Aug 2023 - Newsletter #009 for Friends of 

Continuing to move towards collaboration, connection and authenticity.

Here we are! 

A very warm, wintery hello to all our subscribers, and especially a big shout out and hugs to all those folk who have completed one of the twelve Collaboration Skills Courses we ran over the last year. And, of course, to anyone else who feels strongly drawn to our vision!

In this edition we share our learnings from the year, and some ideas we have for further development of this work. There are glimpses into some of the happening projects we visited in the South Island, and our usual assortment of tips and tricks. And most importantly, we are keen to seek your input...

Reflections on the Collab Skills Road Trip

Over the last year we ran 12 collaboration skills courses up and down the country. It was heartening to see so many people voting with their feet for a new agenda of interpersonal and social change. We have had such great feedback from participants, but actually we would (and will) do it again any day, because we ourselves learned so much along the way.

Each course bore fruit from the preceding one, until we eventually got to Christchurch, which was some of our best work to date. Sibylle and Peter felt more engaged with participants, better anticipating roadblocks, and perfecting the balance of stretch/safety zones that are so important for learning and human development.

While in the Nelson region we made visits to Riverside and Tui communities. While in Christchurch we visited Peterborough Cohousing, Windrose House, and Gricklegrass Community, more about that below. It was great to trade stories and learnings with each of the groups. We showed slides of European ecovillages and gave short presentations on Deepening Community / Taking another look at Community, detailing insights from social neuroscience and positive psychology, that support a more intensive, yet achievable, level of collaboration.

We are currently planning for the year ahead, see below regarding that too!

More about Gricklegrass Community Farm...

Gricklegrass Community Farm is a 14ha pastoral property located on the outskirts of Oxford, in North Canterbury. It includes a rough but liveable 6-bedroom house in need of repair. There are ongoing efforts to redevelop community at the farm by a small group, who are keen to create a thriving intentional community based on regenerative agriculture. This group is eager to use the knowledge gained in the Collaboration Skills Course to bring the property and community back to life. This project has much potential, and they need help.
See Gricklegrass

More about Heartwood Community Te Ngakau o te Rakau Inc.

Established in the 1970s, this organization once served as an umbrella for three co-operative housing sites in Canterbury. However, with the recent sale of the Mansfield property in Christchurch, and the uncertain future of the historic Chippenham Lodge (a registered historic building from the 1860s) the Heartwood Society is facing a time of transition.

The 400m2 Chippenham Lodge, located next to the Mansfield property, was severely damaged in the Christchurch earthquakes and requires major repairs to be made habitable again.

More about Windrose in our next newsletter...

Chippenham Lodge, a registered historic building
from the 1860s

Planning for the year ahead

Based on feedback from course participants, the project has some rough ideas to flesh out over the winter (well what's left of it!). Separate from The Big House Project (a housing co-op), it seems clear that there is a continued role for the collaboration skills course into the future. We in NZ appear to be called to build deeper foundations before intensive community projects can grow strong roots here. Our Dragon Dreaming work will refine all this (more on that further down the newsletter), but here are a few ideas:

1. Perhaps split The Big House Project into several organizations, widening the scope to include a permanent place for the Collab course and related work, and maybe other initiatives also,

2. We are geographically dispersed. So probably develop a support network/programs for both graduates and friends of the project. Perhaps with online community experientials. Perhaps the previously discussed social media style of web platform to connect people with projects, and to distribute news and events,

3. To make the Collab more accessible, experiment with splitting the course into several, independent, one-day workshops. Watch this space for dates.... (or keep an eye on the Events section of the website)

4. With your input, develop a 'Collab 2' course, that would take the work to the next level. This course would go deeper into co-regulation, self-regulation, happy chemicals, bonding, boundaries, and of course communication and emotional management. What scope is there to develop resources aimed at younger folks/kids?

At this stage, you are invited to get in touch if you have any ideas, or would like to participate in some way, or would just like to be kept in touch of developments. If there is interest in the first instance, we might create an email list for that specifically.

Upcoming Events

Our collaboration course has already been distilled further and will be four separate, individual, day long courses (pick and choose what which you feel comfortable and curious about!) We will offer these courses in Canterbury initially, then to towns elsewhere, by demand. If you are keen to attend these in a town near you, please do get in touch.

Our Dragon Dreaming Experiment...

The Dragon-Dreaming process has its origin within the Australian Aborigines culture. Sibylle first came across it, in connection with German communities and eco-village projects. From the beginning she was fascinated with all the ideas and tools connected with it. 

Last Thursday we had our first go with it and were amazed how much fun we had and how easy it was to condense all our dreams to one sentence. Still being a little bit long as sentences go but describing all our dreams.

You might ask: what is different with Dragon Dreaming? It offers a holistic approach; left and right brain, brain and body, thinking and intuition, work and play, success and failure, individual and environment, theory and practice, thought and action.

Another aspect of the holistic approach are the three principles the dreams have to be dedicated to: Service to the earth, personal growth and creating thriving communities.

That means projects using Dragon Dreaming save nature, help heal nature, members learn and gain the courage to leave their comfort-zone and experience personal growth, and members learn to trust, appreciate, support and grow into a high functioning team.

The Dragon-Dreaming process consists of 4 steps: dream, plan, do, celebrate. This sounds a little bit like the management tool of quality management - plan, do, check, act. Sibylle has experience in both ways of handling the processes.

Before Sibylle trained as a kinesiologist, she worked as a quality manager. And knowing a lot about our spiritual path because of what she experienced supporting people on their growing path, she immediately had the deep inner knowing, that we need holistic approach and tools of Dragon Dreaming if we want to under-go real processes of change.

During Sibylles quality management time, it took several years and a lot of tiring meetings, to condense the purpose of the company in one sentence. Using the dragon dreaming tools it only took half an hour. And we had a lot of fun doing it. The dreaming took us about 2 hours. We were pretty proud of what we could manage in the dream part of the process, in such a short time.

We have now done the dreaming part of the Dragon Dreaming process for the third time. Why twice or even three times? Well, because we use it as an iterating process. During the first dreaming process we were looking far into the future asking ourselves, "What has to happen, that at the end of my life I could say: "This was the best project, the best team and the best collaboration I ever used time and energy for". The second dreaming session focussed on the next 5 years, and the third session on the coming year. 

We will share our Dragon Dreaming results in the next newsletter, stay tuned ;)

Other things happening that we think are awesome:

There is a veritable pile of useful e-books about consensus, running groups, facilitation etc at Seeds for Change. We have the odd slide from there material in the collab. A recent participant reminded us of their resource library here:

Seeds for Change Resources

And a website with the same name in New Zealand but with the purpose of growing a network of social entrepreneurs & changemakers who believe equity is at the heart of thriving communities.

Seeds for Change | Seed Waikato

Personal Growth:

If you are interested in personal growth you might be interested in Sibylles work. Back in Germany Sibylle had her own kinesiology practice. Now, settling down in Auckland she starts her work again. 

Did you know that upsetting events from our past get internalized and stored in our bodies as energy blockages? These blockages are almost entirely hidden from our conscious mind, yet they affect our physical and emotional health for our whole life. You might be interested to know, that the muscles of our body provide us with rapid, accurate insight into the nature of these blockages. Counselling works with the mind, kinesiology works with the body... read more

Our book recommendation this week:

Reinventing Organizations - Frederic Laloux (2014)

Sibylle writes:

I very much like this book because it transfers the deep love, respect and esteem to people and the environment. The content of the book also conforms with our thinking, that to create thriving communities (organisations, workplaces, education environment, families and economy) we need new approaches. The old tools do not work anymore.

He writes about "taming the ego", we call it "personal growth". He writes about "inner rightness as compass", we name it "deep inner knowing". He writes about "yearning for wholeness", we name it "holistic approach".

So, you see, the ideas of Frederic and our ideas are aligned.

Frederic studied 12 different extraordinary pioneering companies, that are reinventing management. What he found out is that they are all "living organisations" and compared this idea with how the earth evolved. The earth has living systems that manage themselves with communication and interaction but not with hierarchy.

The breakthrough for this new way of management, according to what he found out is: (Page 55 of his book)

1. Self-management: fluid powerful systems of distributed authority (no hierarchies). We totally agree that we need "leaders in every chair".

2. Wholeness: drop your masks, reclaim your inner wholeness and bring all of who we are to work. There we are back to our idea of personal growth

3. Evolutionary purpose: Stop wanting to control the future, but listen to what the organisation is drawn in to. Our approach to this idea is to slow down processes, go to the observers place, digest and use the wisdom of the group to find a win-win solution that keeps our evolutionary spiral going upwards.

The book interacts with the thinking left brain (text) and the feeling and visualizing right brain ("comic" pictures) and also conveys a lot of practical tools.

I thoroughly enjoyed spending time "with the book" because of all the illustrations that connect with the right brain, the tools and tips we get to reinvent organizations, and the way the thinking matches the ideas of our project.

Useful videos and good reads: