Walkers

I think of you in motion and just how close you are getting
And how every little thing anticipates you
All down my veins my heart-strings call
Are you the one that I've been waiting for?

                              Nick Cave

Another image made during the London rush-hour.  As usual, I am wandering and wondering, avoiding the tube and taxis - roaming the streets as I make my way back to a hotel or station. 

Just people-watching, really.. and bemused by the urgency of the walkers striding out, rushing to get somewhere.

But I like Nick Cave's reframe... that the walkers are being anticipated and called by strangers...

More interesting, I reckon, than just a commute home.

The Edge of Chaos

The Edge of Chaos, the aptly named bar at Schumacher College in Devon.

A place where, according to the complexity scientists, phase transition is liable to take place.  I've got to say, I've transited through the odd phase in there myself...

This is Sky, one of the participants on last month's Artful Organisation course.

Sky had travelled over from the States where he helps run Perque, an company attempting to transform healthcare 'speeding the transition from sickness care to healthful caring' by addressing the root causes of sickness rather than simply fixing the symptoms.  He was there to join with artists and policymakers to think about how to respond artfully, aesthetically to the economic and ecological challenges we will be facing over the next decade.

And so that's part of the Schumacher story really; bringing interesting people together in a curious, mostly slightly chaotic, but always very creative way.  

What's not to like...?

Fox Games

Fox Games © 1989 Sandy Skoglund

Please Note: "Fox Games": This work has been published with the permission of the artist and copyright holder Sandy Skoglund. 

I was really delighted when Sandy Skoglund gave me permission to use a copy of 'Fox Games' on Photo-Dialogue.  

I'm always keen to feel my way into a New Year with a reflection on how things are changing for me, whether as a consultant, photographer or academic and towards the end of last year it felt like some seismic shifts were in play as I defined how I intend to work with Photo-Dialogue in 2012.  So, perhaps that's why it felt important to get back to 'Fox Games'.

Back in 2003, I worked with Ashridge colleague and author John Higgins as he guided me through a visual exercise using postcards that we had purchased from the shop at the Tate Modern.  As we spread the cards on the floor of the gallery, John asked me to describe my practice as a coach and consultant through the images.

'Fox Games' was particularly significant for me - I felt it showed how I saw organisations: grey, dull places where commerce took place but where the red foxes of emotion and feeling ran wild while remaining apparently unseen and ignored. The image told me of things that I intuitively knew but had, at that time, been unable (or unwilling) to clearly articulate.  In fact, as the product of a good deal of 'formal management training' and an MBA graduate, perhaps I had been 'educated' out of taking my own experience seriously.

Following my epiphanic moment in the Tate Modern, 'Fox Games' became the cornerstone of my Master's dissertation and then continued to set the tone and agenda throughout my PhD.  It has been a remarkable and significant image for me and continues to both provoke and inform.  Now, as I use imagery of various kinds to help articulate some of the unseen dynamics within organisations or to provide the basis for coaching inerventions, the Fox Games postcard travels with me to remind me of where my personal journey into imagery and vision began.

So, you might like to attempt your own piece of art-shop photo-dialogue.

Here is a simple process:

• Immerse yourself in a problem, issue or dilemma.
• Take some time out, relax, grab a coffee and visit your local art gallery.
• Buy a few art cards, 8-10 will do. Buy anything that engages you - act intuitively - don't overthink your purchase.
• Lay out the cards in a pattern that resonates - again - don't overthink the process.
• Take a few minutes - what are the images telling you about you, your approach, how you are seeing the issue, what is the 'story' you are telling yourself?
• What other perspectives become available to you? What insights do the cards offer?
• Take a photo of your collection and the layout - on your phone will do.
• Show the images to a friend (set them up as in your previous layout)
• What do they see?  What do the images and the layout mean to them?
• Take a longer break - a few days or so - then review the images and layout again. What is significant to you now?

Good luck! Have some fun and enjoy yourself.  And be careful, an image might emerge that begins to set an amazing, compelling vision for your life and career...!

Let me know how you get on!

Xmas Ella

OK. Entirely unneccesary.... Gratuitous... I know...

But, hey, gimme a break...Indulge me... Season of goodwill and all...;-)))

Here's a Christmas picture of my girl in her new hat... (Thanks, Auntie Kath...;-)

Hope you are all still chilling after the festivities!

Steve

xx

The Boxing Day Meet

I'm still continuing my inquiry into the curious nature of our local hunt.

Here is an image of the hunters gathering in a local town square on Boxing Day.  They pull a good crowd; it really is quite a celebration.  Before they go off for the day the riders, horses and hounds spend an hour or so standing in the square and folk come along to see the spectacle, pet the animals and say hello.

Over 300,000 people took part in the Boxing Day hunts across the country. The occasion feels both gloriously anachronistic and a signifier of tradition and community - there is a sense of heritage and lineage in all of this. In this image I notice that the town square hasn't changed much in a few hundred years and it seems like this sport hasn't either. There will continue to be more riders literally taking up the reins...

And... I always feel a little edgy with this stuff.  OK, I know I'm carrying big cameras and I'm not just part of the crowd.  And I do feel that a sport like this is probably inappropriate these days (but, hey, I think the same about football ;-).  

And then a picture like this presents itself....

Artful Organisation

This is my Ashridge colleague and Artful Practitioner, Chris Seeley, leading a morning exercise at Schumacher College in Devon. 

Chris was at Schumacher working with Chris Nichols, an Ashridge consultant with a long track record in strategy and sustainability, to deliver 'Artful Organisation'; a 4 day inquiry into the question: 

"How can organisations cultivate artful and creative ways to help re-imagine their role, relationships and themselves for a sustainable future?"

One of the key assumptions of the inquiry was that the world has now become too complex, too interconnected for us to apply logic and rationality and expect to get any sensible answers. In fact, the opposite; if we continue to think about the economic and ecological issues using the same old ways we will get the same old stuff. And with that comes the risk that we will continue along a path towards irrevocable damage of our planet...

By bringing our full 'artful' selves to our work we can creatively engage with these issues in a way that will offer new ways of thinking and being.  

So, what does artful creativity require? Courage, guts, edginess, putting yourself out there, risk, resilience... 

So this kind of work is not for the faint-hearted but one of the most matter-of-fact gutsy exponents I know is Dr. Seeley herself.  Here she is leading a 'hand dance' where participants closely mirror each other's hand movements.  

If intimacy and connectivity might set the conditions for different ways of 'being in the world' this a surprisingly interesting exercise... give it a go....