Revisioning and refreshing your reflexive abilities through aspiration, inspiration and perspiration

‘Reflexivity’ is a regularly used term within systemic thinking and practice. In brief it refers to an aspirational process in which an individual person, or persons in relationship take a ‘step out’ to explore: their relationship with themselves (self-reflexivity); with each other (relational reflexivity); with ideas (conceptual reflexivity); with their feelings (emotional reflexivity) (Burnham, 1993, 2005) and their surroundings (contextual reflexivity). These processes include: clarifying aspects of practice that may have moved from ‘original to orthodox’; confirming our commitments to improving our practices and extending our practice repertoire. We aim to create opportunities for you to revision and refresh your reflexive abilities through:

• sharing some of our own experiences of enhancing our reflexive abilities often through processes that were personally uncomfortable
• mapping these experiences onto theoretical frameworks to transform them from personal experiences into professional abilities
• creating exercises that enable workshop participants to actively experiment with change.  The late Barry Mason (2010) described this process thus:

Change = A commitment to experimenting with difference + action + repetition + time

There is a possibility of two half day, online follow up support sessions that give participants the time to express their ‘commitment to actively experimenting with difference’ in their own practice, returning to share and compare with others.

The MAC’s ecology contains both ‘Mind’ (exhibitions of art and poetry) and ‘Nature’ the varied parkland of Cannon Hill Park fitting with Bateson’s ‘Steps to an Ecology of Mind’ (1972). Each of these resources can be used by participants as contexts for reflexive inspiration.  Those taking ‘Steps’ into different Ecologies may create some perspiration and bring us to our SENSES and bring our SENSES to us (Nkanang, 2026).

Cost: £40 including refreshments but not lunch (bring your own or use the café)

Email [email protected] to book your place

Places will be allocated on a first come first served basis but not confirmed until we’ve received your payment. We will send you details of how to pay. We regret we cannot generate invoices for employers.