There are many ways to repair a rupture. Sashiko Japanese visible mending is meant to highlight the rips, tears, frays, and fringes of an individual garment with stitches in a contrasting thread. Sashiko translated means "little stabs," which perfectly describes the distinctive running stitch that defines the technique's style. In Sashiko, it's the contours of the damage that dictate the repair and reinvent the garment into something better than before-a stronger fabric, a more beautified and still functional design.

Kintsugi is the Japanese art of putting broken pottery pieces back together with gold — a metaphor for embracing flaws and imperfections. As a philosophy, it treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise.

INSIGHT FOR COMMUNITY IMPACT'S APPROACH

Insight for Community Impact’s work is grounded in a pedagogy which makes use of systems psychodynamic (SPD) thinking and social justice aspirations. With systems psychodynamic thinking, we explore how unconscious processes shape our efforts to learn about difference in ways which do not repeat violent ‘othering’. This includes embodied ways of expressing human experience. We seek to develop an ongoing network of social justice leaders prepared to struggle with how their past and present conscious and unconscious processes shape their interrelationships.

We acknowledge that learning for all of us as consultants and members includes working with our own and others’ love, hatred and dependency. Resistances, denials and disavowals based on life experiences come with the effort to learn, but also reveal the limits of what can be faced, especially in the face of imbalance of power. Our capacity to understand the other is fraught by this imbalance, as well as what each brings to the encounter, and the fragility of our efforts to seek the relationality required by human experience. The pain that arises within these efforts requires language in order for our efforts to continue. (Britzman & Gazel, 2022, 86)

“[This] commitment involves the courage to withstand conflict and misunderstanding without retaliating, the courage to tolerate not understanding and the courage to want to show up in the face of uncertainty makes a difference”. (Britzman & Gazel, 2022: 9).

In working within Exploring Difference Conferences, ICI draws on Tavistock group relations thinking in:

Attending to unconscious and conscious dynamics within and between us both individually and in the group as we learn together.

Exploring unconscious pushes and pulls through projection, that can be recognised by attention to parallel process, symbolisation (dreams, fantasies) etc.

Remembering the operation of Group-as-a-whole: that what is happening to individuals reflects aspects of the group.

Using psychoanalytic concepts to support understanding of group functioning (e.g. anxiety, denial, splitting, projection/projective identification, as well as containment).

Considering how Bion's basic assumptions and work group functioning may be useful tools for exploring what’s at play in a group.

Considering and disrupting the ways Boundaries, Authority, Roles and Tasks are thought about and taken up - the basic tenets of the Tavistock Model). Provoking curiosity about roles – assigned and assumed; unpacking social assumptions about the dynamics of authority, leadership structures, use and abuse of power.

Considering how power is operating within the group as a companion to authority and leadership. Noticing how power is manifest and has often had oppressive roots in hierarchical thinking, binaries, white supremacy, patriarchy, capitalism, in which we participate and against which we struggle. When power is considered in this way then social justice becomes an overarching theme/desire.

Working with others can be exhilarating and it can be trying. We know that when we work with others “how” we do the work is of equal or more importance to “what” work we do. Yet working in difficult conditions and fraught environments as activists, professionals, leaders and workers, we can encounter intractable group and organizational problems which are difficult to make sense of never mind overcome.

At ICI, we believe that making sense of these difficulties is key to creating the change we want to see in our communities and organizations, and that we can do so – or at least begin to do so - by better understanding ourselves, each other, and how we work together. By improving our understanding of how unconscious forces affect groups and they us, we can improve our own impact, develop our leadership capacity, and increase our capacity to a better world.

ICI's trainings, based on the group relations method developed by the UK-based Tavistock Institute, offer opportunities to learn about the nature and emergence of difference, leadership and authority in groups. This requires exploring the connection between our inner worlds (thoughts, fantasies) and outer worlds (context and environments) and sharing those connections. Using a variety of didactic sessions, small and large group sessions, storytelling, and role analysis, we link the learnings from the event to your organization and context.

ICI’s training offers opportunities to:

• Increase effectiveness by understanding difference and people-in-context
• Observe group behaviour in the here-and-now and understand how they appear in your organization
• Develop your leadership capacity
• Understand how your leadership style affects the group
• Learn about "under the surface" forces that impact people, groups and organizations.
  
  

ICI is a collaboration between Bureau Kensington, Inc, PARC (Parkdale Activity and Recreation Centre), West Neighbourhood House, Working for Change and the Toronto Neighbourhood Centres..