The SIETAR Europa Congress in Lille, June 2024 represented a return for those supporters of SIETAR France who had attended conferences at the Catholic University in both 2010 and 2014. Personally, all my old memories of the town then have been overwritten by this newly vibrant experience we were now presented with. The greenery, canals, the new buildings, restaurants and hotels, the fresh and expensive looking Business School that hosted our experience, and the Super super friendly customer facing French staff in the Business School, the bars, the restaurants and the hotels. They seemed to be from a different planet to the tourist handlers of Paris.
Sessions
Day 1- We had a wide array of content and some complex titles to wrangle. I chose my own path, and this is what happened…
We kicked off with Milton Bennett’s session, weaving his tapestry and filling in the texture of his DMIS model. With his easy eloquent charm, he pushed the audience with some new terms and high powered concepts, his messages woven into the fabric of the model and the familiar, and his personal opinions subtly hinted at. Bravo.
My session was nicely attended. Thanks, Nadya for cutting the YouTube Short that helped promote the session. With a room full of the great and the good, we explored methods for tackling conversations with difficult people and shared some techniques originating in Transactional Analysis – TA, Mediation and the Socratic method. On reflection, the 5 methods on offer were probably 2 too many to share! The 8 groups doing the exercises responded well, and after some engineered chaos, came up with some strong and moving examples of ideological ideas and how to deal with people who hold them.
The Ukraine workshop hosted by the EXTRAORDINARY human being, Victoria Spashchenko. She exemplified resilience, belief and a life affirming determination to continue, with stories of daily routings being adapted to carry on, the rejection of pity and sorrow from observers, and tales of the spirit of the nationals that were moving to listen to. They will not be bowed by violence and a constant threat to life.
The evening speaker, Amin, Dr Aminkeng A. Alemanji, a Kenyan researching race at the University of Turku in Finland, was a breath of fresh air – “Every time I hear the word “racist”, I ask the speaker to define what they mean.” If only we could all do that, we might get to outcomes that are more developmental and constructive. Amin gave us a gift, extending the story from the US centric, double monolith narrative that has taken up so much space, his examples being taken from a global perspective. His work is a constructive addition to the field. That and the promotion of the element of race as separate from the overused labels of racist and racism made a strong distinction and could shift the discourse in a more useful direction.
Day 2 – Veronica de la Fuente and Ghislaine Tamisier – Bridging Intercultural intelligence and coaching competence – A smooth and passionate exploration of the differences between intracultural interventions and coaching. And (this is my 9th Congress) we had the first incident of rebellious push back from the group with Darren rejecting the offered exercise and asking for something else! Now I have seen it all 😉 Great fun.
I was cautious about Carolyn Ryffel’s promise in her Questions and presence session. If you look up her Nunify contributions and from my past personal encounters, I know that Carolyn is a straight shooter, who fires out bullet-like questions that often hit the target hard, and I mildly feared for my personal safety, expecting a challenging session. Not to worry. We had our first of several sessions on somatic teaching, expanding on the interaction between head, heart and hara. It was a profound delight. Thanks Carolyn.
Kate Price and Veronica Ramos – Ways of knowing – First Nations, Metis and Inuit pedagogies – probably the most informative “new” topic at the Congress. Kate’s energy flowing out toward her brain-zapped audience at 4.15PM, was necessary and most welcome. She expanded on the wrongs handed out to the First Nation’s peoples of Canada. Informative and moving in equal measure. And containing further somatic teaching moments.
Last day – Bernd Gibson’s Immersive Learning show – a light style with plenty of props supported this informative session, as the interculturalists in the room were invited to become pirates for the morning. In this vein we revisited the iceberg as the upper deck, middle deck, and lower deck of a pirate ship. The group were then encouraged to share their many stories around immersive learning experiences – e.g. foreign study students invited to “survive” on a real island, planted actors in the class being deliberately rude to a technically incompetent lecturer to provoke a reaction in the student body, and other roleplays and set ups that aimed at novel ways of learning.
This was beautifully done with serious learning and examples wrapped up in play, symbolism, and discussion.
Last session – Elena Steiner, Jan Van Maele, Lauren Mark, Qun Yu – Mobilising Movement Practices – Cloud hands will set you free.
Mentally and physically exhausted, at this stage (some with undiagnosed covid) the perfect end to the workshops was provided with these out of mind exercises, exploring nonverbal physical contact, movement and non-primary sense awareness. The 10 fingertips touching exercise had me leaving my mind and my body! A fab last experience to take away from all the rich learning sessions on offer in Lille.
The party
Many people slipped away during the day by plane, train or automobile but this still left a rump of enthusiasts to form a raucous dancing troupe at the Business School in the evening. Bernd rocked the vinyl and the fairer interculturalists, swung, swayed and sang their way towards midnight. I did not partake of the offers to dance, and my decision was proved right, when videos of the dancing started appearing all over Facebook the following day. I still haven’t lived down my getting caught out at SIETAR Switzerland’s wonderful conference in Lugano, 2018. Accusations of Dad Dancing are difficult to live down. I’m not falling for that one again! It was the perfect occasion to say a quick hello or goodbye to those that mattered to us during the week.
Matthew’s Congress Score – I was impressed by the Congress package as a whole and took value away from 8 sessions out of eight. A 100% record. Equalling the Malta Congress hit rate in 2022
Thank you – Bravo to Grant Douglas (the hardest working and most modest man in Europe), Bastion Kuentzel, Suze McCullagh, Grazia Ghellini, Bernd Gibson, Magda Szumna, Nadya Gorbova, Adrian Pilbeam, Eila Isotalus, Almendra Staffa Healey, Rebecca Schroder Crspillo, Eva Maria Hartwich, Steve Miller, Lena Zeger, Dora Molodynska Kuentzel, Vincent Merck, Papa Balla Ndong, Anna Kawalska, Lidia Wisniewska, et al. for organising the event and choosing the contributions so wisely.
(We will overlook the opening event, that while culturally normal for France, did not fit with the tone of the rest of the Congress – 42 minutes of older white men talking about numbers and initiatives to an audience with a wholly different agenda. And it bordered on tortuous, watching the bar staff fail to pour beer from a faulty machine and looking like they were in no great hurry to fix the issue and avert an intercultural crisis!) We will speak of this no more.
Missing – And there were many people not there – George Simons, Richard Lewis, Barbara CV, Gary Thomas, Eithne Knappitsch, Anna Zelno, David Trickey, Nigel Newington, Karin Martin, Noor Azzizan Gardner, Laurence Sicot, Lord David McCrea, Michelle Cummings-Koether, Yvonne van der Poel, Rob Gibson (ill and virtual) and more.
Until the next my friends…
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