LACEWEB FUNCTIONAL MATRICES
Written 1993. Updated: April, 2014.
In talking
about energy-in-action in his various outreaches, Dr Neville Yeomans used the term
‘functional matrix’. Neville said (Nov, 1993) that he used this term to refer
to the ‘generative and formative developing and shaping of functions and fields
or foci of Laceweb action’.
Neville had
sustained Fraser House during 1959-1968 as tentative and transitional. He
resisted having anything he did being categorised and put into little boxes.
Creating all of his functional matrices allowed him to talk and act without
being pinned down to definitive specifics, which would in his view, limit and distort.
Some Laceweb
self-help and mutual-help functional
matrices are listed below - most of them dating back to the late Sixties and
early Seventies. It is not exhaustive and there is overlap between categories.
These different
functional matrices are more theme-based energy-in-action that appears for a
time and then disappears, somewhat like sub-atomic particles in quantum physics
– disappearing and re-appearing elsewhere. They are not a thing like a club or
an organisation that you can belong to. They are doings – energy in action.
NAME USED FUNCTIONS, FIELDS AND FOCI
AKAME Grandmother and
me
Youth and adolescent
support
Cultural healing action
Healing Storytelling
Alternatives to criminal and psychiatric incarceration
Stopping youth and adolescent civil and
criminal law breaking
Values
CADRES Community theatre
Community
wellbeing
Social
justice
Therapeutic
mediating
Alternative
dispute resolving
CHUMS Caring and Helping Unmarried Mothers:
Care
Help
Support
Networking
Experience
sharing
Work
opportunities
Playgroups
Childcare
CODA Disability action and the arts
DANZACTS Alternatives to prisons
Cultural
healing action
Combatant’s
return to civilian life
Healing
dance, drama & the arts
Healing
festivals and camp-outs
ENTREATIES Intercultural enabling
Exploring
intercultural humane values
Peacehealing
protocols
EESOS Fostering emergence in self-organizing systems
Intercultural interfacing and intercultural mediating
Identifying
and using system free energy
Fostering
business wellbeing
Enabling
emergence of natural phenomena
EXTEGRITY Supporting grassroots
community following societal collapse
Intra-state
cultural Keyline
Funding support for civil society
re-constituting
Fostering caring partnerships between prior
conflicted peoples
Supporting survivors of torture and trauma
(natural/man-made)
Support for reconstituting local grassroots
community
Mentoring social ecology on Inma Projects
FAMILY
NEXUS Nurturing Wellbeing:
Socio-emotionally
Economically
Environmentally
Integrated local area planning and action by
locals
FUNPO Youth action
Youth
employment and skilling
Youth
healing festivals
Youth
sport dance art and culture
INMA Caring
Enabling
Fostering
emergent properties
Nurturing
Oneness
Seeding
possibilities
Spiritual
Wholeness
Inter-cultural
Normative Model Areas
KEYLINE Originally:
Conservation
Eco-villages & eco-habitat
Edible landscaping
Oasifying deserts and arid areas
Permaculture
Self-sustaining
Water harvesting
Thriving New soil generating
Local Energy Transfer Systems (LETS)
Thriving communities & farming
Function and foci extended to:
Producing and distributing documents,
papers, communications photos, stickers, films and other, cultural and artistic
materials and productions
Enhancing
community cooperation and mutual support, locality, self respect, friendliness,
creativity, culturally appropriate peaceful nationalism and multinational
regional cooperation
Life food
producing and consuming
Assisting other bodies with similar aims
MEDIATION Relational
Mediating
MATTERS Mediation
Therapy
Mediating as
alternative to adversarial law
Home, street and rural mediation therapy and
mediation counselling
MINGLES Celebrating and re-creating
Community
wellbeing
Evolving
and sustaining new friendships
Social
networking
Parties
and Gatherings
Wellness
Enriching
families
Healing
language
NELPS Accommodation
Community
education
Ecological
psycho-linguistics
Natural
Living Processes
Natural
Learning Processes
Employment
and skilling
Income
security
Personal
wellbeing
NEXUS GROUPS Intercultural healing action
(CONNEXION) Intercultural Keyline
Intercultural
humane legal processes
Intercultural
social networks
Linking
to global governance
Truth,
reconciling and accepting
Healing
Storytelling
UN-INMA Cultural Keyline
Cultural
Healing Action
Quick response healing teams
Supporting
torture and trauma survivors
Alternatives to criminal and psychiatric
incarcerating
Therapeutic community
Healing
Storytelling
Evolving enablers
Enabling networking
Each of the
names in the above list has significance. Neville had checked on the
derivations of the words and terms he had in the Laceweb Functional Matrix
names:
AKAME
‘Aka’ is Torres
Strait Islander for Grandmother; hence the connotation is ‘me and my (wise)
grandmother’
CADRES From Latin ‘quadrum’, a
square; meaning ‘a function’ or’ scheme’; the ADR connotes ‘Alternative Dispute
Resolution’
CHUMS Colloquial for
good friends
Caring and Helping Unmarried Mums
CODA From Latin
‘cauda’ meaning ‘tail’; an adjunct to the close of a composition; CoDA Latin ‘co’
from ‘cum’, meaning ‘with’, and DA connoting Disability Action
CONNEXION From Latin ‘connectere’ – to join, link,
unite, associate, closely relate, coherent, having the power of connecting;
link to Old English ‘connexity’ meaning simultaneously being inter-dependent,
inter-related, inter-woven, and inter-connected; also links to ‘Keypoint’ as
themes conducive to coherence.
DANZACTS Connoting ‘dance acts’;
combatant’s return to civilian life (in working with a member of the
Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) and other Bougainville and West Papuan
traumatized refugees in 2001, dance was rated the most useful in the healing
ways we explored); Therapeutic Community.
ENTREATIES From Old French
‘entraiter’ – to ask earnestly; the word ‘treaties’ is embedded
EESOS Enabling emergence in self-organizing systems
EXTEGRITY Connoting ‘extensive
integrity’. It is possible that Neville knew of the term ‘tensegrity’ connoting
‘integrity through tension’ and used this to derive ‘extegrity’.
FUNPO At Yungaburra
where Funpo started it stood for the ‘Fun Post Office’; all the children of the
little town were exchanging letters with each other gratis by sending them to
Funpo. It also stands for Friends of UNPO, the Unrepresented Nations and People
Organization in The Hague.
INMA ‘Inma’ is a special word for the Central
Australian Aborigines. Neville had obtained their permission to use it. It has
many meanings including ‘oneness’, ‘a coming together’, and ‘being together’.
In Ma connotes ‘in ma’ – ‘in the mother’ and has similar connotation to the
word ‘matrix’. The Torres Strait Island word ‘Ini’ also means, ‘being
together’; INMA also stood for International/ Intercultural Normative Model
Areas (Yeomans 1974)
KEYLINE From father’s Keyline
MINGLES
Mingle: to mix
together, to blend with, to associate
NELPS A play on ‘help’; NLP or Neuro-Linguistic
Programming, or Neville’s terms for NLP, namely, ‘Natural Learning Processes’,
and ‘Natural Living Processes’
UN-INMA Unique (Indigenous)
Networks - International/Intercultural/Interpersonal Normative Model Areas