me for the duration, even in a challenging moment. I am now definitely committed to having the Overcoming Patriarchy calls on a monthly basis. Come check it out.

Responding to the Call of Our Times. The joy of this course continues. Most recently, some people within the course are not satisfied with its format while most are. Instead of either having me change what I do and do something I and most don't want, or simply respond with "too bad, this is how it is", the group is taking on finding a solution that works better for everyone. The learning is happening in the area I most want to be effective in enhancing: people's capacity to step into holding and caring for the whole. In case you've missed it, you can still join, and you will receive the recordings of all previous classes. Because this is not sequential, and there is no curriculum other than what arises, there is no reason not to join later.

Organizational Work. I still remember the first time, in 2000, of walking into an organizational setting - a company where I had worked years before - to offer something of what I've learned through NVC. Fast forward to this year, I experience a sweet alignment between what I most want to offer and the organizational clients I am working with this year. In all cases, the possibility of enhancing function such that all systems are supporting effective work for purpose in alignment with values is the core of what we focus on. One client in particular is a huge joy to work with, because they are taking full ownership of the process, doing their internal work with only coaching and guidance from me as needed. I feel super well used and in total integrity in all my organizational endeavors of this year.

March 2017

These celebrations, mournings and other happenings accompany Miki's March newsletter. The newsletter is currently going out every two months.

Sabbatical. A lot of people remain confused about what I mean by sabbatical. How can it be a sabbatical when I am doing so much? So I want to clarify again and to celebrate what is happening. The purpose of the sabbatical is not for me to rest. It's for me to shift the nature and focus of what I do, to accomplish three overlapping goals: to write much more, to stay even closer to my core mission, and to be able to follow my own rhythm with far less effort and responsibility. ALL of it is happening. Writing is pouring out of me, and the more it comes, the more I want to write. There isn't anything I have planned for this year that is a stretch in terms of effort, mission, or responsibility. And I have been keeping the focus on two days a week in which I am not accountable to anyone. I have always known that unstructured time is my most productive. Now I have twice as much as previously: two days every week. My intention is to continue in this way indefinitely. May I have the good fortune to manage to set things up to make that work.

Convergent Facilitation (CF) Celebrations. My biggest excitement in this moment regarding CF is that it is now interwoven with two other core teaching frames. It means I have a clear frame for what I am happy to teach when I go places, and it means CF is well integrated into my work with change agents and my work on collaboration in the workplace. This year I am offering CF as a standalone workshop only four times, and only one of them is in English: Chicago, Nov 11-13. One in Israel, in Hebrew: Apr 3-4, and two in Spain: Jun 23-25 in Madrid, and Jun 26-29 in Barcelona. I am also integrating it into two facilitation retreats, into a workshop in Czechia on Working for Transformation without Recreating the Past, and into the two CNVC International Intensive Trainings that I am participating in this year. Next year, CF goes to India, Japan, China, Mexico, Brazil, back to the UK and Poland, and Houston. In 2019, I am thinking of going to Colombia and to Nigeria.

Beyond that, I am beginning to pass CF to others, starting with Roxy Manning taking over teaching CF locally in Oakland, July 22, and December 11-12. If you can possibly do it, I think you're in for a treat.

Stay tuned for details on all of these.

Convergent Facilitation (CF) Mournings. At the same time as all these celebrations, I am also mourning two things about CF. One is that despite so many promising moments and connections, there hasn't been a second major project. I long for an opportunity to demonstrate in other contexts how much of a breakthrough CF can provide. In these times, especially, I see CF as a key process and capacity to support humanity, and without more projects, I don't know how to make it known. The other is that the book project is taking longer than I had imagined to bring to a level of bringing it to a publisher. I hope very much to be able to offer a celebration in this next time.

Leveraging Your Influence (LYI). The first LYI event led by others is now scheduled. Aya Caspi, friend and LYI veteran, is joining together with Jihan McDonald to offer an LYI day in May. The LYI East team is surveying the people who've been to previous LYI events to see what and when they would offer. People in Europe are still in the early discussion time. And, overall, it's moving forward. Without my involvement. All that's on my plate is to support, coach, update materials, tweak the curriculum, receive feedback, and mostly focus elsewhere. I am so grateful to see this transition unfolding.

Global Governance. The group I invited has come together, and we are deeply committed to submitting an entry for the competition put on by the Global Challenges Foundation. Two of the most exciting principles we've come up with so far both exist in the realm of paradox which I love. One is that we want our design to allow both for divergence and convergence in group process. The other is that in order for any global governance system to work, it must work for both ends of the power spectrum: both the people with unimaginable power and those without any say must somehow be served by it and embrace it. That's the true challenge we are facing: how to make it work for all, truly all. Working with the smaller group that's the most committed is becoming a precious joy as we aim to use our own process in part as a way to live and demonstrate what we are designing.

New Future Process. This is likely my last celebration about NFP for a while. The two and half year process has now moved into its final phase - implementation - after all the parties that have been involved so far have accepted the plan that we created. An Implementation Council is now operating and facing the immense task of operationalizing, prioritizing, and finding ways of funding all the transitions and innovation. In keeping with my sabbatical, I have resigned from the NFP. It's been a focus that consumed a lot of energy, and it wasn't consistent with my new focus. I do fully anticipate joining the new organization when it reaches a stage of being joinable. If you want to follow what's happening, you can find updates on the CNVC website.

Responding to the Call of Our Times. This year, my NVC Academy course is unlike any I've done before. Neither the NVC Academy nor I had any idea how it would unfold, since it was so experimental: no curriculum, no specific agenda, no careful planning. Instead, it's me, on screen with participants, responding in real time to all the challenges everyone has in finding their best self and moving outward from their own personal lives. So far, more than 130 people have signed up to the class, and it's the first major class I am doing on Zoom rather than Maestro, which means we all get to see each other on the screen. It's been so joyful, I come every week with utter joy to the next class. In case you've missed it, you can still join, and you will receive the recordings of all previous classes.

Support for the Sabbatical. Last time I shared with you that we hired Margo Dunlap to do fundraising and development work. Margo has been on a steep learning curve: about the unusual relationships we have with supporters, about the work we do, and about my very uncommon approach to money. Our shared goal is to create a foundation for my continued ability to contribute in the ways that most utilize my vision, passion, and capacities. Over time, I want to increase my writing time and the free calls more and more, and Margo will be in touch soon. Meanwhile, I wanted to celebrate that in parallel with her coming on board, we are receiving commitments to matching grants, and thus the vision of the long term sabbatical is emerging as entirely possible. Stay tuned for more soon.

Personal Mourning. When my beloved sister Inbal died in 2014, I told all my friends that I had to have a moratorium on loved ones dying. I am grateful to have had a full two and half years before my next loss. Merijane Block (who participated in BayNVC's Leadership Program in 2005) was a dear and close friend, a radiant lover of life and people, with wisdom and grace that nurtured all her many friends. She faced metastatic breast cancer for 26 years, losing mobility towards the end, and never losing her bright light, even when she was fully in deep discouragement about her life. I found solace in her capacity to meet me in looking at life and death unsparingly and with warmth. She died of a reaction to a medication, without the opportunity to say goodbye, surrounded by love to the end.
This month's credits, not including the portraits: From top: 1) "Spring" by Ardu (CC BY-NC 2.0); 2) Musco Twilight XII by Phil Roeder (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0); 3) Mandels 2 by Mark Carter (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). All 3 are from Flickr.
January 2017

These celebrations, mournings and other happenings accompany Miki's January newsletter. Miki did not send out a newsletter in October.

Web of Support. My celebration this time goes to the people who organized a last minute Convergent Facilitation training for me in Bristol, England, and then supported me while I was there. Sophie Docker took upon herself an impossible task of making this training happen with less than 2 months notice, during the holiday season, and without any assurance that there would be any income. She pulled it off and I couldn't imagine a more proactive, flexible, and cheerful organizer. Dorota Godby opened her home to me, and took care of every little detail, including cooking all my meals with such gentle joy that I was in tears. I would go back there in a heartbeat, and, indeed, Sophie is cooking up some plans for 2018.

New development person hired. This is an unofficial welcome to Margo Dunlap who is joining the Fearless Heart team. This is the very first time in our entire existence as a non-profit starting in 2005 that we have a person entirely dedicated to fundraising and development. Stay tuned for more soon. I am super happy this is happening.

Convergent Facilitation (CF). 2016 was a big year for Convergent Facilitation. I conducted workshops in multiple locations in the US, in Europe, and in Israel. I solidified my plans for making CF outlive me, and, as part of that plan, I wrote the manuscript for the CF book. And I hired Aimee to support making these plans a reality. In 2017 we are focusing on finding a publisher for the book and on building the "tribe." The response to CF continues to be overwhelmingly positive, and I am now in early conversations about two possible international projects that might help with putting CF on the map way more visibly.

CF in the movies... When I was in Paris, teaching CF, the team of the Big Dream, the movie being made about NVC and its social change applications, filmed a simulation of a real issue. This was about a parent-run preschool that is struggling to decide whether or not to adopt an organic standard for the meat they purchase. I felt entirely transported to another reality while the circle met and we converted one comment after another into a list of principles that everyone in the group agreed to. The person whose situation it was felt the magic, too, and was eager to take it back to the school. Although the movie is not likely to be finished for a couple of years, I am utterly pleased that this is now captured.

Leveraging Your Influence (LYI). I am celebrating that my personal involvement in LYI is complete. LYI plans are in the making for both Europe and the US, and news of this will come when they are ready. For now, I am just delighted to notice that letting go of everything was a bit scary, and now I am in full trust that this body of knowledge and practice will continue to move forward. I am even more at peace knowing that Uma Lo is going to take on managing LYI. Uma has been involved with LYI almost from the start as part of the East Coast organizing and design team, and who has been instrumental in getting me to articulate and prioritize a focus on power and privilege at LYI and beyond.

Global Governance. When four different people suggest that I submit an entry for a major prize, I know it's time to pay attention. This prize was announced by the Global Challenges Foundation. It's up to $5,000,000, and the invitation is to design a new global governance model to replace the UN, since the UN is inadequate to the task of attending to the major issues that humanity is facing. I think I've been waiting for this opportunity, without consciously knowing it, since I was five and began thinking of bringing together the leaders of all the world's countries to convince them to stop war. I have gathered together a group of people from a number of countries to grapple with the challenge and to see what we can come up with in the very few months that are available to us. It's coming up just as the New Future Process is winding down for me, and seems entirely aligned with where I see myself wanting to contribute. What a miracle.

Free calls. I am now beginning the 4 th year of my offering free conference calls. These calls have consistently been some of my favorite ways of sharing my work with the world. There are many people who are quite regular, so that a sense of community and mutual familiarity has developed. We delve together into everything, without taboo topics, with gentleness and love towards everyone's experience, and a fierce and loving commitment to challenge, together, our frames for making sense of our experiences and the world. I offer five free calls every month except when my travel schedule makes it impossible. Two of them are dedicated to the topic of facing privilege, which to me is one of the major ways that we can transcend many current blocks in our ability to move forward together. Two of them follow my Fearless Heart blog and related topics, and one is for people who are sharing NVC with others. I just love making these opportunities available to anyone who has access to the internet or a phone line, anywhere in the world (schedules vary to accommodate multiple time zones).

New Future Process. When a letter from the CNVC board came to the New Future Process indicating that they wanted massive changes in what we were producing before they would feel in integrity to move forward, some of us were ready to throw in the towel. After committing ourselves to meet the board with empathy, open-heartedness, curiosity, and courage, we arrived in Albuquerque for a two-day meeting that went as well as any meeting I've ever attended, especially when starting in conflict and mistrust. Key to the success was our small team creating a thick web of mutual support amongst us such that none of us feared being alone during the meeting. We then attended to the relationship and our respective emotional experiences before looking at content. Thus it was that when we got to actually looking at the letter, we were already fully together. We were able to find solutions to all of their concerns, and we are moving forward with their blessing. This, at this time of chaos and disintegration, is nurturing my hope that we humans can solve problems when we come together and look for practical solutions that work for all of us.

Support for the Sabbatical. I cannot truly find words for describing the experience of having more and more people step up and find ways of supporting my plans to reduce my income generating activities so I can have more focus on writing, creative projects, and pure giving. This includes a number of people who joined the Circle of Support, including a new major donor committing $500 a month, other one-time donors ranging from a few dozen to $13,000, and two donors who are committing to a very significant matching grant as soon as we launch our campaign designed to make the new focus of a sabbatical an ongoing sustainable reality. Thank you thank you to all who have faith in what I and the Fearless Heart team are doing.

For archived newsletters, celebrations and mournings from 2014 to 2016, please go to this page.

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Miki's Newsletters, Celebrations & Mournings

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Miki has linked to this page from every newsletter since March 2014, to add whatever celebrations and mournings didn't fit in the newsletter. You can get to the newsletters through the links...

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I need to email a paragraph about what I need support on/with this Sunday to Verene Nicholas who has kindly offered to provide a coaching session and who works on behalf of the NGL community. I have scheduled a VC meeting with her for Friday 23rd NOV @ 3pm via Zoom. There's a possibility NGL members from the US might tune in. I'm currently not a member; I went to one of Verene's workshops over summer in Glasgow and now want to know more about non-violent communication. Particularly, how I can transfer this language into my social art practice when it comes to working with other ppl in the community. And also when working and communicating about sensitive and difficult topics, negotiating parameters, and healthy debating admist complex areas in discussions within the institutions.

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About Verene

I work at the juncture of personal/inner and collective/structural change and alternatively play a coaching, training, consulting or facilitative role depending on context. All the projects I work on act as prototypes of what it takes to create collaboration and a nonviolent future. I am based in Scotland. Some of my work is online and international. I like most of all being and working with real people in real places.To know more about me, click here.

"At a time when I was driven to despair in navigating deeply challenging organisational dynamics, Verene's contribution helped me to re-access inner resources that had become chronically unavailable. The experience of how much more available I became as a result, and the transformative impact arising from improved relationships, demonstrated for me how much we underestimate the amount of inner capacity it takes to inhabit roles of leadership and responsibility with soul and integrity."
Gehan Macleod, Director, The Galgael Trust

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I work at the juncture of personal/inner and collective/structural change and alternatively play a coaching, training, consulting or facilitative role depending on context. All the projects I work on act as prototypes of what it takes to create collaboration and a nonviolent future. I am based in Scotland.

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"Surrealism was underneath my skin." Currently, it's become a sub-reality not to be ignored entirely but also not to be taken too seriously either. It's a question of creative positioning. For the imagined to become real is the awakened dream: cultural revolution in fruition, a devoted actioning to take place, and I am fully awake actioning away @ 3.40 am.   

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"Surrealism was underneath my skin." Currently, it's become a sub-reality not to be ignored entirely but also not to be taken too seriously either. It's a question of creative positioning. For the imagined to become real is the awakened dream: cultural revolution in fruition, a devoted actioning to take place, and I am fully awake actioning away @ 3.40 am.   

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During reading week and specifically after speaking with Jen (my study buddy )over the phone, I freaked out knowing fully well I had to break up with my affiliation with my surrealist peers; those artists who have long been gone and the surrealists from all around the world, who openly share their work in the Global FB Surrealists group. Immediately I get to envisage their desires, hopes and fears, it's been daily pleasure of mine for some time. After being an underground surrealist for 20 years bound to psyche interaction I realised not so much that I must leave surrealism behind to become more socially engaged or attuned to the social art practice realm but rather simply change the image I had of my position within  the infinite movement itself. I no longer identify totally as a surrealist anymore  because that situated loss has come about due to the formation of new humanistic bonds by being introduced to new peers with their own interests. Plus what's most intriguing is their actual demeanour. Instead of ditching the surrealist school of thought altogether, I have through the awakening dream discovered a social collective conscious which was previously withheld unconscious.

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Image: The Bolsheviks

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Writer Laurie Stone answers my post on FB about artists struggle. 

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Writer Laurie Stone answers my post on FB about artists struggle. 

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"It is a thing of beauty when people gather to work hard and fall in love with each other's voices simply for the joy of it. "

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The more I move, the more I read. The more I read, the more I am moved.

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The more I move, the more I read. The more I read, the more I am moved.

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Time to get moving!

P.S I miss "teaching", or rather, learning from little ones.

Though over the past few months I'm more drawn to working with older teens and young adults. I just think throughout that transition from intense adolescence and forming identity to jumping in at the deep end into over pressurised adulthood, where the individual is literally thrown into the world with no/little support isn't fair. An opportunity has come up to mentor a young person. I want to but a) how b) what can I do plus am I responsible enough? c) my resources i.e capacity: energy and time i'm limited now until next year anyway. I'd spread myself out too thinly I reckon if I take on anymore change/challenges.

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Today's kids sit more than ever. Babies spend hours confined in car seats and carriers rather than crawling, toddling, or being carried. As they get older their days are often heavily scheduled between educational activities and organized events. Children have 25 percent less time for free play than they did a generation ago, and that's before factoring in distractions like TV or video games.

Left to their own devices, children move. They hold hands and whirl in a circle till they fall down laughing. They beg to take part in interesting tasks with adults. They want to face challenges and try again after making mistakes. They climb, dig, and run. When they're tired they like to be rocked or snuggled. Stifling these full body needs actually impairs their ability to learn.

We know that our little ones walk and talk on their own timetables. No rewards or punishments are necessary to "teach" them. Yet children are expected to read, write and spell starting at five and six years old as if they develop the same way at the same time. Academics are pushed on young children with the assumption this will make them better students. This approach is not only unnecessary, it may be contributing to problems such as learning disorders, attention deficits, and long term stress.

Studies contrasting reading instruction at age five compared to instruction at age seven find earlier lessons may damage reading development. By the time children reach the age of 11, students who were instructed earlier show poorer text comprehension and less positive attitudes toward reading than children whose instruction started later.

Literacy isn't easy. It requires children to decode shapes into sounds and words, to remember these words correctly in written and spoken form, and to understand their meaning. Allowing reading to develop naturally or teaching it later tends to create eager, lifelong readers. Why?

Children pushed to read early (not those who naturally pick it up) tend to rely on right brain processes because that area matures more quickly. These early readers are likely to guess at unknown words using clues such as appearance, context, beginning and ending letters. Their main tactic is memorizing sight words. These are valuable methods but not a balanced approach to reading. Such children may quickly tire after reading short passages or read smoothly but have difficulty deriving meaning from what they read. The procedure they use to decode words can make the content hard to comprehend. These reading problems can persist.

On the other hand, children benefit when they learn to read naturally or are taught later. That's because, as the left brain matures and the pathway between both hemispheres develops, it becomes easier for them to sound out words, to visualize meanings, and mentally tinker with abstractions. They memorize short sight words but sound out longer words, an approach that is less taxing. As they incorporate more words into their reading vocabulary they more easily picture and understand what they are reading.

In order for children to read, write and spell they must be developmentally ready. Some are ready at the age of four or five, some not for many years later. This readiness includes complex neurological pathways and kinesthetic awareness. It includes the proprioceptive sense developed through sensory receptors in the muscles, joints, and tendons: a form of maturation essential for a physical sense of self (even essential for learning how to modulate one's voice and to hold objects carefully).

Such readiness isn't created by workbooks or computer programs. It's the result of brain maturation as well as rich experiences found in bodily sensation and movement.

These experiences happen as children play and work, particularly in ways that cross the midline. They includes expansive movements such as climbing, jumping, digging, swimming, playing hopscotch and catch, riding bikes, sweeping, running. They also include fine movements such as chopping vegetables, drawing, building, playing rhyming and clapping games, using scissors, and playing in sand. And of course there's the essential growth that comes from snuggling, listening to stories, singing, trying new tastes, enjoying make believe. Children are drawn to such experiences. Without them, they won't have a strong foundation for learning.

These activities stimulate the child's brain to develop new neural pathways. Such activities also build confidence, smooth sensory processing, and create a bank of direct experience that helps the child visualize abstract concepts. Well-intended adults may think a good use of a rainy afternoon is a long car ride to an educational exhibit. A young child is likely to derive more developmental value (and fun) from stomping in puddles and digging in mud followed by play time in the tub.

There are many other factors contributing to reading readiness. Perhaps most important is a supportive family life where play, reading, and conversation are an enjoyable part of each day. But it helps to remember that young children want to participate in the purposeful work of making meals, fixing what's broken, and planting the garden. They also need free time without the built-in entertainment of specialized toys, television, or video games. Their development is cued to movement. These bodily experiences prepare children for the magic found when shapes become words, words become stories, and they become readers.

Portions of the post excerpted from Free Range Learning.

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Reading Readiness Has To Do With The Body

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Movement is a key factor in reading readiness.

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My classmates they are more than my friends they are my supporters, my critics. Or else I evaporate.

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Looking @ Nicholas Bourriaud again thinking i'll buy the book 'relational ""... then I came across something far more appealing:

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Looking @ Nicholas Bourriaud again thinking i'll buy the book 'relational ""... then I came across something far more appealing:

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subject relations: unconscious experience and relational psychoanalysis (aesthetics in music; 6)

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Subject Relations: Unconscious Experience and Relational Psychoanalysis (Aesthetics in Music; 6)

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Subject Relations: Unconscious Experience and Relational Psychoanalysis (Aesthetics in Music; 6) eBook: Naomi G . Rucker, Karen L. Lombardi: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

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Community meeting @ the Spectrum Centre 4 end of NOV, 26/11/2018 15:00

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Community meeting @ the Spectrum Centre 4 end of NOV, 26/11/2018 15:00

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I sent an email out 6 days ago with a form I had completed attached to enquire about provisionally booking the community theatre. I rang them today to follow up, and literally arranged a meeting with Lisa & Anna within minutes. At the meeting I will present my 'pigeon post' project for feedback in order to gauge suitability in relation to folk who use the centre. Then afterwards there will be time 4 Q&As. I will need to co-create the logistics for all this. Also, i'm amazed how sometimes a phone call suffices pretty well. I think email is perhaps becoming a bit outdated now. People need to hear others' voices clearly & form a response by igniting their own.

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On ETHICS. Btw I'm cheating by reposting my FB posts. It's easier to write in front of an "audience" they see my flaws in crafting something in real time. They seem to want to chip in too when they can, and this motivates/grounds me. I find the opening process creates a better sense of direction overall. 

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On ETHICS. Btw I'm cheating by reposting my FB posts. It's easier to write in front of an "audience" they see my flaws in crafting something in real time. They seem to want to chip in too when they can, and this motivates/grounds me. I find the opening process creates a better sense of direction overall. 

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Art isn't religion. As an artist it's not my job to be concerned with morals. Admittedly i can come across sometimes as "preachy". Ethics though is at the centre of the relationships I form within a conversational framework which changes all the time, even daily. I speak to ppl in public and on most occasions ppl talk to me to what appears to be "off the cuff". I dnt know a lot of the ppl i'm talking with very well at all but the ethics primarily focuses on navigation via participation by two bodies being and doing together; including the opportunity to leave at any point.
From my position my language communicates my own boundaries and intentionally gives space for understanding that each person i engage with is treated as an individual who i can learn from. This is unconditional from the very beginning, otherwise interaction is forced. The writing continues the learning process by means of reflection and imagination.
Individuals go from being to becoming in a shared dialogue which I would suggest is shared ownership of creative output and context. However, when someone asks me to comment on such and such beliefs that's where i draw the line and say i cant comment coz otherwise conversations are just an argument or agreement of conformity so there's no space for key development of persons, another reason why ethics need to be fluid and change moment to moment. The main thing is to be aware of this and accountable for any errors needing to be addressed and followed up by a thorough risk assessment.

I wish politicians did risk assessments.

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Notes on Social Art Summit tuned  in Live to panel discussion. 

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Notes on Social Art Summit tuned  in Live to panel discussion. 

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Just finished watching the socially engaged art in higher education lab at the Social Art Summit taken place at Site gallery in Sheffield. The panel talking about the complications and challenges within the institutions and the making of new courses on the subject. Really glad I got to tune in live online. The open discussion and questions from people working within institutions put many of my anxieties about assessment, input and output and structure at bay for now.

My favourite comments from the panel about socially engaged practice were:
It is not made up as you go along necessarily it does have a history. It's been happening since the neolithic cave times throughout social endeavour and collaboration. This is what made art, religion, cinema. What's important is what makes it relevant today the social context, social society . What society are we creating?

It is a deeper practice than public art , community art. It's not just about art.

The context is everything. Interrogate the space we are in because otherwise people put on ppl thinking the transformation has to happen "out there" instead of actual transformation "here". What goes in the glass and what surrounds the glass, why is/place the glass here? -- these range of practices work after a long time , it is like a screwdriver unscrewing the screws.

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I'm struggling to put the two together. I did before in 2007-10.
There's something I can't grasp within established institutions. On one hand, I'm grateful art is acknowledged as actual intelligence at a higher level-- learning on a continuum unlike in school where it is either discounted altogether or is valued only as an extra curricular subject. Art being taken seriously as a profession is still laughable today probably more than it was in the past, though, it was what my old peers believed in. In fact it's what we dreamed of: to work in the 'real world' doing what we love best, which of course involves others and revolution on a large or relatively small scale; it doesn't matter which we were determined to work through our failures. To fail was to achieve success and autonomy. On the other hand art practice or learning dependent on or within the institution i.e uni, gallery, council, art market, becomes a hoax. I've decided my position is a) no longer to be 'cherry' about being an artist regardless of situation, circumstances or status, and b), to be interdependent in forming relations with the institution. Never a conformist, I'M AGONISING with this framework of expectations, deadlines and 'what to do lists' here. However, if the institutions don't shift their power to everyday people and affect life in the present day, how else will both worlds ever come together. Thus the power of  'knowledge' remains imperialistic.
I need to keep going regardless of my split mind about art being institutionalised. And it's certainly time to take action.

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I downloaded the free relational aesthetics pdf online and surprisingly found another book by him which is more interesting because it mentions psychoanalysis.

'Author of the influential Relational Aesthetics examines the dynamics of ideology

Nicolas Bourriaud is a leading theorist and art curator. Here he looks to the future of art as a place to tackle the excluded, the disposable, and waste—the exform.

He argues that the great theoretical battles to understand the present will be fought in the realms of ideology, psychoanalysis and art and a “realist” theory and practice must begin by uncovering the mechanisms that create the distinctions between the productive and the unproductive, the assimilable and the inassimilable, and the includ-ed and the excluded.

To do this we must go back to one of the greatest theorists of ideology, Althusser, and examine how ideology conditions political discourse in ways that normalize cultural, racial and economic practices of exclusion.'