Claiming our place,
re-imagining purpose

In inviting development practitioners to our second Biennial Practice Conference we included a quotation from Paul Auster suggesting that …. “Stories only happen to those who can tell them”. We described the purpose of the gathering as ‘claiming our place’ which we hoped to do by ‘revealing our practice’ and ‘re-imagining our purpose’. The full story of our journey is one of humanity, creativity, frustration, community and a jumble of emotions and insights that left many of us feeling that we had experienced something of what development is about. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that we experienced something of what development process could be about.

Altogether there were eighty three of us from fifteen countries. We gathered for three days and nights in the small rural town of McGregor, two hours drive from Cape Town. It was a conference only in the sense that it provided opportunity for a group of practitioners to confer with each other, time to reflect individually, to capture and share thoughts and experiences. Stories from our practice were brought along and exchanged. The work of the three days included singing, dancing, eurhythmy, graphic narrative, painting and working with clay. After themes were explored, groups captured and presented their conclusions in the most creative ways imaginable. There were no papers read, no power-point presentations, just a very diverse group of development practitioners in creative and purposeful conversation. There were six pairs of facilitators each made up of a social process facilitator and an artist. My role was to attempt to ‘hold the whole’.

Our stated purpose was “to add to an emerging developmental discipline in the development sector – not from the perspective of theory but from the experience of thinking practitioners”. There is no single story that can capture the richness of what emerged through the process. In this publication we share a collection of stories and images that capture some of the content and the process for you the reader to draw your own insights and meaning from. As a way-in to the richness, diversity and creativity of perspectives from participants and facilitators I share three claims made during the process that have remained with me as additions to my thinking and as challenges to my future practice. 

“Development is creativity.”

“This is the end of us-and-them development.”

“Our purpose is to civilize power.”

I choose these three because when brought into relationship with each other they capture for me some sense of what emerged from the conference as our purpose and practice as developmental practitioners. Although articulated by participants as insights arrived at through the process I believe they also reflect some defining characteristics of the process itself.

This statement has triggered many challenging thoughts in me about what I am working with. It leads me to think of development as an impulse that results in the emergence of the new. It conjures up images of vibrancy, of life and birth, of possibility and change. I sense the irrepressible striving of living systems to bring more of themselves and their potential into the relationships that create their world. It connects me to the human struggle we know so well in South Africa against forces that limit, restrict, diminish and demean.  

If development is creativity I am forced to start thinking differently about my practice, about what I am trying to do and how I do it. My sense is of opening things up and encouraging movement, diversity, new connections and relationships. I imagine working with contrast, clash, contradiction and counterpoint as well as with rhythm, harmony and complementarity. I face the daunting prospect of learning to see the world differently, and see different things in a world that I imagine I already know. I start understanding the challenge of social transformation as beginning with the truly creative process of imagining new social or organisational forms that in their turn foster creativity.

When I start thinking of development as creativity I realise I have at least as much to learn from the artist as I do from the manager. Some went further than I, to the point of seeing development not as creativity but as art. (see McGregor Manifesto)

When you participate consciously in social processes the inter-connectedness and interdependent nature of development becomes obvious. It becomes ludicrous to imagine that meaningful development can take place in one part of a system while other parts remain unaffected. When you take time to reflect on your own development challenges and needs you cannot escape the connection between your own stuckness and that faced by the targets of your development interventions.

The implications of this claim are radical. We need to start thinking of how our world would change if we were truly inclusive in our approach to development. Imagine that we as development practitioners started taking our own development seriously as a precondition for considering ourselves able to intervene into the development processes of others. Imagine our own organisations and countries facing the challenge of modelling organisational forms and practices that shift power relations to favour those least powerful within them. It is inconceivable that significant progress will be made in redressing imbalances in society without bringing the whole into movement.

Surely we cannot expect to be taken seriously by the poor and excluded if we do not target the accumulation and concentration of wealth and power as being as much of ‘the problem’ as poverty and powerlessness.   

I am still far from sure what this might mean, but I am intrigued by the thought of civilizing power. I do know that if we engage in development without understanding that we are in the business of addressing issues of how power and resources are distributed in society we are missing the point. But the notion of civilizing power leads me to go beyond the obvious. Civilizing reminds me of my connection to civil society and my purpose of building its power. To link our identity to shifting power relations between the state the market and civil society in favour of civil society is to make a bold claim. It puts us firmly in the service of civil society the society of ordinary citizens or civilians. 

Another meaning of the word civil is courteous or polite. This leads me to thinking of exploring different ways of using or applying power. New ways of applying power and new organizational forms based on distributing power rather than concentrating it might even constitute civilization. The dictionary definition of civilize is “to bring to an advanced stage of social development”.

These three claims, or perhaps something behind them and around them, spark in me a re-imagination of purpose. I see the development field that I work in as operating consciously at the interface between civil society and the more dominant institutions of the state and the market. I see our constant struggle to remain in service of civil society, reaching always for the periphery trying to connect to the most excluded while using the resources channeled via the centre. I see civil society and the freedom and diversity that live at its outer periphery firstly as a source of creativity vital to society as a whole. The tendency of human systems to impoverish and disempower the margins to enrich and empower the centre is where my work lies. I understand the principles of hierarchical domination that inform these systems as not only ecologically and systemically unsustainable, but a reflection of a uniquely human distortion in the fine balance between creative and destructive life forces.

As development practitioners operating at this interface we are constantly confronted by hard choices. My sense is that amongst those gathered at this conference there is a deep intuitive sense that there is an important place for those who understand the relationship between development and creativity. There is a growing voice that is challenging the view of development that leads to entrenching domination and control through random acts of technically well managed efficiency focused delivery. There is an upsurge in the search for organisational forms, processes and practices that connect people to inner and outer resources in ways that are essentially creative and life promoting.   

The Biennial Practice Conference is one of the burgeoning attempts around the world seeking creative and developmental alternatives through experimenting with forms and practices that are congruent with our purpose. Creativity is central to the thinking and the form that it takes. From the outset we have used both artists and social process facilitators to lead the process. This year we took a conscious step towards integrating artistic and social creative process from the planning phase to co-facilitation. The shortcomings of our best attempts at process design were highlighted by frustration and resistance to those elements that pushed for product and pre-determined conference outputs. The demand from participants was to slow down, to create more space for reflection and exploration, to bring more of themselves and their stories, and to engage in artistic process for its own sake. These responses to the process shaped and changed the process.

The conference consciously tries to break the “us and them” dynamic by creating a space to focus on practitioners and their own development. This conference was all about taking our own development as practitioners seriously and taking responsibility for the quality of our own practice. It was about finding our own voice, not to speak on behalf of others, but to bring our own experience more clearly and forcefully into shaping our world. As we claim to be attempting to do with others.

In many respects this was an anti-conference, an attempt to civilize power. While there were facilitators, and artists who shared freely of their skills and knowledge, the subject material came from the experience of the participants. The facilitators participated as equals in bringing their stories of practice exactly as everyone else. There were no elevated voices of authority, the process was deeply collaborative and collegial. Insights and creativity were everywhere. During the process many pieces were authored, poems were written, plays performed, learnings were danced and sung.

When people come together around a common purpose in an environment of trust and love, and are challenged to engage their artist within – the creative outpouring is truly remarkable in its quality its quantity and its power. Development is creativity? 
 

to top...