Cittadinanza Riflessiva / Reflective Citizens, Chieri, 9th March 2019; Dialogue between Convenors
A baby between two citizens’ worlds, the Serbian and the Italian, is born in AGAPE in the first Reflective Citizens (RC) Workshop in Italy – in Chieri near Turin on the 9th of March 2019. For this occasion, invited for Contexts by Peter, we shall just briefly share a few points.
The conception-dream for the Chieri-RC-event was initiated in Istria (the largest Adriatic peninsula, which is about half way between Belgrade and Chieri) in Rovinj, Croatia (for its beauty called “the bean of Istria”), during the triennial conference of IAGP (International Association for Group Psychotherapy and Group Processes), in the summer of 2015. The journey began: fantasies, ideas, sharing, reading, learning…Significant next station of the developmental journey went on during the Belgrade Psycho-Social Dialogues in 2016 – the 3rd International Belgrade Reflective Citizens Conference: the richness of joint learning with RC-conveners, the RC-coordination body and RC-participants from the Serbian Reflective Citizens Koinonia, as well as with group-analytic colleagues from Serbia and from many countries interested in developing similar psycho-social projects and cooperation. Alice’s further RC-understanding of the RC-Methodology (RC-Training about organizing and convening procedures, basic values, ways of starting new RC-branches) and in general, about the life of the Serbian RC-Koinonia, was then powerfully nurtured by our joint participation in the Travelling-RC throughout the landscapes and monasteries of Kosovo and Metohija, in May 2018 – Alice was bestowed the seeds necessary to make the dream blossom with the sound collaboration of a close friend who is sharing RC-journey, namely Lorenzo. Lorenzo is a sport entrepreneur and a mind-body coach deeply interested in exploring movement-mind relationships both at an individual level and in group settings. He is sharing the RC journey with us on the bases of shared social engagement and a reciprocal wish to explore how to eventually integrate in RC methodology also bodily communication and experience.
Another joint work of three of us, Marina, Lorenzo and Alice, happened at the next triennial IAGP conference in Sweden, Malmo, which included facing complexities of organizing the RC-workshop as part of the ‘groups in the city’. Reflecting on the dynamics of our professional organizations and citizens’ groupings, we began the careful collaboration on preparation the Chieri-event: finding the right date, adequate venue, details of the setting, number of participants, co-creating the flyers with information to citizens, and of course, sharing dreams in between. Lorenzo became the head of the organization committee, with three more young 19 and 21 years old people namely Maria, Gaia and Luca representing the voice of youth in the organization process, Marina and Alice the co-conveners. Starting a new RC-branch requires an inter-generational Training (generations of RC-activists) – it is like learning a handcraft that needs sensitive attunement with many aspects of the local reality, every piece of it is indeed unique. Marina, backed by the Serbian RC-Koinonia, was over the months giving Alice the necessary support, training, supervision, apart from bringing to Italy the Serbian RC-matrix with her own presence, as well as of the experienced RC-activists, Sanja O’Sullivan and Zaven Đorđević, with their meaningful contribution. Very important is to highlight how all this happens on a gratuity base – gratuity and generosity are core values of RC at all levels, since RC-WS attendance is free of charge, thus, all interested citizens can afford participation.
Interestingly, it happened that at this very first Italian RC-workshop our venue was full! We were 70 participants. The organization committee invited friends, colleagues, acquaintances, gathering their networks of relationships and thereby paying attention to intergenerational and other heterogeneities as much as possible. The reaction to the invitations was unpredictably great, to the extent that a waiting list was established for this and for the further RC-opportunities. This was taken as an indicator of interest among the population in the town and the region. Thus, it was an encouragement to move forward in the development of an ongoing process of RC-blocks. The date of the next workshop is already saved: 13-14 September 2019 at the same venue and with the same conveners and organizing team.
The venue preparation was done with thoughtfulness about chair positions, for their changes during sub-sessions, registration, name tags, the use of indoors and outdoors, keeping the time and other agreed boundaries, and general RC-culture – it all went very well! We worked in Italian, with translation as silent as possible. Marina’s addressing the RC was in English, translated by Alice – language-attunement was also important. The atmosphere was one of curiosity, with enthusiasm present. We made a 15-minute introduction outside, because we had a garden space in front of the gym, and were blessed with sunny weather, all RC-participants in a circle standing, while Lorenzo, Alice and Marina talked. Chairs were set indoors into snowflake arrangement for the social dreaming session in the way the author of the method, Gordon Lawrence, used to do – Marina and Alice co-hosted. As usually, dreams brought up significant social unconscious aspects from the community, Italy, Europe and wider world. All the other sessions followed, in richness of citizens’ sharing of their images, fantasies, ideas, reflections, wishes for collaboration in understanding the world we live in, how could we contribute, and rather complex integration in small and large sized RC-groupings, as well as review and applications mini groups before the good-byes…. In spite of contact with many very difficult, painful and fearful social-political contents, there was also present a tone of a joy of participation in the new RC-Birth, namely the very first RC-workshop in Italy! This will be described in more detail on another occasion, but for here just…
A Glimpse into the Chieri-RC-Matrix
Most of the people who took part in the workshop had never experienced a Social Dreaming Matrix or a Large Group, and it was astonishing how quickly they understand how to use this space and time, generously feeding it with many dreams, associations, thoughts and personal experiences, in an ongoing communication with barely a silence, as if there was a need to talk to each other that could eventually find a voice.
The first dream “I forgot my tooth brush, and decided to fill my mouth with water and to wash my mouth with forceful movements of my mouth” was followed by dreams containing the terrific and the exciting: danger, death, threats, litter and pollution, dehumanization, dictatorship, mobs shifting from friendly to fierce, but also birth, flight, journeys, beads, intimacy, reconciliation hugs….. Among them a dream about people on a ship and a sea-monster taking them one-by-one into the water and swallowing them, until the dreamer was left alone. Waiting for the monster to come for him, the dreamer decided to jump down, and was then slowly diving through the blue sea… Associations to the Del Toro’s movie The Shape of Water, a love story between Elisa and a beautiful amphibian-being ending with them living in the sea, making love. A theme enveloping the issue of futuristic transformations we as humans might have to undergo. Another dream getting lot of attention, sort of core dream intensely worked through and multifacetedly crafted by the group’s mind, was of a man approaching the dreamer, and realizing that it was himself in the mirror. Various mirroring opportunities that RC-matrix provided were widely explored during the following RC Large Group, leaving the end open like in the narration of open dreams without an end, to be continued, metaphor of an open future to be imagined and built together in RC-groups, the concern and preoccupation for the future being very present, shouting like a graffiti on a wall. Taking up responsibility for the future in the present…
There was terror, but somehow no feelings that were too scary. Besides during this first RC experience citizens did not pick up the terrifying leaking from dream-telling, the sewage was probably left for next workshops, that is once the RC-baby is a bit stronger; so conflict, destructiveness, hate, and other too strong feelings did not surface yet. In this Italian pioneering experience much attention was given to the building of the RC-matrix, so that the RC-baby, also present in one of the dreams, could come to birth without conception trauma. The dream announcing the baby’s birth was about a kid and two couples, neither of them biological parents, the main worry was how to get organized in order to grow this child. The Large Group discussion developed through a dialogue about movements between opposites in a dialectical interplay: openness and closeness related to the future, reflecting and acting, robots and citizens, alienation and responsibility… a dialogue between generations, very much appreciated, and the idea that young people building the future also carry with them fragments of the dreams of the previous generations.
Two dimensions emerging in the group narration, SPACE and TIME, condensed in the image of concentric circles vibrating and irradiating when a stone is thrown. A stone starts a process. RC represents a space within time boundaries where reflection, dreaming, dialogue are possible. A question about meaning raises: what’s the purpose of all this? Is it a starting point of a journey? Where to? Or is it a finite experience? Will we be able to tell others what we have been doing here, in this space and time? Wondering about how to use RC-space and time and where all this will lead us is an open question.
A last Chieri-RC-vignette might help to approach this open question: walking through a crowded place, a precious necklace, made by somebody dear to the RC-participant, broke with all the wonderful beads scattered all over the place, making her very sad. However, after the event, people came to her bringing one by one the collected beads. She repaired her necklace and was very happy. It links well with the experience of RC allowing deconstruction to transform into complex puzzles, then swinging back-and-forth through destruction/construction, and through RC-cooperation – “re-mediare”, as Alice said, for taking the breath and continuing into deeper explorations of layers of meaning.
To be continued…….
Alice Mulasso
alice.mulasso@icloud.com
Marina Mojović
dr.marinamojovic@gmail.com