Harvest From Listening Sessions with The Emergence Network

“These ways of perceiving / feeling / experiencing are so important to finding the rhythms that the world needs now.” – Craig Slee

• ten is a space where we can relate to problems totally differently: we don’t fall into solutionisms; a place that un-problems problems and replaces them with curiosity and where we can stay in uncomfortable questions.

   

• The importance of language and having language for things that are felt but not understood… of being able to develop new languages. AND there are many things about ten that are difficult to explain with the words that we currently have.

   

• Many appreciate the opportunity to meet people from different places and worldviews, this can bring in new ideas and perspectives; people of African heritage particularly appreciate the diversity and company of African voices and many appreciate hearing from folks from the “global south”.

   

• There is gratitude that ten encourages experimentation, practice and making; it allows folks to think differently with more openness and can lead to newness; a space for breaking patterns and defying the notion of “normal”.

   

• ten meets a need that is unique, that people can’t find elsewhere – even if that need is hard to define!
   
• There is a deep, deep call for local connections. How are we learning to dwell in place? How does the work resonate in our localities? Ideas of residencies, snail mail, local pods, having tea together.

   

• ten is focused on the heady, theoretical stuff… on opening up new ideas; there is curiosity and confusion about application. How to apply it to life? How to embody? How do we continue to nurture the lived direct experience of spirit/queerness/awkwardness/the otherwise? How might postactivism be applied and lived out in one’s communities and engagement with social issues?

   

• An attraction towards “staying underground,” whatever that means; and interest in embodying the form of a mycelial network that mostly just operates under the surface but occasionally a fruiting body pops up. Underground networking? This could be humble/humbling work.

   

• A sense that the work might be seasonal/cyclical in some way.

   

• Some people suggested we seek the support of outside practitioners to help look at some of the organisational challenges and possibilities both in terms of form/shape and in terms of stickier questions and difficult patterns.

   

• People appreciate the value of this question: What if our response to the crisis is part of the crisis?

   

• ten touches people in a memorable way. Even people who haven’t been involved in a while say very compelling things about ten – there is some appreciate simply knowing it’s out there.

There was an interesting mix of responses where “let’s define things more clearly” met “I love how undefinable this all is”. There’s an interest in the experiment of defining the undefinable, knowing we will fail and still, seeing what emerges. (It’s also useful to have some things for approaching funders!)

In the words of others:

• “Postactivism, non-dualism, animism, fugitive epistemologies.” – Alnoor Ladha 
• “Intersection of politics, spirituality, soma, and myth.” – Sofia Batalha
• “An anti-imperialist spiritual-based perspective” – Owólabi Aboyade
• “Curiosity, living with crisis, meaningful work, place to be lost together (particularly for young people)” – Vu Truong
• “A place of confluence, fertility through the composting of what no longer serves (could be smelly and unpleasant), a brave space with trickster energy, space for not-knowing.” – Gaby Franco
• “Comfortability with being on the edge of things… in the best of ways… and that is quite incredible for me. It’s had the most light of anything I’ve done in the past years. Done in a ‘brave way’. I haven’t seen this kind of courage in any other place. And by that I mean courage to fail… I have so much respect for that.” – Cliff Berrien

• “Dream research/incubation cells”  – Craig Slee
• “A cocoon to grow dreams/enquiries” – Sofia Batalha
• “A thought/practice laboratory (in an amoeba-like/amorphous shape) for decolonial pedagogies” – Austen Smith
• “A digestive system, supporting breakdown of systems and problems already crystalized and shitting out something different with the question of ‘how do we breakdown intelligently’ at the center” – Eric Chisler
• “Soup with broth and meat/vegetables” – Sergio (Yeyo) Beltrán
• “Safety blanket” – Geci Karuri-Sebina
• “A single organism somewhere in adolescence where we try things, some things are working out, some things are clearly not right.” – Bhuppi Sharma
• “A place for lost souls, for young people, for people who feel despair and meaninglessness, for people who want to ask new questions. A new university for the world!” – Vu Truong
• “A humble learning community, in dynamic wayfinding, wording worlds through body, voice, and shared landscapes; a mycelial support network for postactivism.” – Sofia Batalha
• “The cracks feel like a place of faith with all that is before us; layers of a time-scale that cannot be defined; layers of clay, beds of fossilized remains, rocks and limestone, lava, ammonites, the cretaceous edge of our lineages… the magma in the core of the earth that is fluid and borderless.” – Flik Hall
• “A nursery. The plants do not have too many resources, so they become strong but they do get a bit of protection [so that they might] become something that goes out in the world.” – Julie Arts
• “A collaboration between people of different pedagogies. And a conversation with the otherwise and all the other wisdoms. Feels like multiple portals trying to flatten enough that humans can understand what it means. Trying to understand the elements, ancestors, entities, gods, lesser gods, trash, sticks, birds, or whatever wants to speak. Feels like a compost heap of a little bit of everything.” – Austen Smith
• Mycelium networks and fruiting bodies within particular ecosystems (several people mentioned this)

Bigger-picture questions we’re sitting with:

• What should the next structure or form of The Emergence Network be? 
• What is the process that we should use to get there? 
• Is there a guiding vision or metaphor that we want to use for this next iteration? 
• How do we describe the nature of the work we do in a clear (enough) way? 
• What cracks, shadows and wild margins might we want and need to explore to move forward well? 
• Who is ten now and who else is it for (now and in the future) ?
• How do we navigate the balance between being an ‘organisation’ where there are tasks, meetings, and action items and being family, being slow, being awkward, grieving and failing? What is our relationship to deadlines, budgets and the work that moves things along?