Core Elements
Over our years of experience, the Culture Garden Team has defined the following Core Elements, which are the building blocks of our offerings to support healthy group cultures.
How we work … and play!
storytelling for change
Stories shape our world. They help us make sense of it and allow us to communicate what matters. Stories are our ‘meaning making’ tools and as such they can be used to connect or divide us. As changemakers we can harness the power of storytelling to shape a world that is just, compassionate and thriving. The more we develop our ability to speak authentically the more we are able to reach people and transform each other in myriad ways.
Nature connection
Understanding and practicing deep connection with Nature brings us back into the foundational creative partnership we believe we are designed to have with the world around us. Nature can be our most loving mentor, mirroring us back to ourselves and enriching our inner developmental journey – as well as giving maps and strategic guidance for creative ways to organise groups in harmony with its core patterns and blueprints.
Awakened Action Planning
In our Longer-Term Partnerships, we offer support and structure for groups' "Cycles of Learning": for a cyclical process of Visioning and Planning, Prototyping/Action, Observation (including assessment, measurement and evaluation), Reflection (including creative and non-linear processes), and back to Visioning/Planning again. This supports groups to share accountability, to regularly harvest - and direct - the tangible progress or "outcomes" of their efforts, and to ongoingly update their sense of purpose, vision, and shared action. We believe that effective methods of project management support the safety, trust and vulnerability required for deep creativity and flow, and that they ensure outcomes are aligned with a group's deepest visions.
THE feminine & THE masculine
Masculine, Feminine, and Non-dual energies interact and express uniquely through every person, place, and project. Understanding the gifts – as well as the potential pitfalls and historical wounding – of these energies, as well as how they show up in our lives and group cultures, helps us to be the most creative and empowered version of ourselves, and to utilise the full range of leadership and connective tools at our disposal.
SYSTEMS OF GOVERNANCE
Recent decades have seen a proliferation of methods by which to share decision-making and leadership in group cultures, and to empower groups to continuously evolve their sense of purpose and identity. We engage collaborative as well as conventional leadership models to provide an effective and flexible framework in which groups can find their own “best fit” for efficient and effective self-governance.
BODY-INFORMED LEADERSHIP
Our bodies are the place where the most ancient, forgotten stories of our cultures play out; stories which all too often involve painful loss, disconnection, and domination. Although we may yearn for genuine connection and ways of living and interacting with others that reflect our deepest values, many of us nonetheless unconsciously embody these ancient stories in our moment-by-moment ways of being. Body-Informed Leadership supports us to sense into these embodied patterns in order to compassionately acknowledge and release Dominance dynamics from our brains, bodies, and groups, and to activate instead the ways of being that are hard-wired for empathy, collaboration, creativity, and play.
PEACE BUILDING
Sooner or later, any group or initiative will experience conflict. This can stir up difficult emotions such as fear, anxiety, anger, or despair; however, with practice – and some planning and cultural design - groups can engage with conflict as an opportunity for positive change, insight, and growth. We teach the practices and personal skills required to navigate conflict peacefully and courageously, in order to receive its (sometimes hidden) gifts.
BEAUTIFUL ECONOMIeS
Even the smallest group has an economy, or an agreed-upon process by which they share resources and meet their needs for living. We support groups to examine their economic practices in order to enhance their effectiveness, to (re)define their internal systems of exchange, and to cultivate synergistic partnerships with the communities, people, and places around them.
Play and improvisation
Our societies and the Earth herself are undergoing rapid and unpredictable changes which require increased adaptability, cooperation and self-organisation and holistic, non-linear approaches to problem solving. The practices of Improvisation and play help us become comfortable with - and even actively embrace – uncertainty and develop a readiness to respond creatively and imaginatively to the unexpected and unpredictable. Shedding preconceived ideas of right and wrong, being forced to think on our feet and connecting to our innate curiosity, we are able to access emergent capacities in ourselves, the group and our environment.