“What is missing in the crisis of our current age is a social technology to access the collective wisdom of diverse and distributed communities. The World Café is an innovative social technology that embodies the principles and practices of a new type of collective conversation that can access this wisdom. It is a must read and a must practice for all advanced practitioners and researchers of social transformation and organizational change.”
~ Dr. Claus Otto Scharmer, Senior Lecturer, MIT Sloan School of Management, co-author: Presence: Human Purpose and the Field of the Future.
Source: https://theworldcafe.com/global-impact/testimonials/
Why did we decide to use World Café method as one of the research tools?
The World Café methodology is a simple, effective, and flexible format for hosting large group dialogue. It also is very much in line with the basic idea of The Opener, and through the dynamic confrontation of different groups of opinion, it is able to define more clearly the framework for the different topics.
The World Café method is simple and based on five basic points:
- A specific environment made up of small tables, reminiscent of a café, each with a notebook or writing paper, coloured pencils and, ideally, five chairs.
- The main facilitator explains the principles and states the theme or key questions of each table where the facilitators sit, they do not change.
- The process itself consists of at least three twenty-minute discussion rounds, after which participants change tables and topics. The table facilitator briefly introduces the information from the previous group to the new group.
- The main questions or key words of each table are related to the specific context. They can be added/changed during the course depending on the development of the discussion in each group. Insights and thoughts are continuously recorded on paper/flipchart.
- Collect the ideas generated by the exchange in front of all participants, usually in the form of a graphic record. Its shape or colour depends on the topic, the participants, the facilitator, etc.
The essential principles of the World Café process are:
- a clear context - why the participants are there and what the objective is
- a welcoming, supportive environment that encourages dialogue and creative thinking
- essential questions and themes that are related to the focus of the participants
- encouraging each participant to share their thoughts
- linking different perspectives, including opposing views
- listening together to different ideas and opinions
- sharing common discoveries
In this way, the World Café method proved to be an ideal way to involve the students in a collaborative dialogue.
The key themes of the Opener World Café were:
- Artistic practice
- Relations
- Language
- Sharing
Each theme was moderated by two members of the research team. Within each theme we worked with additional initial sub-questions:
- ARTISTIC PRACTICE (as artistic research/reflection) Einar and Martin
- AR is based on practice-led-research. What (which elements) does that imply for performers?
- What are the challenges of doing and conveying artistic reflection in our practice as performers?
- How can practice-led research in performance be of interest and useful to the performance community (also in higher music education)?
- How do we document our practice-lead process in the best way?
- LANGUAGE (as a tool for artistic reflection) Christian and Magdaléna
- What kind of language (words/concepts) do we use in our work as performers?
- Reflections in AR most often documented in written texts. Yet, the performance environment is very oral (also internally thinking/talking to oneself) and there is little tradition for reading AR texts on BA an MA levels. How do we deal with this?
- Do we have a common language of communication as performers or is it individual?
- What can language show? (possibilities and limits)
- RELATIONS (as part of artistic reflection) Signe and Hilde
Performance is a relational activity on several levels:
- Relation teacher - student
- Relation performer - instrument
- Relation between performers (ensemble)
- Relation performer - composer (past or contemporary)
- Relation to myself and my own body
- How can different kind of relations listed above be reflected upon as part of AR?
- SHARING (creating spaces of sharing) Zuzana and Ricardo
- What is meaningful to share in our performance context?
- Do we have a culture for openness and sharing experiences, questions and reflections in our institutions?
- How could we further develop spaces of sharing?
- Are there limits to what we can share as performers?
ARTISTIC PRACTICE – hosted by Einar and Martin
Every group consisted of 5 – 6 students.
Findings:
In general students tried to express:
- what they consider to be artistic practice,
- what qualities should AP have,
- what can improve the process of their own AP and AP in general
Some interesting questions came up:
- is or should be AP exact or should reflect someone´s personal approach?
- Is there a final solution / result or is enough just finding the questions
Interesting ideas – it was said that:
- AP is connected to personal life
- for creativity in AP is important the atmosphere
- important in AP is express feelings, ideas and be honest in them
Students were looking for tools of AP:
- routine as a tool
- listening as a tool
- sharing as a tool
- reflections as a tool
- re-discovering as the continual process as a tool
It was interesting to note a moment of change in the opinion of the student during the discussion. At the beginning of his speech, he described the AP as a very exact scientific process and after 3-4 minutes of thinking and expressing his own opinion, he described the AP as a practical process and a personal experience of the music.
Another description of the creative process came when he compared AP to cooking with its character of a process, adding ingredients, spending some time in the process and the results which should bring some expression / taste / enjoyment to the people – and these vary according to who is cooking.
LANGUAGE – hosted by Magdaléna and Christian
This particular topic brought many exciting questions, as:
- How to make knowledge transferable?
- How to develop the language used to explain the sound?
- How to find balance between different teachers’ languages?
- Can we avoid demonstration when explaining?
- Is irrationality and mystery in music a superstructure or the base?
- Is precision of expression in art possible?
Tools:
- Real-time discussion
- Trying to find the words why I like something – it verifies myself
- Dialogue with pianists – about the mechanisms of movements, ideas, naming…
- Dialogue with composer/conductor – immediately about “how to understand”
- Hand/body movements (abstract) while expressing music
- Method of imitation – effective, but temporary
Ideas:
- Artistic mystery comes as a result of “tiredness” of searching for words.
- Using words can lose or destroy the mystery behind it (Nietzsche)
- Contradiction between precision and fantasy: using a lot of words (stories) to know how to express the sound
- However accurately we name it, we always are dependent on the degree of acceptance
This theme was also a great opportunity to start developing a framework for creating Slovak expressions in artistic research.
RELATIONS – hosted by Hilde and Signe
Questions that came up:
- difference between or define Workshop and Masterclass (WS is more the work in process and can stimulate musicality easily)
Tools:
- relation of inhaling and exhaling
- friendship which was developed to “artship”
What is important for relations:
- fighting, but with fantastic result
- to accept other opinions and go into them
- inspire and respond
- relation to our own experience, practice
- relation to ourselves, to be connected to ourselves
Interesting ideas:
- the same music taste is a problem
- The body reacts before the mind
- Comparison difference of cactus (alone – static) and flower garden (together and developing)
SHARING – hosted by Ricardo and Zuzana
Trying to express what sharing means:
- to find someone on the same vibe
- to share not only your information but also your personality
- that I found something I don’t want to keep only for myself
- to give something and to get something in return – leads to good feeling
- exchange
- caring
- interaction
- communication – both verbal and non-verbal
- generosity
- transferring ideas – inspiration
- creating “hunger” for knowledge, music itself
What can limit us in sharing:
- That I don’t want to push the others and don’t want to make them a copy of myself
- Culture limits – comparison to Croatia – in Slovakia we share more, but with the right people and we are more practice-orientated
- So yes, culture can create different limits in sharing one’s thoughts and ideas
- Performer’s will
- Audience, its education or response, the flow
Ideas that came up
- When sharing in teaching process, we should ask questions, not teach answers
- Both composer and performer are shared in the performance
- Developing sharing spaces – begin with oneself – to take time for sharing with myself first
IN GENERAL:
Many students’ opinions developed during the World Café session.
Some of them changed their opinion about topics in the opposite way, changed their opinion about themselves (found more qualities in their abilities of reflection, language, communication...).
An interesting idea came from a student who explained that she remembered much more information (almost everything) from these discussions than from the usual lectures.
It seems that the World Café method is not only a great tool for research, but it is also a great tool for education.