Ms. Donna Cardinal, Mr. Wes Denison, Mr. Murray Polson
The Cultural Leadership Development Project was a three-year national project to develop learning opportunities for cultural leaders, making use of distance communications technologies. Along the way, we discovered that we were experiencing community at a distance. This paper looks at what that was like, what might account for it happening, and the practices that might enable it to happen for other groups of people working and learning together via computer-mediated communications (CMC).
The Cultural Leadership Development Project was sponsored by the Centre for Cultural Management at the University of Waterloo, and funded by The J. W. McConnell Family Foundation, Imperial Oil Limited, and the Innovations Programme of Human Resources Development Canada. Over its duration, it involved a total of 250 people. The tangible outcome is a prototype distance learning opportunity for cultural leaders to be offered as early as January 96 by the University of Waterloo. At least as important though less tangible an outcome is the discovery of a process whereby community was created and sustained at a distance, principally via computer-mediated communications.
Early in the Project, participants were invited to open accounts on a computer network, and to commence communicating with one another via e-mail and electronic conferencing. Other distance technologies used up to that point included extensive audio teleconferencing, and one experience of video conferencing. Participants were located from coast to coast, and from the US border to Dawson City, Yukon. Costs of computer communicating were underwritten by the Project for all who wanted to explore this medium. Equipment costs were not subsidized. Of the 80 people who opened accounts between January 93 and the end of the Project in April 95, a half dozen were veteran computer communicators. Another dozen had limited experience of e-mail, mostly on local area networks. The remainder had no experience of using computers to communicate, and some had no experience of using computers. I mention this to establish that computer-communicating was a new mode for most of us, including the Project Director. However, from the start, we had a definite purpose for our use of CMC, and clearly defined protocols for our communication, in which we engaged whether on-line or in person or in any other modes. These protocols were the practices and disciplines of the Futures-Invention approach to envisioning, about which more later.
Our initial purpose, when the first accounts were opened, was to exchange scenarios of the future of culture in Canada among scenario teams from all eleven Project sites. These scenarios of the future had been developed in some detail during three-day envisioning workshops held in each site, which ranged from major metropolitan areas like Toronto and Vancouver to smaller and more remote areas like Kitimat/Terrace, Sault Ste. Marie and Cape Breton. Until this point, one year into the Project, most communication had been between the Director and participants in each site by mail, audioteleconference or face-to-face. This was the first communication among participants in different sites.
In subsequent stages of the Project, we used the computer network to conduct an on-line envisioning workshop at a distance, and then to pilot the learning opportunity we developed. From the exchange of scenarios, through the on-line workshop to design the learning opportunity, to the two pilots of the learning opportunity, there was an increase in numbers of people participating, and in intensity of participation. As with the Project itself, participation in each of these stages was by invitation and self-selection. There were no prerequisites except intention on the part of the learner to participate at that stage.
Our computer linkage was via a text-based conferencing system operated by the NirvCentre, a not-for-profit organization in Toronto, affiliated with the APC networks worldwide. We established a series of private conferences accessible only to CLDP participants. Some of the advantages of the NirvCentre "Web" were that it didn’t require high-end equipment; it allowed us to group our interactions around conferences and topics within those conferences; it maintained an ongoing record of interactions whereby a newcomer could trace the evolution of current activity; and it provided ample opportunity for exploration of non-CLDP conferences on the Web by CLDPers who were motivated to explore the e-world on a small scale.
A disadvantage of the NirvCentre’s Web service was the cost of connecting from all over Canada by Datapac. NirvCentre has direct-dial lines in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal and now Vancouver; for all other participants, Datapac rates made the service quite costly. The solely text-based system was also a limitation in a group of people that included many artists and visual learners.
When one person (a "Web window") from each of 31 scenario teams was invited to post his scenario in a specific CLDP conference, a collective steep learning curve commenced! Eventually 20 scenarios were posted, almost all by scenario team members. Perhaps because the posting itself was such a feat for most, or perhaps because no clear invitation was offered, there was limited interaction around scenarios--perhaps 20 or 25 pages of questions and responses. The most interaction was by two veteran computer communicators, whose scenarios were also the first to be posted. However, this was enough to encourage others, and to demonstrate the potential of computer-mediated communication to link peers throughout the country. One of those persons lived in Vancouver and worked for US public television; the other lived in Toronto and was a senior curator in a major national museum. Their exchanges were elegant--no line wraps, no gibberish, no single lines per page or single letters per line, no new topics called "q" created as they tried to "quit" from a mystifying path on which they found themselves. Later, as the rest of us struggled to learn how to create a response rather than a topic, we appreciated the competence and experience exhibited by Dave and Justine in those early, apparently easy, postings.
The second time we focused our efforts on computer conferencing it was to take advantage of the technology to conduct an envisioning workshop on-line. In response to an invitation that went out to all 140 people who had participated in the Project to date, 24 accepted the invitation to envision the learning opportunity that would meet the needs of cultural leaders as articulated in the scenarios of the future. We would follow the envisioning approach as we had done in the three-day face-to-face workshops in each site, and practise the disciplines of envisioning, but now do so at a distance via CMC. The purpose was to design the learning opportunity that would be offered to our colleagues inside the Project, as a pilot, and eventually outside the Project, as a course offering from the University of Waterloo. Since we saw the learning offering potentially being delivered by CMC, the workshop at a distance would serve not only the design task but also as a pre-pilot.
Some of the persons who registered for this design workshop at a distance were instructional designers; others were artists, educators, trustees, concerned citizens. All had experienced the envisioning approach face-to-face, had generated scenarios of the future of culture and their role in it, and were prepared to invest nine weeks (original timetabling) in the design process. Three who enrolled themselves for this workshop did not have computers; their participation in this on-line workshop was facilitated by fax relay to the Project office and from the Web network.
In the design workshop at a distance, we supplemented our CMC interactions with one-on-one telephone conversations, small group teleconferences, and eventually a teleconference involving all 24 participants. In the teleconferences as in the on-line work, we adopted the disciplines of envisioning as our communications protocols.
What is the envisioning approach and what are its disciplines? The Futures-Invention approach to envisioning was developed by Warren Ziegler in work with graduate students at Syracuse University, and has been refined by him in use with thousands of citizens over the past 25 years. Envisioning invites out the imaginative and spiritual capacities of persons in service of an intended future, where the future is invented rather than inevitable. Envisoners begin with a dissatisfaction or concern or dissonance they experience in the present, and then imagine a future in which that concern has been well-addressed. Persons who share compelling images of the future construct shared scenarios, then work together or help one another come to the action they cannot not take--and so realize some important aspect of that future in the present. The particular practices that enable envisioners to discern the focus of their concern, image that concern well-addressed, and take action in the present, are specific ways of listening to self and other, questioning self and other, and imaging, individually and collectively, so as to eventually enter into dialogue with spirit--one’s own and all together.
In the design workshop at a distance, we discovered that it was possible to practise these disciplines, in service of a shared image of the learning offering, at a distance. The practise of these disciplines, whether face-to-face or at a distance, creates a special kind of community, which Warren has named a community of learners. In this community, persons are engaged in their own exploration of their owned concerns; they search for sound responses first within themselves, and offer these to their colleagues as their contribution to a possible shared vision and common action. We listen so as to bring to fullness the offerings of others; we discern what is compelling to ourselves and offer it without imposing. Each person is motivated by a dissatisfaction, and has hope for the future. Without dissatisfaction, there is no reason to imagine a future other than a continuation of the past and present; without hope it is not possible to imagine anything other than what is.
In this community we acknowledge that future lies within each of us, that it is a metaphor for the human imagination. The future stands for our noblest aspirations and worthiest intentions. We know that there are no experts on vision; no one can supply vision to another, although we can, by uncovering and offering our vision, discover others whose visions are importantly connected to our own, and thus we are able to build shared vision and take common action. Interactions are characterized by respect, and are alert to the emergence of new and larger vision from within each person and the community. In a community of learners, envisioners work together to help each other learn their way into the future. In this way we move from individual imaging to seeking a shared vision and common action designed to actualize that shared vision.
Our teleconference at the end of the design workshop (16 weeks, not 9!) was a celebration. We had generated four detailed scenarios of the learning opportunity we would offer; we had demonstrated that persons who had envisioned face-to-face could do so at a distance, and we had experienced community among persons most of whom had not met.
However, a very big question still remained: could envisioning and its disciplines be introduced and learned at a distance, and a community of learners formed among those practising it for the first time at a distance? It turned out that it could, but we would not know that for another year.
Before we leave the design workshop, I want to observe that as far as we know, what we have done is unique: designed on-line in community with peers a course to be offered on-line. This process took 16 weeks and produced the equivalent of 2000 pages of text! The on-line design process proved to be a very useful trial of the course offering, to which we now turn.
The learning opportunity we designed through the envisioning workshop at a distance was subsequently delivered by computer network in two pilots, one involving 19 learners and the other involving 30 learners, including 14 who had not been part of any of the earlier phases of the Project.
The learning opportunity, which we have now named Cultural Leadership Inside Out, is a self-directed, problem-based, peer-supported, highly interactive programme where learners and companions meet and work in a series of designated electronic conferences. There is no syllabus per se; the learner brings a concern she has for action in her cultural community, however defined. Her concern--its exploration, and the imaging of it well-addressed--set the focus and direction for her learning. There are no textbooks; rather the learner is invited to enter into a series of reflections and writings in which she learns and practises the disciplines associated with envisioning while applying them to her concern. There are no instructors or tutors; rather the learner meets up with a companion, someone experienced in envisioning at a distance, who provides a guaranteed level of response to the learner, extends invitations to her to proceed through stages of her learning journey, and invites the forming of community among a group of learners as they listen, question and respond to one another in support of the learning of each and of all.
One practice of the envisioning approach which is key to learning, to forming community, and which serves as a continuous mode of self-evaluation, is praxis. Praxis as we use the term invites a group of learners/envisioners to reflect together on a practice they are doing, to consider what it is like to do it, what they are doing, and why they are doing it. This practice renders one’s own learning conscious, and enables a group of persons to take responsibility for their own learning, individually and collectively, and so increase their competence--meaning both skill and will, ability and intention.
What was it like to do this? It seemed to me that CMC offered learners involvement in a very contemporary means of communication. There has been lots of public recognition that CMC is going to be a way of the future, and the learners of the CLDP were there doing it--not talking about it, but actually using CMC to contact other learners. I think this was a draw to help people stay in the Project and deal with the frustrations of that technology. They were pioneers, all of them; a group of explorers, a community of experimenters.
Climbing the learning curve of the technology seemed to be almost a right of passage. The learner came in and many people hovered around and encouraged the learner to succeed. The view, after the steep and strenuous climb up and over the technological learning curve, was of the community of other learners. Without conquering the technology, the community was not there. What a view that was; finally after much frustration to reach a place that was touted as non-judgmental, where you got to talk about your concerns and vision, and your peers actually listened to what you had to say. These were strong, as yet untried, lures to at least attempt to become part of that community.
The existence of the community was to address the concerns of each person. Those people chose those concerns and presented them in time slots that suited their schedules. This community of learners was indeed a strange place, not in the least like any other place I have every known: threatening in its individual revealing but promising in its caring acceptance. These are new ways of being; and in the learning and practice of those new ways the bonds of community were firmly attached, each link being essential to the whole.
The CLDP offered a series of electronic spaces that were there specifically for people to talk and listen, as well as a place to stand back and observe--in a self conscious way--that process of talking and listening. Each person is centre; the chain begins and ends with that link.
The chain is seen link by link on the screen. Each link has its own characteristics, is quite individual, is unique. Each link spreads itself across the landscape, locating itself in the chosen landmark and adopting the behaviours of that place. Each person’s topic (not by itself, but seen in community) reflects the concern of that person within the communications behaviours of that place; and yet that same link is able to appear in other screens that reflect the party-like behaviours of jovial chat. Same link, different places; witnessed at the viewing time of other links and perceived in the viewer’s time frame.
Each link is seen as it moves in and around and through the land; searching, turning this way and thrashing that way, tangling and untangling, seeking and clarifying until the action occurs off the screen, in the local community, again linking the community of peers to action in the individual communities.
The passage is never completely through; each history remains to link future present moments to the now and remembered opportunities.
The community grows from each well-addressed concern to the next; linking hither and yon, and providing a central nurturing well of support from screen to screen.
What have we learned from the two pilots conducted between April 94 and April 95? That the cultural community is in the early stages of using computers for communicating. We provided a lot of help to persons in learning their communications software, the network software, modem settings, etc. Once a learner was functioning on the network, much of this help was provided by companions and by other learners; initially we had people dedicated to assisting learners to get connected. This usually involved repeated, often lengthy, telephone conversations. The three people who had participated via fax relay in the design workshop comprised a micro case study, as each one in turn acquired a computer and immediately began communicating with it.
We learned that even in the creative sector, the practices of envisioning are new and unfamiliar. Before we can leave behind the traditional learning supports provided by texts, deadlines and external evaluations, we must have other practices to give structure to our explorations of what matters most to us. Venturing into e-space, into a cluster of other learners one has not met, offering to that nascent community one’s own concerns, stories, and discoveries, involves much risk. Companions who are veterans of the process can often extend the invitation in such a way that the learner takes an initial risk, and discovers that all other learners are learning and practising the same new disciplines, examining them for what they can own and learning with others who are similarly engaged.
We learned that envisioning even at a distance is a powerful process for unleashing our worthiest aspirations in response to serious dissatisfactions and unsettling questions we ask ourselves about how things are in the world at present. And we learned that many persons, when invited, will seek their own sound responses to their questions about what else might be possible, first for them and then for their community of learners, and finally for their local community where they live and work and bring about change.
And we learned that we can find like-spirits at a distance, be encouraged and supported in our own learning journeys by these kindred spirits at a distance, celebrate our learnings and actions with them, at a distance.
If transformation takes place when persons in community question ourselves and our world, invent more hopeful stories and possibilities, and carry these into action in our day to day lives, then our experience in the Cultural Leadership Development Project has shown us that transformation is possible not only face-to-face but at a distance. We feel that this experience speaks to the great potential of the information highway, not as a gigantic audio-visual database or as a quick and egalitarian avenue for exchanging information, but as a meeting space for persons who are "engaged seriously in transforming the world for the sake of humanness."(1)
Walter Brueggemann, Living Toward a Vision (Fortress Press, 1978) p. 68.
For more information, please contact:
Ms. Donna Cardinal at cardinal@web.apc.org