Through the Collaborative Practices Salons, we are trying to create and influence institutional cultural change – first at our institution, the Australian National University, but hopefully overtime in other organisations too. Here in this short post we share the principles that guide us in this work, and that we feel are vital to the salon project.
We want this time & space to nourish us, rather than draw from us.
All too often the obligations that fill our calendars, however important, can leave us feeling exhausted. The salons are designed to be inspiring. A gift to ourselves, our collaborators, our colleagues and our community, a place where people can meet new people, have something to eat, have a new experience and have fun.
We are all experts in our own practice, and we are all learners too.
We come to the Salon in the spirit of peer learning. Peer learning is a process that requires us to occupy both the role of the teacher and the role of the learner. Our experiences, interests and motivations are important resources that are valuable to others in the salon community, just as we can learn from the experiences, interests and motivations of our peers.
We want to challenge the typical conventions of coming together.
At least, as coming together is usually framed by the university. The salons are not meant to be training or a showcase or a workshop or a networking session. They something else, which is emerging as we go. In an earlier blog we wrote about why we have chosen the salon format for how we come together to reflect on collaboration.
Our approach is forming and formative.
The salon is an experiment in convening as collaborative practitioners and building a reflective community around our practices. The design, activities, and themes of each salon emerge through our investigation of how people collaborate in previous salons, our Collaborative Practices Lab Program, our initial research and our ongoing reflections. Our approach evolves as we go, and from each salon an idea surfaces that shapes the subsequent salon, and those after that.