Conjuring community...
...tentatively, from the edges
Conjuring… creating?…
This is an early response to the recent Unpsychology Imaginings online launch event and creators workshops. These meetings each had a purpose: celebration in the first instance; learning, orientation and sharing in the second.
However something else began to emerge… tentatively from the edges. We realised that Unpsychology might be changing – alchemically – into something more collectively relational. A ‘community’, perhaps?
This post contains some thoughts and fragmentary reflections on this possibility.
In the meantime, we are still a magazine with our tenth anniversary edition open for submissions! The theme is Edges and the submissions deadline is the last day of February 2024 (see HERE for details).
Really? A community?
In the last few weeks there has been change percolating in and around the Unpsychology eco-sphere. For going on ten years, we’ve been an indie-magazine - sometimes in print, sometimes in PDF, always FREE to download and engage with.
We’ve also become a Medium publication and now this Unpsychology Voices Substack, and there is a growing crowd of contributors, followers and subscribers on those two platforms and beyond. And over our decade, most importantly, we’ve been honoured by the offerings of those who have submitted their writing, art, music and other forms of creativity.
Yet, I’ve hesitated to call this ecology of form and engagement a ‘community’. The word brings to mind something fixed and tangible. Something we might belong to, identify with and be part of. Something that has edges and boundaries - maybe physical, psychological, intellectual or political…
…something that requires something of us.
Within a community, that is to say, there are things that might hold us to each other. Relationships which – previously ever-shifting and ever-flowing – become set in a patterns that have names and shapes, perhaps even sets of rules and expectations. This is not necessarily a bad thing – but it is a ‘thing’ about community that we would do well to be aware of, otherwise it can become a restriction or a fantasy of ‘safe space’ or something to have a stake in.
And yet, something is happening to Unpsychology. Relationships are shifting and something ( a community?) is being tentatively conjured into being from the edges.
Parties, workshops and dancing in Zoom-rooms
A few weeks ago we held an online party to launch the second issue of Unpsychology Imaginings (available HERE). It was a small party on Zoom - around 12 people came. There were no balloons and the music didn't happen (a technical issue), but a bunch of Unpsychology contributors and supporters did meet to celebrate. There was, however much gratitude, companionship and appreciation.
It was fun! Whilst on the call, some people were preparing food and eating; others were struggling with overheating computers and inadequate bandwidth; others just waking with coffee; others sleepy and relaxed before bed; others in transit to other meetings and bits of life. There were conversations and greetings and hints of the beginning of something. As one person wrote in the chat as they were leaving:
Thanks everyone for co-creating and weaving voices, thoughts and visuals together to something that now travels its own way into the world. Beautiful to be a part of that.
Then, last weekend, we held two further sessions - online workshops for potential contributors to our tenth anniversary edition with the theme of Edges.
Again, it was clear that something is stirring. Nearly 30 people came from around the world to listen, share, create and co-create. There were conversations around ‘edges’, but also explorations of the ecology and ecologies of Unpsychology.
This time, the music worked. it was awesome and beautiful, created and mixed by our Sound Editor, Patrick Carpenter: https://on.soundcloud.com/UiMNr
People moved and danced, on and off camera. Then, in response and tentatively at first, people started to talk about Edges. And cracks. And beautiful mosaics and dangerous precipices. And community…
Perhaps they were wondering…
Could this be a place for me to be? Could this be a place I want to be? Could this be a place or a space with edges, but one that goes beyond edges?
A conversational snippet
A: Curious about…the implied directionality: the process of centering the edgeless or edging the center…
S: the directionality is often the temptation. A bit like you talked about polarities. These emerge culturally, but are they real?
There were other questions too, and we know that the way the space was set up did not work for everyone. Some others were concerned that the relational potential touched on in these meetings could allow for real-ness and challenge and not simply a ‘nice’ place to be; a nice place to be nice…
Perhaps they were also wondering…
Could this be a space where I can be me? Could this be a space where I can explore the edges of the troubled, broken world right now?
After-words - fragments of a reflective dialogue
Emails shared by two of the editors
Lesley (Design editor):
You may still be awake but watching the sun disappear as I contemplate a rainy Monday breakfast.
I've recently adopted a habit of journaling in a scribbled visual way and I just thought I'd share my two pages*. I just did, thinking about my own experience of our workshops (of course in the next moment these pages would look different and the impressions from first session are a bit less obvious). There seems to be infinite ways of digesting what occurred and responding from there. Managing the potential for overwhelm will be a thing.
In any case, I feel lots of inner percolating and fermenting and I look forward to talking with you all. Finding ways to bring all that energy into a magazine form will be fun with plenty of challenges sprinkled in. Already I see some clues...
(*see the images above)
Patrick (Sound editor):
Thank you for these beautiful pages ! What a brilliant way to journal. And great to have some things documented too. I wrote a few things down (in straight lines with a black pen 🥳) too:
Language can invoke new stories
Open, radiant and abundant without the need for growth
Not everything is domesticated
Unpsychology sits between the mainstream and the alternative - at the centre of two polarities ( the equator!)
What happens on the other side of edge? (the paradox of an infinite universe that is also expanding)
The idea of 'same/different' - not either/or but both.
Life in the edges of ecosystems, where landforms overlap eg mangroves. What emerges in this context?
The edge between 'bigger, more expressive' and 'softer, more detailed' (dance)
Something that opposes is not necessarily antagonistic.
Lesley:
Oh that's great Patrick!
Great to have all these clues and in different forms.
I think of the equator as relaxed and warm-turquoise-sunny. Perhaps edges can be relaxed and active at different times?
Great to have these different gleanings.
Patrick:
Perhaps the centre of the two global polarities is the earth's core - a high pressure environment indeed!
Ways in… and ways on…
F (workshop participant): I hope you'll call us all in as you go forward on this issue - I'm a hive mind person and very curious to see what hive this might turn into.
A (workshop participant): Does difference have to be edged? “We’re not required to be radical”. “Not require people to be different, that’s another type of conformity” Beautiful!
We want to allow the relational mesh that Unpsychology is becoming to evolve and grow. We have no end point or goal in mind – we’re generally not goal-oriented people (not that that this is necessarily a problem!)
We want to draw people together to share perspectives on a troubled world in a way that is genuinely creative and relational. We don’t want to be just the nice guys, and there will be some perspectives and interactions that rankle with us, both as individuals and within the groups and collaborative forms that emerge and disperse as part of this project. What might matter is how we dance with the difference.
We want people to join this community that is not a ‘community’, and leave and return and move on from it, and learn from it and teach within it and co-create it. What is created will be learned from, even when the creator(s) have moved on.
We know we can’t necessarily change the world, except that we DO want the world to change. We know, however, that the dam may already have broken and all we can do is point our raft downstream and, in Ursula K LeGuin’s words: “…shoot the rapids! All at once!”
And so, as well as creating our 10th anniversary magazine (which is a joy in itself), we will, in the coming months, create invitations for further online gatherings – both in the editorial crafting and creation of Edges, and to collaborate over other possibilities and creations.
We may also put on musical and poetic ‘events’ where we can sing and dance with possibility, and some of these might be in-person gatherings as well as in-Zoom…
You’ll be invited to join us!
 | A guest post by
|
 | A guest post by
|