Flow of Day 1

  • Welcome and framing
  • Check-in
  • Teach: Mental Models
  • World Café
  • Teach: The Four-Fold Practice
  • Sign up Matrix
  • Check-out
  • Dinner
  • Prep time/coaching

Gallery

Story of Day 1
by Aiko Kakehashi

The soft spring sun welcomed all of us to Karlskrona. 110 people from 25 different countries made a big circle to sit down together. I felt both nervousness and excitement inside of myself and in the circle as well. According to the welcome message, we seemed to arrive at the learning place where we can try out.

Why are you here? This was the first question to check in this learning place. We looked very diverse in terms of background, experiences, working fields, and generation. Some of us were hoping to know more about tools for co-creation and knowledge for hosting conversations with holding the space for emergence. Some of us were expecting network and community to support each other. Some of us desired self-development. The rest of us answered even “I don’t know.” Anyhow something brought us here. We started listening to each other which also helped us to explore the value of our gathering.
Where are we now? Which kind of world do we live in nowadays? In the next session, we had an access to some frameworks and common understandings.

Since we are facing on complex / chaos situations which we are not used to solve, we need to practice to stay at and work with complex adaptive system instead of mechanistic system. When we physically tried to make a shape of mechanistic system during the Mental Models teach, I noticed we need not the state of distance being very close, but some space to connect and talk with others as we sense our needs. A voice “let me get out from here!” sounded symbolic to express our current challenge to make change. On the other hand, even when we broke the previous system shape, we experienced it is not easy to move in an organic way with order. Fresh air and new challenge helped us laugh at and enjoy exploring though.
How can we help to solve together? Now we go to find the way to pass through the chaordic path. As the hosting team designed today Day 1 for "coming to the water’s edge", we got to the starting point little by little. However, we individually needed more time to settle down at this place and get to know each other like “who are you?”, “where are you coming from?”, “what brought you here?” and many other questions. Then, we learned FIKA! The traditional Swedish way having chat over coffee and sweets gave us much energy and chances to shake hands. The organizing team hosted this first transformation of ours from strangers to friends, which was yummy!

In the beautiful afternoon, looking at the blue sky above Baltic sea, we departed for our world traveling on the chaordic path. The self-organizing setting for World Café seemed quite different from the ordinary airport where everything is well-controlled. We took the calling question as a ticket and enjoyed an alternative trip exploring the places where we see a need / opportunity for change, our challenges, and potential capacities for the transformation. We exchanged our thoughts and ideas with new people at each place we stopped. Later, as if world travelers sometimes enjoy sharing experiences, we shared and found both unique perspectives and common discoveries, BINGO! The harvesting team actively started working for our collective learning, which was exciting!

Then, we got tips for our practice to stay together with these diverse people. 4-Fold Practice looked like an ultimate map to use when we are unconscious about where to stand and wondering where to go next. Taking time to focus on each of our destination in this 4-day learning journey, we were offered many opportunities to take for our practice. Each of us signed up in the matrix sheet with a bit of nervousness standing at the edge and a lot of excitement trying to learn something new.
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After spending this first day for the fully arrival at Dojo and before starting a deep journey together for the next days, the special handmade dinner offer was so heartening. ​​

Teach: Mental Models

World Café

Question Round 1: Where do we see a need for change in the world?
Question Round 2: What are my personal challenges in this?
Question Round 3: Which capacities are needed to support this transformation?

Teach: The Four-Fold Practice