Dung Beetles: How We Roll / Intra-active Woven Web of Fundaments

The Dung Beetles embarked on a process of co-creating some principles of collaboration/underlying shared understandings/aspirational qualities of being, working and playing together. After a process of reflection on the etymology of ‘principles’ they settled on the name How We Roll: Intra-woven Web of Fundaments.

The co-creative process happened over approximately a month and involved various processes including two full-group calls, working in pairs, asynchronous wordsmithing & questions on a shared vision board, phone calls, text messages & numerous emails. The process was facilitated by two Dung Beetles who communicated consistently about the process with each other and the other Beetles.

This is what the Dung Beetles came up with (see image above).

These fundaments were aspirational. In a number of ways, the Dung Beetles clearly failed to embody them. They stumbled, wondered, bumped up against each other, misunderstood, got it wrong, felt discomfort, confusion and pain – which all led to some generative reflections and realisations about the multiplicitous and at times seemingly oppositional versions of what sanctuary looks and feels like for different people.

​The group did some further reflection on these inspirational aspirations, the ways in which folks continue to behave in ways counter to their intentions and ideas or processes which may assist in continuing conversations/processes around how to respond when aspirational fundaments are clearly not being embodied, when internalised binaries, tensions with perceived difference, identity politics, etc. inevitably trip us up.

Written by Marianthe Loucataris.