There are now thousands of people in Britain and across the world who have participated in the Leicester conference and other Tavistock Institute of Human Relations (TIHR) programmes over the years. Many of whom have been inspired to use what they have learnt both personally and in their professional lives.

As people come to the end of a programme there is usually an expressed desire to stay connected, to find ways of keeping the thinking alive and developing and to continue to give and gain support for ongoing work. Despite peoples best intentions it can be difficult to mobilise and sustain this creative energy.

This session invited Alumni to join us in an Open Space event to explore and discuss what could be possible. How best to activate and nurture this vibrant body? How to sustain it in its endeavours? What is its Primary Task? What can the Institute do? What can the Alumni do?

The session was also open to those who wanted to know more about the programmes we offer, providing an opportunity to meet previous participants and the faculty, to find out what they might get from participating.

ARCH-LIVE

Creating a Tavistock Institute Community

We want to build on the momentum generated through this open space event at the festival. Creative ideas were flowing (see the attached summary at the end) now we need to make them a reality.

We want this to be a truly co-produced enterprise between TIHR and our wider community. The first step is for those of us with some desire and energy to get together in a Community Building Group, to identify our purpose, our primary task and develop the processes and structure through which to engage with our wider community.

We want this network to be attractive to and extend beyond our alumni to include other interested people – for the moment we are calling it the Tavistock Institute Community. 

r.kelly@tavinsitute.org to join.

We have set up a private Basecamp group  specifically for the Community Building group. Some people have already begun using this so you will not be alone. 

If joining the community building group isn’t for you, then watch this space for the launch of the Tavistock Institute Community itself.

Looking forward to working with you …. Warm wishes Rachel Kelly and Anne Benson

Download Outcome from Festival Activating the Alumni event 20^th October 2017

EVENT LEADERS

Anne Benson is a Principal Consultant and Head of Professional Development Programmes at the Tavistock Institute. She joined the Institute from the Kings Fund in 2015. Anne has designed and delivered many development programmes across the UK and Internationally. Currently she is one of the co-directors for the Practitioner Certificate in Consulting and Change (P3C), Director of the P3C programme for the TA Academie in the Netherlands and part of the core team of faculty developing and delivering programmes in China to build capacity in working in the Tavistock method. In addition to her work at the Institute, Anne works as a Cognitive Analytic Psychotherapist.Rachel Kelly is Professional Development Coordinator at the Tavistock Institute and has been working on the marketing, recruitment, administration and support systems for our Professional Development portfolio since 2005. Underlying all our work is a commitment to the dissemination of our ongoing ideas, theories and methodologies and to life-long learning and professional development and furthermore, to embodying them in practice ie living the work. To this end, Rachel is also an Alexander Technique teacher – the Alexander Technique is about performance – how to discard unhelpful patterns of thought, movement and tension and promoting the skilful use of the whole self- how we move and breathe, how we learn and act and, above all, how we choose our reactions to increasingly demanding situations. Rachel brings this to the various courses that we offer and runs the Embodying Role Event at the Leicester conference.