Exploring the Origins of Practice: In Dialogue with Founding Faculty of the Presencing Institute

Abstract

In September 2020, Julie Arts and Angela Baldini, core team members of the Presencing Institute, brought together four of the founding faculty for a conversation on the origins of some of the institute’s key tools and practices. They sought to articulate the roots of the organization’s work by inquiring into the history of its practices with the people who brought them into being through their experimentation. The group shared how these tools came into being and evolved, and also ‘what the work asked of them’ – touching into the inner experience of holding these practices. What unfolded was a dialogue on the deeper dimensions of practice underlying not only these tools, but the field of awareness-based systems change as a whole. In the end there was a sense that the conversation went to the heart of what the work is really about – and that it is a conversation worth sharing.