François Matarasso

When I am facilitating a co-creation project, how can I ensure that the experience is as rewarding for those present as I hope? 

That question opens many further questions, which is why this practice is restless and so rewarding to me. Let’s begin with questions about what I know, believe or assume, (by which I mean what I believe I know without realising that it is just my belief)

• I probably know the time and place where we will work, how long the project will last, a rough idea of who will be involved and other such practical matters.
• Some of what I know shades into belief. Do I know or believe that co-creation is a rewarding activity? If my confidence the project will lead to a positive outcome rests on long experience, does that make it knowledge or belief?
• Both my knowledge and my belief are limited, and not only in the ways I understand. I might believe in multiple intelligences and know that people have different  learning styles, but is that sufficient to shape how I organise activities or behave towards others? 
• When I meet people, what assumptions do I unconsciously make about the intelligence or learning style of that fidgety teenager or that patient older woman? 
• And where did I get the idea that people have come wanting to learn anyway?

This barely scratches the surface of how my behaviour is shaped by my knowledge, beliefs and assumptions, themselves shaped by my age, physical attributes, personality and psychology, social and economic status, education, past experience and many other factors of which I may be very unevenly aware. It doesn’t begin to ask ethical or political questions, such as:

• To what extent is it acceptable, if at all, to use my (untrained) knowledge of psychology or education to try to influence how another person might respond to the session?
• How can I know what would be rewarding to them anyway?
• What reasons lie behind the decision to fund this activity and to what extent, if at all, am I content to fulfil or reinforce them?

And so on, and so on, and so on. Over the years, the most effective way I have found to deal with these myriad questions is simply to keep asking them, knowing that the answers are always contingent and temporary. I walk the line, like a funambulist, always adjusting my position to avoid a fall. The instability is not a problem. On the contrary, I love this shape-shifting border territory, where every choice, every moment, matters and, what’s more, where I am fully conscious of its importance. This is life, energy, co-creation and we are in it together.

If anything in the previous paragraphs gave you the impression that I am the only person to have brought their knowledge, beliefs and assumptions to the room, or to be asking themselves questions, please think again. I am not in command or control of this session: I am a participant in an experience that is co-constructed. We are all funambulists, cheerfully encouraging one another as we totter across the void of life. And the wonderful thing about co-creation is that, even if it’s not where we thought we were going, we always end up in a place we’re happy to get to. 

Or at least that is my knowledge, belief and assumption.

Originally published on http://www.aselflessart.com