Spaces for Growth
Learning our Way out of a Crisis
Graham Leicester and Maureen O'Hara
Publication: October 2022
List Price: £12.50 Format: ~ Paperback - 64pp Size: 14 x 21.6 cm ISBN: 978-1-913743-46-8 Tags: IFF, Koreo, International Futures Forum, learning, 21st-century competencies, powerful times, transformative growth Buy the paperback (£12.50)
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In normal times we tend to go about our lives oblivious to the structures, institutions, processes and shared values that shape our behaviours. In powerful times like ours, deep structures of love, power and justice are brought to light.
International Futures Forum (IFF), has for some time been tracking three emergencies: a real emergency (the challenges we face in the world), a conceptual emergency (making sense of the world to take on those challenges) and an existential emergency (how all of this leaves us feeling at a human level). It is the existential emergency, the human consequences of living in powerful times, that has dominated the scene. Together we need to support individuals, groups, organisations, communities, institutions, human beings in all formations to expand, to develop and to grow, to rise to the occasion. This booklet proposes three steps to doing this: The first section explores the context of our times and how we can learn to read the landscape more effectively, coming to feel more at home in it. The second section focuses on transformative growth, both what we need to develop in ourselves – the 21st-century competencies – and how we can do so. The third section moves to action, in particular transformative action that will shift our systems and patterns of activity towards our aspirations for the future. A Manual and a Rallying CallWe live in powerful times... in a rolling crisis that is both real (there are consequences), conceptual (horribly complex to grasp in its multiple dimensions) and existential (shaking the inner foundations of our worlds).
These emergencies are not distinct: they are all connected and now hunt in packs. But it is the existential emergency, the human consequences of living in powerful times, that now dominates the scene. That is the subject of this booklet. For it is in the boundless potential of the human system, the ways in which we choose to live our lives in patterns of relationship with other lives, that our hopes for recovery and renewal ultimately lie. Spaces for Growth is both a manual and a rallying call. It explores the settings and the environments we need to discover and to create, as hosts and guides, to enable individuals, groups, organisations, communities, institutions, human beings in all formations to expand, to develop and to grow. In this way we will, together, rise to the occasion. ContentsIntroduction 7 ~ Outline 9
Section One: The First Step Is Awareness 12 Powerful Times 14 ~ “We are always here” 14 ~ Three Emergencies 15 ~ Coming to our Senses 18 ~ Three Responses 18 ~ Three Literacies 19 Section Two: Transformative Growth 22 21st-Century Competencies 24 ~ Expansion, Development and Growth 24 ~ We Are Already Competent 25 ~ Enabling Growth and Development 26 The Core Stance 26 ~ The Facilitating Environment 29 ~ Spaces for Growth 31 ~ What Kinds of Space? 31 ~ Hosts and Guides 46 Section Three: Transformative Action 48 Moving Into Action 50 ~ Producing 50 ~ A Culture of Transformation 52 ~ The First Move 54 ~ Start Where You Are 54 Appendix/Notes 56 IFF Resources 56 References 57 |