Episode 31  - The ProAction Cafe is a group conversation approach where people can offer peer support for each other's ideas, projects, and challenges. In this episode, I interview Ria Baeck, to learn the origin story of this method that she co-created with Rainer von Leoprechting. She shares how the rounds of conversations work and we explore how this conversation approach allows you to tap a collective intelligence in the room. 

For more information the Peer Power Hour events see this link. 

Episode 30: In times of fear and uncertainty, we need spaces where people can connect and offer peer support. In this episode, Beth Tener talks with Andrea Martin, also a facilitator, about an in-person space they’re creating called the Peer Power Hour, that allows people to help each other with our ideas, projects, and challenges. Andrea also shares about an initiative she started called Give and Gather, which creates local gatherings for mutual support and community connections. You’ll get practical ideas how you can host these kind of peer-support gatherings and hear about the benefits.

How can you create experiences of belonging and collective vitality, that support people’s creativity and thriving? Join Beth with her guest Bruce Nayowith as explore stories of how people have created environments of belonging in different contexts, as featured in podcast episodes 6-8 of Season 3. We explore how Minneapolis creatively engaged a diverse range of citizens to transform policies related to housing and hear from a local housing advocate about creating ways to engage residents in policy decisions. We unpack what it takes to ‘design’ inclusive spaces that facilitate authentic social connection and trust, with the story of the SeaCHANGE Conference. Finally, we discuss how people can strengthen a sense of their belonging and interconnectedness with all living things, learning from Four Arrows about moving beyond Western culture's assumptions to discover the kinship worldview.

Resources and links:  

Home: Living Love Playlist Season 3: My gift to you - a Spotify playlist of favorite songs of the guests on the Living Love podcast Season 3.  

Kinship: A Hub to Amplify the Power of Community: Check out this web site to learn about Beth Tener’s work, focused on designing for connection in groups and communities of all kinds. You can join the newsletter here.

Interconnected, by Daniel Siegel: Bookshop.org

Fire, poem by Judy Brown: 

Green Acre Baha’i Learning Center: 

Enough: Staying Human in an Engineered Age, by Bill McKibben: Bookshop.org

Great March for Climate Action (2014): http://climatemarch.org/ 

For a transcript of this episode see: Kinship website

Audio editing by: Podcasting for Creatives

How can we restore a sense of feeling at home with nature? In this podcast, we explore the sense of disconnection between humans and nature in modern Western cultures and contrast that to indigenous worldview that values interconnectedness. Four Arrows, a.k.a, Donald Trent Jacobs, shares stories from indigenous cultures, and his new book "Restoring the Kinship Worldview" which offers 28 precepts for rebalancing life on Earth. You’ll appreciate the richness of how a kinship worldview can help us restore biodiversity and balance with the earth, and personally to find courage in the face of fear and discover a deeper sense of belonging.

Resources and links:  

Kinship: A Hub to Amplify the Power of Community: Check out this web site to learn about Beth Tener’s work, focused on designing for connection in groups and communities of all kinds. You can join the newsletter here.

Restoring the Kinship Worldview: Indigenous Voies Introduce 28 Precepts for Rebalancing Life on Planet Earth, Book by Four Arrows and Darcia Narvaez

2019 UN Biodiversity Report Article

Worldview Chart by Four Arrows and Darcia Narvaez

The Evolved Nest, Darcia Narvaez’s Website

Wild Geese, poem by Mary Oliver 

The Media Have Missed a Crucial Message of the UN’s Biodiversity Report, in The Nation by Four Arrows

Differing Worldviews in Higher Education: Two Scholars Argue Cooperatively About Justice Education, Walter Block and Four Arrows  

A Time Before Deception: Truth in Communication, Culture, and Ethics, Thomas W. Cooper  

You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times, Howard Zinn

For a transcript of this episode see: Kinship website

Audio editing by: Podcasting for Creatives

This conversation explores how we can create spaces where artists of all kinds can foster a sense of belonging and creative exploration. With Diannely Antigua, a poet and educator, and Najee Brown, a playwright, photographer, and arts producer, we share the story of the SeaCHANGE Conference, a conference like no other. We gather creators of different identities, races, and ages and explore how the arts can contribute to healing and social change. In this podcast, you’ll learn about the ways that the arts and creative community supported each of my guests in their paths, and how to create conferences where people can form meaningful connections that lead to lasting friendships and collaborations.

Kinship: A Hub to Amplify the Power of Community: Check out this web site to learn about Beth Tener’s work, focused on designing for connection in groups and communities of all kinds. You can join the newsletter here.

 SeaCHANGE Conference - register for the conference here 

SeaCHANGE Conference: Art + Conversation with Victoria Carrington and Robert Sapiro - earlier podcast sharing about the Conference

Diannely Antigua: 

web site and Instagram  

Bread & Poetry Podcast by Diannely Antigu

Diannely’s Book Good Monster: https://bookshop.org/p/books/good-monster/20252485?ean=9781556596902 

Najee Brown:

najee visuals: photography web site  

Instagram

Theater for the People

Multicultural Arts Center in Cambridge, MA

Green Acre

For a transcript of this episode see: Kinship website

Audio editing by: Podcasting for Creatives

In many communities, we are in a crisis where many people cannot access affordable stable housing. Andrea Pickett shares her experience as a housing advocate who is also navigating the housing crisis herself. She's passionate about giving those with lived experience a voice on these issues. Janne Flisrand shares how the City of Minneapolis, with broad citizen engagement, created a systemic scale of change towards homes for all. You’ll learn about how the group Neighbors for More Neighbors rallied people to support new housing and the Mapping Prejudice project allowed people to see the harms of historical discrimination. Discover how community artists engaged many voices not usually in the process, wonky bloggers deciphered zoning codes, and elected leaders took bold city-wide policy action…with early signs showing the measures are keeping rents stable. 

Kinship: A Hub to Amplify the Power of Community: Check out this web site to learn about Beth Tener’s work, focused on designing for connection in groups and communities of all kinds. You can join the newsletter here.

 Kinship Blog Post: An overview of Minneapolis’s 2040 Plan

Janne Flisrand Blog Post: Minneapolis’ Secret 2040 Sauce Was Engagement

Neighbors for More Neighbors: Website

Minneapolis 2040 Plan: Website

Mapping Prejudice: Website

Streets.MN: Website

Wedge LIVE: Website

Pew Research on Minneapolis Rents: Article

Andrea Pickett TEDx Talk: YouTube Video

Literary Hub Article Featuring Janne Flisrand: Article

For a transcript of this episode see: Kinship website

Audio editing by: Podcasting for Creatives

Join Beth with her guests Nancy Gabriel and Bruce Nayowith as they reflect on highlights and learning from episodes 1-4 in Season 3. We explore how to create intentional “pockets” where people try different ways of working together. The positive examples and inspiration from these experiences can spread. This episode offers facilitators, teachers, and coaches ideas on how to create positive environments for dialogue or learning. We draw insights from conversations with Ria Baeck with Collective Presencing, Emily Daniels with The Regulated Classroom, and Rosa Zubizarreta with Dynamic Facilitation and Citizen Assemblies. We discuss how to create environments for collaborative learning. 

Resources and links:  

Kinship: A Hub to Amplify the Power of Community: Check out this web site to learn about Beth Tener’s work, focused on designing for connection in groups and communities of all kinds. You can join the newsletter here.

New Directions Collaborative

Dartmouth’s NH/VT Schweitzer Fellows Program

Trauma and the Soul by Don Kalsched (book)

Thomas Huebl – website and Healing Collective Trauma (book)

The Pocket Project

Gottman Marriage Counseling Method 

Circle Way 

How a Caterpillar Turns into a Butterfly - Blog about Imaginal Cells: A Model from Nature for Transforming Systems from a book by Elisabet Sahtouris quoting Norrie Huddle

Ladder of Influence - A concept for slowing down our thinking to see how we jump to conclusions and/or interpret things, developed by Chris Argyri.

Collaborative Learning and Generous Exchange - Blog 

For a transcript of this episode see: Kinship website

Audio editing by: Podcasting for Creatives

Conflict is a part of life. Instead of avoiding conflict or allowing it to split communities into polarized sides, how can we transform tension and conflict into creative responses and unity? My guest, Rosa Zubizarreta, author of From Conflict to Creative Collaboration, shares examples of innovative citizen engagement processes that allow people to feel a sense of psychological safety in speaking up and feeling heard. We learn about how Citizen Councils were used in Austria to address complex challenges - shifting from two polarized sides to find creative solutions. Rosa offers suggestions of approaches that anyone can use to help a group hold tension and conflict, including Dynamic Facilitation, Restorative Circles, and Empathy Circles.

Resources and links:  

Kinship: A Hub to Amplify the Power of Community: Check out this web site to learn about Beth Tener’s work, focused on designing for connection in groups and communities of all kinds. You can join the newsletter here.

Rosa’s web site - DiaPraxis: Awakening the Spirit of Creative Collaboration. She is currently a Visiting Fellow in Democracy at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

From Conflict to Creative Collaboration - Rosa’s book

Scaling Deliberation - Austrian Citizen Councils - article by Rosa

The Co-Intelligence Institute - Promoting innovations in collective wisdom, co-creativity, and collaborative governance. Tom Atlee, research director.

Citizens - book by Jon Alexander

Restorative Circles - An approach to working with conflict, developed by Dominic Barter

EmpathyCircles.com 

 For a transcript of this episode see: Kinship website

Audio editing by: Podcasting for Creatives

Episode 3: Season 3: As we gain a fuller understanding of what stress and overwhelm do to people, it has enormous relevance for classrooms. In this episode, Emily Daniels of The Regulated Classroom shares how she helps teachers create classroom environments where everyone feels a sense of felt safety. Emily has trained thousands of teachers and administrators in this framework, translating scientific research of trauma and resilience into practice. Participants say “This is the most hopeful thing I’ve done in education in 30 years.” When the whole group’s nervous systems are “regulated,” this creates a more fruitful environment for learning. The approach is a solution to educator burnout and overwhelm.
 
Resources and links: 

Kinship: A Hub to Amplify the Power of Community: Check out this web site to learn about Beth Tener’s work, focused on designing for connection in groups and communities of all kinds. You can join the newsletter here.

The Regulated Classroom - Emily Daniels’ website where you can learn about her framework and trainings 

Bottom-Up Trauma-Informed Teaching - Guidebook of classroom practices and exercises by Emily Daniels

Trauma and the Nervous System - YouTube video about Polyvagal Theory from Dr. Stephen Porges from the Polyvagal Institute

Thomas Kuhn - studied how paradigms shift   

Dr Peter Levine - developer of Somatic Experiencing, a naturalistic and neurobiological approach to healing trauma

Dr. Bruce Perry - Neuroscience researcher and author of “What Happened to You?” with Oprah Winfrey

Resmaa Manakem - Author of My Grandmother’s Hands

For a transcript of this episode see: Kinship website

Audio editing by: Podcasting for Creatives

If you’re hungry to find ways that groups can adapt to change in fluid, collaborative ways, this podcast conversation with Ria Baeck provides the nourishment of inspiration. She’s a facilitator and author of Collective Presencing, a book and web site exploring how groups can co-create. We explore specific ways that enable people to feel safe to speak and to be themselves in a group. Drawing on learning from The Art of Hosting and circle process, Ria shares how to hold a container for the group to find its own answers. We can enter a flow state with a group, where the collaboration is like a dance. In times of rapid change, this emerging human capacity to co-create will be vital to learn and practice.

Resources and links: 

Kinship: A Hub to Amplify the Power of Community: Check out this web site to learn about Beth Tener’s work, focused on designing for connection in groups and communities of all kinds. You can join the newsletter here.

Ria Baeck’s Web Site: Collective Presencing

World Café

Open Space

Circle Way

The Circle Way (Book)

Ways of Council  - web site

The Fruits of Collaboration - blog post with the graphic Beth described about building foundation of strong relationships before action

Art of Hosting - Syrian refugee story

Questioning to Question Our Assumptions - blog

The Dawn of Everything: A New History (Book)

The Art of Hosting

Open Sourcing Social Change - blog

For a transcript of this episode see: Kinship website

Audio editing by: Podcasting for Creatives