Conviviality Pattern
Promoting positive human qualities, values and harmony in the pathway to transformation.
We can only live the changes we wish to see: we cannot think our way to humanity. Every one of us, every group, must become the model of that which we desire to create.
Ivan Illich 1
Challenge: How can you open the transformation process to enable the highest and most comprehensive possible level of participation?
Cluster: Enriching Practice Patterns
Type: Essential Practice Pattern nested within the Design Cycles Pattern
Purpose
The purpose of the Conviviality Pattern is to generate and sustain a high quality of participant engagement and interaction.
Pattern Description
The Conviviality Pattern enables positive human qualities, values and harmony to emerge through participant engagement in sustainability transformation. Not only should engagement be highly participatory, it should be at a high level of quality. The Elements in this Pattern are supporting actions that should be present across all phases of the transformation process. They ensure that healthy positive relationships between participants and the wider stakeholder network develop to provide the sustaining human energy for the transformation.
Elemental Patterns
Reciprocating: Beyond transactional behaviour, this Element is a key dimension of conviviality, as it spreads the benefits, responsibilities (and the difficulties) of the sustainability transformation to all participants through being-in-relationship with each other. Reciprocating can be one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many.
Empathising: Empathising with others is a fundamental state for practitioners and participants alike to enable the transformation go deeper and further, yet also to ensure all perspectives contribute to the process. Empathising means understanding the needs, fears and loyalties of participants, as well as the qualities, knowledge and skilles that they bring. Empathising is a key practice to ensure all are welcome in the process, and their contribution is valued.
Listening: The readiness to listen enables more people to participate in a transformation process. Practitioners and leaders in the social entity can dominate activities in ways that close off avenues to participation, so listening helps to break that dominance when it happens. Including participants through mutual listening supports collective sensemaking.
Responding: The quality of engagement and collective sensemaking ensures that weak signals in the system can emerge and be recognised early. This brings collective knowlege to the surface; but what happens when the process generates new knowledge, especially if it has come from diverse and unexpected sources at the far reaches of the system? The Responding Element recognises such contributions from participants through treating their contributions seriously and reinforcing that they have been heard and their contribution will be incorporated into the transformation.
Empowering: By activating the Empowering Element, and linking with other Conviviality Elemental Patterns, transformation leaders should not only engage participants, but also empower them to participate, by recognising their strengths and qualities as well as their role in the transformation. Going further, empowering participants to be stewards of the transformation work will grow motivation to participate more deeply and engender trust in the process.
Opening: Making the transformation work accessible is important, so opening the practice context to participation increases engagement. Ideally, opening the space will motivate participants to self-select and self-organise to support the transformation through removing internal friction and barriers.
Clearing: Transformation work can be contentious, and if poorly facilitated, such contention can lead to resistance in the system, driven by loyalties, losses, fears and a raft of human motivations. When blocks to the process emerge, clearing the space becomes a priority, but because such blockages are signals about the state of the system, address them before moving on.
Closing: This Element keeps the transformation process moving, especially when it becomes bogged down. Ideally, leaders, practitioners and participants identify through consensus that an issue is ready to close to facilitate moving on to other aspects of the system that need attention. A consensus for closing is critical. If a closing process needs substantial mediation and conflict resolution the situation is not yet ready to close. See Negotiation and Mediating Elemantal Patterns in the Enabling Pattern.
Supporting: Everyone, whether leader, practitioner or participant, needs support at different phases of the transformation, and should be aware that support is forthcoming. Support can be in many forms: such as public recognition of contributions; resourcing; changing roles; self-learning and research time.
Trusting: Trust is at the core of good society, community and networks, even if only for transactional engagement; beyond transactional engagement and towards deep engagement, trust amongst participants is essential and must be cultivated and developed, through conscious action and responding appropriately to emergent patterns. Trust can be developed through general goodwill, but if lost, can be difficult to re-grow. Applying the Conviviality Pattern, requires activation of the Trusting Elemental Pattern to enable the Design Cycles Pattern to spiral in a healthy way.
Playing: Transformation can be hard work, and the hard work becomes pleasurable work if we introduce play into our processes. Releasing the Playing Element helps create connection with joy. It releases creativity by dissolving inhibition, uncovering new ideas, possibilities and patterns, feeding into the Design Cycles and Phase Patterns.
Caring: In the Natural Systems Pattern, the Element of Care connects us with country and responsibility for our natural systems. Here, Caring is an Elemental Pattern that activates an ethic of care for our fellow humans, and their spiritual, mental, emotional and physical state as part of the transformation process. If people are suffering in some way, they can’t engage; but perhaps the simple humanity of inclusion in a larger transformation with a great purpose that benefits all, can also help to heal an individual through action.
Celebrating: The shared celebrations in this Elemental Pattern help to mark progress in the transformation. They help embed the knowledge of what has been gained and help to retain the energy for change in the next activities and phases. And its just good to do - and the act of celebrating in itself may uncover something worthwhile for future actions.
Atlas Navigation
Go to the Elemental Patterns within the Conviviality Pattern:
Reciprocating Empathising Listening Responding Empowering Opening Clearing Closing Supporting Trusting Playing Caring Celebrating
Go to the Enabling Pattern within the Enriching Patterns Cluster
Go to the Guiding Pattern within the Enriching Patterns Cluster
Version
Version 1.0 - 2 Jun 2024
Version 1.1 - 23 May 2025
Version 1.2 - 15 July 2025
Illich, I. (1976). Celebration of Awareness: A Call for Institutional Revolution. New Ed, Paperback. London: Penguin.