A couple of weeks ago, my sister emailed me about The Talking Night and asked me to describe some of the principles as she is thinking of starting something similar within her friendship group and potentially as a tool in her work with disadvantaged teenagers. My response turned into a bit of a dissertation and it got me thinking that I’ve never written anything about it, publicly, so to speak.
Five years ago, I was in Newcastle with some friends, listening to a talk about climate change in a public park. The quote that sticks in my mind is this:
If every person in the UK boiled only as much water as they needed each time they made a cup of tea, the equivalent of one whole coal-fired power station could be closed down.
Some days later, Sylvie, Andrew & I got together and nutted out the shell of an idea for The Talking Night, inspired partly by the cold Winter evening we’d spent in Newcastle and probably inspired by a hundred other things I couldn’t express. The broad concept is not really new, but I want to share with you my interpretation of what The Talking Night is and the particular medley of ingredients into which it has evolved. I believe it’s a concept that has great potential as part of the foundations we need to lay for a better world.
the basics
A group of people, open to anyone but initially friends, come together one evening a month to discuss a particular topic. There are a number of regular elements which could be described as ritual*, which help to define it. If there were objectives, some of the key ones would be learning, understanding, reducing one’s prejudice and opening one’s mind. It could be called an intentional heterotopia (this Wikipedia article is pretty shaky, so you could plough through Foucault’s original here).
a note
I want to make it clear that the following is a series of thoughts and observations – a lot of people have helped to shape, participated in and become part of, The Talking Night and I’m sure many of them – you – will have different feelings about what it is, what it means and what is important. Also, a lot of what I’m going to talk about might sound ideal, but actually achieving all of these things is hard work – there isn’t one talking night I can remember in which all of these elements came together perfectly. So, I’m just throwing it out there, and I’d like to invite you to respond.
an absence of rules
It was organised with an intent not to bind people to particular practices – I suppose you could say the absence of rules was seen as one of the principles. I think flexibility and an ability to organically evolve without boundaries is an important part of creating something collective and something which can last and grow. Of course, there were ideas that guided how the event unfolded… generally phrased as “in the past, we’ve done…” or “we usually…”
It’s interesting to note how people generally tend to read those statements as a pattern and have a desire to a) not create change and/or b) continue the pattern – both of which could be interpreted as a form of conservatism. Is it too presumptuous to connect this to the idea that Aussies are known for conservatism?
ritual & environment
Usually, someone would be a ‘host’ for the evening – offering to hold the event in their living room, though it was sometimes held in a park or other venue.
Initially, we had a practice of switching off all the electricity in the host building. Not only was this a recognition of climate change and energy consumption – remember the kettle quote? – it’s something physical & empowering (“I can create a big change in my immediate environment”) and serves to draw a line between the meeting of friends and The Talking Night itself. This rapidly changed to replacing electric lights with candles (owing to limitations of the host venues) and was eventually pretty much abandoned – one major issue was people falling asleep.
We always acknowledged Aboriginal country at the start. It was encouraged for the person doing the acknowledgement to make it individual (eg. talking about what they might know or feel about the local Aboriginal population, past or present, and if it may have any relationship to the topic for the night). We also tried to share this role around - specifically avoiding a particular individual becoming a caretaker of the ‘rituals’. A dangerous analogy may be drawn here to organised religion which, hopefully without offending too many people, I’d suggest has to it’s name terrible oppression largely, or at least partly, due to it’s power structures – ’caretakers’ become ‘convenors’ and convenors become ‘leaders’. More on why leaders are problematic in a second.
I think comfort is incredibly important in creating the kind of space necessary for The Talking Night to function well. There’s a number of ways to arrive at this conclusion, for example, Maslow’s hierarcy of needs. This is not an endorsement of that theory – I think it has a lot of holes – but if you look at the pyramid above, you can see that if we’re aiming for creativity, lack of prejudice, problem solving, etc – there are some more basic elements that will at least help us get there. And you can see the one I’ve emphasized: food. Every month people would bring food to share and dinner would happen before and often continue during the talking. Sometimes people would bring raw ingredients and we’d have a big cook-up, mostly people would bring cooked dishes, but the food was always exquisite. It needn’t have been special I guess, but I think the quality of the food reflected the respect people had for The Talking Night and the care they held for their fellow participants. Generally someone would also bring a delicious desert, to be presented with a flourish when energy levels were dropping. Aside from a few ridiculous restaurants I’ve been to, I think some of the tastiest food I’ve had in my life was at talking nights. Comfort oozes like honey into the land of hedonism.
topic
A key aim of The Talking Night was learning, especially exposing oneself to concepts and topics that one wouldn’t usually come across – setting aside time to look at, and think about those things. The idea was for someone to do some research before each talking night to facilitate this learning. Research is a very flexible term here – it could be looking up information on the web, old school book-and-library research, talking to someone on the train, structured interviews, relating personal experiences, inviting a guest speaker, really anything that brings external stimuli or information to the group. This became even more flexible over time such that a ‘topic’ might be a series of activities (for example, we once each read short excerpts from a book, or another time, someone offered a guided meditation). The first topic we ever discussed – I think it was August 2004 – was Mongolia and I nominated myself to do the research. I wish I could, but it’s pointless for me to try to capture the breadth of topics covered from that point on – if people can remember some notable ones, leave them in the comments.
good communication
Introducing The Talking Night to new-comers was a common activity – with so much satisfaction, people wanted to share the experience or had a particular person who’s input they sought and invited others. In the process of doing this one would usually talk about communication techniques. Again, I believe it’s important not to frame them as rules. eg. “We usually try to use active listening… would anyone like an explanation of the idea of active listening… the reason I think this is important is…”. Okay, this is off the top of my head, so you can imagine for yourself a less patronising way of expressing that.
- Active listening – highlighting the importance of not holding onto what one has to say (instead concentrating fully on what others are saying without worrying about forgetting what one was going to say, there’s plenty of time);
- Speaking & responding respectfully – noting that we all want to feel safe in the space, we don’t want to feel stupid for anything we say. More creative and thoughtful ideas are likely to emerge if we feel secure enough to say anything without fear that another is going to use it against us, point out our errors or respond aggressively/argumentatively. For example, using “I statements“.
- Sharing the floor – being aware of who is talking and contributing. You might be surprised how effective it can be to suggest people self-identify and be conscious of their actions, “If you know that you’re a loud person or talk a lot normally, make an effort to leave space for others to contribute to the discussion and seek comments or responses from quieter people.” Leaving space (silence) in the discussion can also help to encourage some people to contribute.
- Avoid multiple conversations – the whole idea of The Talking Night is people coming together for a collective discussion. It works against the harmony and concentration of the group if people are talking in small groups in the same space.
a safer space
This is probably the most critical element to really tap into the potential of The Talking Night. Though we rarely did this explicitly, it can help to actually put it out there verbally…
this talking night is trying to be a safe space
…and explaining what that means. A quick search suggests a gaping hole in the web’s collective knowledge here – but put simply we’re talking about being inclusive, non-discriminatory, universally accepting, creating an environment of trust and openness, eliminating aggressiveness, etc… as much as we can. At the most basic level, respect for people’s openness – it’s potentially pretty damaging to repeat personal things divulged in the course of the discussion. Communication techniques are a critical element in creating safer spaces, but of course, trust is the oil that enables this bike to glide smoothly. If one isn’t close and very open with the other participants to start with, it generally takes a while with the same group (all consistently communicating well and being reassuring) to build that trust and start seeing a greater degree of openness, creativity and learning.
the pitfalls of leadership
Something I’d like to think we managed pretty consistently – jump in and correct me here if I’m wrong – was a conspicuous lack of hierarchy. This is something that feeds into the construction of a safer space. In my experience, it can take time for so-called ’shy’ people to develop the confidence to believe what they have to say or their way of doing things is just as valid as everyone else’s. Conversely, one will also encounter people accustomed to managing, dominating, organising or leading others. Anything but a totally flat structure in organisation as well as within the conversation works against the idea of a safer space as it can result in talking over the top of one another or one person deferring to another – in turn working against the best possible creative and therapeutic outcomes – yes, I believe The Talking Night concept can be very effective – whether consciously applied or not – as a therapeutic tool.
time
We never really set a time limit on The Talking Night, which was important to aid in implementing some of the ideas above, in particular, active listening – if people feel like they have a limited time then they are likely to be motivated to ‘get their ideas out there,’ which works directly against the idea of actively listening to other people. However, in terms of ending the night, we had a general practice of wrapping up when the first person fell asleep or had to leave – this might seem irrelevant, but it has a subtle importance: it’s inclusive – no-one should be left out, no-one’s contribution is less important. Of course, we often thought it was a good idea to continue the discussion if a majority of people were staying on or still awake, but since a large body of discussion had usually occurred while everyone was present, it could be done ‘outside of The Talking Night’ so to speak – eg. in breakaway conversations, which can conflict with some of the communication techniques one was aspiring to use during the main discussion.
wrapping up
We always followed the same format to mark the conclusion of the discussion, which is another thing that can help to create a safer space. Drawing a line around the discussion so that people feel more confident to be open – creating the sense of a heterotopia in that it’s a separate space and time from their normal life, where they might feel insecure, the need to be competitive or suspect that others are likely to use their vulnerabilities against them.
Other than helping to enclose the space, we would first decide on a topic for the next month (this wasn’t initially the practice, but we found that sometimes we ended up without a topic for the next month – not for lack of ideas but for too many possibilities – so putting it before the closing ensured that a decision was made). Someone or more than one person ideally also nominated themselves to do the ‘research’ that I mentioned before. Once the topic was chosen, we went around one by one and were given time to say whatever we felt – it didn’t have to be related to the discussion, though it could be – it might be just what one was feeling, how your week was, letting people know they are important to you, a difficult time you’re going through, why you were really happy, what made you satisfied with the night… whatever. The important thing is that each person had time individually, with no-one else speaking at all, to have their say. Of course, the idea was not to make people feel coerced to say something if they didn’t want to either. The other critical element to this part of the talking night was that people were asked not to respond to anything anyone else said during this wrap-up. It was important to outline this beforehand explain that this creates a space even safer than the talking night discussion where someone can share things that they might need to get off their chest without the fear that someone will confront them about it later or even try to help. Sometimes people will want to get things out in the open but aren’t ready to have them analysed by others yet. For some people, it’s very non-confrontational to know you can say something with the confidence that no-one will question you about it.
So, that’s The Talking Night. I hope some people who have been part of various Talking Nights have made it this far and can add, correct, dispute and comment on my representation – please have your say! For others, you might be considering starting something similar – to you, I’d offer this advice: part of what made The Talking Night special is that we came together, borrowed ideas, changed things and made our own special recipe out of it all. I think any group will be better served by sitting down and making conscious collective choices, however loosely, about the principles and practices on which you’d like to operate.
If you’ve got this far, I’m sorry this was such a long haul and please ask questions and start a discussion around this – if you feel it’s worthy, share it on twitter, crapbook or wherever. I’ve also just added a translation feature to this blog so feel free to send it along to your non-English speaking friends too!
* No-one actually ever referred to anything we did at talking nights as ‘rituals’ as far as I know, I just thought the word kind-of fit.
