Creating Spaces for Cultivating Goodness

It all started in 2013. when 60 folk from across the world came together in Newbattle Abbey near Edinburgh for a 3-day training workshop in Participatory Leadership processes and practices. Following this event other opportunities for training, learning and on-the-job practice were found in the UK and overseas which led to an invitation to assist delivering a large half-day Open Space process for 500 participants at the first Scottish Rural Parliament in Oban in November 2014.

Several of us decided that we could be stronger together with a formal structure, and in January 2015, we established a Community Interest Company and Connecting Scotland CiC was born! Our mission was to bring more use of participatory processes and practices to Scotland by delivering training, supporting the practitioners and then to undertake work for organisations and individuals who invite us to help.

Since then, we have gone from strength to strength, as you’ll see from the success stories below. These practices are used worldwide in large and small organisations, local and national governments and parliaments, community groups, anywhere people want new, different and effective ways of co-creating space for engaging in the conversations that matter. We now bring those global and local skills, knowledge and experience to Scotland.

You'll see that in our and other websites, we use the terminology of and refer to the 'Art of Participatory Leadership' (AoPL) and the 'Art of Hosting and Harvesting' (AoH&H) in a fairly interchangeable way. Here's a good place to explore more of what these mean, what the global community of practitioners are doing, and where you can get more information on training events, etc. https://www.artofhosting.org