Michael was keenly interested in exploring the development of ideas and developments in the field of social and human inquiry. While alive, he initiated many opportunities for people around the world to get together and talk about ideas and to pay attention to what they triggered and sparked. We include here a brief conversation between his close colleagues Maggie Carey, Shona Russell and Rob Hall who describe some of the ways they have been able to continue these explorations. We also include some Dulwich Centre Friday Afternoon videos. What are some of the ways you are continuing the exploration- and cross-pollination?
Explorations as the Driving Force
Transcript
…..being at the point of social inquiry, not coming up with the answers, but being intensely interested in where things are going on, and what they might spark.
Rob Hall
Maggie Carey, Shona Russell and Rob Hall remember what it was like to share ideas with Michael.
“Out of the box” conversations: an invitation to co-explore the broader politics of problems and reconstruct preferred ways of being in responding to stories of drug-use and racism By Kassandra Pedersen
This innovative methodology involves the creation of a “box of problems” to assist therapists and the people consulting them to collaboratively investigate the historical, social, political and economic contexts of problems.
In this presentation, Kassandra describes her exploratory use of the ‘box of problems’ in therapeutic conversations with a young immigrant girl struggling with the effects of drug-use. The project was centered around the metaphor that “Problems have Ethics” and it explored pathways to unmask and question those “Ethics” by bringing into the therapeutic conversations the girl’s understandings about relations between dominant discourses around drugs and migration that favour, or are served by several doctrines, lobbies, larger interests and systems.
This video describes how “out of the box conversations” facilitated this teenager’s evaluation of the power plays that supported the drug-use. Finally, “out of the box conversations” created openings for her to live out alternative stories of personal agency and new courses of action according to her preferred value of “having a personal, social and political voice” in life.
Kassandra is a dedicated narrative therapist based in Thessaloniki, Greece, and an international Tutor of Dulwich Centre for the Greek training program. She has a passionate interest in facilitating experience of preferred stories through the deconstruction of the social, political, cultural, and interpersonal contexts in which problems arise. Alongside her private practice, she offers narrative workshops, supervision and trainings in Greece and overseas. Kassandra can be contacted via email: [email protected] and website: www.kassandrapedersen.gr