Evolving a Dispersed Urban Wellbeing Community
Posted June 1992.
Updated April 2014.
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The
following is a script for Radio Program Twelve in a series about the lifework of Dr
Neville Yeomans, the founder of Therapeutic Community in Australia.
The
program is about psychiatrist Dr Neville Yeomans extending the therapeutic
community model in civil society. This model is discussed in some detail so
that resonant people may desire to replicate or adapt this model in their own
areas.
Dr
Neville Yeomans pioneered Therapeutic Community in Australia as the founding
director of Fraser House a unit he opened in September 1959 on the grounds of
North Ryde Psychiatric Hospital in Sydney, Australia.
Upon
leaving Fraser House in 1968 Neville wrote the job description for a new role
and section in the New South Wales state health department namely, Director of
Community Mental Health. Neville then applied for and became the first Director
of Community Mental Health in Australia - within the New South Wales Health
Department. How Neville began applying Fraser House processes within that job
role will be the subject of a later program.
After
three years in the Community Mental Health role Neville went to live in the tropical
North East Coast of Queensland to explore the application of his ideas in civil
society away from centres of power.
Neville
Yeomans used the evolving of functional social networking in Fraser House as a
primary process for moving dysfunctional people towards functional living.
Neville began replicating this process in linking with Aboriginal and Islander
women in Northern Australia and evolving among them what Neville called
‘networks of natural nurturers’.
Neville
had been engaged in this networking between 1972 and 1984 while living along
the North East Coast of Queensland. These networks were evolving in Mackay,
Townsville, Cairns, and on the Atherton Tablelands above Cairns.
Neville
had bought houses in North Queensland coastal areas - Mackay, Townville, and
Cairns, and also one in the Atherton Tablelands at Yungaburra. He progressively
set up the coastal houses as therapeutic communities. These houses typically
had eight people in residence. The majority of the residents were Aboriginal women.
Outsiders would attend regular groups led by Neville at these houses. After a
time, Neville would move on and leave these houses as self-organising entities.
Neville had his Yungaburra house as a base for networking through the Atherton
Tablelands.
Dr Paul
Wilson, one of Australia’s best known criminologists and acting head of the
Australian Institute of Criminology in Canberra between 1986 and 1991 devotes
Chapter Six of his book, ‘A life of Crime’ to his personal healing experiences
living within Neville’s small Therapeutic Community house in Mackay.
In
1988, Neville Yeomans moved strategically back to Sydney living in his house at
Bondi Junction and sustaining himself as a psychiatrist in private practice. He
was also extremely active in voluntary work, continuing to extend Fraser House
outreach in civil society.
Neville
was at the time in regular contact with an informal group of 20 local people
living around Sydney who were interested in personal and community wellbeing.
Neville
had been instrumental in linking many of these people together. This group
would meet each other at workshops on varying healing modalities led by group
members. He would also meet them informally at social gatherings.
Members
of this group were generally aware that Neville had done seminal pioneering
work in the 1960s in evolving therapeutic community practice in Fraser House.
However members of this group typically knew little about the specifics of how
Fraser House worked. Neville was not one to talk at length about Fraser House.
He may give some information to someone, if in his opinion that person usefully
needed to know. Neville would occasionally mention micro-bits of his way during
workshops.
Little
was known at the time by this group of 20 about how Neville Yeomans used social
networking at Fraser House as a primary process for transition towards
functional living, and how Neville had been replicating this process in
Northern Australia.
Neville
had just returned from a workshop on using sensory submodalities in
psychotherapy ran by Steve and Connirae Andreas in the United States. Neville
Yeomans led the Balmain workshop assisted by two associates.
After
Balmain, a number of other psychotherapy workshops were held above a shop at
240 Broadway in Sydney Central. These workshops were on a range of healing
modalities as well as human relations.
For
some of the experiential work, the group would move across the road to
parklands opposite the Broadway shop. Passers-bye might see for example, a
person on a raised platform about to do a trust fall backwards into the arms of
a waiting group, with a safety person holding the person till all involved were
mentally present, alert and ready. The group engaged ecologically in all manner
of human relations and wellbeing experiences.
Now to the next
part of this historical journey into Neville’s life work – it is early in 1988
and Neville says words to the effect:
I don’t
need to do this!
Done it
all before.
I
already know how to do it.
It’s a lot
of work; however you Sydney people are ready to experience this.
Word is
sent out to the core group of 20 people using tentative language – the language
of possibilities - using lots of tentative words like ‘perhaps’ and ‘‘maybe’
and may’, as well as using passive sentences and generalisations:
Ideas
are evolving for a gathering at Neville’s place. Perhaps it may be called
‘Healing Sunday.’
If there is energy for it, we may together
start a dispersed wellbeing community in Sydney.
The
Keypoint for this community may be what Neville has termed ‘Healing
Sunday’.
Healing
Sunday may have four experiential sessions lasting one hour during the day -
where attendees may experience a range of healing ways from members of the core
group and possible others.
This
gathering may be held on the first Sunday of each month at Neville’s
place in Bondi Junction on the South side of Sydney Harbour.
If
it happens, then this Healing Sunday may be free of charge.
People
may bring food to share and perhaps leave a small donation for basics like
herbal teas, milk and the like.
They
may arrive between 8:00 and 8:15 AM for a start at Nine AM sharp.
If
Healing Sunday does happen, Neville envisages adherence to the following
timetable:
8:00 –
8:15 In the morning
– to arrive with food and prepared platters of food for a midday feast
8:15 –
9:00 Would be for networking, drinks and snacks
9:00 – 10:00 The
first session
10:00 –
10:10 For a toilet and
stretch break
10:10 –
11:10 The second session
11:10 –
11:30 Drinks and snack
break and networking
11:30 –
12:30 The third session
12:30 –
2:00 The Midday
Feast and networking
2:00 –
3:00 The fourth
session
All of this was consistent with Neville’s way. Neville was always
setting up contexts he described as, ‘filled with possibilities’. If one in a
hundred of these ‘possibilities’ generated one or two things of substance, it
was for Neville, ‘a miracle’.
Neville talked up possibilities in vague terms. ‘Healing Sundays may happen. For a time Healing Sunday
was a potently articulated virtual reality.
This tentative language was consistent with Neville’s slogans:
Firstly, nothing happens unless the locals want it to happen
And secondly, if it happens it is because the locals do it.
Healing
Sundays did start. The locals wanted it and did make it happen and that
timetable was always adhered to. An aspect of Neville’s particular kind of
leadership was to accurately sense what the locals would want to do.
When
the day for the first Healing Sunday was approaching, such was Neville’s
rapport and respect within this core group, all of the members of the core
group said they were coming and would make it happen.
The first
Healing Sunday was a great success and Healing Sunday ended up being held for
eighteen consecutive months.
Generally
the core group members were present. Other attendees came regularly. Some came
every two or three months. Over the 18 months around 220 people attended a few
or more times.
Of
these, around 180 people evolved into a social networking group that regularly
met each other in pairs and in small and large groups outside of Healing
Sundays. The 180 people became a dispersed wellbeing community.
At the
first few Healing Sundays Neville would select three of the core group to act
as session coordinators. The names of the three coordinators were put on a
whiteboard in one of the meeting rooms. As people arrived they were told to see
one of these three if they wanted to run a healing segment during any of the
four sessions. After a number of Healing Sundays the core group decided who the
three coordinators would be.
The roles of these three people were to schedule who ran segments, to
ensure variety, and ensure that the segment generally matched the mood of the
group.
The coordinators would also schedule things so that the last segment in
a session would end at the end of the session and not carry over to the next
session.
At
Neville’s suggestion there was a tentative open agenda based on a theme of
wellbeing. What came next during a session was a function of the unfolding
context. The entry process into the first session contributed to attunement
within the group. There was a superb friendly vibe. What tended to quickly
emerge was a shared resonance among the attendees.
The
coordinators were encouraged by Neville to sense this emerging resonance and
notice what contributed to it emerging. They were also encouraged to notice any
changes in resonance once group resonance emerged – was the group as ‘group’
looking for continuing their present energy, or shifting to higher or lower
energy. Were they ready for hands-on work, or verbal work, or energy work?
Neville
termed this ‘an unfolding context-based open agenda’. The theme of each
successive segment emerged from the coordinators reading of the group energy
and was chosen on the spot by the three. The group was not asked what they
wanted next. That would have been getting the group to ‘go cortical’ and begin
talking about experience, rather than experiencing experience. At the end of
each segment there was no discussion or feedback. This was to keep things
experiential. There was scope to give feedback during breaks if people wanted
to.
Anyone
could put his or her name down to be a leader of a segment of a session when
they arrived on Healing Sunday. Sometimes segments were led by Neville’s
invitees who were not part of the core group.
The
coordinators would have a pool of people at each Healing Sunday open to and
able to lead a segment. These people were told to be ready to run a segment at
anytime during any session and that they would not necessarily be called upon.
During
breaks Neville may briefly engage the coordinators in a review away from other
attendees relating to their matching of segments to group resonance, their
choice of segment themes, their sensing of the changing mood and values being
expressed in group interaction, and their coordinating role.
These
were the same aspects reviewed by Fraser House staff after every big group
therapy session at Fraser House. Also, these were the aspects that Neville was
constantly monitoring during his coordinating of Fraser House Big Group.
Reviewing these aspects in Fraser House was a way of inducting Fraser House
staff into Neville’s way of coordinating Big Groups. Similarly, Neville was
mentoring Healing Sunday coordinators in his way.
It was
not known by those connected with Healing Sunday that this use of ‘themes that emerged
from the group’ and ‘context resonant theme change’ was a fundamental aspect at
Big Groups in Fraser House. In Fraser House, themes emerged from the group
context and were selected as Keypoints for group engagement. Themes emerging
from the Fraser House groups would typically be used if they had the property
of being conducive to coherence in the group.
At
Healing Sunday, one of the coordinators would take less than 30 seconds to
introduce a segment leader or leaders.
Neville
himself was never one of the three coordinators and he never led a segment. His
way was to let others learn to do things by experiencing a task.
However,
Neville was constantly scanning process and metaprocess (the process of the
processes) within the group.
Segments
could be up to 20 minutes in length. Some segments would be completed in less
than 5 minutes. The segments were on anything to do with wellbeing – personal,
inter-personal, group, family and communal wellbeing.
However,
at Neville’s insistence, one aspect was non-negotiable; everyone leading a
segment had to have people
experiencing something within 90 seconds. There was to be no long speeches, no
spiels about theory, and no talking about experience. The aim was to have attendees
experience experiencing things. If this 90-second limit on getting attendees
experiencing something was not adhered to, the coordinator who had introduced
the segment would stop that person and say words to the effect:
Stop
and watch how other people do this and have another go on a later Healing
Sunday.
Some
found this 90-second limit a challenge. If after 60 seconds a segment leader
had not started introducing the experience they would be given warning by the
coordinator that they had 30 seconds remaining to do so. Some people were
stopped and told to have another attempt at a later Healing Sunday and were
successful on later occasions.
We
learned how to introduce what Neville called ‘micro-experiences’. The common
experience was that when a segment leader briefly introduced a
micro-experience, other attendees would use and link these micro-experiences in
what could be called ‘generative patterns’ so that often the person who was
leading a segment would learn new ways from attendees and would end up doing
the most learning. Neville used the
term ‘co-learning’ and ‘co-enrichment’ to encapsulate the repeated experience
that segment leaders learned things from other attendees.
Many
Healing Sundays had attendees who had never been before. Neville set up the
coordinators to introduce one of a few opening rituals. A ritual would be
chosen that fitted the context on the day. As an example, one of the opening
rituals was a mirroring and mime experience that was firstly conducive to
everyone learning and remembering everyone’s name, secondly, having their
awareness and attending capacities focused, and thirdly, knowing a lot about
each person present.
In this
particular opening, a coordinator would welcome everyone, identify the other
coordinators and identify Neville as the host.
The
opening ritual would be then outlined. A person at random would stand and say
‘May
name is (mentioning their name) and I like to’
Then
the person would mime some simple action without speaking. It may be relating
to say, swimming, or reading, or dancing, or snoozing, or the like – some
pastime or interest.
Then
the person to their left would stand and repeat what the first person said and
did. That is, they would endeavour to ‘become’ the first person – and to the
extent they were able, they were to mirror what the other person did – match
voice, tone, inflection, pace, volume, and match the non verbal part as well.
Then
they would introduce themselves:
‘May
name is (mentioning their name) and I like to’
Then
that second person would mime their own action without speaking.
Then
the next person to the left would mirror the first person, then the second, and
then introduce himself or herself.
This
pattern would be repeated around the whole group. As people mirrored each of
the previous people they had more and more to remember. This was balanced by
having heard and seen the sequence more and more times as we proceeded around
the circle.
There
were varying degrees of ‘performance pressure’ experienced by people as well as
a build up of anticipation. People became very involved in attending to
processes within the group. This served to introduce people to the experience
of staying present and involved in group process for the rest of the sessions
during the day.
When
all had participated, the first person to introduce themselves was to become
each person in sequence all round the group. Typically people did very well. If
people struggled they were assisted. Invariably people bring a lot of
themselves to this task and astute observers were able to have a massive amount
of information about those present.
The
final part of this ritual was for everyone to randomly shift seats so that the
sequence was very different to the original. Then people would randomly have a
go at becoming each person in going around the new sequence quickly, which
added to the humour.
Then
everyone would be invited by a coordinator to mingle and meet and say the
person’s name that they were meeting and obtain confirmation that they had the
name correct. Typically everyone knew
everyone’s name at the end of this sequence. The coordinators kept the ritual
moving and it was completed within 30 to 40 minutes. This left time for one or
more segments for the first session.
There
were some Healing Sundays with contexts that did not lend themselves to using
this opening ritual and another context-appropriate welcome process was used.
As an
example, a couple of times Neville or others had invited people with particular
dysfunctionality such that the above opening ritual would have overwhelmed
them.
Neville
was very actively involved in Healing Sunday. However someone outside of the
core group would generally have little idea of this. As well, many of the core
group not engaged in the coordinator role would have little idea of the seminal
role Neville was playing behind the scenes.
Neville started Healing Sunday by engaging others in contacting of the
core group to get Healing Sundays started. Neville’s experience from his Fraser
House days was that groups work best if they have less than 20, or more than 50
members.
Groups of fewer than 20 can have intimacy. With over fifty members, crowd
and audience effects tend to emerge and can be used by an experienced enabler.
In groups of between twenty to fifty members, sub-groups and individuals tend
to vie for attention.
With this experience in mind, Neville networked by phone with people he
knew to ensure that extra people attended so that at least 50 and up to 60
people were present.
The number of
people attending was crucial for using audience and crowd effects and Neville
did not leave teeing up extra attendees to others. Some
of the core group of 20 would invite people, though most were Neville’s
invitees. Neville had a large number of addresses and phone numbers in
three books that he always had nearby.
In 1999 when Neville was told that he had a very short time to live he
passed these three address books to a female nurturer who he knew would make
strategic use of them.
Sixty
was the largest number that could squeeze into Neville’s Bondi Junction house
comfortably, and that number meant we would be shoulder-to-shoulder with each other.
This mirrored the way people were crowded into Big Group therapy in Fraser
House.
Neville had found in Fraser House that keeping to a strict time length
for sessions prevented what he called ‘session creep’ - that is, sessions
getting longer and longer.
At
Fraser House important work tended to be left by attendees to late in a
session, and if the session was extended to work with this ‘important work’,
then intensive work would tend to get later in starting during each subsequent
session. Sessions would have kept getting longer and longer. When everyone
knows that the session will end in
one hour no matter what is happening, people tended to get started immediately.
This was a reason why Neville had the strict time schedule.
The
gathering space in Neville’s house was two adjoining rooms with folding doors
between them that were pushed open. The front room was around 4 metres square
and the adjacent room was around 5.5 metres square with a staircase running up
the side of it. People would sit on chairs, couches and cushions in an
elongated circle. Often people would be sitting on the stairs looking down on
the others. Once we went into experiential mode people would spread out through
the entrance hallway and into a third room behind the first two rooms.
Sometimes we would experience something alone, e.g. shifting awareness around
our body guided by the facilitator. Sometimes we would experience things in
pairs, in 3s, 4s or small groups. Some things, for example, chanting would
involve everyone.
The
sessions were wonderfully rich and varied. During the 18 months we experienced
a wide range of healing modalities; all aspects of Neuro-linguistic Programming
or NLP, as well as Milton Erickson’s therapeutic processes.
There
were lots on segments on listening, attending and awareness, many movement
related processes including Feldenkrais and somatic therapies, voice work,
breathing processes, singing and chanting, as well as energy and subtle energy
work.
An
Aboriginal person with a Balinese friend facilitated an intriguing session on
sensing, experiencing and mirroring the non-verbal communication and movement
used by people from other cultures. The Aboriginal person had immersed himself
in the cultural nuances of Chinese and Japanese minorities living with them in
their homelands in gaining his Masters Degree. As an example, the Balinese
person combined pelvic fluidity and smiling when he asked for the time in
Balinese. The swaying moving and broad relaxed smile was a fundamental aspect
of the way the Balinese person expressed himself. Some people with Anglo
backgrounds found incorporating smiling and pelvic sway into their
communicating was extremely difficult – all of the muscles connected to their
pelvis and around their face were rigid.
Sometimes
spontaneous things would happen. On one occasion a lunchtime discussion theme
for some had been gender relations and stereotypes. A deliveryman brought a
small, though still very heavy upright piano in the middle of a session. All of
the women decided that they would immediately hold an impromptu segment on
working together in getting the piano upstairs. With the males as silent
process observers, the women quickly tapped into their combined creative talent
and worked out a strategy to very safely get the piano up the stairs, around
the landing, and up a second flight to a room upstairs. They did this with
consummate ease in no time at all and were very proud of themselves - and
received a standing ovation from very impressed menfolk.
During Healing Sunday there was always an abundance of food. For the
midday feast a large sheet of plastic was put down on the floor in the two
front rooms to protect the carpet. Brightly colour tablecloths were spread on
top. Many of the beautifully arranged platters of food were spread out along
the full length of the rooms upon the tablecloths. Colour, taste and
presentation in the food were a feature. It was truly a Feast. More food was on
platters placed on a breakfast bench in the kitchen. People sat on the floor in
the two front rooms and chatted as they ate. Some would eat on an outdoor table
setting under a suspended grape vine in a small backyard.
60
visitors can create a lot of housework. People had tea and coffee and often
breakfast upon arrival and had drinks and food at the morning snack-break and
the midday feast.
At the
same time Neville set a standard that everyone was to be seated at the
commencement time of each and every session, and that the house would be
spotless with no work to be done at the end of the last session.
Neville
spoke to the attendees at the start of the second gathering with the theme of
community self care and what kinds of things we as a community of carers could
do to nurturer our place and likened it to a bird’s nest. He then went on to
talk about birds preening themselves and arranging their feathers.
From
the subsequent group discussion there was an agreement by consensus that we as
a group would preen both ourselves and environment while at Neville’s house.
Any emerging ‘mess’ would be removed.
Three
minutes before each session was to start the call would go out, ‘Preening
time!’ ‘Preening time!’
During
this time everyone was to engage in three minutes of preening of the house.
Three minutes work from 60 people is 3 hours of work completed in three
minutes! With four sessions, 12 hours of work would get done.
As many
as could fit around the kitchen sink would choreograph their movements in a
dance as all dishes, cups and utensils were washed and dried in 3 minutes. A
vacuum cleaner was available and used. Other cleaning equipment was available.
Windows were washed. The little back yard was swept. Magazines were rearranged.
Bookshelves were placed in alphabetical order. Typically, everyone was seated
at the start of every session. And the house was spotless when everyone
left.
Many said that they had established preening time in
their own households and housework had ceased to be a chore.
With an upstairs and a downstairs toilet available,
these were in constant use during the breaks so everyone had finished prior to
preening time.
No one left a session to use the toilet. No work was
required at the end of the last session and people would typically leave
shortly after it finished.
In knowing Healing Sunday finished sharp at 3PM people
typically scheduled other things to do afterwards. They had experienced
excellent networking before the first session and during the breaks and
typically they did not linger at the end.
While Healing Sundays
were free to attend, Neville made use of these days to invite one or two of his
psychiatric clients to experience being in a group context within a wellbeing
community. Neville would have these clients sign the Federal Government
Health-Care slip for an extended therapy session for the day.
During the first five
minutes of the third session, administrative matters were covered and anyone
could make brief announcements relating to upcoming events. Attendees running up-coming
workshops would take this opportunity to let people know. Others may be holding
a dinner party or meeting at a restaurant.
Others may let
attendees know of a workshop or event that they knew was about to happening.
This admin session was an integral aspect of evolving networking networks.
After eighteen months
there was a navel gazing session about Healing Sunday. The core group had seen
its birth and growth to maturity. There had been a shared understanding about
the aims of the Healing Sunday – ‘evolving a dispersed urban wellbeing
community’. That aim had been well achieved - a dispersed wellbeing group had
been formed and was alive and well. People were linking with each other. No one
had to be alone for Christmas dinner.
The members had acquired
a wide range of wellbeing skills and had many people they could call on for
support. We elected to stop having Healing Sundays and the last day was as good
as the first.
Healing Sunday was
never reconvened and many of the 180 network to this day. In ceasing when it
was a sustained success it lives in peoples memories as just that – a
magnificent success.
Neville played a very
potent, though subtle behind-the-scene role in every aspect of the Healing
Sunday experience. He was the enabler par excellence. He supported people to be
able. He was continually energising contexts rich with possibilities. Many of
these were embraced by others for functional change. In this he was a model for
other people interested in being catalysts for social wellbeing. Resonant
people may consider replicating Healing Sunday in their local area
We have been discussing how Dr Neville
Yeomans extended Therapeutic Community within civil society. The next segment discusses the links between Healing Sunday and action
occurring throughout the Australia Top End and extending through the East Asia
Oceania Region.
From 1985 through to 1999 Neville was linking with and working on all
manner of activities and projects with other people both inside and outside
Australia.
Neville liked to have his home and brain uncluttered. Regularly Neville
would donate his library of books, academic journals and magazines that he had
acquired to the nearest library. Neville travelled light. When he moved to a
new house he wanted to take himself, his three address books and a couple of
changes of clothing, and that was all.
None of the people involved in forming and evolving Healing Sunday and
the associated wellbeing network had any idea at the time that Healing Sunday
was integrally linked to action unfolding across the Australia top end and the
East Asia Oceania Region.
This next segment
introduces this wider action. Healing Sunday’s possible role in this wider
action is then introduced.
None of the people linked
to Healing Sunday knew that Neville had written about what had been happened in
the Healing Sunday gatherings seven years previously in a seminal paper called
‘On Global Reform – Intercultural Normative Model Areas’.
In Neville’s ‘On
Global Reform’ paper he wrote about processes that could unfold over the next
250 to 300 years that may lead to a more caring and humane world. Neville was
writing about, and engaged in actions relating to societal transition with the
potential for transforming the social life world all round the globe - what
Neville termed ‘epochal shift’.
In that ‘On Global
Reform’ paper Neville had envisaged three transitional phases each with
different processes. He called these three transitional phases T1, T2, and T3:
Tl related
to Consciousness-raising in National Arenas
T2 related to Mobilization in Transnational Arenas
T3 related to Transformation in Global Arenas
Neville had been
energising T1 Consciousness-raising in National Arenas by networking among the
Aboriginal and Islander nurturer women in the Australia Top End commencing in
1971.
Seventeen years
before Healing Sunday (in 1971) Neville had written a brief document called:
‘Mental Health and
Social Change’
An interesting
pairing of concepts:
‘Mental Health’
and
‘Social Change’
This paper was continuing Neville’s
action research linking ‘Therapeutic Community with nurturing community action for
global wellbeing
That document was a precursor
to the ‘On Global Reform’ document written ten years later.
That 1971 Mental
Health and Social Change document specified five reasons why the Australian
Top End was the best place in the World to begin exploring global
transition models amongst the people on the margins of dominant society.
It was far away from
centres of power in Europe, UK and North America
It was far away from
Australian power centres
Australia at the time
was not sensed as a threat to anyone
It was where there
were populations of indigenous Australians – creating possibilities of engaging
with the most marginalized in exploring new social forms, and
It was Western,
though just under Asia where more than half (by number and by peoples) of the
world’s indigenous people live – providing ready access to more marginalized
people as social catalysts
Neville Yeomans had
expressly formed the therapeutic community Fraser House in 1959 to explore
epochal shift with the most marginalized in Sydney society – those in the back
wards of mental hospitals and those in prison to whom the authorities would not
give a day of parole. The staff, patients and outpatients involved at the time
did not know this, except Neville’s personal assistant, psychologist
anthropologist Margaret Cockett.
Just as Neville
invited the most marginalised people into Fraser House, Neville chose the most
marginalised people in the Australia Top End to work with – the Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islanders. Neville sensed the most marginalised in the current
system are the best people to explore new societies.
Neville wrote in his
‘On Global Reform’ paper that healing networking in the far North (quote)
…would be accompanied
by widespread T1 activities in an ‘Intercultural Normative Model Area’ (or
INMA) around the Atherton Tablelands and Darwin in the Australia Top End,
conducted largely by those trained by previous groups. Aborigines from all over
Australia and overseas visitors would be involved. (End of Quote)
The ‘previous groups’
that Neville referred to began in Armidale in North East New South Wales in
1971. Yeomans led that gathering. It was at Neville’s suggestion called
‘Surviving Well in a Dominant World’. Aboriginal and Islander people from
around Australia attended including a young Eddy Mabo who became very
significant in getting the Australian Federal Government to pass laws giving
Aboriginals and Island land rights.
That gathering was
repeated in 1972 in Armidale and again in 1973 in Grafton, a little further
north. These gatherings were followed by gatherings in Alice Springs and
Katherine in the Northern Territory.
Those gatherings were
led by Neville and the Aboriginal person fluent in Chinese and Japanese
mentioned in the last program. From these gatherings networking has been
spreading informally through indigenous healer networks in the Australia Top
End.
At Neville’s
suggestion, a brief letter was sent in mid 1993 about the possibility of a
Small Island Coastal and Estuarine Peoples Gathering Celebration happening in
June 1994. Neville spoke of it been both a gathering and a celebration. During
this program we will refer to this gathering in the short form as the ‘Small
Island Gathering’.
The letter indicated that
this gathering celebration may possibly be hosted by local Aboriginal and
Islander women from around Atherton, and may have a community wellbeing theme
based open agenda, with one potential theme being ‘Creating Alternatives to
Criminal and Psychiatric Incarceration’.
This is the same
tentative language that was used in spreading the word of a possible Healing
Sunday.
This letter was sent
to many global governance organizations and other international bodies. Just
like Healing Sunday, this Small Island Gathering was a potently articulated
virtual reality.
Neville named the
gathering in positioning it as a Follow-on Gathering to the Indigenous Section
of the United Nations Small Island Development Conference in the Caribbean in
June 1994.
In November 1963, the
UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva sent a letter saying that they had
received our letter and that they were funding the Small Island Gathering
Celebration. There was no request for submissions. It was already approved. All
the Human Rights Commission were asking for were details of where they were to
send $13,000 Australian and for the hosts to send a report of what happens and
some photographs.
The
Gathering did take place in the Atherton Tablelands in June 1994. Around 500
people attended and a report and photos were sent to the UN Human Rights
Commission.
Aboriginal
and Islander women and others, many from very remote parts of Australia,
attended this gathering. Torres Strait Islander women also came from remote
islands in the Strait between Australia and Papua New Guinea. People from small
minority groups and others also attended along with Eddy Mabo’s son. Sharing
healing and nurturing ways at this gathering helped form links between the
attendees and linked them into wider networks nurturing community action for
global wellbeing through the East Asia Oceania Australasia Region
It is understood that
the UNHCR grant was made because of firstly the hosts been Aboriginals and
Islanders, secondly the main invitee group was remote area aboriginal women,
thirdly, that the gathering process was following indigenous way, and fourthly
because of the themes being explored.
Down to Earth (or
DTE) (the cooperative that runs the ConFest Festival) funded three people
skilled in festival site selection and set-up to fly around 3,000 kilometres
from Melbourne to Cairns in December 1963 and then travel up to Neville’s place
in the Atherton Tablelands, a two hour trip.
Neville and others
had started ConFest in 1976 as a Campout Conference Festival exploring global
wellbeing futures. The 2006/07 New Years ConFest Gathering, still run by DTE,
celebrated the 30th anniversary of the festival. Radio programs
about ConFest may be found on the News Section of Radio TC International on the
internat.
The aim of this trip
by the three DTE people was to link these three people with a number of
Aboriginal communities in the Atherton Tablelands.
Discussions were held
with a number of communities and 14 sites were explored. A site for the Small
Island Gathering was chosen by the host group; it was beside rainforest on a
little peninsular on Lake Tinaroo near Atherton.
While these DTE
people were staying with Neville in his house at Yungaburra, Neville set up
fourteen different events and happenings to link them into a matrix of local
action. One of these was a New Years Eve party attended by 75 Aboriginal and
Islanders and 75 other people. Half were male and half were female. Half were
adults and half were children. Just like his pattern in Fraser House, Neville
worked to evolve balanced communities.
Typically, houses in
the Yungaburra area are built above ground on poles to keep the houses cool.
Most of the children of Yungaburra became involved in preparing for this party
creating fantastic atmospherics underneath the house and having exclusive use
of the area from dusk till around 9:30PM.
The children dug a tunnel under the front veranda and placed fluorescent
paintings along the sides of the tunnel and fluorescent tubes overhead.
Fluorescent white sand was spread on the ground under the house so that the
floor glowed brilliant white in the night-time. The children came upstairs at
9:30PM and escorted the adults down through the tunnel to the lower area.
Another event was a
dance party in beautiful rainforest with the forest floodlit at night. Yet
another event was a small campout weekend beside a stream in the rainforest. A
busload of Aboriginal men who had overnighted in a hostel for inebriated street
people attended and were considerable transformed by the experience.
At Neville’s
suggestion, DTE also funded an Aboriginal woman and an Islander woman to go
down to the Easter ConFest four months prior to the Small Island Gathering to
experience how ConFest emerges through volunteer energy. These two women were
considering forming the hosting groups for festivals.
At Neville’s
suggestion DTE provided seed money to get the Small Island Gathering at Lake
Tinaroo started when the overseas funding from Geneva was late in arriving.
A busload of regular
attendees of the ConFest Festival travelled three thousand kilometres from
Melbourne to attend the Small Island Gathering.
As well, another 90
ConFest attendees living around Nimbin in Northern New South Wales also attended
the Small Island Gathering.
These 90 were all
experienced in circus artistry – juggling, fire stick twirling, drama,
drumming, Acapella singing and the like.
After being invited
to the Small Island Gathering Celebration 90 marginal people made their own way
north from Nimbin;. Some did car-pooling. Others borrowed cars and some hitched
a ride.
Nimbin, the area
where these artistic people had come from was where the large Aquarius Festival
was held in 1972. Around 15,000 people attended that Festival. Neville played a large part in getting the
Aquarius Festival started as well.
The 1994 Small
Island Festival has links to a whole string of prior festivals that Neville
energised dating back to the Watsons Bay Festival in 1968. There were three
more festivals after Watsons Bay that Neville energised with other people.
The Paddington
Festival in 1968 launched Paddington Market, a Saturday Village Market that
surrounded Neville’s first Community Mental Health Centre. Paddington Market
survives to this day as a Sydney icon.
The energy setting
up the Watson Bay Festival and Paddington Festival also set up the Centennial
Park Festival in 1969. That festival filled 650 acres of City parkland with
around 15,000 people attending. The next festival was the Cambelltown Festival
in the early 70s attended by half the cast and crew of the musical Hair.
The Cambelltown
Festival initiated the Aquarius Festival attend by 15,000 and that festival in
turn energised ConFest that in turn supported the Small Island Gathering.
Associated with all of these festivals were hundreds of other associated
activities that were linked into the matrix.
The Aboriginal woman
that was funded to go south and attend the 1994 Easter ConFest energised local
Atherton Aboriginal and Islander people to be the host group for the Small
Island Gathering.
The Islander woman
who also went down to the Easter ConFest energised ‘The Spirit of the Oceans’
Wellbeing Gathering in Townsville in 1994. Many young South Sea Island women
studying at James Cook University in Townsville attended that festival.
Energising groups of
people to preparing all these festivals was a major way Neville strengthened
social networking. The festivals themselves created opportunities for small
networks to evolve through linking with other small networks. Long thin
dispersed networks would have scope to become more integrated, with people
knowing and connecting regularly with more people in the network.
Back to the ‘On
Global Reform’ paper – Neville’s had written and I quote:
Over a number of
years the Indigenous population of the Intercultural Normative Model Area would
be increasingly involved, both black and white.
(End of quote)
Neville continued evolving
networking among indigenous healers till his death in 2000.
Through the UN
Indigenous Working Group in Geneva and the Unrepresented Nations and Peoples
Organization (or UNPO) in The Hague many of the Indigenous people linked to
Neville have been networking with others through the East Asia Oceania
Australasia Region. It is understood that this informal network of networks now
links into more than half of the indigenous peoples of the Region.
It is also understood
that these networks are networking with other Indigenous groups around the
world carrying out what is arguably the most advanced dialogue currently
happening around the World on the theme of Global Futures - and significantly,
these dialogues are typically going on in languages other than English.
Every aspect of
Neville’s action was adding to a connected matrix. Everything Neville did was
related to and supporting everything else he did. Many stories could be told
relating things that Neville was involved in that have links to Healing Sunday.
Now to the
significance of the Healing Sundays – these were held on the first Sunday of
the month for 18 months in the late 1980s.
Through attending and
linking with each other, attendees evolved a dispersed wellbeing network of
around 180 people.
Neville had written
in his ‘On Global Reform’ paper in 1981 about consciousness raising happening
among people interested in wellbeing in the Australia Top End.
In his ‘On Global
Reform’ paper Neville specifically refers to a period of consciousness raising
among people living further South in Australia. This consciousness raising was
to encourage resonant people supporting the movement up North.
Neville wrote – and I
quote:
Co-existing
with later T1 activity is a relatively brief consciousness raising program
with the more reformist humanitarian members of the national community, i.e.
largely based on self-selected members of the helping and caring professions
plus equivalent other volunteers.
However
their consciousness raising is mainly aimed at realizing the supportive and
protective role they can play nationally, in guaranteeing the survival of the
Inma beyond their own lifetimes, rather than trying to persuade them actually
to join it by migration. (End of Quote)
In writing those words Neville was referring to the likes of the
members of Healing Sunday and members of other actions energised by Neville in
the South East of Australia, such as ConFest mentioned previously. These are
the kinds of people Neville was writing about when he wrote of consciousness
raising – and I quote:
.......with the more reformist humanitarian members of the national
community, i.e. largely based on self-selected members of the helping and
caring professions plus equivalent other volunteers.
In Neville’s terms
Fraser House, ConFest, and Healing Sunday were all INMAs, that is,
Intercultural Normative Model Areas. Neville obtained permission of the
Aboriginal women of the Australian Centre to use their word ‘inma’. It has the
some of the same sense as the two syllables in English – ‘In Ma’ as in ‘in the
mother’.
Shortly after the
cessation of Healing Sundays in 1989 Neville returned to live in the Atherton
Tableland.
In 1993, he shifted
to Darwin. From 1993 to 1999 Neville devoted his time to strengthening the
networks in the Region.
At his death in May
2000, unfolding nurturing community action for global wellbeing was in tune
with the transition stages envisaged by Neville.
T1
Consciousness-raising has been occurring in National Arenas. T2 Mobilization
has begun to occur in Transnational Arenas.
An example was a
gathering of 40 wellbeing nurturers from eleven countries in the East Asia
Oceania Region held in the countryside outside Manilla in 2004. A Laceweb
enabler had travelled extensively in the region networking with local
grassroots healer networks in meeting 240 people and linking with 43 local
wellbeing groups in the Region. The attendees at the Philippine gathering were
in part selected from these 240 people.
Five of the 40 who
attended that Philippines gathering have now been funded by DTE to come down to
New South Wales and experience ConFest and link in to local wellbeing networks.
Many of the possibilities
outlined in Neville’s On Global Reform paper are becoming realities.
It may
be that models outlined in this program may be replicated, adapted and tested
by resonant people in other parts of the World.
End of Script
Other links:
Financing
Sustainable Global Futures