Celebrating Rudolf Steiner: A Recap
October 28, 2011
Over 500 people gathered at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Club last month to celebrate the 150th birthday of Rudolf Steiner, RSF’s namesake and inspiration. We were joined by others who have been inspired by Steiner’s thinking and body of work, and the day was full of interactive panel discussions, workshops, Biodynamic treats, eurthymy, and more! Below are some photo highlights of the event.
Stephanie of Filgreen Farm, in Boonville, CA pretties her display of biodynamic produce.
From a stimulating panel on Transforming the Way the World Works with Money: (l -r), Jeffrey Westman, Michael Davis, Sabine Shaffer, and RSF CEO Don Shaffer. Not pictured, Indigenous Designs CEO Scott Leonard.
Valarie Baadh Garrett leads students in a Spacial Dynamics workshop
What's so funny about biodynamic wine? Thanks to Frey Vineyards, Benziger Family Winery, Paul Dolan Vineyards, and Small Vines Wine, we got to find out!
Here's a peek at the main hall and its community engagement tables. Festival attendees chatted with folks representing Biodynamics, Waldorf Education, RSF, and other Steiner-inspired fields of work.
In the spirit of celebration, Paul Dolan, a pioneering biodynamic winemaker, poses with a picture of Rudolf Steiner. There's a cake too... it was a birthday party after all!
Have you heard about Conversation Maps? We posed a question and were heartened by the responses!
A crowd of children captivated by the Magic Lantern Marionette Show. Who knew the Frog Prince was so popular?
Cynthia Aldinger, founder & ED of LifeWays North America, conducted a Caring for the Young Child workshop and got people up on their feet!
Guided by intuition, people placed seeds throughout the day and co-created a Seed River.
Thank you to all who attended and participated! For those of you interested in hearing panel recordings — Robert McDermott, Paul Dolan and others spoke — you can download them here.
The 2011 RSF Borrower Gathering and Community Supported Transformation
September 27, 2011
by Reed Mayfield
In July, over twenty RSF borrowers convened at the San Francisco Waldorf School for our third annual RSF Borrower Gathering. One would be inclined to describe the energy of the group as “engaged and enthused.” The feeling is mutual amongst the many people with whom there exists a direct relationship based on reciprocity and common values – RSF staff & board, investors, donors, partners, and friends. We fondly refer to this group as the RSF Community. This community is united by the impact we collectively bring forth into the world, the transformation we seek. The impact is evidenced in a number of ways: supporting Fair Trade practices, organic alternatives to store bought foods, Waldorf Education, environmental stewardship, food security, social finance, and much more. Among all this activity, progress is made with the creation of innovative and transformative ideas, through co-creative conversations. The RSF Borrower Gathering is an excellent representation of one of these conversations.
Over the course of one and a half days, the RSF Borrower Gathering brought together a variety of RSF borrowers, all with extensive hands-on experience in building successful non-profit and for-profit social enterprises. Borrowers shared insight into their respective industries from many different geographic areas and across all three of RSF’s Focus Areas (Food and Agriculture, Education and the Arts, and Ecological Stewardship). During a session titled “Engaging Your Local Economic Community,” moderated by Raphael Bemporad of BBMG, a panel of RSF borrowers discussed the many innovative ways they engage with their communities. Jessica Rolph of HappyBaby, Jason Graham-Nye of gDiapers, and Denise Hamler of Green America shared the thought processes and methods that have contributed to the stellar communities grown around their organizations. Denise said that to advance your mission, “know what you do well, and find out who is good at what you need.” Jason spoke about how gDiapers corporate culture extends beyond the walls of their offices and also about their use of social media to communicate with customers. Jessica discussed the importance of utilizing community engagement in their decision-making process and how the business truly took off when they “really began to listen” to the HappyBaby community.
Other highlights to the gathering included:
- A presentation on Co-Creation from Raphael Bemporad of BBMG, a “brand innovation studio” focusing on “sustainability, technology, and social purpose.” Click here to read more.
- “Managing an Intelligent Organization” with Dale Rodrigues from Mary’s Gone Crackers.
- Break-out sessions with RSF’s senior management team and industry sector experts.
- Updates about RSF, including the Social Impact Assessment Project, new initiatives, and the future of the organization.
- An evening reception held at the CompoClay Showroom and Resource Center with RSF investors and staff.
The gathering was held at the San Francisco Waldorf High School. The school is registered with the U.S. Green Building Council as a LEED Project, and is currently working on its Gold Level Certification. RSF is deeply appreciative to the school and staff who allowed us to use their beautiful facilities.
Each member of the RSF community is a cornerstone in our organization. If there were no value-aligned investors how could social enterprises maintain their values when seeking financing? Without the high-impact borrowers, would capital be channeled to organizations our investors would not be proud to support? The Annual Borrower Gathering is an example of how RSF utilizes community, transparency, and direct personal relationships to achieve our mission of transforming the way the world works with money. This event continues to grow in both size and content each year, bringing new borrowers, investors, and staff together to generate valuable learning experiences and to build stronger relationships. Thank you to RSF Community for contributing to the success of the 2011 RSF Borrower Gathering.
Reed Mayfield is Lending Assistant at RSF Social Finance.
From Co-creation to Association: A Social Challenge for the New Economy
May 31, 2011
"Co-creation to association", John Bloom
by John Bloom
Search“co-creation” on the internet, and you will find it described primarily as a marketing technique. A company puts out a product, opens the lines of communication with its consumers and shapes the products based upon the input. This level of interaction is made possible by the immediacy of digital feedback loops and the emerging abilities of manufacturers to customize products. This loop becomes self-reinforcing once the consumers see their ideas implemented and become more tightly wound with the product or brand. There are multiple benefits to this particular co-creative marketing approach, perhaps the most important of which is the reduction of unnecessary and wasteful production. Such an approach is an important step forward from an environmental perspective, yet, this view of co-creation is mostly driven by market share through customer loyalty. Much more than market value is possible through co-creation. If practiced as a community, it can serve as the basis for co-authoring significant portions of economic life, and at the same time re-inspire participation in civil society.
In the study of human creativity, problem solving is a distinct research subset simply because it has a beginning, middle and end, and can be observed in a laboratory. From the standpoint of research, such a neat package makes for measurable outcomes and publishable data. However, if all of our creative thinking were framed around problems and solutions, we’d all be in full-time analysis. Consider instead, the deeper creative processes of imagination, inspiration, and intuition. While they are all at work in our daily lives, they are much harder to grasp. Some simple working definitions are in order. Imagination is the capacity to form recognizable and plastic pictures, and for those pictures to transform through experiencing others’. Inspiration is the energy we breathe in, that renews a sense of what is possible. Intuition is the capacity to know through direct experience without the intellectual or cultural constructs of thinking. These are simplifications of very complex processes, and these “i” words are often misused in popular culture. Further, in some spiritual traditions they have very specific even sacred meanings, and, though I am trying to craft some basic practical concepts, I do so with respect for their spiritual heritage. They are capacities which one can only develop for oneself, and as one develops them one can come to recognize those capacities in others.
Imagination, inspiration, and intuition are capacities rather than outcomes, techniques of knowing rather than ends in themselves. They function most effectively in context of trust, and least effectively in a context of analysis and doubt. Yet they frequently inform, even if unconsciously, problem solving and other forms of decision making, despite the Western dominant culture’s predisposition to have faith or comfort in more “rational” processes.
It is challenge enough for each of us to understand how the capacities of imagination, inspiration, and intuition are at work in each of our lives, and they are present, and sometimes more heightened, when participating in a group. Yet, something new is possible within and through a group that could not be possible for an individual. For example, how many times have you sat in a group that was struggling to see a way forward whatever the situation, when an idea arose that no one person in the group had originally thought of? Where did the idea come from? How could we understand this process as co-creative? I am describing a process in which imagination, inspiration, and intuition are operating as a group capacity, operating in a way that recognizes yet also transcends individual capacities. I would hold that understanding this collectively evolved consciousness, the reality which we co-create with others, is a critical, if difficult to achieve, practice needed for transforming our economic relationships. Imagination, inspiration, and intuition are essential “tools” for understanding not only ourselves but also others with whom we create our interdependent communities.
Co-creation is not some far-fetched idealistic notion. There are long-standing and deep traditions of practice from which to learn, such as Native American Councils and the Quaker Meeting, and more recent ones such as Chaordic Organizations, Goethean Conversation, and Theory U. All these practices acknowledge some spiritual background or presence, and the work is to open as a group to what voice may emerge from silence, deep listening, and attendance to the emergent. These are group wisdom practices that foster and result from imagination, inspiration, and intuition. And these practices are one way of accessing spiritual guidance in organizational decision making. They are not to be taken lightly or used superficially.
One important aspect of co-creation is that while it calls for each person’s highest self, our better nature, it is not a democratic form. Co-creation recognizes the unique capacities and perspectives each person brings to a circle, and eliminates the polarizing affect of competition for power. A decision, or the sense of the group, is a shared emergent experience rather than a voting process in which everyone has to agree. One could say in contrast to the democratic that co-creation is more of a republican form (in the vein of Plato’s Republic) in which the strength of each person is present within collective imagination of community, and that each person carries a sense of responsibility for the whole community.
As with co-creation, an economy is also not a democratic form, but rather a more republican one. An economy thrives out of real interdependence, recognizing the gifts we bear and material needs we have. If our long-term aim is to evolve into an associative economy, which in its simplest form brings together producers, distributors and consumers to set prices, then learning to recognize the importance of co-creative processes and to discipline ourselves to work within them is a critical step along that path. An associative economy will not evolve without the parallel social transformation made real through co-creation.
John Bloom is Director, Organizational Culture at RSF Social Finance.
