Recap of The Social Field Research Summer School

Nov 3, 2019

In June 2019, 55 researchers, students, artists, practitioners and academics gathered for an unconventional research event: the launch of the Presencing Institute’s Social Field Research Summer School.

In June 2019, 55 researchers, students, artists, practitioners and academics gathered for an unconventional research event: the launch of the Presencing Institute’s Social Field Research Summer School. They came from 23 different countries across five continents with the intention of contributing to the advancement of awareness-based systems change and to research that helps us to illuminate the invisible dimension of the social field.

Participants came from:

  • organizations, such as the World Health Organization, Impact Hub Lausanne, Centre for Human Ecology (Glasgow), and the Compassion Institute (USA);
  • government, including the Scottish Government and Ministry of Social Development, New Zealand; 
  • a diverse mix of academic institutions including the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro state, Stockholm School of Economics, Centre for Social Impact (University of Western Australia), Royal College of Art and the universities of Edinburgh, Vienna, Rennes, Antwerp, Cambridge, Pittsburgh, Wisconsin, Stavanger among others.

One striking feature of the summer school was that once in the room it was impossible to tell which participants were students, practitioners or faculty. What was clear, however, was the whole-hearted and whole-spirited engagement present.

The four day inaugural event was the first concrete step toward a 10-year vision to foster a global network of researchers who will co-develop the concepts, methods, and tools needed to catalyze the evolution of social fields. Our stepping-off point was a set of inquiry questions to help us begin this work:

  • How can we better understand and articulate the phenomenon of the social field?
  • What are its processes and dynamics?
  • How do we affect change in social fields?
  • How do we know if a field has shifted?
  • What are the conditions and barriers surrounding social field change?
  • What is the impact of social field change?

Once gathered, Otto put science, technology, the university and research into a historical context:

We live in a moment where millions take to the street in Hong Kong to fight for political justice and where the Fridays for the Future and other youth-led movements in different shapes inspire cross-generational uprising around the globe. As we all know, this has to do not only with a single issue, such as climate change. There are much deeper systemic issues at play. When you double-click on these movements and ask what are these deeper issues, one of them of course is the transformation of capitalism. In order to really make progress there, however, the next deeper level has to do with politics, with power and with decision-making, so reinventing democracy and the public space. If you then double-click on that and say what’s the next deeper layer, a lot of that has to do with education. Without reinventing education, and higher education in particular, nothing much else is going to happen. And yet, we believe that underneath all these things we already know, there is yet something deeper and more fundamental and something that we, as a community, haven’t addressed so far: the transformation of science itself. Because, at the end of the day, the issues mentioned above are grounded in an old paradigm of science.

With that frame, we dedicated much of our time together to active laboratory experimentation where we trialed new practices in Micro-phenomenology, Social Presencing Theater and Visual Practice Resonance with the intention of evolving these social technologies as research methods.

In addition, smaller groups met to share practices and methodologies such as participative evaluation, video sequencing, scribing and dialogue interviews as research tools, quantitative measurement, grounded theory and network science.

The Social Field Research Summer School was a prototype. We got valuable feedback and learned a lot. We learned we need to think clearly and with foresight about the ethical issues related to awareness-based systems change research, where the first-person experience is integral to the research process. We learned we need to balance cutting-edge collective experimentation with creating space for people to share and develop their work.We learned there is an appetite for connection and co-creation and an exceptional willingness to engage in this work.

The summer school was alive with ideas and connection. Since that time, we see the seeds of impact starting to emerge:

  • Individuals continue to meet, often across countries and continents through Zoom calls, LinkedIn and other platforms;
  • Working groups formed and continue to meet, sometimes focusing on a region, such as Europe, sometimes on a topic, such as capacity-building for systems change or youth engagement;
  • One project group is actively working to move forward a prototype for a new on-line, open-source journal focusing on awareness-based systems change.

For many, it was the relationships formed and the sense of becoming part of a new kind of community within the research world that were the most important outcomes:

“The event left me with a sense of connection and inspiration for this work. That in itself is one of the most powerful gifts one can receive.”

What worked? The possibilities that we have opened, so that it is a start of the conversation, of something new.”

“I came back a kinder and more open-minded person because of what I experienced.”

What the Social Field Research Summer School can and wants to be is still evolving. What is clear is that there is an engaged community aligned around the intention to make this a long-term effort.

“I feel like I will be unpacking, unfolding and evolving all the impressions, contacts and ideas, for a long time and am glad to have the picture of this being the start of a 10 year journey, so that there will be time for the unfolding.”

The 10-year timeline speaks to a broader vision of reinventing the 21st century university into an entity that integrates science, social arts practices, and consciousness in the service of profound societal transformation. Through the summer school, we are creating a platform to support and amplify the seeds of this new university that can already be found in the new learning environments and hot spots of societal transformation, and to sow new ones. It supports a community that lies at the intersection of research and practice in awareness-based systems change and offers a platform to help build and grow its work. The annual Social Field Research Summer School provides and annual “touch point” for the community, where we can experiment with new methodologies, forge connections and initiate the collaborations that will advance the field of awareness-based systems change and social field research.

 

The second annual Social Field Research Summer School will be held in Berlin, July 5-8, 2020.
Applications will be opening later this year. 
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