Launch

Yesterday we met with 700+ people at the launch of the 2022 ulab 2x program. For one hour and a half, we reviewed together the journey plan for the next 4 months, the destination we want to arrive to (our prototypes), and the support infrastructure that is offered by the Presencing Institute.

All that makes no sense without the driving factor making us do it, our present and deep intentions. In our case, we want to make something very simple and difficult: time. Time for research and transformation, because research is and should be transformative.

Orla, Rita, Verena and I organize a series of retreats in the Basque Country and northern Ireland to give educators, researchers and artists opportunities and tools to connect and continue with their work in online/offline communities of practice, reclaiming time in nature to reconnect and practice radical self care

The four of us work in action-research (widely) and we understand it is a human right to be democratized. We do it by organizing generative conditions for transformative research, education and arts.

Core team is plurilingual (English, Basque, Spanish and German) and based in the Basque Country, so we usually speak in English between ourselves.

We did a journalling exercise and afterwards we met in small groups to share our findings. I was lucky enough to meet Otto Scharmer in my breakout room:

Otto (whose work I have been reading, studying and somehow following for the last 4 years) was very relaxed and kind. He did not take over the conversation, and built upon what the others were saying. We all presented our projects and Otto mentioned that when they started the PI it was precisely as a community of people who wanted to do action research. That was very encouraging to hear!

The 2x is a big network providing the platform, the tools and the rhythms to strengthen collaboration and cross-pollination between projects across geographies. Now the challenge is to gather around our intention an extended team (our stewards and stakeholders, to use the terms that we practiced with in the session) and organize with them our first workshop. More about that later!