Emergent Strategy + Scribing Review
simmer
I have been wanting to talk about the intersections of Emergent Strategy and scribing ever since I opened up the first few pages of the book and was immersed in the flocking of birds and the incredible fullness of adrienne’s descriptions of herself and her lineage. Ever since I found words to wrap around a sensation of worldbuilding and worldshifting that made me feel alive…
Although these sensations felt urgent and important and essential to my practice of scribing, it took me a few years to be in a place where I could articulate those thoughts. I spent the intermediate time from picking up the book to offering this workshop learning how to be an adult. I had the wonderful experience of assisting Kelvy Bird with online programs around generative scribing, I became involved in multiple mutual aid projects around Brooklyn that taught me how creativity can unleash abundance and how emergence can manifest in very physical ways, and I participated in improvisational dance spaces specifically crafted using the pedagogy of Emergent Strategy. And finally, I came upon a pocket of time that afforded me space to research, explore, weave, and dream this workshop into being.
web weaving
For me, scribing is all about emergence. It is a practice in loosening, shaking off, letting go in order to stretch, expand, deepen, burrow, and enmesh. What I find so wonderful about the emergent strategy philosophy is the concept of adaptation. It is not about coming up with a perfect solution, something that we can hold still and repeat over and over regardless of the circumstances. It is about finding footprints to stabilize our journey, methods of noticing when things need to evolve in order to continue, and creating sustainable ways to be together and create change.
When I create a scribing piece, it is a product of that moment. It reflects the research and history that went into creating the space, the insights arising from the conversation, and the foggy spaces in between. When the piece is finished, I envision that people will return to it and reinterpret it each time, seeing different things in the illustrations, making new connections, noticing how their perspective has shifted since the conversation took place. In this way, scribing is a practice in emergence not only as the piece is created but also each time it is re-viewed.
why this, why now?
Feeling this resonance between emergent strategy and scribing made me reflect on how, in between these worlds of community organizing and visual sensemaking, I saw gaps in both that could be filled by the other. A warp to a weft.
In organizing spaces, I felt the need to hold complex backgrounds, experiences, and needs. I saw the desire to develop plans that are nimble to change, pivot, and spin with the constant turbulence of external conditions. However, that agility needed to be tethered to showing up as reliable and responsible community members. I also felt a yearning for a space where people could grow and learn, where the barriers to enter weren’t guarded by intellect or identity, and where people could make mistakes but be held in generative accountability.
In scribing spaces, I felt a desire to articulate these visual + metaphorical literacies through the lens of liberation work. I saw a hesitance to consider scribes as co-conspirators in emergent strategy work and caution around the influence/bias that filter how scribes listen. From my own dreams, I envisioned a posture of companionship where scribes could offer their gifts without the desire to be voiceless or hidden. A posture that celebrated the nutrients of their lineages and awareness of their blind spots.
the workshop!
In an attempt to synthesize rather than replay the entire workshop transcription, I included the major teachings from adrienne and the meaningful insights from our group reflections.
adrienne writes:
“Emergent strategy is how we intentionally change in ways that grow our capacity to embody the just and liberated worlds we long for”
Embodiment is such a big piece of this framework, and we collectively reflected on where we feel alignment between our values and our embodied experiences. Here are some questions to consider:
Where do you feel alignment between your values and your embodied experience? This can be your art practice, your relationships, your habits, etc
Where do you feel open to emergence? Where do you feel constrained?
What grounds you in the midst of change?
There are three main themes that resonate for me from the book:
The adaptive and relational nature of emergence - emergence requires flexibility and our relationships can help tether us amidst those shifts
The constant of change - paradoxically, the only constant is change!
Nature as a teacher of emergence – how can we learn from the larger ecological body? What does nature know about emergence within the realm of sustainability, cycles of life and death, distribution, interdependence?
Another precious amb quote is this gem: “What we pay attention to grows”
As scribes, we are quite literally “drawing attention.” So how can we draw in a way that nourishes both internal structures of care and accountability and external understandings of clarity? For me, this looks like showing where methods of organizing mirror or contradict the goals of the group. Although the group’s vision may be about centering marginalized communities or redistributing resources, are there firm power hierarchies present in the room? Are all voices being listened to and welcomed in with even weight? Scribing can be a powerful tool to illustrate the resonance/dissonance in this area. Sometimes, those contradictions are felt without being named and scribing can surface those sensations.
Scribing can also help support internal resourcing necessary for sustainability. What methods of care are present? Where do people need more support either in time, energy, or community? Where can we be creative with resources and find abundance when we are limited in other ways? Where do we need to slow down, widen, and breathe?
A participant mentioned the desire for scribing to invite more feedback and collaboration. To bring in the “we” from “what we pay attention to grows.” Often, the way individuals interact with scribing pieces is determined by facilitation agendas or cultural norms that delineate art from audience. If the audience is already the art, then what are other ways scribes can invite people to visualize their perspectives, wishes, and worries? When does synthesis become reduction? Where can scribes be adaptive as part of the scribing process and invite in more relationship?
principles
We then turned towards the central principles of emergent strategy, pausing to reflect individually and then as a group about where these already exist in our practices/lives and where they can be further integrated. These reflections were soooo juicy and vibrant and tender and introspective and collective and I would love to dive deeper into each one of them in the future.
fractal
Small is good, small is all (The large is a reflection of the small)
Metabolizing big conflicts into smaller pieces
Prioritizing individual connections, noticing how those can have a rippling impact in larger groups
Scribing
Showing patterns within individual bodies and groups, illustrating fractals in different levels of the system
adaptive
Change is constant (be like water)
Less prep, more presence
Centering embodiment practices to get out of a flight or fight response, being able to respond/adapt to a group from a grounded place
Scribing
Shifting the scribing based on how the room exists, not sticking too closely to plans
Illustrating the flow — what is in transition? What is it responding to?
interdependent + decentralized
There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it
Invisible web + network – everything is listening, how can we be more attuned?
Individual purpose morphing into collective purpose
Bringing in people’s gifts
Scribing
Visibilizing the whole network
Illustrating what boundaries look like –- within our interdependence, where can we find sustainable boundaries?
“Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you” — Prentis Hemphill
nonlinear + iterative
There is always enough time for the right work
Move at the speed of trust
Different shapes/speeds of trust
Letting go of a scarcity mindset and letting things breathe
Scribing
No start or end to a scribing piece, walking through it by way of changing paths
Scribes creating centers of gravity — pulling, wrapping. warping attention
Creating new context around the piece each time people engage
Creating artifacts that are never “complete”
resilient: rooted in transformative justice
Never a failure, always a lesson
Trust the people (if you trust the people they become trustworthy)
Giving time for individuals to work through what they need to work through
Collective body – people can hold different pieces of a group process
Letting go – trusting that what will happen will happen
“Trust the beings, they find their shape”
Scribing
Showing people how they are held by something bigger than themselves – collective strength, ability, capacity
Including pieces of joy and happiness
Calling in vs calling out harm + trauma in the context of a community, not pushing people out to the edges
creating more possibilities
What you pay attention to grows
Scribing
Offering resources as opposed to solutions — what are the options? Where are the choices?
scribing reflection
The scribing piece that I drew from the workshop was inspired by the Mississippi River maps created by Harold Fisk which illustrate how the river’s course changed over centuries. For the “legend” of the map, I placed our aligned values and grounding practices to illustrate how these practices and principles overlap, create flow, and constantly shift as we allow for emergence.
where to?
So what can we do with these overlaps between emergent strategy and scribing? We can let them marinate, melt, mold, manipulate how we continue to shape our community work and our map-making. In this moment where it feels like parts of our world are slipping into sickening spirals, we can create beautiful strategies that people can grasp. We can practice the adaptive and embodied lessons of emergence by building trust with others so we can feel safer letting go. We can support each other through individual journeys of self-growth and change and learn how to navigate collaborating within the fractals of our individual and collective bodies. We relate, adapt, and emerge.
