Are you working to create new patterns, policies, or paradigms in your organization or community?
Do you know that something different is needed to transform stuck situations, but don’t have any easy answers?
Are resource constraints forcing you to explore alternative business models and operating principles?

Register here.

The Art of Hosting offers tools for participatory leadership that can help generate the new thinking and energy needed to transform your organization, sector, or community. Bring new models and theories of change to your leadership challenges.
• Learn practical, participatory tools — and how to use them — including: chaordic project planning, world cafe, open space, pro action cafe, and more.
• Immerse yourself and your team in a supportive and co-creative space.
• Experience the connection between personal transformation and the capacity to create change in the world.
• Learn personal practices for “hosting yourself” with gentleness and confidence.
• Zoom out for the big picture view of the challenges facing Nova Scotia and the world.
• Connect and learn with a community of leaders working to bring change into diverse settings across the province and beyond.
This gathering will be a learning space to grapple with the real, systemic problems in Nova Scotia and beyond. It will be an opportunity to learn and experience tools that are being applied in community, private and public sector, academic, healthcare, and educational settings, as well as social change efforts around the world.
A few examples from Nova Scotia:
• Public consultations and civic engagement in Halifax Regional Municipality. Creative processes to bring citizen input into the design of the public library, stadium, Nova Centre, and other community projects across HRM.
• Public Health transformation. Engagement and capacity building to create healthcare renewal in the face of demographic and budgetary challenges.
• Strategic Urban Partnership. A strategic collaboration to enhance the vibrancy of the downtown core
• Education and student voice. Student associations and universities have begun to use AoH techniques to bring diverse perspectives to the table to co-create solutions for the challenges facing the education sector.
• Nova Scotian change initiatives, conferences, strategic plans, and gatherings of all types have been enriched by Art of Hosting methodologies.
And from around the world:
• The European Commission uses the Art of Hosting and Harvesting Conversations That Matter engage stakeholders and train leaders in participatory leadership techniques.
• The United States Interagency Council on Homelessness used AoH techniques to bring together multiple stakeholders to develop a comprehensive national strategy to prevent and end homelessness.
• The Finance Innovation Lab in the United Kingdom is an incubator for systems change in finance.
• AoH methodologies have begun to infuse civil society in Columbus, Ohio, informing high-impact projects in education, health, and social services.
• Vorarlberg province in Austria has used AoH methodologies to bring the public voice into policy creation and political decision making processes.
In a world that is becoming increasingly complex and fragmented, we need to know how to connect with each other — and ourselves — to make the change that is needed. The Art of Hosting will be a personal leadership and professional development practicum that will deepen your own capacity to affect transformation in yourself and in a complex world.
Come ready for three full days of learning, conversation, and transformation with new and old colleagues and friends.
Dates: January 16-18, 2013. 9am-5pm.
Location: Mount Saint Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia
Fee: $550 before December 7, $650 after December 7 (lunches included)
Team Rate: $450 per person for teams of 3 or more from the same organization. Please contact us to arrange this discount.
Scholarships: Some partial scholarships are available.