Spaces for Growth: learning our way out of a crisis

We live in powerful times. A rolling crisis that is both real (there are consequences), conceptual (horribly complex to grasp in its multiple dimensions)

and existential (shaking the inner foundations of our worlds).

These emergencies are not distinct: they are all connected and now hunt in packs. But it is the existential emergency, the human consequences of living in powerful times, that now dominates the scene. That is the subject of this booklet. For it is in the boundless potential of the human system, the ways in which we choose to live our lives in patterns of relationship with other lives, that our hopes for recovery and renewal ultimately lie.

’Spaces for Growth’ is both a manual and a rallying call. It explores the settings and the environments we need to discover and to create, as hosts and guides, to enable individuals, groups, organisations, communities, institutions, human beings in all formations to expand, to develop and to grow. In this way we will, together, rise to the occasion.

Graham Leicester is Director of International Futures Forum. IFF’s mission is to support a transformative response to the challenges of the times. Graham previously ran Scotland’s leading think tank, the Scottish Council Foundation, founded in 1997. From 1984-1995 he served as a diplomat in HM Diplomatic Service, specializing in China (he speaks Mandarin Chinese) and the EU. Between 1995 and 1997 he was senior research fellow with the Constitution Unit at University College London. He has also worked as a freelance professional cellist, including with the BBC Concert Orchestra. He has a strong interest in governance, innovation and education, is a senior adviser to the British Council on those issues, and has previously worked with OECD, the World Bank Institute and other agencies on the themes of governance in a knowledge society and the governance of the long term. Maureen O’Hara PhD is Professor of Psychology, National University, USA; President Emerita, Saybrook University, San Francisco; and Director, International Futures Forum-US. She is a licensed psychotherapist in practice for over three decades and worked closely with Carl R. Rogers in La Jolla, California - facilitating encounter groups, large group events and training psychotherapists in many countries. Her recent work explores the present and potential future impacts of global cultural shifts on psychological development and emotional wellbeing. Books include Em busca da vida, with C.R. Rogers, J.K. Wood and A. Fonseca (Summus,1983); Ten Things To Do In A Conceptual Emergency, with G. Leicester (Triarchy, 2009); and the Handbook of Person-Centered Psychotherapy and Counselling with M. Cooper, P. Schmid and G. Wyatt (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). She is married to Robert Lucas with whom she resides in Carlsbad, California.