It’s interesting how new relationships form. Like many other things that are meaningful in life it’s a co-creative process. A few weeks ago while working on the production (co-creation) of the next issue of Lifewide Magazine I came across Julian Stodd’s blog (1). I immediately saw the value of his thinking for our work and emailed him to see if we might draw on his blog for an article in the magazine. He readily agreed and over a week or so I wrote an article based on extracts from three of his blogs. In fact this article then shaped the title for the issue ‘Using social media in the age of social learning’. I shared the piece with Julian and he was happy for me to have taken and adapted his work in this way. I this way I had appropriated some of his thinking and writing and contextualised it for our own purpose. We also added a couple of illustrations that I commissioned from our community artist and finally another person formatted the article and incorporated it into the magazine. So ultimately four people were involved in this simple example of a co-creative process in which, the crystallised thoughts of one person shared through a blog were adapted and repurposed by another, illustrated by another and packaged by another to create a novel product (our magazine) that could be used to communicate with and engage others. In Carl Rogers' words, ‘a novel relational product has grown out of the uniqueness of the individuals and the circumstances and materials of their lives.’ (2)

During this process Julian said he’d like to meet up to share some stories and invited me to participate in a workshop he was running on the theme of co-creation, music and agility. I decided to take up his offer and on Wednesday I joined nine others in a conversation that was masterfully facilitated by Julian supported by Cath a singer/musician. What emerged was a rich and enjoyable conversation that was animated and illuminated by the insights and stories of participants. In other words together we co-created our experience even to the point where, after a little experimentation and guidance we collectively produced a simple tune using the ‘keezy’ app.

One of the things I like about Julian’s blog is the way he makes his thoughts visible using a word picture. These provide simple but powerful tools for reflection and analysis. The thing I like about them is that they are provisional. They provide a starting point not a conclusion and they contain within them the space and opportunity for improvisation. We started the day with his creation figure.

I did not agree with Julian when he said creation is not a process. The very act of constructing a process for learning or achieving something is a creative act. It brings the means to achieve something into existence and then executing it and inevitably adapting it along the way gives meaning and continuity to this act. And it's certainly about will and intention to think and act in a certain way to achieve something that is valued and meaningful. But stuff happens along the way that is not anticipated that we can latch onto and let it take us where it takes us so it's also about working with emergence.  Co-creation involves the thinking and doing of two or more people over a period of time in a context bound together in some sort of purposeful relationship. It might be a relationship that is invented for the purpose - that grows through the co-creative experience or it might be an existing relationships in which purposes are grown by people who already know and are involved with each other. The ten people involved in the workshop spent the best part of seven hours together talking and sharing ideas and perspectives on the topics we discussed drawing on our own past histories and projecting our imaginations into the contexts and situations we had encountered or created in the past or might see ourselves in, in the future. While we worked within a process designed by the facilitators what emerged from the process was the novel collective product of all the individuals who participated. I'm sure we have all gone away and reflected on and perhaps acted on what we have learnt so the effects of that time bounded process continue and who knows where it will take us (this blog for example or perhaps future collaborations involving participants). In this way one co-creative process spawns others. That is why it all feels ecological to me 4.

Julian's 7 stands of co-creation image (3) seems to contain many of the salient features of co-creation - assuming that it is all about people in purposeful and intentional relationship in which the intention to pay attention and add value to the products of each other's thinking is paramount. What is missing from the conceptual aid is any representation of the dynamic of how two or more people in a purposeful relationship bring into existence 'novel relational products grown out of the uniqueness of the individuals and the circumstances and materials of their lives.’2  It's all subsumed within the word 'co-creation.'




Another context - In the workshop we used the ‘process’ of making music as a way of capturing important aspects of co-creation something I can relate to through my experience of being in a band. On Thursday evening my band came together for a practice. We hadn’t practiced for over a month following our last gig – several members had been away. Over the years we have been together we have discovered that although we enjoy the experience of just playing together we get bored and demotivated if we do not have a purpose – like rehearsing for a gig or a recording session. Practising the same stuff over and over again is not enough to hold us together. Fortunately, we have a couple of gigs coming up so we have a purpose and one of these involves introducing new songs to our repertoire (chosen by the host) and an invitation to write and record a song for their daughter. So we have a real challenge and a context for co-creation relating to both adaptation (new cover songs) and invention (creation of a song that has never existed before). The first process is fairly straightforward and does not involve too much creativity – it’s more of a technical exercise to replicate a song that is usually well known to us perhaps with a few tweaks although generally we try to faithfully reproduce what already exists. Co-creativity here involves the blending of our skills and sounds to make music that others would recognise. The dynamic of co-creative invention is quite different – I would describe it as ecological. Paul our singer had several conversations with the host to build a picture of their daughter for whom the song is being written then went away on holiday and wrote some lyrics. Simultaneously and independently our most prolific song writer created two new tunes and also wrote some words. The two of them then met up and tried to connect their two independent contributions. At our rehearsal they shared their ideas as work in progress and we all added our interpretations until a coherent sound began to emerge. We didn’t go very far with this on Thursday as it’s a work in progress and we trust that it will evolve over the next few weeks (because we have done it before).


It illustrates the sort of co-creative process we use to produce our music. Invention and originality generally takes place in the minds and embodiments of one person, who then works with another to develop and refine until the products of this process are shared with the other members of the band who then build on it. Perhaps we might call this phase ‘development’. The product of our collective efforts gradually emerges over a period of time usually several weeks. As we reach agreement on the overall sound our efforts turn to replicating the song in exactly the same way each time we do it and this is eventually codified in a recording (production/reproduction). We seem to be following a well trodden path as this seems to be the way that Lennon and MaCartney and the Beetles worked -  so we are in good company. Through this process we have all contributed to the ‘novel relational product’ but in different and unequal ways. You can hear an example of our co-creativity ‘Song for Ollie’ here http://freeworlders.weebly.com/

1 Julian Stodd http://julianstodd.wordpress.com/
2 Carl Rogers (1961) On becoming a person. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
3 http://julianstodd.wordpress.com/2013/02/26/seven-strands-of-co-creation-reflecting-on-how-we-learn-together-in-social-learning-spaces/
4 Norman Jackson (2014) Creativity in Development: An Ecological Perspective in N J Jackson Creativity in Development: A Higher Education Perspective, Lifewide Education Chapter 1 Available online at: http://www.creativityindevelopment.co.uk/

It's funny how some of the big events in life sometimes don't inspire you very much to write about them. It's almost as if they drain you of energy and enthusiasm for thinking about them any more. Our recent benefit gig for Ollie feels like that.. by our own measures it was a success. We packed the hall with nearly 150 people. We raised £2300 for the two cancer charities we were supporting and the feedback we received was very positive and sometimes highly complementary and people genuinely seemed to be having a good time. Our music was some of the best we have achieved and we combined really well with two other musicians, and we sold over 40 CDs. The effort was considerable from everyone involved - the band worked hard and we were all wiped out by the end. All my family helped with the organisation and sales of drinks and making sure that things ran smoothly. I was very proud of them.  Furthermore we had good publicity on local radio and at least two more gigs on the back of it as well as a new working relationship with the musicians that we worked with. I thought I would find writing about it a joyful experience but for some unexplained reason I can't muster the energy. This lethargy is also affecting other things I'm doing. It's a strange experience for me and I can't explain it. 

To rekindle my energy and enthusiasm for writing something I thought I'd look again at Ollie's unfolding story on his website, Facebook page (which has 149 friends) and the YouCaring webpage hosting 410 donations given by friends and people who don't know Ollie or his family. I found the messages of support, love and friendship, and the stories of things that people had done to raise money truly inspiring. Many people had not just given but organised or hosted some sort of event like raffles, auctions, pub quizzes, table top sales, coffee mornings. One person had run a marathon and a group of office workers had donated their lottery winnings foregoing the pleasure of a fun night out. Ollie's illness and the journey his family are making have touched many people and made them want to give and in some cases create events that encourage others to give. So that one little boy's fight against cancer has spawned a whole ecology of action aimed at raising money both directly for the Lovis family and more generally for charities that are helping other children with cancer. This is a wonderful story and it shows how a horrible situation can inspire many people to do something positive and good. And it made me feel good that I and my band have been a part of this ecology of love and support to achieve something worthwhile on behalf of friends in need.

The band was happy to keep going with the fund raising using the Song for Ollie as a way of focusing attention on the issue of children with cancer. I set up our own YouCaring webpage and linked this to the Freeworld's website which now hosts 8 tracks of our CD which can be downloaded free with encouragement to donate. I set ourselves (myself) the target of raising £1000 for Children with Cancer and my sister was brilliant in kick starting the campaign with a £100 donation. 

So on reflection all sorts of actions, new ideas, new products, new relationships and friendships have grown out of this ecological process. Ollie has inspired many people to do many new things. He is the inspiration for much human enterprise and creativity and has enabled many people to feel better about themselves because they have connected in some small but deeply human way to his life story. 

This story has given me another perspective on the idea of ecologies for learning and achieving something we value so I wrote a piece for the next issue of Lifewide Magazine

During our recent conference Professor Ronald Barnett positioned himself as a critical friend and  issued a challenge for the advocates of lifewide learning. He raised an issue which was about the potential of lifewide learners to be selfishly concerned with themselves rather than the issues and challenges of others in a locally disconnected but globally connected world.

In his speech Ron said

It may sound as if this [lifewidelearning] is a project concerned with individuals as individuals. It is concerned about their welfare, their needs, their possibilities, their own learning. Is this an agenda for late capitalism, in which everyone looks out for themselves - and reconstructs themselves (for a fluid world) and goes on developing themselves for themselves? Cf ‘Bowling Alone’.  A solipsistic educational journey devoid of any sense of universal claims and possibilities. There is a real world – it’s not just a matter of our life-projects. It is a globalised world  and a world riven with conflicts, power differentials, and ideologies. Willy-nilly, we are embedded in networks – antagonistic as they are. A challenge then [for lifewide learning] is that of bringing a (greater) concern for the world into our learning tasks.Neither self-centred nor selfish but self-less, not merely immersed in the world but engaging critically with the world - with a care for its flourishing.

My response to this is that a life with purposes that are only directed to self-development and the benfit of the individual is not a life worth living. I illustrate this through a story about the band I play in. We have been together for many years now - you might and we frequently do say we are growing old together and our jokes are about age, decrepitude and decline... but there is something magical in coming together to play music and try to get better at what we do. Except, when our practices serve no purpose other than for our own benefit we lose momentum. People make excuses and don't turn up. The secret we have discovered is to have a goal - in the form of a performance or a recording. Having a goal focuses attention and we can all work together to achieve it. Even better is to have a goal that is beyond our own immediate interests where we feel we are doing some good. A few months ago we decided to put on a charity gig to raise money for a worthy cause at our own expense in the local village hall. Then we heard about a local family trying to raise money for their child who needed treatment for a brain tumour in America. We adopted this cause and have all entered the spirit of raising money by selling tickets, recording songs for a CD which we will sell and then various activities on the night of the fund raising gig. We are also going to talk about it and the broader issue of raining money for a children's cancer charity on local radio.  Over the last few months the band has been brought together and we have learnt and developed through the process. We have also started collaborating with other musicians which might open up some new opportunities for us. Undoubtedly, we have been inspired by having a purpose that is greater than our own needs and interests.

This week will be interesting because I'm contributing to a survey LWE survey aimed at revealing how, what and why we learn through our everyday experiences. It should reveal the ecology of  my lifwide learning. Three times a day I will spend  about 10mins recording these things and at the end of the week pool them with other contributors to see what emerges. I will also reflect on what my log tells me. Anyone is welcome to join the survey even if its only for a few days.  DOWNLOAD SURVEY TEMPLATE

 





Here is my completed log for the week

A Week in My Life - making sense of my activities and the learning/meaning I derive from them 

My week was atypical in the sense that it is not every week that I get the chance to participate in a conference and interact with people who shared the same sorts of interests and values as I have. But the rest of the week was typical of my current life. So what have I learnt from the process of recording and thinking about my experiences? 

ACTIVITIES
Out of a possible 168 hours (7x24h) I was active for about 112h (averaging about 16h per day). These were broken down into the following categories of activity 

WORK About 50 hours includes work for my company Chalk Mountain and Lifewide Education. This week it including  attending a conference. This week I spent considerably more time on LWE work. Also includes 6h for this recording and reflecting exercise. Quite a lot of my time was spent either preparing for the conference or trying to fix a problem with a website.            

FAMILY About 24h this includes family at home (my wife and daughter), family elsewhere (children at university and children/grandchildren living locally), and family overseas (mother and father in Australia and sisters in Australia).

DOWNTIME about 18h includes reading, listening to music, watching TV/ youtube for pleasure and education like Time Team and playing my drums

TRAVELLING about 14h mainly time in the car being a taxi service or travelling to friends and family. This week included travelling to and from Leeds to participate in a conference

CHORES about 6h includes - cleaning, shopping, preparing meals, ironing, doing odd jobs in house/garden

HABBITS
I am clearly a creature of habit and my life is quite routinised. I get up and go to bed at more or less the same time. I have breakfast, lunch and dinner at more or less the same time,   and the pattern of what I do each day when I am at home is more or less the same. I start working at around 8am and work until 12ish.. I eat lunch and watch time team, I work pm until late afternoon or evening. I have dinner at more or less the same time with my family and we use this opportunity of being together to learn about each other's lives, discuss family and make plans. Evenings after dinner are generally devoted to relaxing and I seem to do the same sort of things most evenings..  This routine might be seen in a negative way but they do not feel boring or constraining because I generally value what I am doing and derive meaning and enjoyment from the things I am doing most of the time. Indeed, negative emotions generally emerge when things get in the way of the things I am trying to do - like having to complete my tax returns.

SOCIAL INTERACTIONS
My main social interaction day to day is with my family wife and children, and thanks to my sister's call - my family in Australia. Some of these interactions are face to face and some via email/skype/telephone. Conversations and activities encourage the sharing  of daily events or news in each others lives the disclosure of feelings and practical and emotional support.

Another sort of social interaction is related to work and this is mainly focused on trying to make progress. Communication is mainly through email and I am grateful for the help and support given to me by other people involved in LWE.

Life is punctuated by less regular events like participating in conferences and this provides opportunity for face to face social interaction. 

PLANNED & UNPLANNED ACTIVITY
While there is a consistency regarding the pattern of my  activity the detail is only roughly planned from day to day. At the start of the week I know roughly what I want to try and achieve. But the details of each day only unfold within the day. There are also unanticipated events that emerge and create problems and new opportunities. This week I had two emergent situations. The first involved having to resolve a problem with the LWE website created by the person who hosts it making changes to the front page that I didn't like. The second event involved me responding to an email from Rob Ward offering me the chance to design and facilitate a workshop at the CRA conference on Friday. This is how it happened..

********************************
From: Rob Ward 
Sent: 19 November 2012 10:10
To: Norman Jasckson
Subject: Forthcoming Residential
Importance: High

Hi Norman
I'm needing to do some last minute tweaking of the Residential programme as the final short session on 'Creativity and PDP' (plenary workshop,
14.20-15.00 on Friday) can't now go ahead as planned.  Would you bewilling/able to offer a short contribution on this theme here?

Apologies for the short notice! BW Rob
********************************

Once I had thought about it I did see it as a real opportunity to try something new and develop myself in the process. 

**********************************************
From: Norman Jasckson
Sent: Mon 11/19/2012 2:14 PM
To: Rob Ward
Subject: RE: Forthcoming Residential
Okay how about trying to model creative use of technology? This process would need the room to be connected to internet and two CRA
staff to support - 1 connected to twitter, 1 connected to weebly.com a website building tool

THEME 'Using technology to stimulate students' creativity in recording ideas, experiences, learning and achievement'
Participants to assume that there are no constraints on the way technology might be used in their own PDP environments ie a blank sheet of paper.

DESIGN - process
1) Self-organise into groups of about 4 people. Groups must include someone with a smart phone.
2) 10mins - pool ideas in the group drawn from personal or imagined experiences
3) 10mins - choose 1 idea and create a poster on a sheet of flip chart paper to explain the idea also prepare a 1 min pitch
4) 5mins - find a quiet corner and person with smart phone a) takes a photo of poster  b) records 1 min explanatory pitch on phone
5) 5 mins group composes 140 character tweet to capture the essence of theiridea for twitter and tweet, photo of poster and 1 min video clip emailed to
CRA address
6) 10 mins CRA colleagues a) post tweets & images on twitter & B) upload video clips to weebly website..

outcome
The tweets would be displayed on the projector screen and if we had two screens we could also display the video clips.. People can go away and look
at the results.
*********************************************************

Between this email and the workshop I did the preparatory work necessary to make it work, I got support from JW who provided illustrative poster and recording and I liaised with DB from CRA to make sure we could do it. The workshop worked very well and I know I can add this sort of technologically enabled workshop to my repertoire of facilitation techniques. I had no idea that this would happen at the start of the week.

LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT
Unusually for me this week some of my learning was formal in the sense that I put myself into situations (presentations and workshops) with the intention of learning something. But, more typically, most of my learning was informal usually goal/achievement driven... a) completing my book project or b) trying to advance LWE. I did try several things I hadn't done before including a workshop design that seemed to engage participants and get some great results. Much of my learning was simply about gaining some new knowledge and much of it was through conversation mainly with people I already knew but who I had lost touch with. Most of my follow-up actions will be linked to this relational knowledge.  I would say that quite a lot of activity I engaged in did not lead to any significant or recognisable learning.  In terms of personal development - what I can do now that I couldn't do before the week started I would identify the workshop I facilitated and the techniques I developed to engage people and record their creations. That experiential knowledge, the capability I developed and used and the confidence I gained can be used again.

Most of my learning was driven by my needs. I needed to modify a logo so I learnt how to use photoshop top do it. I uploaded a slide show to weebly for the first time. I learned how to design and facilitate a workshop I took on. Some of my learning was simply a biproduct of enjoying myself.. like searching for music on Youtube, spotting a new band I liked on Later with Jools Holland. There is also learning of a more strategic in nature which is linked to my work namely reading articles and books that enable me to add to my understanding. This week I read a transcript and watched a video clip of John Seeley Brown's talk on the entrepreneurial learner which I think LWE can use. I had picked this up from a link in a blog by Jane Hart that I was examining with a view to commissioning a chapter for LWE e-book. Much of my learning comes from this sort of intelligent and sometimes haphazard searching.

I also continued to develop my understandings of the ways of thinking promoted by Clayton Christiensen by reading his book and trying to apply his ideas to what I was doing which I know will  have significance for LWE. 

Some of my learning has come from using tools like stat counter to monitor how my websites are being used. This is a new form of learning over the time the knowledge will be valuable to know what interventions draw people to our resources.

In a more typical week I would do a lot more writing. For me writing is a very important way of developing and organising my thinking, creating meaning and recording my understandings.  This log and the reflective piece served as my main writing task this week. 

MEANINGIn my family context meaning is created through the day to interactions and conversations we have and the things we do to help and encourage each other and give each other emotional and practical support.

In the work context meaning is created through my book and in developing and promoting LWE. I feel I made quite a lot of progress with the later this week both in the redesign of the website and in my involvement with the conference. Meaning is also created through interaction with my family and feeling that I am in some way helping them. Reflecting on my experience of participating at the CRA conference I felt that I had, at least momentarily, regained a lost identity and renewed a set of friendships/relationships with people and higher education that had been eroded because it was no longer part of my everyday experience. This meant a lot to me and it has taught me the value of trying to find or create these opportunities for my own wellbeing. I devoted a lot of time this week to intentionally learn about my own learning and meaning making. I probably spent 4 or 5 hours this week recording and analysing my activities and what I have learnt from them. The value in the process is that it has enabled me to examine more systematically what I'm doing and how I draw meaning and learning from my activities.

VALUES  & IDENTITIES
One of the purposes of this exercise was to examine the ways in which activities and behaviours, and what motivates them, reflect values and identities. Through the week I was mainly working with two sorts of identity.

The first identity I embodied was my working identity - my work is essentially academic (eg being a writer/scholar - the book commission I worked on), educational (applying my knowledge of how people learn to the concept of lifewide learning)  and educational developer (trying to influence other educators). The central values here are those of being professional in these fields and trying, through hard work, thinking and creativity to progress each of my work enterprises. An important part of my identity as a teacher is my ability to communicate ideas and engage people in using them. Because of the conference I was able to do both of these in presenting my ideas on lifewide development and facilitating a couple of workshops which enabled people to try out some tools I had developed, or enabled small groups to share ideas and create some original educational designs. It is very important for me to maintain this part of my identity but which is quite hard to do now that I am no longer working in an institution. As a result of reflecting on this I strengthened the way I market this aspect of my professional work on my website.

The second identity I embodied relates to me as a member of a large family and a complex set of relationships that make up my family ... as a father/step father, husband, grandfather, brother and son.... the central value here is the love for my family and my desire to care for and help family members and the value of staying in touch with each other.  This week, thanks to technology I was able to have interactions and good conversations with my wife and daughter at home.. with my daughter and son at university - telephone/skype, with my wife when I was a away and she was away by telephone and skype, with my mum and dad in Australia (telephone), my two sisters in Australia (skype) and my daughter and my three grandsons. This record shows the value of the technologies we have for enabling us to communicate across the world.

I also experienced two other sorts of identity during the week..

The first was a sense of regaining, at least for a short time, an identity I held a few years ago as a respected thought leader in higher education. By being with a group or people I had worked with, including people from two agencies I had worked for, and being reminded of the roles I played in enabling change to happen in the HE system, I felt part of that society or community again. Here the values were around championing an educational cause (PDP, and providing concrete practical support to enabling it to be implemented. The fact that my commitment has carried on beyond employment gives me credibility in this respect.

Another identity I nurtured was my identity as a drummer in a band. We normally practice every week so this identity gets validated when we come together. When I'm listening to music in the car I sometimes play our own music or I imagine playing the drums to whatever is being played. This week we didn't have a practice but I had an hours work out on Sunday. Here my values relate to my love of music and of making music particularly with others and trying to improve myself as a drummer.

COMPARISON OF HOW I USED MY RESOURCES WITH MY PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN
This is the first time I have ever taken a week of my life and tried to record how I have used it. In his book on Measuring Your Life Clayton Christensen (p62) talks about strategy -   Real strategy .. in our daily lives is created through hundreds of everyday decisions about how we spend our resources (our time). As you're living your life from day to day, how do you make sure you are holding in the right direction? Watch where your resources flow. If they are not supporting the strategy you have decided upon, then you're not implementing that strategy at all.  The personal development plan I made in September identified my most important goals as:

1 To lead and contribute to the further development and promotion of the Lifewide Education enterprise
2 To grow the Chalk Mountain business and deliver a good service to clients
3 To support my (large) family - do whatever is necessary to help them
4 To build a recording studio and develop the technical skills to record my band
5 To create a woodland garden
6 To be open and responsive to new possibilities and adapt to or take advantage of the unplanned and unexpected

I think my life this week has supported achievement of the first three goals and I had a good example of responding to goal six in accepting at short notice, the challenge to facilitate a workshop at the CRA conference.  Goals 4&5 are much lower in my list of priorities than the first three goals. So it would appear that, this week at least, is quite closely aligned to my personal strategy.

CONTEXTS & PROBLEM SOLVING
I often use John Stephenson's contexts and challenges tool to help me reflect on the things I am doing.  I would say that this week. Most of my activities have been in the familiar context and familiar problems domain but the conference and the activities I undertook did put me outside my comfort zone (unfamiliar context) and tackle an unfamiliar challenge ( the workshop on creative use of technology).


VALUE OF THE EXERCISE
I estimate that the whole exercise of recording and analysing my log took me about 7 hours which I have allocated to LWE work. So was it worth it? I think it's helped me appreciate the value of this sort of tool and reflective process to helping people appreciate their learning and development in their everyday lives. I now think that the process and outcomes could be usefully integrated into the Lifewide Development Award.

The exercise has:
1) enabled me to see my life as an integrated whole (during this period of time) and see how different parts of my life interact
2) revealed the patterns of daily activity in my life highlighting routines and more unusual activity and the motives for engaging in such activity
3) forced me to think about the learning that is associated with different sorts of activity and the potential ways in which I have developed/changed through only a week of living - indeed this reflective exercise has made a significant contribution to my learning this week added to my understanding of how to promote reflection on our own LWE
4) encouraged me to see the meaning I attribute to different activity in my life
5) enabled me to check how I am allocating my resources to the things I value and confirmed  that I am spending my time in ways that are consistent with the goals I set out in my personal development plan
6) enabled me to recognise that the identities I embody and enact  which are closely related to the things I value 
7) enabled me to apply some of the wisdom I have recently discovered in Clayton Christensen's book  to reflect on my own activity and behaviour. This has helped me see how some of the ideas in this book might be incorporated into the guidance and support we give to lifewide learners.