Way back at the end of last year, I had a conversation that surprised me. A collection of yoga students were sitting round a table discussing the state of the nation. It was a playful conversation. One of the group had worked on the new Elizabeth Line in London and we were discussing what other public spaces needed an overhaul or perhaps retirement, and the Houses of Parliament were mentioned. OK, you’ve guessed it. I mentioned them.
This Victorian homage to Gothic architecture is a wonderful flight of fancy, and could be part of Disney GB. However, as a serious building for the complex nature of modern politics – at their best - it’s risible.
All was amicable disagreement around that table, until I mentioned the adversarial nature of the Commons Chamber. Representing as it does the very binary nature of Western democracy. When I went on to suggest that a new debating chamber should be designed on a circular model, fostering a more consensual style of discourse, debate and decision making, I was met with a style of gentle superiority that the English mastered centuries ago.
Lesson One – watch your assumptions – they creep in everywhere and can make a real mess of a situation with almost no conscious help from you. I had assumed that if someone takes yoga seriously they will have a view of life that fits nicely into mine. Really? That’s a rookie mistake and I’m supposed to be a self-aware woman, able to park assumptions, be judgement free and squeaky clean, particularly when your passions are engaged.
And that leads me back to my passion, well one of them. This passion is for the spaces we create to live in, to work in, to celebrate in, to debate in, and to legislate in.
I feel our ancestors across the globe had it right when they met around a fire, yes for warmth, yes for companionship, and yes also for discourse, debate and decision making. Very simply everyone was seen by everyone else. Corners and straight lines create a hierarchy of seeing and hearing, appreciating and understanding. A-round is a circle, a bit chaotic, not the perfection of smart art, but a shape which nature recognises. The natural world doesn’t do lines and corners. It does curves and undulations, rocky pinnacles and forever shifting depths.
Now, the influence I or any other individual has over the future of the buildings that house The Mother of All Parliaments is sadly, but rightly, negligible. However, as employees and employers, as freelancers and homeworkers, as carers and the retired, we can influence the way we meet for conversation, in celebration, for discussion, for decision making, even in conflict.
And that starts with the distance between us. Something that we’ve all had to address very practically over the last three years. We sit behind furniture; a desk, a table, even a screen. They distance us, creating barriers, a concrete manifestation of a hierarchy of voices and ideas. They feed ways of behaving that reinforce rules rather than rights, compliance rather than critical thinking, complacency rather than creative change. Remove the furniture and you start to shift perspectives. With screens and global teams, we have the same challenges; the solutions will be different but the driver is the same - shifting perspectives to open up a more collaborative, connected network of discussion and decision making.
Once the furniture is gone, the space is open to reimagining. The Scottish Parliament did it in 1999. The Society of Friends (The Quakers) did it from their founding in the 17th century. Secular and religious building and practices across the globe channel the power of the circle to focus the mind and in so doing broaden understanding and fosters appreciation of perspectives other than one’s own.
A small anecdote: When I was in my first year as a language teacher, I taught a summer school for global professionals who wanted or needed English for their work and pleasure, but hadn’t had an opportunity since school. It was basically a beginners class. 6 weeks to get doctors, fire officers and lawyers, among others, to comfortably inhabit English. From day one I sat among the learners, rarely, if ever in front of them. On one memorable evening, one of the shyest students had volunteered to lead a section of the session and was at the whiteboard getting feed in and writing it up when a new student walked through the door. The new student very formally introduced themselves to the ‘teacher’ who stood smiling with welcoming warmth, until embarrassment took over and she looked over to me.
Disrupting the rules of engagement gets us thinking about how we interact and how we can do it better. Using the circle as a seating plan for meetings in all their guises, allows us all to be included, to reach across and around the space of discourse.
You may be doing it already, thinking about and exploring different physical plans for meetings, workshops and all the other ways we gather together. If you’re not, try a different way of setting out the space. Try simple actions to get a collaborative flow. Disrupt expectations – the circle embraces, it holds, it includes. The way we physically inhabit and create space has a cognitive effect on how we behave within it, in relation to ourselves and each other.
Might we not listen more deeply, celebrate collaboration over individual achievement more readily, and create networks of difference to resolve complex challenges more easily, if we met in a circle?
Idealistic? Yes.
Possible? Yes.
In our hands? Most definitely.
In Praise of Circles
annemmosley