Team Syntegrity participants in Barcelona in June, 2017.“Inside the word emergency is emerge; from an emergency new things come forth”, wrote Rebecca Solnit as she reflected on the staggering achievements of unarmed civil society in recent decades. And in 2017, it seems that with governments across the world introducing more restrictive laws on civil liberties, clamping down on independent media and turning a blind eye to the persecution of social activists, civil society and the new ideas that emerge from within it are needed more than ever.
So when 30 participants met through Team Syntegrity, guided (or perhaps un-guided) by the cybernetic method of non-hierarchical participation, there was much anticipation at being tasked with the question: In the context of several major interconnected global crises, how can civil society help to renew our democracies to rise to the challenge?
Certainly, in the event, if creativity is born from bringing different perspectives together, the group’s diversity was a positive sign from the outset. In fact, with such varied professional backgrounds, personal styles and interests in the room, I would struggle to group them in any way other than by labelling them as participants from civil society, united by a profound and challenging question.
