Michael: Continuing the spirit of social inquiry

Something that jumped out at me when listening to the recordings was the acknowledgement of the amount of time it takes to collaborate and the commitment Shona, Maggie and Rob had to “locate (Michael’s) notes in real practice” – this connected to my sense of the NPCI Study Group (aka Collab) where I’ve been able to join with a group of understanding people who want to enquiry into my practice and the dilemmas I might raise about ‘where too?’ in a piece of work or a mechanism to move through a stuckness or un-know that I’m grappling and at other time discover a way to implement a theory into practice. What this adds to my approaches is an opportunity to test ideas or questions in a way that I’m gently held to account to my preferred way of practicing. I’ve noticed how sustaining this collaboration is for my energy against big, tough, age old problems that have many tricks and recruitment strategies in communities world wide. And sustaining of my commitment to use creativity, fun and hope in practice when there are invitation from others to pathologies, expertise or other those that me meet in our work.

By practice my questions online and stretching my ideas and skills, I’ve also found an increased capacity to collaborate with services in my local community in ways that used to seem so much more difficult and i think a part of this was probably my uncertainty of showing different ways of working together.

Cate