PBI at Stonehenge
I've had a week at the Peace Brigades International (PBI) General Assembly (GA), it's triennial global gathering. It was really nice to have a week without having to think about where I'm going or where I'm sleeping (except for the night at Stonehenge - this is a real contrast with my biggest process complaint at the GA - that there was no negotiation of the agenda) and also to have a break from the bike, though I've actually really enjoyed getting back on it the last couple of days as well.
The GA was really hard core, probably the most hard core conference I've been too. This is due to the combination of a consensus process with a representative structure meaning that all the various delegates (about 40?) were supposed to be representatives of their constituencies, (meaning they discussed all of the various proposals with them before hand) and that any proposal would only be approved with the consent of everyone. We also had a very full agenda with PBI's first ever six year strategic plan and a raft of proposals for implementing it and others not related to it, and reports from each of the five projects (countries where PBI has teams doing protective accompaniment) and a couple of workshop spaces as well. I can sort of see why the agenda wasn't negotiated, there was just no time if we were going to get through everything.
We did have quite an interesting process of achieving all this consensus though using a sort of matrix small group structure of affinity groups and theme groups because there was no way we could approve it all in plenary. First we would meet in affinity groups where our role was to voice any concerns of our constituency on about four specific proposals and hear the concerns of other constituencies. Then we would mix into theme groups so that each theme group had a member (or more) of each affinity group. In the theme groups our job was to represent our affinity group and all of the concerns raised in it about one specific proposal and then form a recommendation to the wider group about whether it should be put to up to test for consensus, amended, needed further discussion between some differing parties or should simply be dropped due to there being chance of reaching consensus. Also remember that through all of this we were working in both English and Spanish the two official languages of PBI with plenaries having simultaneous translation and small groups working either in English or Spanish. Luckily about half of the participants were bi-lingual so the only slight problem was some of the spontaneous small groups where we usually had to get a participant to translate for a couple of people. There were also some people who were working in their third or fourth language as well of course. But it definitely helped my Spanish a bit. We went through three cycles of affinity groups and theme groups dealing with different proposals each time. So you can imagine it was fairly exhausting process. By the end of it though we reached consensus on all but two major proposals, one of which is very controversial and the last GA hadn't reached consensus on either and the other which was only introduced during the GA and the main issue was that people hadn't had a chance to consult their constituencies'
It was really great to be there though, just to get a picture of PBI beyond Australia, meet lots of people involved, hear directly from people working as part of each of the projects, and get a sense of how the other country groups are going. I came out of it feeling much better about PBI Australia's activities which I've always felt were small compared to other countries. We did have some great times together (despite there being no scheduled 'community time') over meals or out at the pub, particularly the last night which saw some loud drunken singing of songs from all our countries in the local square until a resident came and told us off - not quite PBI’s desired image I'll admit.
Anyway, as to the other bit of the title, not only did I make it to Stonehenge in the middle of the GA but so did four others who decided to join me. When Michael from the US heard I was going he wanted to go to and Chris (also US) was also keen and had a local friend interested as well. Originally I was going to train and bike but with four of us we decided to hire a car. Once that was decided Christine from Canada was interested as was Lin (my Australian co-delegate) luckily Chris' local friend dropped out so we all fitted in the car, and that was that. The other bonus of having the car was that we didn't have to miss any sessions (a requirement of Mike's as he'd been paid for by PBI USA to come) as the festival was overnight. So we left a bit after 9pm (end of the day's sessions - told you it was hard core) trained out to Heathrow (the only place we could pick up a hire car that late and saved driving through London anyway) and arrived at Stonehenge some time in the wee small hours.
Stonehenge had been open since 10pm but the car park was only half full when we arrived. Stonehenge itself was jammed full of people, including some climbing on the rocks unfortunately and others in sleeping bags. So yeah it was a big festival, no amplified music allowed but plenty of drums, various pipe instruments and even a traditional English (not Scottish) bagpipe we heard as dawn approached. We had a great time wandering around, mostly outside the stones themselves which were too crowded (although we definitely went in there and touched them) but one could actually better appreciate the scene (both stones and people) from outside the circle. We saw a beautiful orange full moon set about 3am just as dawn was breaking. Mike and I heard a few minutes of a performance historian telling the history of how the stones were cut into shape and brought from all over England and even Wales by some otherwise unknown civilisation between 5000 and 3000 BC and then joined together by hollowing out some holes and these being filled with wood and then mortar to join the top and bottom ones. We warmed ourselves by the fire a bit cause it got pretty cold, forecasted down to 10 degrees celcius, Lin who has poor circulation struggled a bit. As dawn approached Chris and I stood in the crowd (an alternative source of warmth) just outside the stones to watch this dawning of the longest day. It was amazing to watch the mist rise, cows appear on yonder hill and discover that what looked like low cloud on the horizon were actually trees covering surrounding hills. Sunrise eventually happened to much jubilation at about 5am, accompanied by several rounds of cheering, applause, blowing of horns and banging of drums, as some cloud low on the horizon made the actual moment of sunrise open to dispute. Someone suggested it was when you could see your shadow on the stones, but sunrise had been popularly acclaimed about half a dozen times by then. In any case it was the only sunrise I ever seen greeted with such popular acclaim and one I will never forget. Once it had happened though Chris and I high-tailed it out of there as we wanted to get on the road quickly and beat the traffic to get back to London by 9:00. Unfortunately we were in such a hurry we didn't see the others waiting at our agreed meeting point and hurried onto the car assuming they'd got cold and gone ahead as we were a few minutes late. An hour later after waiting and then going slowly back through the crowd making sure we didn't miss them and getting back to the car we got in what was now the queue of traffic waiting to get out. Luckily we had had the foresight to park near the gate (disobeying parking attendant instructions) and walked past a lot cars trying to get out and to so didn't have to wait too long. We did however run into quite a bit more London peak hour traffic than we'd hoped and arrived back at the hostel having had 1-2 hours worth of snatches of sleep in the car and on the train. Mike and I had split the driving as neither would have made it all the way by ourselves without falling asleep. I went straight back into session then had to walk out of one later as I was falling asleep taking my notes (you could even see where my writing trailed off into scribble). I lay down for a 20 minute nap but of course my body would not except anything less than 3 hours. This was enough to get me through and after that I was no more tired than anybody else. So we had a great adventure, and it was great to be able to share it with some others rather than be by myself and the car worked out at £10 each instead of a £20 train ticket. Awesome.
gotta go though
James
The GA was really hard core, probably the most hard core conference I've been too. This is due to the combination of a consensus process with a representative structure meaning that all the various delegates (about 40?) were supposed to be representatives of their constituencies, (meaning they discussed all of the various proposals with them before hand) and that any proposal would only be approved with the consent of everyone. We also had a very full agenda with PBI's first ever six year strategic plan and a raft of proposals for implementing it and others not related to it, and reports from each of the five projects (countries where PBI has teams doing protective accompaniment) and a couple of workshop spaces as well. I can sort of see why the agenda wasn't negotiated, there was just no time if we were going to get through everything.
We did have quite an interesting process of achieving all this consensus though using a sort of matrix small group structure of affinity groups and theme groups because there was no way we could approve it all in plenary. First we would meet in affinity groups where our role was to voice any concerns of our constituency on about four specific proposals and hear the concerns of other constituencies. Then we would mix into theme groups so that each theme group had a member (or more) of each affinity group. In the theme groups our job was to represent our affinity group and all of the concerns raised in it about one specific proposal and then form a recommendation to the wider group about whether it should be put to up to test for consensus, amended, needed further discussion between some differing parties or should simply be dropped due to there being chance of reaching consensus. Also remember that through all of this we were working in both English and Spanish the two official languages of PBI with plenaries having simultaneous translation and small groups working either in English or Spanish. Luckily about half of the participants were bi-lingual so the only slight problem was some of the spontaneous small groups where we usually had to get a participant to translate for a couple of people. There were also some people who were working in their third or fourth language as well of course. But it definitely helped my Spanish a bit. We went through three cycles of affinity groups and theme groups dealing with different proposals each time. So you can imagine it was fairly exhausting process. By the end of it though we reached consensus on all but two major proposals, one of which is very controversial and the last GA hadn't reached consensus on either and the other which was only introduced during the GA and the main issue was that people hadn't had a chance to consult their constituencies'
It was really great to be there though, just to get a picture of PBI beyond Australia, meet lots of people involved, hear directly from people working as part of each of the projects, and get a sense of how the other country groups are going. I came out of it feeling much better about PBI Australia's activities which I've always felt were small compared to other countries. We did have some great times together (despite there being no scheduled 'community time') over meals or out at the pub, particularly the last night which saw some loud drunken singing of songs from all our countries in the local square until a resident came and told us off - not quite PBI’s desired image I'll admit.
Anyway, as to the other bit of the title, not only did I make it to Stonehenge in the middle of the GA but so did four others who decided to join me. When Michael from the US heard I was going he wanted to go to and Chris (also US) was also keen and had a local friend interested as well. Originally I was going to train and bike but with four of us we decided to hire a car. Once that was decided Christine from Canada was interested as was Lin (my Australian co-delegate) luckily Chris' local friend dropped out so we all fitted in the car, and that was that. The other bonus of having the car was that we didn't have to miss any sessions (a requirement of Mike's as he'd been paid for by PBI USA to come) as the festival was overnight. So we left a bit after 9pm (end of the day's sessions - told you it was hard core) trained out to Heathrow (the only place we could pick up a hire car that late and saved driving through London anyway) and arrived at Stonehenge some time in the wee small hours.
Stonehenge had been open since 10pm but the car park was only half full when we arrived. Stonehenge itself was jammed full of people, including some climbing on the rocks unfortunately and others in sleeping bags. So yeah it was a big festival, no amplified music allowed but plenty of drums, various pipe instruments and even a traditional English (not Scottish) bagpipe we heard as dawn approached. We had a great time wandering around, mostly outside the stones themselves which were too crowded (although we definitely went in there and touched them) but one could actually better appreciate the scene (both stones and people) from outside the circle. We saw a beautiful orange full moon set about 3am just as dawn was breaking. Mike and I heard a few minutes of a performance historian telling the history of how the stones were cut into shape and brought from all over England and even Wales by some otherwise unknown civilisation between 5000 and 3000 BC and then joined together by hollowing out some holes and these being filled with wood and then mortar to join the top and bottom ones. We warmed ourselves by the fire a bit cause it got pretty cold, forecasted down to 10 degrees celcius, Lin who has poor circulation struggled a bit. As dawn approached Chris and I stood in the crowd (an alternative source of warmth) just outside the stones to watch this dawning of the longest day. It was amazing to watch the mist rise, cows appear on yonder hill and discover that what looked like low cloud on the horizon were actually trees covering surrounding hills. Sunrise eventually happened to much jubilation at about 5am, accompanied by several rounds of cheering, applause, blowing of horns and banging of drums, as some cloud low on the horizon made the actual moment of sunrise open to dispute. Someone suggested it was when you could see your shadow on the stones, but sunrise had been popularly acclaimed about half a dozen times by then. In any case it was the only sunrise I ever seen greeted with such popular acclaim and one I will never forget. Once it had happened though Chris and I high-tailed it out of there as we wanted to get on the road quickly and beat the traffic to get back to London by 9:00. Unfortunately we were in such a hurry we didn't see the others waiting at our agreed meeting point and hurried onto the car assuming they'd got cold and gone ahead as we were a few minutes late. An hour later after waiting and then going slowly back through the crowd making sure we didn't miss them and getting back to the car we got in what was now the queue of traffic waiting to get out. Luckily we had had the foresight to park near the gate (disobeying parking attendant instructions) and walked past a lot cars trying to get out and to so didn't have to wait too long. We did however run into quite a bit more London peak hour traffic than we'd hoped and arrived back at the hostel having had 1-2 hours worth of snatches of sleep in the car and on the train. Mike and I had split the driving as neither would have made it all the way by ourselves without falling asleep. I went straight back into session then had to walk out of one later as I was falling asleep taking my notes (you could even see where my writing trailed off into scribble). I lay down for a 20 minute nap but of course my body would not except anything less than 3 hours. This was enough to get me through and after that I was no more tired than anybody else. So we had a great adventure, and it was great to be able to share it with some others rather than be by myself and the car worked out at £10 each instead of a £20 train ticket. Awesome.
gotta go though
James
posted by James Tonson | 6:54 am
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