Bold Explorer's Guide ...

It has been two years since we started our artful project with a get-together at London’s Whitechapel Gallery and monthly Start the Week sessions. Here we explore what we hoped to achieve at the start, why it is important now for people and organisations before exploring what we did and the people we met along the way. We finish with a few clues as to what might emerge. Rob Warwick and James Traeger.

Here James and Rob reflect on working with a group of MBA participants exploring group dynamics, appreciative inquiry and artful practice.

When we are focusing on our practice and being artful what else is going on? In other words, what are the conditions that enable and constrain inquiry and what can we do about it.

Here we talk about our Mayvin community evening, getting people together at the Whitechapel Gallery, London to practice their artful inquiry. Very quickly people got into their artful stride, creating pictures and using these to enable rich conversations.

In this episode we explore James’ practice-based learning with Rob asking questions to get to the nub of what that practice is. We focus on artful approaches to practice, in terms of both what we do and how we think about what we do. In this sense it is a live exploration that just ‘happened’ with all its hesitations and stuttering that occurs between two people where new knowledge emerges. This is in contrast to post-hoc rationalisation of knowledge that seems clear cut. Here are some of the ideas and theories we are drawn to in this conversation. Becker, H. (2008). Art Worlds - Updated and Expanded (25th Anniv). Berkeley: University of California Press. Bourdieu, P. (1990). The Logic of Practice. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Polanyi, M. (1958). Personal Knowledge - Towards a Post - Critical Philosophy. Chicago: Chicago University University. Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations. London: Sage. Picture credit: ‘Miles Stair’ sculpture at Somerset House by Eva Jiricna.

If practice based learning is about anything it is about getting close to the grain of what goes on. We explore what this means and the different angles that we are going to take in future podcasts.