Community Leadership Fellowship:
Three Rivers Flowing...a deep dive into the philosophies and practices of dialogue, reflective practice and soul
for social and community practitioners
PLEASE NOTE: This event has already taken place. To see Upcoming Community Praxis Co-op Events, see the Events page
The Fellowship will:
Be an intensive three-day journey of engagement and encounter
… towards the deepening of our leadership in organisational, community and social practice,
… underscored by traditions and sensibilities that offer guidance for our praxis in challenging times
… including David Whyte, bell hooks, Martin Buber, Mary Watkins, Paulo Freire, J.W. Goethe and Otto Scharmer.
A three-day journey as part of a ‘community of practice’, aimed at developing the faculties and understanding necessary to deepen your capacity for leadership in reflective community and social practice.
A programme that observes the rigour of academia while challenging its ways of thinking and engages learning through a practising community.
The idea:
To build community and a robust reflective community and social practice, courage is needed.
Courage to go within (soul-work) so that we may work without. Courage to act by becoming ever more receptive, to feel the world arise or fall inside our own bodies. Courage to work on our thinking, moving it towards the dialogical and participatory.
Courage to recognise the heart as a phenomenological organ of perception, to experience our bodies as our way of relating. Courage to work with others on refining our practice. Courage to challenge the very grain and gesture of our times.
The content and faculties:
River #1: To start the Fellowship you’ll be invited into a courageous and vulnerable exploration of what soul-work means for us as leaders in our workplaces and communities.
River #2: Then we will journey into a challenging space of examining our practice and leadership anchored firmly in the wisdom of dialogical traditions of community and organisational development.
River #3: Finally, we will be invited into a phenomenological reflective practice, underpinned by a Goethean sensibility. We will explore, appreciate and affirm our most authentic selves as artists of the invisible applying subtle skills of delicate activism to our roles as organisational and community leaders.
The Fellowship will be potent and practical for:
Peter Westoby was introduced at a keynote of the 2018 International Association of Community Development as “a community development scholar, activist and analyst”. Peter kind of liked the ring of it; almost poetic. Yet, more accurately, from the age of 20, Peter has been on a journey of community development practice, deeply shaped by a grass-roots tradition, Freirean in nature, and place-based. That evolved over many years, particularly as he worked in places such as South Africa, Uganda, the Philippines, Nepal, PNG and Vanuatu.
At the age of 40 he found himself as a latecomer wading into the academy, and perhaps by chance, took up a position as a community development scholar just as Anthony Kelly retired from 40 years of teaching, practice and service at The University of Queensland.
He has been a writer or co-writer/editor of 14 books and over 50 professional journal articles on CD (https://uq.academia.edu/PeterWestoby), and loves that there is an emerging global ‘community of scholarship’ growing around the world. But more importantly, he loves reading, walking, sitting by a fire under the moon or stars, wandering daily in Mary Cairnross Park, exploring his bio-region, being with friends, sipping a coffee at dawn, and going to bed about 8.30pm (yes, he’s a lark, not an owl).
Be an intensive three-day journey of engagement and encounter
… towards the deepening of our leadership in organisational, community and social practice,
… underscored by traditions and sensibilities that offer guidance for our praxis in challenging times
… including David Whyte, bell hooks, Martin Buber, Mary Watkins, Paulo Freire, J.W. Goethe and Otto Scharmer.
A three-day journey as part of a ‘community of practice’, aimed at developing the faculties and understanding necessary to deepen your capacity for leadership in reflective community and social practice.
A programme that observes the rigour of academia while challenging its ways of thinking and engages learning through a practising community.
The idea:
To build community and a robust reflective community and social practice, courage is needed.
Courage to go within (soul-work) so that we may work without. Courage to act by becoming ever more receptive, to feel the world arise or fall inside our own bodies. Courage to work on our thinking, moving it towards the dialogical and participatory.
Courage to recognise the heart as a phenomenological organ of perception, to experience our bodies as our way of relating. Courage to work with others on refining our practice. Courage to challenge the very grain and gesture of our times.
The content and faculties:
River #1: To start the Fellowship you’ll be invited into a courageous and vulnerable exploration of what soul-work means for us as leaders in our workplaces and communities.
River #2: Then we will journey into a challenging space of examining our practice and leadership anchored firmly in the wisdom of dialogical traditions of community and organisational development.
River #3: Finally, we will be invited into a phenomenological reflective practice, underpinned by a Goethean sensibility. We will explore, appreciate and affirm our most authentic selves as artists of the invisible applying subtle skills of delicate activism to our roles as organisational and community leaders.
The Fellowship will be potent and practical for:
- Community and social practitioners who want to reflect deeply on themselves as ‘source’, the key instrument in our practice
- Group and organisational leaders who’d like to lean further into their leadership practices of observation, deep listening, and discernment
- Active and engaged citizens who’d like to be more conscious of their intuitive practices
- Activists, social and ecological practitioners wanting to deepen their dialogue and reflection capabilities
- ‘…This fellowship protected by soul during covid’
- ‘…the course helped me be in touch with my aliveness, and lean into the balance of freedom and responsibility’
- ‘… I’ve learned to step back, slow down, observe and be reflective, so my action is more potent’
- ‘… I’ve reconnected with my senses and heart, and have a much clearer intention’
Peter Westoby was introduced at a keynote of the 2018 International Association of Community Development as “a community development scholar, activist and analyst”. Peter kind of liked the ring of it; almost poetic. Yet, more accurately, from the age of 20, Peter has been on a journey of community development practice, deeply shaped by a grass-roots tradition, Freirean in nature, and place-based. That evolved over many years, particularly as he worked in places such as South Africa, Uganda, the Philippines, Nepal, PNG and Vanuatu.
At the age of 40 he found himself as a latecomer wading into the academy, and perhaps by chance, took up a position as a community development scholar just as Anthony Kelly retired from 40 years of teaching, practice and service at The University of Queensland.
He has been a writer or co-writer/editor of 14 books and over 50 professional journal articles on CD (https://uq.academia.edu/PeterWestoby), and loves that there is an emerging global ‘community of scholarship’ growing around the world. But more importantly, he loves reading, walking, sitting by a fire under the moon or stars, wandering daily in Mary Cairnross Park, exploring his bio-region, being with friends, sipping a coffee at dawn, and going to bed about 8.30pm (yes, he’s a lark, not an owl).
At this present moment he is also:
Director/consultant at Community Praxis Co-op;
a P/T practitioner at Hummingbird House;
a Custodian of Camellia Centre for Reflective Practice; and
a Visiting Professor, University of the Free State, South Africa.
Director/consultant at Community Praxis Co-op;
a P/T practitioner at Hummingbird House;
a Custodian of Camellia Centre for Reflective Practice; and
a Visiting Professor, University of the Free State, South Africa.
Check this out to listen to Peter:
PLEASE NOTE: This event has already taken place. To see Upcoming Community Praxis Co-op Events, see the Events page