the essence of music faciliation

For anyone interested in Music Faciliation, I highly recommend listening to Salle Des Departs, a 10 minute podcast from the good folks at Radiolab:

Imagine that you’re a composer. Imagine getting this commission: “Please write us a song that will allow family members to face the death of a loved one…” Well, composer David Lang had to do just that when a hospital in Garches, France, asked him to write music for their morgue, or “Salle Des Departs.” 

dynamic form in process facilitation

In an attempt to make the most of a missed presentation at Stanford last week, I decided to swing by the campus bookstore. I happened upon a treasure of a book, LI: Dynamic Form in Nature, by David Wade. As I perused the pages, taking in the rich illustrations and the annotations that accompanied them, my mind leapt from patterns of nature to patterns of process. Specifically, to the patterns of dialogue and information flow that are created by the structure of interactions during design events.

Being the first to admit my unrefined skill at rendering what’s in my mind to an illustration on a page, I was nonetheless inspired enough by Wade’s work to break out my journal and begin sketching.

it’s all guinea pig, all the time

During a recent conversation about event design with my friend, Kathia, one topic that came up was the notion of balancing “pushing the envelope” with the notion of keeping a familiarity and meeting expectations among the participants, at least until a field of trust and engagement is established. While we didn’t couch it in these exact terms, this was the gist.

The more I think about it, the more I think designing to the expectations and familiarity of the participants lacks power and handicaps, rather than helps, a facilitator’s ability to unleash group genius, breakthrough thinking, and shifts of mind…