Ok so its not quite as much of a hippy-fest as the title of this short blog (blogette?) suggests… Today is day 1 of the 20th international commune on participatory methods in New Delhi, run by Praxis India – the institute for participatory practices.
I’m trying to cram in a quick blog in the first break as the 8 days are pretty tightly packed and sound fascinating, so I may not get another chance!
We have a day and a half with Professor Robert Chambers (ironic that it takes travelling half way round the world for me to finally do some training with Robert when we both live in Brighton!), a few days on participatory monitoring & evaluation and then a couple days of fieldwork which, I hope, will be the best bit!
A few gems so far from Robert Chambers and Tom Thomas (Praxis CEO):
“We live in exciting times, but also in exacting times. They demand a lot from us”
“The mere act of creating spaces for dialogue is important”
“When things are changing fast, sometimes the worse things are, the more opportunities there are to make them better”
“We need to come together to pish the boundaries of the possible”
And a nice symbolic “lighting of the flame” ritual to get things started (OK so it is a bit hippyfied…)
And nice to see some old-fashioned revolutionary spirit on the free (environmentally sustainable) bag!
Hopefully will blog more later in the week but no promises… If you’re interested in following we’ll be tweeting on #theworkshop2017 (and probably on @praxis_india too)
Matt Haikin 