Greetings and Happy Midweek,
I’m back home now and thus, back to my ‘at home’ routine…which will continue to include these weekly Connects! After 2 years basically of not going anywhere, I realized when I traveled these past 2 weeks, it’s a bit of a challenge - and a choice, or not, in some cases - to keep up with the ‘at home’ routines.
Speaking of travel, I enjoyed revisiting and reaffirming many Global SKILLs principles and practices this past weekend while attending a global conference (virtually, of course!).* The keynote presentation, entitled Disrupting Africa - the Future of Innovation, intrigued me with thoughts on the topic of encouraging and nurturing innovation.** The speaker encouraged “creating creators” in the context of working with the youth of Africa as they pursue their passions by exploring ways to address the needs of their communities - and in turn (as they upscale their efforts) their continent and beyond.
More broadly, I got to thinking that we who work cross-culturally are intimately involved in this “creating creators” kind of dynamic all the time. For example, as we become integrated into a Host Community, often we are able to enrich our new acquaintances’ awareness of their own cultures by our questions and explorations. They become ‘culture creators’ for us - explaining, illustrating, defining their cultural practices & perspectives…and they in turn enrich our own ‘culture creating’ - as we gradually become more ‘fluent’ multi-cultural adventurers.
Another speaker took this concept and emphasized the importance of story-telling as part of culturally creating creators - ah, but that will be a future Connect!
For today, I’ll finish simply noting that documenting whatever culture creating is happening, like in the story-telling practice, is also so very important…Amen to that!
How about you ~ what is one example of “culture creating” you have experienced lately?
Share about that with a friend or note it here.
And check out the Global SKILLs LINKs below for a few more insights into this culturally creative dynamic.
Thanks for being part of this Connect community.
Until next week,
Betsy
* I find the concept of “culture creating” to encompass all of what we do through our Global SKILLs training, including:
~ 3 Dimensional Dynamics Model:
1st dimension = HOME ; 2nd dimension = HOST ; 3rd dimension = HARBOR
~ PROACTive Learning Strategies:
PRO = PROfile, PROcess, PROgram
ACT = Application, Collaboration and Transformation (which we looked at today)
Contact me for more information on these strategies and how you might use them in your current programming
* The Africa Futures 2022 Conference keynote speaker, Nnamdi Oranye, introduced this “creating creators” concept in his presentation as noted above. For more on the concept, check out: https://www.amazon.com/Disrupting-Africa-Rise-African-Innovation-ebook
Global SKILLs LINKs ~ examples of “Culture Creators”
Global-nomadism w/ a storytelling focus: https://gng.org/
Some more “creating creators” culturally inspiration: https://culturecreators.com/
2022 ~ Celebrating 40+ years of working in
intercultural communications and global community building
“It takes a community to build a community”
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Please do not reproduce or share without my permission (betsy.barbour@gmail.com)