Pro-Vocation

Purpose:

To promote authenticity. To align aspirations, values and talent with action. To provoke the development of personally and organisationally enhancing beliefs and attitudes. To encourage commercial and social enterprise, community spirit, and individual and collective self-sufficiency and support. To promote and foster individual and collective talent.

Approach:

Groups meet once per month initially. In the first few meetings, the facilitator (known as the Agent Provocateur) provides input with linked exercises for the first hour. In the second hour, the Agent Provocateur works with issues using a provocative, facilitative and largely advice-free style to enable people to resolve challenges, exploit opportunities and talents, and to commit to action. Each session ends with an action statement from each participant focusing on an experiment they are going to conduct over the following month. Actions can be individual or collective.

Who it is for:

Some groups will set up with a specific focus (for example, 'parenting', or 'personal well being' or 'business development'). Other groups will start out without a specific focus and will gradually develop their focus, splitting when appropriate into separate groups as specific communities of interest emerge. Anyone can suggest a focus for a new group and the Agent Provocateur will help to set up the new group recruiting others who have similar interests. Group size limited to 15 people.

Where It Will Happen:

The location for each group meeting will change from time to time. Locations will include really exceptional venues (for example, meetings may be held in cafes, a swimming pool, on a specially hired bus, in someone's house, conference centres, on top of mountains, the beach, in a different town, or country, on a council estate, in a community centre, a garden, a boat, on a specially chartered plane, at a historic venue, and so on. Groups will agree upon the location for meetings on a rolling basis according to means, opportunity and preference. Group members will share venue organisation between themselves with support from the Agent Provocateur.

Values:

Free and Radical Experimentation
Robustly and Positively Provocative
Education is best when it is Provocative
Energy comes from Action
We 'Think the Unthinkable'
Integrity and Authenticity
Liberating and Enabling
Learning/Knowledge Come From Within

What it will cost:

The monthly fee is £15 per person, plus their share of the venue costs (the venue cost divided by the number of people attending. Groups will be in complete control of their venue costs and will be able to keep to whatever budget the group agrees and finds sustainable for all members of the group. Annual subscriptions for a total of 12 sessions per year will be accepted at £144 per annum.