What happened on the Art of Hosting in 2013?

The first training in the practices of Art of Hosting and Participatory Leadership in Sofia happened during the spring of 2013. It was a period of changes for the whole country, between times of unrest and rethinking for many people. The question around which the training was called seemed to be both in the right place and the right time: “How to focus our personal energies to move forward in a common direction?”

The days between 17-19 May were filled with conversations involving the potential and fostering the collective intelligence of all participants - from diverse ages, backgrounds and work fields. What united us was the passion to learn from each other and improve ourselves towards a direction of cooperation and co-creation.

We learned about some of the practices designed around these shared values - Circle Practice, Open Space, World Cafe & Pro Action Cafe, Appreciative Inquiry (you can learn more about them from this page. More importantly, we have the opportunity to apply them in discussing topics which were either of shared importance for many of the participants or were burning questions for some of them.

Some of the participants were working in the Education sector, in Human resources, as trainers or were just individuals interested in the topics of leadership, so the experiences shared were pretty diverse. This opened a way to improve ourselves in listening and understanding each other, as well as being inclusive and celebrating the differences. What impressed me was that despite of these differences, warmth and togetherness emerged between the participants.

For me the whole training was a really shaking experience, as I got to know some people determined to give their best to realize their dream about changing the world for better. This made me think that I can actually also seek for a life work in which change for good is its essence, not just a complement. I was pretty happy to re-discover the feeling of working together with openness and inspiration, building ideas from the roots of our deepest intentions.

Sincerely,
Maya