2023 Igspo/Tavistock Group Relations Conference

The conference staff provides and maintains the boundaries of the conference as an online temporary learning organisation. Within these boundaries the conference participants (members and staff) work towards the primary task of the conference and the various tasks of the different subsystems and events that constitute the conference. The role of staff is not to passively observe or evaluate members, but to utilise their experience and being-in-the-moment to offer working hypotheses, interpretations and observations to assist members in their work towards the primary task, in the here-and-now. The staff therefore has both a management and a consulting role. The way in which staff take up their roles is always open for exploration.

Ancestral meaning systems in a global context ….

In the words of the poet David Whyte (2014): “Memory is not just a then, recalled in a now; the past is never just the past: memory is a pulse passing through all created life, a waveform, a then continually becoming other thens, all the while creating a continual but almost untouchable now”. Recalling the memories that we share, and that are carried through the lineage of our ancestry, may bring us closer to the untouchable now. Read more