ART Collective
What Is ART?
We love art but ART in the name of our community stands for Action Research for Transformation. That term was introduced by Hilary Bradbury, a leading light in the action research field and principal at Foundation AR+, a global community of participative action researchers, which our research center is partnering with.
ART calls us to “Let us have courage enough to engage with the power dynamics that hold us on this unsustainable path. Let us practice mutually transforming power in service of a more beautiful world, for all.”
Just as most directions in the Action Research discipline, ART:
- Offers its participants an opportunity for personal development (1st person inquiry)
- Improves the collective problem-solving and questioning/listening capacity of the research team (2nd person inquiry)
- Helps the organization/community whose problem is being addressed to engage in collective self-reflection and tackle complex tasks (3rd person inquiry)
Who Are We and What Motivates Us?
We are a diverse group of people with a wide range of professional background, all passionate about transformation in ourselves, organisations, communities and social systems.
Feeling transformed by our own experience as graduates of the ‘From Me to We to all of Us‘ learning journey on Campus Co-Evolve, and having discovered a shared passion for developing our knowledge and practice of Action Research, we decided to self-organise to establish the ART Collective, in order to continue learning and practicing ART together.
What Are the Collective’s Current ART Projects?
Our current research projects include:
WiserWith — led by George Pór
This is a R&D project for creating a living, socio-technical system co-evolving with its participants. It is being designed to support better sensemaking, wiser life decisions, mutual learning, emergent collective intelligence, and generative serendipity among people, organizations/communities, and societal systems. To achieve that, it will use a combination of electronic, social, and inner technologies for Computer-Assisted Wisdom Development.
Business as Unusual – Led by Tina Liu
A space dedicated for asking different questions, making changes, prototyping idea and starting new projects: A Peer-led learning journey through design thinking structure for professionals, entrepreneurs and innovators to use business as a leading force for personal, professional, organizational and societal transformation.
Ocean of Knowledge – Led by Tina Liu
A knowledge Commons dedicated for Ocean
Transformative Education – Led by Gina Bonmariage
What are the conditions for replicating the prototype for integrating transformative education and Action Research for Transformation, developed at Campus Co-Evolve, to a larger scale?
Regenerating The Palouse – Led by Bill Aal.
An experiment in eco-social restoration of the Palouse Region in Washington State based on people’s collective wisdom and intelligence.. We are moving with the question: How do we rebuild a thriving culture and economy for the region as we move from extractive industrial agricultural systems to regenerative models.
How We Work
Given the geographically distributed nature of our community, presently, we’re working online, using video conferencing every three weeks, Google Drive, an online forum and a WhatsApp chat. Once the end of the pandemic permits, we intent to meet, occasionally, also in in person.
We use various approaches to support our collaborative capability development. One that is gaining popularity is Action Learning.
Feeling transformed by our own experience as graduates of the ‘From Me to We to all of Us‘ learning journey on Campus Co-Evolve, and having discovered a shared passion for developing our knowledge and practice of Action Research, we decided to self-organise to establish the ART Collective, in order to continue learning and practicing ART together.
Who Can Be a Member?
If you feel attracted to this kind of work, and if you have:
1) a real project that you are working on.
2) a genuine quest into 1st person, 2nd person, 3rd person transformation.
and want to find out more, including becoming a member, please contact anna@campus-coevolve.org.