VANCOUVER — In a funky coffee shop in East Vancouver, a large piece of paper is spread across a table. On it is written: "What is the most important question in the world to you?" Such big-picture thinking is the root of Conversation Week, a series of hosted discussions taking place this week in rooms as far-flung as Australia, Brazil and Iran. In Canada, moderated conversations have already taken place in Toronto, Vancouver and Winnipeg, with further events in Calgary, Edmonton, Victoria and Waterloo, Ont., to come.
Born of the Conversation Café, a series of discussions launched in Seattle as a way for people to process the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the first Conversation Week took place last year. Through a partnership with online organization Global MindShift, this year's event will see more than 150 conversations take place internationally. More like a 19th-century salon than a mobilizing force, Conversation Cafés are designed to simply encourage strangers to get together in a public space and talk about the issues of the day.
Vicki Robin, Conversation Café founder and co-author of Your Money or Your Life, says the point is to create a "head-heart" dialogue as opposed to the traditional cut and thrust of debate. The technique is being picked up by businesses, institutions, conferences and schools - there's even a café being organized in the British House of Commons. "This is a unique, interesting, adventurous and fun game," she laughs. "It's like Halloween, trick or treat: it's scary, but you know you're safe."
Conversations are taking place in spaces as diverse as beauty parlours, student unions, bed and breakfasts, libraries and restaurants and are hosted by volunteers trained in the set structure and agreements of the café.
The session starts with six stated agreements designed to maintain civility. They range from open-mindedness to sincerity and brevity, and each discussion follows the same process of two rounds during which every person present is given the floor, followed by open discussion. At the end, each participant offers thoughts on what they found meaningful in the discussion.
At Toronto's Centre for Social Innovation on Monday night, 25 people were split into two discussion groups. "I introduced the idea of slowing down to the speed of wisdom," conversation facilitator Marilyn Daniels says. "And straight away people were speaking from very deep concern. They talked about what keeps them from acting on what they know, the political and economic structures that form barriers, and then we moved on to what gave them hope."
Toward the end, people began to fidget. "They wanted to start moving and a teacher invited us to start singing," Ms. Daniels says. "It was lovely."
No such impromptu celebration takes place in Vancouver, which is home to a smaller affair: two hosts, two attendees and myself. The question chosen for discussion is "What kind of leadership does the world need now?" We pass around a smooth grey stone (the "talking piece") to indicate whose turn it is to speak.
Kate Dugas, community manager for ChangeEverything.ca, struggles with the concept of leadership. "My parents were both journalists and leadership became a scary word - it was all about political backstabbing bastards." Host Laura MacKay talks about her work in "backcasting" at the Natural Step Canada, a Canadian non-profit, a process by which you work backward from the desirable future to create a sustainable plan in which to achieve it. In those terms, she suggests, we are all leaders. Community development planner Lama Mugabo is a Rwandan who has lived in Canada for almost three decades. "I think of [Nelson] Mandela and how he talked about leading from behind," he says.
Ninety minutes later, we've covered issues including democracy, the relative merits of multinational corporations, notions of power and ideas for a more collaborative leadership model. No one has raised their voice, nor felt the need to tap the stone (to indicate an agreement is being broken) despite my own struggle with the concept of purposefully retreating from argument to allow understanding and curiosity to flourish. The process feels more draining than energizing, and I find myself hankering for the dynamics of a larger, more diverse group - without the singing.
"The discussions can be brilliant, sometimes they're boring and sometimes they turn into 'Ain't it awful?' clubs," Ms. Robin says. "But the experience of being heard deeply only happens in the presence of others and we are offering a space where the whole point is being part of the process."
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