Hello, this is Peter Levesque. Welcome to episode thirteen of the Knowledge Exchange Podcast. This podcast series is a product supported by the Canadian Council on Learning – Canada's leading organization committed to improving learning across Canada and in all walks of life. I want to thank the great staff at CCL for their efforts with this project to advance our understanding of effective knowledge exchange to improve the learning of Canadians. You can download this episode, as well as one of the seven future episodes in the series from my website at www.knowledgemobilization.net, from iTunes directly, just search for KM podcast. Alternatively go to knowledgeexchange.podomatic.com.
The conversation that I had with Eimear O'Neill was quite different from many in this series. Eimear is a psychotherapist, thinker and mobilizer, who is busy helping to create a culture and context that supports transformative life-long learning that leads to a “One World Community”. Her perspectives and energy are quite amazing; you come to see that indeed all things are connected but you then ask yourself, how then do we keep creating differences and divisions? I appreciated her comment that leadership is for the task and from the middle. I agree that we are never totally free; but rather that we are bound to each other and responsible for the well-being of all. I share her hopefulness of the growing connectedness assisted by technology. Perhaps this shall enable us to be more collaborative and creative as we learn – together. Enjoy.
Peter: I'm in a lovely home in Palmerston Square in Toronto in a neighborhood that I didn't ever know about but it's lovely and why don't we start by you introducing yourself – just say who you are…a little bit about what you do. Eimear: My name is Eimear O'Neill and I'm, by training and I suspect by nature, I'm a psychotherapist, which means I pay attention to spirit – that's really what psychotherapist means – not just change but attention to it – done that for 35 years. I'm also and educator; I work with the Transformative Learning Centre at the University of Toronto with many universities and community agencies and groups of people around the world in really engaged in deep transformative learning. Peter: We've had a series of email conversations back and forth that have been really enlightening and we've just had a conversation for about an hour getting to know one another and you've told me a little bit about the work that you've been doing and the paths that you've followed. This series of podcasts are around knowledge exchange and lifelong learning and leadership and I think that you have some very interesting perspectives.
Let me start with knowledge exchange is that it's described in many ways as bringing people and evidence together to influence behavior. How do you react to that? What does this mean to you? How would you think about knowledge exchange? And you said that this language is new to you and it's new to many different people so when I say “bring evidence and people together to influence behavior”, how do you react to that? What does that mean to you?
Eimear: The closest I would get to trying to describe that simply, is sharing places and spaces, so that you bring a diversity of people with world views that you want to actually explore and deepen and find ways in which you can collaborate, co-create together and that's what you're trying to do and you try to do that in places and in ways that free people up from some of the structures that tend to keep them being well behaved. I'm not well behaved by nature. Peter: Well that's actually really interesting, so the exchange process has to happen in places and so do you help facilitate those places? Eimear: I think that's basically what I do along with whole groups of other people, it's not just that I do that but because of the kinds of connections that I've developed over time in this city, I'm able to have access to spaces and places that generally are free. So it means that to throw a series of gatherings like the “Spirit Matters” gatherings, and to be able to have access to a space like the Ontario Institute for Studies and Education, which is right in the subway system, right downtown Toronto - easy access for people from all over the world and free to use, it's terrific. Peter: So what do people learn in these spaces? How do they engage with one another?
Eimear: Well we're not engage…generally at this stage, when I'm interested in and what the group of us who are interested in transformative learning are doing is actually bringing together people who – it's not an academic conference, this is really bringing together people who are…who share an understanding of ourselves as being members of one earth community – I suppose that's the way I'd really think of it. That's what we called the Last Spirit Matters - one that we did in Toronto here – we called it One Earth Community: Sharing our Stories, because that's basically what we're trying to do is to bring people – who ranges, whole age groups, whole ranges of people who are interested in learning and in putting out what they learn and bring them together in a way…in a short period of time over 2 days in a space where they can share deeply, understandings that they hold and talk deeply with diverse groups of others about how those, various aspects of those, and then where they can actually develop support networks and networks to enact or do things out in the world that will make a difference in terms of fostering one earth community – that understanding – that recognition – that world view. Peter: Okay. This series is sponsored by the Canadian Council on Learning and what's different from previous efforts around education policy, education being within institutions, following a very systematic process that the process...I mean part of what you're describing is a process of facilitating lifelong learning around a world view; how difficult is that? How difficult is the process of supporting lifelong learning?
Eimear: As somebody who only managed to finish my 3rd attempt at a doctorate when I was 55, I'd say that it's not easy. I'm a lifelong learner because of being…growing up as member of the Irish culture because that was part…as the people who were first kind of underwent colonization, we understood that talking together and educating was something that really was important - when it was forbidden, we did it under the hedges. The understanding is that you've got to always be learning and understanding your place in the world and how you are going to put out what you feel and know and share with others. That's what you want to do theoretically. Peter: Right.
Eimear: But to actually do so within university systems is not very easy, at least I did not find it easy. I found academia…it was very hard to find places that supported trans-disciplinary work and creative work and work that was life-affirming and that would be accessible to lots of people. Most people have 4 or 5 people read their PhD.
Peter: In our conversations and in our emails you've talked about this challenge of working across disciplines, across sectors, across economic groups, across cultures, across languages and that it takes a particular type of leadership; that there are people that can help facilitate this but in their leading, it's not the traditional kind of forceful military style of leadership of we will go in this direction and you will follow me. Can you talk a little bit about the kind of leadership that is needed in transformational learning?
Eimear: That's a really good question. I'd say it has to be sort of leadership for the task and from the middle is the way I would say it. So basically… Peter: That's a good statement. Eimear: It has to be something that's to with what the heck you're trying to do. So if I'm actually trying to work out that a particular task gets done then delegating and understanding the skills of people and helping to …you know that's one kind but mainly the kind of leadership that I see as working in this sort of way is what I call Participatory Leadership that really fosters the self-direction of other people and their engagement at a deep level of spirit in the process that you're trying to do, so that you're not having to go around and order them and whip them into shape; you're actually trying to get them to use the slack in their leash from the kinds of structures that they usually have to work within. You're trying to get them to use that really creatively and to engage their hearts and their minds and their spirits and their bodies and their most creative parts of themselves in that process. And you're trying to get them to do that with each other…to get to hang out and make music and eat together and do those sorts of things because those are part of how humans connect and learn to trust each other. Peter: It's interesting, I keep hearing over and over again the concept of trust and I hear it from a different perspective that there's the interpersonal trust that is based on relationships and over time and of working together and then there's this whole set of conversations in the scientific community around the trust of the evidence and they come to greater certainty about evidence and I'm just wondering how do you react to this the statement that evidence is the following and everything else is excluded? Because you've talked about many different ways of knowing, that knowledge comes from many different places, from many different practices and in order to work together you have to find some way of conversing but that doesn't fit with our, and I'm putting it in quotation marks of “scientific” evidence that has been rigorous and tested over and over and over again. How do you deal with that interface…I mean of really of 2 different ways of looking at knowledge?
Eimear: I don't see them as 2 different ways; I see them as having deeper roots that are shared. The idea that you bring in multiple perspectives to explore something and multiple world views to explore something means that you're seeing it almost like a hologram like from many, many ways and that's where you get your better view of it – your fuller view of it – your deeper view of it and the evidence based, I think that's interpreted in a particular way and usually what people mean as evidence based is evidence based stuff that supports my view. And structures that lead to that…you know you only get answers to the questions that you ask, so that sort of understanding and the rigidity of those structures is…it keeps…it maintains itself and that's part of why I'm interested in transformative learning is because even the…although there's a place for the evidence based and the scientific and the statistical…you know it's important to know that since 1997, Canada has trebled its export of arms. That's a very important piece of evidence or to know that its policies are less and less transparent not more and more transparent. Those sorts of things are very important to know – those are sorts of evidence based if you like pieces of information but they have to be set in the larger conversation with multiple perspectives about what do you do with that? How does that affect what you're trying to do in forming one earth community better and how do you still bring multiple perspectives so you don't continue to play out your own evidenced based presuppositions? So my idea…my sense of it is that the more I bring together or I'm part of groups who bring together very divers views and providing an open space that allows those to be shared comfortably - not in rigid structures but in structures that are more emergent, then the more chance you have of actually having those multiple perspectives or world views give you a fuller picture. You're still constantly having to question yourself about what structures are you trying to keep in place. Like I always …somebody asked me at the Holistic Education conference yesterday, “so do you think we're ever free so that we can just sort of be creative and free and think and act in life-giving ways?” and I said, “no I don't think we ever are because I think the freest you get is to keep an eye on the snake in the corner”. Peter: One of the other sets of conversations, the parallel around evidence is…and knowledge exchange is getting the right information to the right people at the right time and have the capacity to act. So how do you know, given the complex work that you do, how do you know it's the right stuff when you need it? What are the indicators that what you're working with is what you need to know? Eimear: When it raises the energy – when people are livened and inspired and able to cry and able to feel and still also able to really commit deeply to some sort of change. So when it really…it's affective learning – it has to actually move people deeply at the level of their feelings and their spirit. Then you know it's going to…you don't know what will happen with it but you know that people are going to be moved to seed it out elsewhere because their own project and …it resonates with their own project and so they are able to then move that along. And I use a lot of…I've been very…I think it's very important; the kind of work that you're doing because the use of technology and filming and being able to capture more than the text or linear stuff that creativity of…we transformed the auditorium in OISE into a forest for the One Earth Community as best we could – we did that …like the group of young people at the university were creative and we did music and we did bird song and had manual over-gongs, symbiosis that was filmed in the rainforest of Costa Rica, up huge on the screen. And we tried to make it a space into which people came that moved them deeply.
Peter: And moved them to go out into the world and act.
Eimear: Yes! To have courage – the courage that come from community because I think part of what happens is we get to understand things but then we're…it's very scary to then have to step up to do something about that and especially when you're in a world that's full of…you know make money, stay busy, keep your status – those sorts of orderings keep people very cold – not much energy to really say, well I don't like that and I want to do something about it and so I'm just going to go and do it. Peter: So given that you did this at OISE, which is….one way of looking at OISE is a building, it's a piece of infrastructure…I'm just playing with it right…but it's seen as a…you know it's like our public universities and our public venues and our meeting rooms are part of an infrastructure that we've built up around ourselves. So how do you better align what you just talked about in terms of people having the courage to go out and act within the world based on what they know and this interaction; what needs to change within our institutions, within our infrastructure, how do you create incentives for more people to act upon their…to engage in courageous acts that builds our society?
Eimear: Well that's a question that will take about 3 hours in itself. What I would say is that I shared a dream with you that one of my colleagues, Sam Croll, had where there were all these emergency vehicles and he's looking in and there's crime tape laid across and as he gets up to the crime tape, he suddenly hears this voice saying oh my god! Curriculum is dead!
I love that, I also thought curriculum was probably held hostage and squeezed like toothpaste into a tube to only go in particular ways and so in terms of the spaces that we're talking about; OISE is a public space that where in to which we bring, not just academics, but community movements and people connected to communities, the actual work that goes up on those floors above us as we're meeting in the auditorium is often limited and squeezed like a tube of toothpaste into very narrow curriculum from very limited numbers of people and that's intended to replicate itself. So part of what has to transform is we really may have to, if not kill curriculum or recognize that finding it dead might not be an emergency, we might at least have to consider how to make it more diverse and more holding of perspectives and not just curriculum but the methodologies - the processes of teaching. For example the space that we've created in the transformative learning and with the help of the Indigenous Education Networks and the arts based inquiry people, we've made a space that draws on world views that are more than Eurocentric, that has an integrated analysis around oppression and power in terms of how you do that in pedagogy, that has a space for art and creative ways of knowing as an epistemology – a way of knowing, that can get under some of the Eurocentricity and the language confinements and the splitting that is in a lot of academic knowing, and that allows a wider expression that can be documented and recorded and put out for further public conversation. So I think it's not just a matter of the space and it being a public education space, it's a public education space in which indigenous knowledges have a real place, the knowledges of wisdom and of marginalized people and wisdom - tradition in women, have a large place and the processes are creative and ecological. Peter: So what's the greatest reward of doing this? I mean this is really exciting but when you talk to those that are…that maybe supportive or not supportive, they're going to say, “Okay, what is the reward for doing this? Why do we want to do this? Why is this important?” Eimear: It's meaningful. It gives meaning to each of our lives to actually put forward, in some ways that we feel might be effective, to… that's why because I feel that if I can put it out into ways that it inspires and resonates with other people to actually get them to do more… Peter: Right. Eimear:... locally and with themselves and with their own communities around moving towards really living and being and acting as one earth community then that's pretty good…and to have some fun and create, creative and energizing time doing that – that's even better – has to energize me too. So many people who work in…only in institutional structures, are very de-energized and flattened and not awake.
Peter: And this is a way to re-awaken them?
Eimear: Yes, it's a way to re-awaken. Peter: Okay. Sometimes I wish I had a crystal ball and that I could tell what the future is but I always ask this difficult question of, if you could imagine the work that you're doing and how you've influenced others, if you could look just 10 years down the road, what do you see as the challenges and the changes and the…those things that you would like to see coming forward? Where do you see the path that you've helped set in motion…in 10 years? Eimear: I see continuation of the work of people like Paola Wangoola, where we, and by we I mean mainly white eurocentricaly educators end up going to other places, and sharing those places and those knowledges deeply – not of some sort of exotic forum but really understanding there what this…these people have to teach us in the larger world community in terms of sustainable, meaningful living. And so I see going to Uganda or going to Peru or going to Brazil, to communities that are trying to do this work all over the world because wherever there's been the kind of accommodation and oppression and globalization of structures of domination – wherever there is that, there's also resistance and creative resistance and resilience that's emerging. So it's a matter of actually like being able to connect those pockets and in 10 years with the kind of technology and the kind of energy and wisdom I hear in my children and in the other people of 30 and 20 that I'm talking with, and that I can foresee and my first grandchild is due in April, and I can foresee that they're born into a different world and there are opportunities to learn from each other and from people are very different from themselves will be increased. I also fear because I think the crisis that we're in is real. Like the climate change crisis, the crisis around militarization, the kinds of government structures currently spreading rather than stopping are…those kinds of governments by hierarchy and arms are…those are proliferating and so I think we always have to keep the light and the shadow held together so that we kind of can see what's being illuminated and where we have to move. So in 10 years I see our capacity all over the world to do that – to build on resilience and resistance as…increasing, it will be very exciting…very exciting. I hope I have the energy to hang in with it.
Peter: Eimear this has been a real pleasure meeting you today and engaging in this conversation and I always…whenever I have these conversations I always leave the last word to the person that I'm talking to. So is there anything final that you would like to say?
Eimear: I think the turning point for me has been the understanding that's actually been around for an awful long time, it's quoted in Anishnabi wisdom, it's quoted by Tiar de Jardin, it's quoted in Gaelic; Shannara, which is that we are not humans living a spiritual life, we are spirit living a human life and our job is to try to be as much in that larger understanding of spirit as creatively as we can in the brief time that we have within the flow of it. Peter: Thank you.
Eimarr: You're more than welcome.
