LCD Weekly Issue - 022 - The Wind, The Pigeon and The Stork
🏔️ Words from the mountains
I am looking back to a terrific "Non-Human Persona workshop in the Park" in Amsterdam last Thursday, June 7. We all gathered in the beautiful Westerpark in Amsterdam-West. It was a wonderful experience in multiple ways.
Since the beginning of this year, we have had a remote team of volunteers, and I finally got to meet one of them, Anneke van Woerden, in person and facilitate the workshop together. It was amazing!
Nature in the Park connects.
We had a pluriverse group of educators, designers, facilitators, researchers, and wanderers from Brazil, Zimbabwe, Poland, and the Netherlands, and everyone got along immediately. It is mesmerising that when you bring people together in nature who don't know each other, they often connect more easily than in an office building. I knew this happened in the wild in the mountains, but I learned that it also happens in a city park.
It is ok to let go of the script.
We didn't do what I had planned to do, and it was great! Yes, we made three fantastic personas of the wind, a pigeon, and a stork, but we didn't do the second part of the workshop. I needed to give space to the conservation of life-centered design and allow individual participants to create a sense of belonging and confirmation that they are not alone with their questions and search for a more impactful way of designing.
As a facilitator, I always have a time-boxed guide to fall back on, but I believe in the power of sensing the energy and needs of the group. This flexibility in my approach, guided by the unique dynamics of each group, makes each facilitation a rewarding experience. It's a testament to the effectiveness of the workshop format and its ability to adapt to different contexts and needs.
Let's go to more parks.
I have been looking for workshop formats that can easily spread worldwide and are adaptable to local cultural and natural contexts. The Non-Human Persona Workshop in the Park is one of them. The workshop connects people and the Park's natural environment. It brings together the participants' different stories, allowing for a fun, immersive, and practical way to explore a key element of life-centered design and give nature in the Park a voice. The format is simple enough to create a smooth introduction to Life-Centered Design.
🐅 LCD in the Wild - Micro Rewilding
The Revelator, a news and ideas initiative of the Center for Biological Diversity, provides editorially independent reporting, analysis, and stories at the intersection of politics, conservation, art, culture, endangered species, climate change, economics, and the future of wild species, wild places, and the planet. They have a terrific article about micro-rewilding in cities, which includes many great examples from the United Kingdom.
Until now, rewilding, which is by its very nature a large-scale effort, has been concentrated in the countryside and rural areas. However, several projects and local movements have been pushing for more urban rewilding at a smaller scale.
Experts call it micro rewilding, and harnessing its potential comes at a crucial time. Urban 'Microrewilding' Projects Provide a Lifeline for Nature. Recovering urban wildlife isn't just about protecting a city's parks and rivers and greening its streets, homes, and skyscrapers.
🪄 Inspiration- Studio DRIFT
"Dutch artists Lonneke Gordijn (1980) and Ralph Nauta (1978) founded studio DRIFT in 2007. With a multidisciplinary team of 65, they work on experiential sculptures, installations and performances.
DRIFT manifests the phenomena and hidden properties of nature with the use of technology in order to learn from the Earth's underlying mechanisms, and to re-establish our connection to it. With both depth and simplicity, DRIFT's artworks illuminate parallels between man-made and natural structures through deconstructive, interactive, and innovative processes. The artists raise fundamental questions about what life is and explore a positive scenario for the future."
A participant of the Non-Human Persona Workshop shared their latest installation, Murmuring Minds
"Murmuring Minds is an interactive performance installation that explores the intricate patterns governing movement and process. Within a designated space, sixty autonomously-moving rectangular blocks act as a swarm executing specific behaviours."
🔥 Hot in the School - LCD Talks # 2: Life-Centered Design and Facilitation
Daniel Wirtz will join us during our second LCD Talk to explore the facilitation of life-centred and sustainable design processes and workshops. Designing more holistically changes the way we facilitate a design process. Decisions are made differently in other moments. The rhythm of a workshop might change. And much more
We invited our friend and co-founder of the Facilitator School to shed some light on facilitation. Together, we explore how facilitation might change when you organise workshops and guide the design process with a sustainable or life-centred purpose.
In the first 40 minutes, Daniel and Jeroen have an in-depth conversation, followed by the Q&A, during which you can ask questions about Life-Centered Design and facilitation.
Join the LCD Talk #2 and learn about facilitating a sustainable design process
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Until next Monday!
Have a great week!
👋 Jeroen
