The poetics of space
I'm back in London after a week of pure spaciousness in Cap Ferret with one of my favourite community minds and conversation partners - Charlotte Terrien. Space is magical, absorbing and expansive at the same time. So often, when I feel tired and static, the best cure is to take a step back and immerse myself in nature and conversations. The concept of space has been coming up in again and again in communities over the last year. In November, I shared the House of Beautiful Business stage with the fantastic Marcel Kampman. In his project Happyplaces, he investigates the dimensions and manifestations of space. He has recorded over 700 interviews asking his guests a simple, but immense question: "What does space mean to you?". With this project, he is investigating the motives, ideas, methods, opinions and insights in a quest to find all dimensions of space.
As people who bring people together, one of the fundamental questions we have to ask is what space is created by the dinner, gathering or workshop we host. This space defines not only the context in which guests come together, but the quality of interaction between each other and themselves. In other words, the meaning of a gathering is dependent of how much space for change we have designed for.
How are you creating space in your life? How are you creating space for others ?
With spaciousness,
V
PS: the picture below is by James Widegren
Correlations
It's hard to talk about space without mentioning The poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard. In chapter 8, he talks about "intimate immensity":
One might say that immensity is a philosophical category of the daydream. [...] Immensity is within ourselves. It is attached to a sort of expansion of being that life curbs and caution arrests, but which starts again when we are alone. As soon as we become motionless, we are elsewhere; we are daydreaming in a world that is immense. Indeed, immensity is the movement of a motionless man. It is one of the dynamic characteristics of quiet daydreaming.
This reminds me of James Kingsland's Am I Dreaming? in which he talks about "absorption" in shamanic and religious practices.
What these rituals and practices have in common is absorption: an exceptionally narrow focus of attention that temporarily excludes everything else from consciousness.
Celebrations
Congrats to Sarah Drinkwater on the launch of Ethical Explorer - a toolkit to help navigate the future impact of today’s technology. It is a compass for pioneers who want to support ethical values in design, foster an inquisitive culture, and ignite positive change through dialogue. The toolkit is a direct response to the need for a digestible, actionable resource to steward ethical tech and it's truly brilliant. Get your copy here.
Conversations
Conversations communities around me are exploring this week:
What does space mean to you?
How do we design lives that allow for regular infusion of spaciousness?
That's all for today! It's been 12 weeks of playing with you and this week we are 522! The conversations these emails spark bring me so much joy, so please keep your thoughts coming, they are always the highlight of my week.
Vx