Our invitation to you

What does it take to really think and work together democratically? How can we connect to others in fruitful ways that foster sustainable action? Can we create groups and systems that are responsive and resilient? What can we learn from therapeutic communities/milieus that we can transfer, adapt and use in other contexts?

Our inspiration for this workshop derives from the long tradition of therapeutic community practice. Tom Main, Franz Fanon, Barbara Docker- Drysdale, Donald Winnicott, Wilfred Bion and R.D.Laing are some of the pioneers who articulated models of practice that were non-hierarchical and collaborative in nature. These are perhaps best summarised by the themes of Democratization, Acceptance, Communalism, Reality Confrontation and Reciprocal Relationships.

To help us to learn from experience, to use our physicality to access nonverbal understandings of ourselves and our relationships, as well as to play and have fun, we have also included spaces in the program for all participants, including staff, to take part in group exercises inspired by Argentine Tango. We will also be using a Social Dream Matrix so as to harness the unconscious life of the group, focusing on the dreams not the dreamers, to jointly create social meanings.

Through the design of this three day workshop we hope to experiment with ways of working and being together. We will be reflecting on our dreams, noticing the part played by the unconscious, attending to the interplay of leadership and followership, re-connecting body and mind, and discovering alternative ways to take up our authority within a democratic ethos.

This is our invitation to you. Join us for what promises to be a rich weekend of exploration and discovery together.

Aims of the conference

A Group Relations Conference is an experiential learning opportunity. In this conference we aim to help you:

• Develop insight into the nature of collaboration and cooperation.
• Build your understanding of group and social processes.
• Discover more about the role of the nonverbal and the body in shared communication.
• Consider broader cultural processes that impact on group and system functioning.

Who is it for?

The Conference is suitable for anyone curious about the impact of self on group, and group on self. You may work in a therapeutic environment, be a therapeutic or relational practitioner, have an interest in the functioning of democratic and collaborative systems, be a student of the human sciences (social science, psychology, psychotherapy, bodywork and movement), a community organiser, or simply a citizen seeking to explore the context in which we live, learn and grow.

What happens in a Group Relations Conference?

Group Relations is an approach to group work, with its roots in system-psychodynamic thinking. A Group Relations Conference consists of a program of group sessions, of different sizes and tasks, some with pre-allocated membership, some with self-forming groups. Consultants work to support learning by highlighting group dynamics. This may include attention to “beneath the surface” processes, blind spots, hidden meanings, and the emotional realities that lie behind our everyday talk.

The first Group Relations Conference, the Leicester Conference, was held by The Tavistock Institute in 1957. Today, they are hosted worldwide, by a wide variety of organisations, committed to the vision of learning through the experience of being together. Stepping into the conference might initially feel like joining any other work or public meeting. There are many familiar features: a handbook sets out the programme, there are the usual formalities of registration, then an opening welcome event at which the staff are introduced. But then something unusual happens. A space opens up which is not filled by a sequence of pre-determined speeches. There may be silence, there may be reflection or suppressed tension, or someone finds the courage to speak. The essential framework is the space denoted by time and task. Within this there is the possibility of exploration.

At its simplest level a group is a collection of people who’ve come together to engage in some shared purpose or task together. This inevitably means that people find themselves taking up, or being pushed into roles. Some of these roles may be task-focussed: a group leader, a team player, a follower. Some of these may be less obvious: a group saboteur, a group sceptic, the silent participant, and so on. There may be a feeling that we’ve been here before. After all, by adulthood, all of us have been in many groups: family constellations, school situations, social groups, voluntary associations, work teams. What is the combination of personal history, of how we read what is happening, and of what is “given” to us by the group, that leads us to play the parts we play in these contexts?

This is the invitation to learn that a Group Relations Conference proposes. There may be surprises ahead as we confront how we influence, or fail to influence others, and how we deal with what others tell us about ourselves. To the extent that the group situations seem “familiar” to us, there is the capacity to re-evaluate group dynamics from other phases of life.

In sum, then, a Group Relations Conference is designed to provide a setting for deep learning about self, about role, and about group in the context of organisation and society. Our inspirations for this particular Group Relations Conference are therapeutic community practice, and argentine tango. For us, therapeutic community work represents a model of creating a collaborative, relational community. We see tango as representing a complex group culture and as such a place for activities exploring the themes of trust, physicality and shared creative expression.

Venue and Times

The Venue is in central London, 5 minutes walk from Swiss Cottage tube.

Accommodation is not provided.

How to Register

Closing Date for Applications : Thursday August 14th

Discounts

We are offering you a choice of high, medium and low fees to suit your circumstances. We trust that, wherever possible, people will choose to pay the higher or medium fee in order to support us in running this event and making it accessible to low income applicants or those with financial restrictions.

Organisational standard rate: £550 (£300 per person for 3 or more people).