Mark Spain

The first session was offered to get us to work in small groups and get to be a bit more connected to each other so we had a conversation with some structured questions.

In this interview Mark Spain describes what happens at an SDN annual workshop. He explains that the participants create the agenda together, after sharing a meal. People can offer to lead sessions but of course there is no obligation to do so.

Sessions might divide people into small groups and be led through some structured 'getting to know you' questions.

A session might outline the story of a community, a project, a history.

Mark describes a session where people were invited to form their bodies into dynamic representations of a system as it changes.

We only begin to touch on the Journey of Mark Spain in this interview. We hope to deliver more, over time.

 

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John Saward: Mark, can you tell us very broadly what happened at this January SDN annual workshop?

 

 

Mark Spain: The venue was a ski lodge in Thredbo. In summer, in the mountains which was fantastic. Great great place. We had a shared kitchen with 16 people and everyone turned up on the Friday afternoon and moved in and we set up a circle in the lounge room. We had a shared meal together.

 

 

Mark Spain: Someone had volunteered or a couple of people had volunteered to do the basics of that meal and so we all helped out putting that meal together and then after dinner each person had a chance to check in in the check-in circle and we got to meet new people and saw them in the context of each other and then the next morning we created an agenda for the four days together co-created an agenda and the basic format was that you know the day was divided up into time slots of about an hour and a half. And you know people offered to run sessions that were important to them and we sort of crafted that together into a four day program with a half day session for a bit of time out in nature on one of the days and then we had morning tea and then we ran through that agenda for the next four days. And each person I think got to have a go. Some people were a bit unsure about what they would run and there wasn't any pressure for them to do anything but by the end of the four days people had thought of something to run a session on and maybe even shared that session with others, and someone else. And it was you know that felt very complete that everybody got to do it. We certainly got to see each person's personality and challenges and interests in the way they are approaching their their life and the things they're interested in.

 

 

Mark Spain: So yeah I'd say overall it was a very rewarding experience.

 

 

John Saward: Can you give some examples of what these sessions were about.

 

 

Mark Spain: The first session was offered to get us to work in small groups and get to be a bit more connected to each other so we had a conversation with some structured questions. One of the people who designed this session to get us to be a bit more open and connected to each other in an accelerated way so that each of the topics was money, politics, death, sex and there might have been a wild card anyway and then another topic but they all and so we sat in a group of three and pulled a name out of a hat before we did that about which topic it was. And there were some questions to explore that topic and we each had a chance to answer questions around that topic. So people I think felt like that got us to know each other pretty pretty quickly and pretty well what the issues were and we came back into a larger group and shared some of the learning insights from that exercise.

 

 

John Saward: Do you remember any actual questions.

 

 

Mark Spain: Oh not specifically but you know like say for example with sex it might have been you know what's your experience of sex or something like that really open ended.

 

 

John Saward: Don't tell us any of the answers for now.

 

 

John Saward: Okay thanks very much. And then another session.

 

 

Mark Spain: A session that I really valued was - one of the people there had brought with them a colleague who's an Aboriginal guy. So when I say I brought with him he's a member of the board so they agreed to come together and they told a story - of their work and life together and both their families over quite a long arc even before they were both born - their relatives and ancestors and then the work they were doing together and how their parents and children and extended relatives fitted into that story. And yeah I found that a very interesting perspective on how. People work in families and in communities and especially in Indigenous communities so that was that was a really rich experience.

 

 

John Saward: Okay sounds good.

 

 

John Saward: One more one more session you can recall?

 

 

Mark Spain: Yeah I've maybe I just mention the session that I ran. I ended up, well I ran a session on what I'd been learning about Restorative Practice in Australia and then asked the group to divide into small groups and have a conversation about where they saw the opportunities for helping restorative practice thrive and be stronger across Australia from their experience and from hearing some of the stories of my research and interviews.

 

 

Mark Spain: And then they wrote down some of those ideas and pulled them and I've put them together to help in my presentation to the board.

 

 

Mark Spain: And then I also was involved in a partnering with someone else running a session on Social Presencing Theatre which comes out of the U.Lab. Which is the work that Otto Sharma has been doing around the world out of M.I.T. in Boston and that's ... what we did is I demonstrated how we could use our bodies to represent... different Elements of a system by the shape that our bodies take. So so what we did is created a four dimensional sculpture of SDN in Australia.

 

 

John Saward: Oh Really? I like video of that... It would be wonderful.

 

 

Mark Spain: Yeah. Well one of the things about the some people thought the same thing and wanted to video it.

 

 

John Saward: Yeah.

 

 

Mark Spain: We had a conversation about that and some people feel a little bit uncomfortable about what may happen to that video and so we didn't have unanimous agreement about taking the video and what would happen to it. So we decided not to do that. So that's come up before in other SDN workshops... there's a sense you know there's... people are quite sensitive about sharing stories and photos and images of the work that happens. Mainly out of just... confidentiality. Respect to each other. I think make it easier for people sometimes it's quite challenging for people to explore some of the topics that they're interested in and they they don't want to be constrained by you know having to think outside the room about what might happen to that material. So even the reporting. David Purnell takes notes of the session.

 

 

John Saward: Okay.

 

 

Mark Spain: Those notes are generally pretty bland and broad. They they don't really.. you know expose much of the detail or the process of what happens there. In the sculpture exercise, when we came to debriefing it was quite a powerful experience actually. Some people were in an observing role and others offered to take on a part of the system and, .. but when you see what happens in the system doesn't necessarily mean that's exactly what's going to happen in the system but it just gives you another lens into the possibilities of how those elements may interact as the future unfolds. So the sculpture moved around to a future state from a current state but as we debriefed it there was some some tears and emotion about what came up for some people and you know some surprise and some delight. So I felt that that was quite a satisfying session and that was done in partnership with someone doing a session on... on mindfulness and where we attend our attention to... as a skill set for being a change agent or a social developer... is being able to slow things down and notice where your attention goes in how the system operates so that those two things work well together.

 

 

John Saward: That's all great and we're running out of time for this session, and there's enough material here to have quite a few more conversations with you, I believe, and I'll invite you back next time and perhaps next time we can go more deeply into how you... how you... your own personal feelings, emotions, your intentions. How does it change your life going to these workshops. But for now that's enough for this session.

 

 

Mark Spain: OK.

 

 

John Saward: Thank You. Thank you for your time.