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Participatory practice
to stories with deep attention and with the ethics of care. It means focusing on how we relate to one another, how we act towards one another, how we care for one another, create a feeling of safety and trust, and welcome each other’s perspectives. It is about deep listening and seeking understanding. Since, when we talk, the words we use can potentially be divisive, we need to be careful of how we communicate our thoughts and feelings and also of how we convey our values through our actions. These values run counter to current trends whereby those who hold power try to create a required distance between people through encouraging anger and division, fear and culture wars. However, by embodying and acting with the intention of holding these values, we model and co-create an alternative way of being. Of course, cultural norms about how to enact and talk about love will vary in different societies and groups, and thus in how the value of love might manifest, whatever the context. Nonetheless, the intention in participatory practice is always the same, to move the value norm from the love of power to the power of love.
Theme 4: Participatory practice as a relational process Transformational culture work is always relational; it is not transactional. Real diversity, equity and inclusion and belonging work is not about a checklist. It is about relationships. (Aiko Bethea, 20202) … this is participative universe, nothing lives alone. Everything comes into form because of relationship… Even reality is created through our participation on relationships. We chose what we notice; we relate to certain things and not others. Through these chosen relationships we co-create the world. (Wheatley, 1999, quoted in Wahl, 2016: 143) As already alluded to, participatory practice is a relational process. The dominant story that puts economics and consumption at its centre creates a particular type of relationship, and it is an unequal one. Indeed, as we have argued, there is no value put on caring, equal, reciprocal relationships at all, despite the fact that they are the glue that keeps things functioning and sustains social cohesion. Society is currently structured to downgrade relationships and prioritise the material, or ‘things’. It also promulgates the primacy of competition over collaboration. This is both a misleading mindset and an unsustainable ‘reality’. The richness of our lives is determined by the quality of our relationships, both between ourselves and with the environment around us. But this is barely acknowledged in some areas. Take scientific papers in the so-called health sciences, for example: they are stripped of the relationships at the centre of the healthcare process. Yet, as we know from our experience of the recent pandemic, a hug, a smile, a pleasant word from another person is fundamental to our well-being, as is our relationship with nature. Participatory practice is a manifestation of the relational: co-creation, 23
