Building Global Grassroots Democracy — Lessons from Collaboration Incubator
How might we build global grassroots democracy that enables us to create a future that nurtures us and the planet?
This compelling vision brought together a group of diverse artists, designers, community builders, social scientists, healers, teachers and entrepreneurs, to gather together at the Dream Farm Commons, a beautiful artist run exhibition and project space in downtown Oakland, California.
At a time when the notion of democracy itself seems to be under siege at a global scale, I was intrigued and drawn to join this gathering to rethink democracy as a bottom-up grassroots movement.
The intense 3 day “Collaboration Incubator” facilitated by Manuela Bosch, Vanilla Way Network, offered a fresh new way of approaching democracy-building, rooted in generative-based frameworks such as Theory U, Social Presencing Theater and Dragon Dreaming, weaving intuition, activism and embodiment work to envision and co-create desired futures to navigate complex challenges at hand. This was one of several Incubators that have taken place already and will continue to be offered in 2019 (see end of post for more info).
Several key themes emerged that appear to be essential building blocks for grass-roots democracy building — connecting with the deeply personal, building trust and relationships for deeper and more intuitive context sharing, and connecting with place-based hubs for local actions.
I found the practice of exploring my own inner journey and building collective trust as an essential element before collective vision setting, and is something that is frequently overlooked by many social change agendas. The following describes some techniques for using these building blocks to create a sacred container — a “generative holding space” for activating and manifesting our highest collective potential as movement builders and social change agents.
Building a practice for deeply personal inner awareness
In his writing on “Three Stages of Global Movement Building”, Otto Scharmer, founder of the Presencing Institute, and author of Theory U, refers to the importance of embracing the personal practice of paying “attention to your attention” by activating our individual awareness on a higher level and making sure that our “attention is aligned with our intentions”.
In a similar way, we began the Collaboration Incubator by tuning into ourselves through check-ins on our physical, mental, emotional and spiritual well-being. This allowed us to connect to our deepest source, and reach the state that Scharmer calls “presencing” (“presence” and “sensing”). As part of our practice for on-going deeply personal inner awareness, we designed and used an emotional check-in chart that allowed us to regularly reflect upon and document our feelings throughout the 3 days of the workshop. We also used personal video diaries as a way to check-in and check-out during each day of the workshop. This became an intimate practice that allowed us to reflect, collect our thoughts, and ground ourselves throughout the duration of the workshop, and quickly helped us gain a baseline understanding of where we are at as individuals and as a collective group.
Storytelling and Building Trust
This was one of the most essential components of the gathering, and without taking the time to build trust through the numerous activities, it would have been challenging to create something meaningful.
Otto Scharmer teaches us about the importance of creating a generative holding space:
“All profound change emerges from community, from a holding space. A generative holding space is a social field that embodies and strengthens the qualities of the open mind, open heart, and open will.”
In the Collaboration Incubator, we used tools such as Ontological Design, Social Presencing Theater and other embodiment exercises to connect at a deeper level. We also prepared and shared food together, sat in a circle and openly shared what was on our minds, and played fun games during breaks — these ancient true and tried approaches to relationship building are truly effective.
Ontological Design Reflections — What We Design, Designs Us.
Storytelling and intention setting is a powerful way to deeply connect a group of people meeting for the first time. We used the methodology of Ontological Design, based on the principle that as we humans design our world, our world acts back on us and designs us. We had the opportunity to reflect on and share very personal stories of both our design origins and design intentions. At the end of our stories, we were asked to elaborate on key points by being asked “Why?” 3 times to help both the listeners and the storytellers go into a deeper inner place and recognize more profound truths about ourselves.
For me personally, this was a chance to reflect on my own upbringing and life journey — immigrating to a country without speaking the native language, being seen as “the other” during formative years of my life, and learning to adapt at a young age (that which designed me) and to hone into the key elements that really shaped who I am today — advocating for social change, empowering others who may not have a voice, and community organizing (that which I am designing).
Intent vs Impact
As we forge ahead in building movements, it is important to differentiate and hold awareness of our desired intent vs actual impact by being mindful of the elements that have shaped our individual realities, and how these may differ from others’ realities. We may each have different filters through which we understand the world around us, and not acknowledging this could lead to misunderstandings or even conflicts throughout our collaborations. We could unintentionally inflict negative impact on others through our interactions. This is where tools like on-going check-ins, setting ground rules and creating space for people to signal to others when something is wrong when they are triggered.
A key lesson for me was we have agency on the kind of impact we have on others at all times, and we also have agency to take a breath, pause, and let the individual or group know that something that was said or done may be unsettling. This is an opportunity to practice healing our individual and collective wounds, and through that, continue to deepen our relationships.
Many Levels of Trust
Trust is contextual and is on a gradient, with several possible levels that can be experienced at various times. It is vital to understand the context that others are operating in when it comes to levels of trust, and not make assumptions about that context.
- The lowest level of trust is experienced during on-going feeling of lack of safety. For instance, when leaving home feels threatening, and you are in danger of being hurt, as experienced by people living in chronic states of danger;
- The next level is feeling that perhaps you could be ok, but are on the lookout for danger — a feeling that women can experience when walking home late at night;
- The Common Life trust is where individuals feel safe enough to have a superficial conversation and get along, but we don’t really know each other. Many workplaces operate at this level of trust;
- Befriending others and connecting on our humanity is the next level, this is when we start seeing each other and sharing more intimate moments and stories
- Finally, when we can be completely vulnerable and start sharing trauma and things we are ashamed about, is when we are at the deepest level of trust.
I believe it is with the most intimate and vulnerable level of trust, where we need to be able to get to in order to build effective social movements and unpack our collective shames and traumas. Therefore, it is key to create a safe container for collaboration. Building trust takes time. It’s vital to get to know each other’s boundaries and needs, which takes time and conscious and intentional efforts. This can be done through storytelling, challenging assumptions and creating safe spaces where people can feel free to voice their concerns, and those would be dealt with in real time.
Non-verbal communication and embodiment to connect at an intuitive level
Embodiment work for deeper empathy building became an essential pathway to deepen our self-awareness and practice storytelling. We practiced embodiment using Social Presencing Theater — developed by Arawana Hayashi at the Presencing Institute. This was a new way of relating, interacting and creating which allowed us to connect with our deeper more intuitive centers of knowing and being.
We practiced the “Stuck” exercise, identifying a place in our lives where we feel stuck and helpless, and then physically embodied this “stuck” situation. We then shared with each other what we are witnessing from others’ stuck situations, and provided guidance on how to shift our physical bodies to get “unstuck”. Going through this deep embodiment process helped us quieten our minds and instead of cognitively analyzing the situation, actually embody the situation.
I was struck by how much our bodies are windows into our emotions and can tell very powerful stories of what’s going on without using words. This powerful technique can be used for movement building and activism, education, and even business and strategy.
Visioning and Taking Action — Dragon Dreaming
Finally, after spending time building trust, sharing stories, and building shared language, we began exploring the definition of global distributed democracy and creating our vision for our desired futures. We used a powerful tool, introduced to us by Manuela, called Dragon Dreaming.
Dragon Dreaming is a systemic design process and meta framework built upon three principles of personal growth; community building; and service to the Earth.
It is based on the notion that every project starts with the dream of a single person. But because most people do not share their dreams, many projects are stuck. Dragon Dreaming facilitator asks a question:
“What would this project have to be like that afterward you can say, you could not have spent your time in any better way?“
Everyone in the room has a chance to share their personal dream without any critique from others for as many rounds as needed. This vision is then read back to those present in the past tense, as if the vision has already come to pass. Once this stage is completed, there is a celebration stage to take the time to honor and acknowledge and celebrate our dreams. After this, the plan for action is developed. In the workshop, we shared our individual needs and existing resources and looked for ways to align our existing projects with our collective dreams and energies.
My Dream and Next Steps
My personal dream for the grassroots democracy movement is to enable and manifest real tangible impact on the ground where people’s lives get significantly better. I want to see people engaged in planning and decision making through people powered participatory governance, budgeting, and policy development.
My commitment to this vision will be realized through the work that I am undertaking in being part of building an “immune system”, a platform, to enable thriving and resilient and flourishing communities. I am starting my journey by seeking and learning about communities where change is happening at the grassroots level, by sharing tools and knowledge for movement building as I come upon it, and by living a life that empowers myself and others for an equitable and flourishing world.
Thank you for reading. Please be in touch if you have any questions and suggestions. More to come!
Deepest gratitude to Manuela, Ann, Gretchen, Emilia, Fyodor, and Daniel for making the weekend so special!
About the Collaboration Incubator: This Incubator Program is a product of collaboration between the Vanilla Way Network, the Institute for Evolutionary Leadership, Dream Farm Commons, Co-creation Loft, Supermarkt Berlin, and Reinvent the World, with the support of the Thriving Resilient Communities Collaboratory (TRCC) as a program for leaders of diverse backgrounds to explore collaboration together. Download the report: PDF (high resolution) // ePublication (faster loading)
To learn more about the next participation opportunity, visit https://collaborationincubator.net/participation/
About Ksenia Benifand: Ksenia is a human-centered designer and foresight strategist with a decade of experience helping people and organizations envision, plan and lead transformational change. She brings together diverse multi-stakeholder groups to collectively map out issues, uncover levers for change, co-design a “desired future state”, and develop a transition path forward. www.aeonstrategies.ca
