MAPA: Finding a Language and Co-Creating the Narrative of Diversity
What might happen if you carefully invite, connect, and convene 38 leaders from various backgrounds, ages, and social classes to explore how our collective feminine and masculine values shape our sectors and society today?
The answer can be found in the unique and surprising journey Renata Sbardelini, founder of the Brazil-based creative consultancy Suindara — a recognized B Corporation — initiated about 2.5 years ago. With the financial support of Natura — the third biggest cosmetics company in the world, founded on sustainability principles — and strategic partnerships with Global Compact (UN), Presencing Institute, FGV, B Corporation, Sesc, and Feira Preta, this dialogic journey culminated in a 5-day gathering in São Paulo, in August 2019. It has since spurred a community, a mini-documentary, and a paradigm shift for everyone involved. As Renata shared:
“MAPA was different from any project or process I ever did in my life. It started small, but it’s a very strong seed.”
Now, a new intersectional narrative is being co-created with the aim to future-proof the fields of communication, education, business, and work in Brazil and beyond. However, Renata, facilitators Marian Goodman and Cesar Matsumoto, as well as the project’s participants agree: Ultimately, it’s not about finding one narrative for all, but about creating a platform for exploring our values and engaging in a process that allows us to open up to each other. As Marian reflected on the MAPA process:
“The depth of love that they have opened together as a group is quite extraordinary, from only five days. They now have a very strongly linked network… There has been a DNA impact, I would say. Everyone has that mark now.”
The Light, The Dark, and The Seed
When asked what sparked the MAPA project — mapa simply meaning “map” in Portuguese — Renata shared that it had sprouted from a very personal experience, right after she lost her mother 5 years ago. “When I was 13 years old, I felt this sense of ‘I am alive, and I want to do something to help myself and others to be happier’,” she remembers. In fact, this feeling has been the driving force for many of her life decisions. However, there was a second feeling mixed in with this, related to her experience of living with a mother who suffered from depression, that “caused a hurt in me, which I grew up with.”
Having these two feelings arise again — which she refers to as the sun (the light) and the sadness (the dark) — after her mother’s death, somehow evoked that 13-year-old in her again. Renata described reconnecting to that seed from childhood and starting to write up a project around feminine values and what it means to be a woman in these times. Through dialogue, however, she realized she needed to include men as well. Moreover, Renata considered the gender and identity gaps important topics to include. As she pointed out:
“Rather than just talk about gender, I wanted to know more about values, which is more than gender. What are feminine and masculine values in the 21st century, and how are our attitudes influenced by these values?”
Beginnings: Forging Relationships From The Heart
The MAPA concept went through many iterations, initially aspiring to be a large-scale festival, then a longer-term and multi-local initiative, and finally manifesting as a 5-day intensive gathering. But to reduce it to this one gathering would be to miss the whole picture. Indeed, the road to MAPA has been long, winding, and fascinating in itself. Before any concrete project planning happened, Renata spent months and months engaging in dialogue with many stakeholder and partners — including FGV, Natura, UN (United Nations), and Sesc — exploring “What could be real prototypes of impact?” She shared:
“During this journey, I understood that this project is not just mine, because there are a lot of others. There is a movement… I can be a leader, or a person who holds this vision, but it is much bigger than me.”
Each conversation helped her expand her understanding of where this could go; focus groups brought new insight into what MAPA wanted to shape into. Along the way, Renata invited Marian Goodman — whom she had met at an FGV event in 2013 — into the project, because she wanted the design to be rooted in the Theory U framework and practices. Listening to Marian, it is clear how much respect and admiration she has for Renata’s efforts and approach:
“Brazil functions on relationships, that’s how the country runs. So Renata had a super network of relationships, or relationships of relationships. She has an incredible humility, listening to what is wanting to happen here.”
This latter quality is exemplified in what Renata described regarding the invitation stage of the project, which was only 2 months before the gathering. Although she had a team of people working to pull MAPA together, it became increasingly clear that she was the one who had to extend the invitation to participants herself:
“I learned that I had to do the phone calls personally. If someone else called them, they would not come. The seed, the passion of the project, was in my heart. When I picked up the phone, people understood the heart of the project, and wanted to come.”
So she invested in this personal connection and single-handedly called 45 people, establishing first contact, after which her team could take it from there. As the design for MAPA was taking shape, Cesar Matsumoto was invited in as her co-facilitator, because he was local, spoke the language, and was an experienced Theory U facilitator. Reflecting on receiving the invitation, Cesar shared:
“I realized this was very big. Renata was speaking to the UN and many corporations. I could see how this subject … was the background matrix for many of the structures and relationships we have in society. It felt from the first meeting like this was the calling of our time.”
Divinely Designed
In the months leading up to the 5-day process in August 2019, the journey was crafted with great care and meticulous attention to detail. Renata had arranged for a film crew to document the event, in addition to which there was a photographer, a journalist, two graphic recorders, and an anthropologist — all to capture what happened and share beyond the gathering. In addition to this, both Marian and Cesar referred to a sense of “divine design”. Cesar shared a moment during a preparatory visit to Rio Silveira, the indigenous village they were going to take the group to, and he recalls being brought to their place of worship by spiritual leader Papá:
“It felt like nature was talking to us through him. And I get goosebumps just by saying that… We felt that this process was being “divinely designed.” It was already bigger than all of us, and all we had to do was not get in the way, and do our job, and just hold that.”
Marian and Cesar both agreed that Renata needed to be 100% free to go on the journey with the entire group as a participant, without having to think about any organizational details. Having initiated MAPA from her seed vision, they agreed that she should be able to bring that vision into the process fully, allowing the project to benefit from that. As Cesar put it: “The flame holder had to be in the middle.”
Day 1 — Setting Up The Field
The first day of the gathering centered around co-initiation. In addition to some theoretical input on the Theory U framework, a starting point was given for the dialogue on femininity and masculinity. Participants were then asked to pair up and have a dialogue around their own journeys in terms of “How has your own story of masculine and feminine been shaped and conditioned, and where were those narratives disrupted in your own life?” After the pair dialogues, the group came into a big circle for a plenary dialogue. Marian shared that, for this particular group, plenary dialogues were particularly rich. She reflected:
“One of the main enabling conditions in this process was definitely humility and the willingness to turn in service of something other. And that was there, or activated, in the participants. The field was set up very quickly, in such a way that it could hold a lot of tension and a lot of testing of its resilience.”
Cesar echoed Marian’s words when he shared: “The container of dialogue where people could be vulnerable and open and listening happened really quick.” And, as it turned out, this container would prove both necessary and powerful for the MAPA project.
Day 2 — Like Taking Off Your Shoes At The Door
The second day was all about co-sensing, starting with input from a number of specialists who were invited to give presentations, offering some added perspectives to draw from. Talks featured were: Rosa Alegria on “The future of masculinity and femininity in the 21st century”, discussing gender fluidity and non-binary identity; a psychiatrist who works with trans children; Ismael dos Anjos, who produced a documentary on toxic masculinity; and Danielle Almeida, who spoke from the black woman’s perspective on racism and colonized values.
Although each of these talks were received with great interest by most participants, they also sparked deep-seated emotions and led to some intensive discussions. A particularly challenging moment was when one of the participants, writer and trans man Ariel Nobre, walked out of the room during the talk given by the psychiatrist. When, after the break, the next speakers offered him some of their time to speak, he was able to share what the talk had triggered for him.
Marian recalls how he shared feeling such anger at hearing a “cisgender person talking about trans experience”, being talked about and for, rather than being listened to and engaged with. This dynamic is all too familiar for people from oppressed groups in society. Hearing about his experience, realizing how objectifying this was for him, was a real eye-opener and paradigm shift for many people in the room. Marian remembers that “he spoke incredibly powerfully” about his experience, including how he had attempted suicide years earlier. His outrage was strong and clear, as he “recited a poem of his, which floored the entire group.”
Bringing in this perspective, which is usually missing from any mainstream discourse, allowed for incredibly deep learning to take place in participants and facilitators alike. This was not a comfortable process, and definitely called on participants to stay with what unfolded as they encountered this crack in their habitual thinking patterns. As Cesar put it:
“We had to deal with our own wounds of being a black person in white society, being transgender, carrying white sensitivity, etc. It was an alchemical cauldron of everyone putting their wounds in there and shaking it up… We went through the pain of talking about those struggles and contexts.”
After Ariel’s share, other voices came in, such as Fernanda Queiroz, a trans woman who emphasized that not all trans people share the same views. A crucial point to make, understanding that no group is homogeneous, and that no one person can speak for an entire group — something that is often expected from minority representatives.
Where Do Our Values Come From?
A powerful moment in the final presentation that day was when Danielle showed a map of the world, and asked the group: “Where do you think our current masculine and feminine values come from?” As she pointed to Europe, a wave of understanding went through the room, also connecting these values to the dynamics of colonization. Moreover, when she asked the audience to think of the associations they had with femininity — which to the group called to mind fragility, empathy, sensitivity, delicateness, and care — and subsequently asked them what they associated with black women, it became quite clear that the concept of femininity is often an overwhelmingly white construct. After all, black women were more often associated with concepts such as resilience and strength.
Danielle also shone a light on other daily blind spots, naming the example of going to the supermarket to buy a loaf of bread. As a white person in Brazil, you walk to the supermarket, get the loaf, pay, and leave — never giving it a moment’s consideration. As a black person in Brazil, she described the process of locating the security person as you walk in, and being extremely vigilant and conscious of how you carry yourself throughout the store. Why? Because experience has already taught you that you will be met with suspicion, and possibly violence, purely due to the color of your skin. This added another layer for the group, making space for each other. Cesar reflected:
“Getting together with that diversity of people dismantled our structured ways of thinking, and then we just got opened up.”
Renata also shared her own deeply personal reflections and insights:
“I never thought I had preconceptions, but I’ve realized that somehow inside myself, I thought I was superior. I would see a black woman and think ‘Oh, she’s really interesting,’ but I would also somehow think ‘I will give her something’ and I didn’t even know what. It was the first time that I really opened my body and my heart and my mind and myself to be with a black woman, a transgender man, etc. It was a beautiful experience.
After this intensive morning, the group engaged in 3D mapping in the post-lunch session, playfully modeling with various artifacts how these things show up in their own context today. This mapping was followed by a plenary dialogue in a large circle, which Renata, Cesar, and Marian all refer to as the most intensive session of the 5 days. Marian remarked:
“It was a hell of a stretch to hold, but a wonderful stretch!”
The extent to which everyone felt part of this process is beautifully illustrated by the translator, whose place was mostly in a translator booth, removed from the circle. However, when Marian reflected on the way in which everyone had engaged and shown up with their whole stories and selves — saying “It’s like taking off your shoes at the door” — the translator, Melissa Mann, jumped out of her booth and pointed to her feet: “Look, look, I have my shoes off!”
Day 3 — Recalibration: In The Darkness We Are Equal
The third day, the group left early in the morning on a 3-hour bus ride to the Mata Atlântica (Atlantic Forest), to visit the Rio Silveira indigenous land, whose people consider themselves custodians of the forest and the culture. The group was welcomed by Papá Mirim and Cristine Takuá, a couple with children who fulfill roles of leadership in their community. Papá shared about the work that they do as custodians, with massive deforestation happening in the Amazon, because of people “wanting to eat meat, wanting to plant soya, and feeling the need to declare their love with gold rings.” He went on to say:
“When things get too bad — which they will — you guys will just leave. We don’t have passports, we don’t have the choice to leave. We will stay here to look after the forest. We’re asking you to stay with us.”
This made a deep impression on the group. Cristine also pointed out that the “aldea” (village) way of life, based on the principle of reciprocity, is quite different from living in the cities, where everyone has individual causes they fight for. However, she emphasized, “there is only one cause, the earth… If that cause is not fought for, the others are all lost.”
The group was taken to the aldea house of worship, the Casa de Reza, where Papá recited a poem of his by heart. Sitting in the Casa de Reza, which intentionally has no windows and little lighting, everyone was essentially covered in the cloak of darkness as they listened. Papá spoke of the darkness from which everything is born, the darkness that is the womb of all creation. He spoke about how we all spring from that darkness and that in the darkness, we cannot see our differences, we are equal: “the darkness accepts us exactly as we are.” Listening to his poem, Marian shared, “you could feel everything recalibrating. It was like an actualization of the poem was happening right there and then.” She said that there was this “deep acknowledgement that we are all one.” Marian reflected on that morning:
“Everything was just landing, and then reconfiguring the DNA of the individuals and the collective.”
After this dialogue and deep listening, the group went on a silent walk through the forest, also stopping at a waterfall along to way to sit in silence. At the end of the day, during the closing circle, each person spoke one word. Every single person had been deeply touched, deeply moved, deeply shifted. There was an extensive sharing that went on in the bus ride back to the city. Marian said:
“We returned a different group. Every person felt the edge of fragility that we were all balancing on.”
Day 4 — Limits of Vocabulary: Whose Narrative Is This?
The fourth day started with some sense-making in smaller groups, reflecting on the time they had spent together up until then. The participants then came back into another big circle dialogue. A rich discussion ensued, which surfaced many themes, among which the topic of language and the limits of our vocabulary. If much of our language has an excluding effect, and if inclusion and exclusion are problematic concepts in themselves, how do we even begin to create a narrative together? Whose narrative will we be telling? Whose words will we be using? Marian shared:
“We realized that just talking masculine and feminine values was woefully insufficient, and if we really wanted to be affecting the narrative of the 21st century, we were actually talking about human values, life values, which included the masculine and feminine, but it was masses more than that.”
Many participants were also reflecting on how their experience in the darkness the day before had given them an understanding and connection that essentially precedes language. They were asking: “How do we get to this place where we live in that darkness, and nothing is unequal?” And there was even some apprehension around “How do we even go back to our lives and contexts after this?” Cesar shared that one participant, a black man, expressed: “I felt and I touched the place where we are all equal.” However, Cesar was also careful to emphasize that “that only happened on day three and four.” He continued:
“It’s easy to say that ‘We are one and we are all the same.’ But we had to go through a tremendous process of working it out, through our differences and our pain, before we reached this sacred place where we are all equals — which was also enabled by us connecting to the planet.”
Day 5 — “A Process That Processed Us”
The final day presented a massive challenge to the facilitators: What would even be the starting points for what was to come next? Marian reflected: “It was clear that we couldn’t just say: ‘This will be taken into education, arts and culture, and business, etc.’ How? Whose education? Whose arts and culture?” The team worked with the graphic facilitator, Mila Motomura, who had been very engaged in the whole process and came up with a mapping of the starting point, based on what she had heard. Everyone then went out into groups to work on that mapping. Marian said: “That helped us to have a base of agreement on how to start and how to work together and go forward.” Everybody’s input was invited and continues to be invited to this day, seeing as the narrative is emerging in many, many conversations and iterations.
The participants also got a moment to consider their own context, and what support they needed to go forward in their own lives and work environments. After the closing of the gathering, the group continued to keep in close contact through a WhatsApp group called “MAPA Lovers” and through visiting each other’s contexts. It’s a work in progress, but as Marian remarked: “I have no doubt that it’s going to have a multiplying effect quickly.” Cesar reflected on the transition from having this shared experience, to stepping back into the world, when he said:
“We are in a challenging space, because we reached that space [where we are equal], but it’s not about evangelizing to other people. Feminine and masculine values could be understood as an aspirational place that we should strive to be in, and that can easily become violent: imposing on others, preaching, indoctrinating. It’s not about that, because we came to our place of understanding because of our opening on many levels, and relating with courage and openness. We had a process that processed us. And now we are trying to hold that sacred space, and figuring out how to talk about it without killing its essence.”
Looking Ahead: The Future of Communication, Work, Education, and Business
Despite the many challenges to articulating the essence and narrative that is emerging from MAPA, Renata has a clear vision of how to move the project forward. She has been working with a team to finish the MAPA mini-documentary, highlighting 10 key themes that emerged, which will be screened on April 15th, 2020, in a theater for an audience of 270 people.
Another intention Renata holds, is to continue organizing these kinds of processes for specific contexts, exploring themes like the future of communication, the future of work, the future of education, and the future of business. She is asking “What are the new jobs that we can start from MAPA?” For instance, she would like to develop workshops for companies around the topics of the narrative; the idea is to change the mindset of leadership, and as a result their way of decision-making. She is aiming to create contracting opportunities for people in the group, such as paid assignments for recording, designing, etc. She remarked:
“It’s an important change in the structure: black and trans people are often not contracted for these kinds of jobs. We are now developing the continuation of the project, and the products that come from this.”
The project continues in various forms into 2020, with strong interest from UN Global Compact (to support such a sensitization/transformation experience for top CEOs in Brazil), Rede Globo (Brazil’s largest TV network, to air Dialogues on Diversity), Natura (for VPs & senior leaders, as well as their home-based consultants), and more. The appeal for all of them is not only changing mindsets and developing a new narrative for the 21st century, but ensuring that new voices come in, especially from the margins. Renata shared that MAPA continues to explore:
“How can we transform this into a loving network, a better place and feeling, of being in this home that is our planet? There is something very powerful in this sensing, but we have to go deeper, and make the ideas more clear.”
Watch the video interview:
We will continue to share updates on how MAPA evolves going forward.
I want to thank Rachel Hentsch for her editorial support.
The MAPA project was conceived and developed by Suindara Radar e Rede (suindara.net), with strategic partnerships with Global Compact (UN), Presencing Institute, FGV, B Corporation, Feira Preta, SESC, and Natura as sponsor.
