Annex 5.3
Case Study: The DAF Diversity and Decolonising Circle

This annex is a report written on the basis of the case study I carried out within the Diversity and Decolonising Circle, in active collaboration and with the full consent of all circle participants past and present. This corresponds to Research Stream #1, as introduced in Annex 3.3.

All current circle participants were invited to review and comment on this report between April and December 2022. I called their attention in particular to any passages that concerned them individually.

In what follows, I start off by introducing the social learning space. I then mention the aspirations expressed by participants within it, before presenting a summary of the evaluation results, including effect data and contribution data. I conclude this annex with a critical discussion of these findings.

1. Introducing the social learning space

The Diversity and Decolonising Circle (D&D) was officially launched in the Deep Adaptation Forum in August 2020. It was the product of several conversations and interactions, the first of which took place during the Strategy Options Dialogue (Feb. to Apr. 2020), a consultative strategy process initiated by the DAF Core Team and piloted by volunteers⁵⁹. This circle launched with the following mandate, as articulated in the first version of its mission statement:

"to find ways to reflect on and address the main forms of separation and oppression that characterise our modern industrial societies - including, in no particular order: Patriarchy; White Supremacy; and Desacralization of Nature at large - as we inevitably carry them with us into the Deep Adaptation movement and spaces." (DAF D&D Circle, 2020)

As part of this mission, the focus of the circle's work since its creation has been on finding ways "to make DA spaces safer for everyone, particularly people identifying as Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour," and thus on "opening spaces for deeper conversations to listen to, learn from, and stand in solidarity with Black, Indigenous and People of Colour" (BIPOC). Nonetheless, D&D also aims to address other aspects covered by its mission statement, for example issues of gender and sexual discrimination, ableism, etc.

Along with several volunteers and fellow Core Team members, I have been actively involved in this circle since its creation, and participated in the early conversations that gave rise to it. I have always taken part in it on a volunteering basis.

Since its creation, the circle has initiated two anti-racism trainings, as well as several workshops on topics related to racial and cultural discrimination, indigenous perspectives, etc. These activities have been mainly geared towards DAF participants at large, but invitations were always extended to members of other networks, and indeed partnerships were established for several of these activities. Individual members of the circle have also provided other educational activities on similar topics, within DAF and elsewhere, with varying degrees of support and collaboration with their fellow members.

Besides these "external-facing" activities, D&D members have also engaged in a continuous process of mutual learning, mutual support, and self-education. Shortly after the circle's creation, we launched a series of monthly "learning circles," in order to share insights, experiences, and resources with one another. We also initiated other practices aiming at making our own learning more visible, such as beginning each of our weekly meetings with a review of recent "successes" (see below).

It gradually dawned on us that in spite of the many setbacks and difficult moments we experienced, our continued involvement in the work of this circle had been a source of many important insights, individually as well as collectively. Therefore, we began documenting some of our learning, through blog posts⁶⁰, webinars⁶¹, and lately, video recordings⁶².

I feel that my participation in D&D has been one of the deepest journeys of personal change I ever experienced (see Annex 5.2, Story #5, as well as Chapter 6). I therefore invited my fellow circle members to join me in weaving together an articulation of as many of our experiences of learning, awakening, mistakes, heart-aches, conflict, and mutual caring as we could. This annex attempts to summarise this collective work of sense- and change-making that I have been a part of.

2. Participants’ aspirations

Assessing the various forms of positive or negative value that are being created in a social learning space requires an awareness of what data might be meaningful to participants, so as to honour their participation and agency (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020, p.198). Once effects that matter to participants have been identified, a "value detective" (p.193) can derive from these effects indicators that will be meaningful to them, and find ways to collect data to monitor these indicators.

A good place to start, with the D&D circle, would be with the discussions we had around the "framing" of our work. Framing is a social learning mode which has to do with the sense that participants have (or develop over time) of why they are engaged with each other. It is an open-ended collective process which "happens as an integral and ongoing part of the process of social learning itself" (p.152). At times, this process may be particularly explicit and intentional, as participants clarify their respective and collective aspirations dialogically.

Unsurprisingly, the discussions that led to the launch of the circle, and to the publication of our first mission statement, were a time of particularly important framing. Among our stated aspirations, listed in our original mission statement, are the following:

"- to find ways to reflect on and address the main forms of separation and oppression that characterise our modern industrial societies - including, in no particular order: Patriarchy; White Supremacy; and Desacralization of Nature at large - as we inevitably carry them with us into the Deep Adaptation movement and spaces."
- "to become more in alignment with the Deep Adaptation mission of embodying and enabling loving responses to our predicament, and reducing suffering, while saving more of society and the natural world";
- "to find ways through this reflective process to make DA spaces safer for everyone, particularly people identifying as Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour";
- "opening spaces for deeper conversations to listen to, learn from, and stand in solidarity with Black, Indigenous and People of Colour";
- "designing a training program for DAF volunteers, core team members, and holding group members, as well as regular ‘Deep Listening for Decolonising’ gatherings for participants in the various DA networks, on this particular facet of our predicament."

In this sub-section, I will present how I interpreted this mission statement. Conversations happening over a year and a half after the circle began led me to understand that my interpretation of the circle’s purpose was shared with other circle members, but not all. I will return to this important realisation in Section 2.2.4, below.

To me, the aspirations listed above have primarily to do with creating change in DAF, from a strategic, organisational and cultural standpoint; but an intention to develop more critical self-awareness is also present there ("reflect on and address the main forms of separation and oppression... as we inevitably carry them with us;" "become more in alignment with the Deep Adaptation mission of embodying and enabling loving responses to our predicament"), and is explicitly linked with the mission of creating safer spaces for everyone ("through this reflective process").

Therefore, I will begin this evaluation process by collecting effect data with regards to this this twin ambition – i.e. that of creating change both "without" (in DAF at large, and perhaps wider afield) and "within" (in the hearts and minds of D&D circle participants). I believe both dimensions have been central to the reflective conversations taking place in the D&D circle since its creation, and thus point to two areas of value-creation to monitor, with regards to the following questions:

• "Are we bringing about generative change for others (particularly BIPOC)?"
  and
• "Are we ourselves changing in generative ways?"

We have prioritised these intentions differently over time, personally and collectively. Indeed, as I will discuss in Section 2.2.4.2, diverging interpretations of our original mission statement eventually became an issue within the circle. I point to the new understanding that emerged for me (and the rest of our group) towards the end of this Annex.

3. Evaluating social learning in the D&D circle

3.1 Effect data: What value has been created?

3.1.1 Data sources

I have drawn my main sources of effect data from documents produced during the course of the following reflective activities:

1. our weekly "success stories" sharing rounds;
2. our monthly learning circles;
3. our October 2021 Conscious Learning Festival experience-sharing webinar;
4. our March 2022 Learning Circle experience-sharing session;
5. the research interviews that Wendy and I carried out with other members of the circle, and with each other.

Details on the files documenting these activities are listed in Table 5.

Table 5: D&D Circle Main Sources of Effect Data (“the data set”)

3.1.2 Creating indicators of value-creation using a thematic analysis

Having clarified our aspirations, I will now start exploring in more detail what forms of value have been created within the D&D circle. This will involve considering whether we, in this circle, have been fulfilling our aspirations (which is the domain of “outcomes,” or “realised value”); but in order to answer more fully the research questions mentioned at the start of this chapter, I will also consider other cycles of value-creation that we often described to each other as important to us in the circle (for example: the joy of deepening our mutual friendships; the pain of dealing with conflict; the conditions enabling our learning; etc.).

In the interviews and events that led to the collection of value-creation stories on behalf of D&D circle members (see next section), Wendy and I generally made use of an iterative list of more fine-grained indicators, and associated questions, to probe the different kinds of value creation taking place for each of us - although this list by no means formed a structured interview process (see Annex 5.1). In turn, we often translated statements of value voiced during these interviews into new indicators to monitor, following the iterative "bottom-up" approach described by Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner (2020, p.198).

In order to distinguish which of these indicators have been most meaningful to us in the circle, and therefore what effect data appears to speak most clearly to the value created within our social learning space for each value-creation cycle, I carried out a second round of thematic analysis on the data set.

I examined the data from a contextual constructivist epistemological position (Madill, Jordan and Shirley, 2000), which assumes that any phenomenon may be interpreted in multiple ways, depending on the researchers' position and the research context. As a thematic analysis methodology, I made use of Template Analysis, as presented by King (2004, 2012) and Brooks and colleagues (2015). I considered this methodology appropriate for its flexibility, and its usefulness to analyse large volumes of diverse data (including transcripts from interviews or focus groups, or any other form of textual data) in a time-effective way (Brooks et al, 2015). Another reason for utilising this methodology is that it is a form of “codebook” thematic analysis (Braun et al., 2019), which encourages the initial development of themes early on in the process, but also allows for iterative refinement of this framework through inductive engagement with the data in the process. It therefore appeared particularly well-suited to be integrated with the social learning value-creation framework forming the broader methodological umbrella of my research in DAF, as well as with the qualitative research philosophy I am following.

Template Analysis encourages the development of an initial template, made of a priori themes that are based on a sub-set of the data. The analysis then "progresses... through an iterative process of applying, modifying and re-applying the initial template" (King, 2012, p.430). I will define themes as "the recurrent and distinctive features of participants' accounts... that characterize perceptions and/or experiences, seen by the researcher as relevant to the research question of a particular study" (ibid, p.430-1). In Template Analysis, themes are hierarchically organized (groups of similar codes are clustered together to produce more general higher-order codes), and "the extent to which main (i.e. top level) themes are elaborated - in terms of the number and levels of sub-themes - should reflect how rich they prove to be in terms of offering insights into the topic area of a particular study" (ibid, p.431). However, themes can also be linked laterally, for example as integrative themes cutting across several main themes, as "undercurrents running through participants' accounts" (ibid, p.432).

As my aim was to identify forms of value-creation that appear to have been most present for us in the D&D circle for each of the value-creation cycles in the social learning framework proposed by Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner (2020), I started off by creating a template with each of these cycles as the main top-level themes, associated with its own guiding research question⁶³:

1. IMMEDIATE: What has our experience been like?
2. POTENTIAL: What has come out of our experience?
3. APPLIED: What have we been learning in the doing?
4. REALISED: What difference have we been making?
5. ENABLING: What has made it all possible for us?
6. STRATEGIC: What has been the quality of our engagement with strategic stakeholders?
7. ORIENTING: How and where have we been locating ourselves in the broader landscape?
8. TRANSFORMATIVE: What have been some broader or deeper individual and collective effects of our activities?

For each of these top-level themes, I then considered what second-level themes might offer answers to these questions, as potential indicators of value creation for each cycle. I derived these tentative indicators from three sources:

1. The list of indicators and associated questions that Wendy and I developed iteratively in the course of our research interviews (see Annex 5.1);
2. The examples of typical indicators provided for each cycle by Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner (2020, p.200-6);
3. Reading a sub-set of the data (CLF and LCR).

See this initial template in Table 6 below. I could not identify any relevant themes (indicators) for the Strategic or Orienting cycles.

Table 6: Initial Template

Once the initial template was ready, I then worked systematically through the entire dataset listed in Table 5, identified relevant sections of text, and marked them with one or several appropriate code(s). I did so by importing all documents into the software Quirkos and analysing them using this software. As inadequacies in the initial template emerged - for example, irrelevant a priori themes, or missing themes - I modified the template iteratively. After having read and coded all data twice, I decided that the template had developed into its final form. I created new second-level themes (indicators) in the process - including in the Strategic and Orienting cycles - and I merged or deleted others in the process. For themes that I felt were most present in the data set, where relevant, I broke them down into third-level-themes.

This analysis simultaneously yielded two critical components with regards to assessing Effect Data following the Wenger-Trayner value-creation framework:

• Second- and third-level themes functioning as indicators of value-creation;
• Codes gathered under the “umbrella” of these themes, functioning as Effect Data.

A third benefit of this analysis was that it allowed me to notice that several lateral relationships could be drawn between certain themes across value-creation cycles, thus forming "integrative themes" (King, 2012) infusing many conversations in the circle, and which thus seemed pertinent to highlight:

1. Conflict and tensions
2. Mutual support
3. How to do this work?
4. New awareness

See the final template in Table 7.

Table 7: Final Template

3.1.3 Considering complementary data sources

During the process of performing the Template Analysis, I also noted down ideas for complementary data sources I had access to, and which provide further information about the effect data that is mentioned in our conversations in the D&D circle. Some of these data sources constitute new indicators of value-creation in their own right.

In Table 8, I list these complementary data sources, and present the indicator of effect data that can be derived from them.

Complementary data sources were typically of four kinds:

• Artefacts produced by the D&D circle (text files, videos, etc.);
• Feedback form results from activity participants;
• Personal observations (including my own awareness, memory or notes from certain events);
• Research interviews I carried out with other stakeholders outside the D&D circle.

While obviously the Effect Data drawn from the Template Analysis above is only qualitative, some of the data I was able to collect thanks to these complementary sources is quantitative. Both types of data can be integrated within the Wenger-Trayner framework, which can act as a boundary object bridging quantitative and qualitative methods (Wenger-Trayner et al., 2019).

I highlight new indicators not listed in the Final Template (Table 7) with an asterisk.

Table 8: Complementary Effect Data Sources

I will now present a summary of the Effect Data I have identified for each indicator, both under the shape of the codes and themes that I drew from the Template Analysis described above, and from my examination of the complementary data sources. Where relevant, I will quote excerpts from the codes highlighted during my Template Analysis process.

For each cycle, I provide a summary table of indicators and data sources.

3.1.4 Immediate value: What has our experience been like?

Table 9: Immediate Value – Consolidated Indicators and data sources

The immediate value-creation cycle is about the sheer experience of participating in a social learning space - what may cause a person to stay, or on the contrary, to leave this space. All of our reflective conversations have pointed to the richness of our individual and collective experience, in terms of both positive and negative value-creation.

We often discuss the difficulty and even painfulness of engaging in the work of anti-racism, decolonisation of our ways of being, thinking, and doing in the world, and awareness-raising around such topics (what we generally refer to as "the work"). For example, realising that one has been exhibiting racist or colonial behaviours all one's life has been a source of shame and disorientation for many of us.

"And so in this waking up process, there was deep shame. There was guilt, there was overwhelm." (CLF)

"So there was a lot of heartbreak and a lot of crying, a lot of shame and a lot of embarrassment for all the things in my life where I had not consciously never consciously contributed to that." (CLF)

The strong emotions brought about by this work on oneself have at times led to strong tensions and conflict within the group and beyond.

"There were some really difficult times for us personally, and then ... that did float into some difficulties in our group." (CLF)

Besides, committing to this journey of learning led each of us to pay special attention to the injustice and inequity that is an integral part of the global predicament, which in itself can prove disheartening - for example when reflecting on one's government inability or unwillingness to recognise its racist and colonialist heritage.

Nonetheless, the circle has provided a space for us to openly discuss our painful emotions, along with other difficulties, and even mistakes and failures that arose for us - including situations of conflict, challenges in doing "the work," but also difficulties emerging in DAF and in our lives beyond the network.

"It's like I'm getting a Masters' degree in conflict! What am I doing that keeps getting me into those situations? I'm doing things that are outside the frame, which makes people and myself uncomfortable." (LC2)

"[At my workplace] I started to feel like an impostor, and not feeling qualified to work here. So I shared that feeling with everyone, and broke the silence around that impression. This helps me to show up more fully now." (LC2)

Indeed, as one of us reflected, this mutual support has often tended to take precedence over discussing "business items" during our calls:

"I remember being in [D&D] meetings where in the check-in someone's having a bad time or is in a particularly difficult place, or showing up with difficult emotions, and the work gets pushed to one side." (LCR)

The quality of the space we co-created together, and the strength of our mutual relationships, appear to have been critical in enabling us to "sit in the fire" - in other words, to remain with the painful emotions, the difficult learning, and openly discuss our challenges, mistakes and failures. We have often commented on the sense of deep trust and safety in D&D:

"I think the openness that we've had in our circle, you know, as to really sensitive difficult topics... just being willing to lay oneself bare in a way... and just say, 'Look, this is what's with me at the moment' [has been very important]." (RC2)

"And, for me, this is one of my special groups, a safe space, very important. Does it mean it's not challenging? No, but it is a safe space that's important, that container. For me, a container of safety needs to be [there], and trust needs to be developed. So that we can be able to 'cook' the challenges and transform the challenges." (LCR)

We have also voiced appreciation for the relaxed pace in the circle, the open-endedness of our work style, and its democratic "vibes":

"It felt easy from the very beginning. And perhaps that's because we'd coalesced around a purpose or at the very least a curiosity, without any real picture of what that might mean or what that might be or what the end point was. And that's what... for me that made it really easy to be part of the conversation. Because it wasn't prescriptive. It wasn't fixed." (LCR)

"I remember sometimes when we came in, and somebody initiated listening to music. And definitely my background was, you know, you don't listen to music at the beginning of a meeting! We are getting things done! So, I would have been quite nervous to do that. But I loved it when it happened." (LCR)

"I haven't noticed any of us dominating. There isn't a single leader, which is so beautiful, because that leaves loads of space for co-creation and for... creating in that moment, as a group of people." (LCR)

We also practice expressing our affection, mutual care, and appreciation for one another. This has helped us create strong relationships.

"There [is] a tremendous level of love and bond within this circle, which [has been] tested." (CLF)

"So we've built a very strong relationship between all of us." (CLF)

As a result, we have also developed a sense of identifying with this group, along with a sense of personal and collective commitment to its mission.

"And I think that's another thing that I really value and admire in this group, is that there's a shared desire, there's a shared mission, and that we really feel a commitment, a deep commitment to that mission, which helps to lift us out of some of the personal difficulties that we might have or somebody's style or, you know, what exactly we do next." (LCR)

"Being part of the circle, I often go back to difficult threads [in Facebook] and put a comment in because I feel like the circle needs to be present in some way to make those spaces safer. So very much embodying in action, this part of our... what I would call the circle's charter." (RC2)

And although circle membership has evolved since its creation in August 2020, five of us (among the six circle initiators) remain committed at the time of writing. Between August 2020 and March 2022, we have been meeting three weeks out of four on average, and have taken part in 14 learning circles in 17 months.
 

3.1.5 Potential value: What has come out of our experience?

Table 10: Potential Value - Consolidated Indicators and Data Sources

Potential value refers to the insights, sense of confidence, connections, or resources that are generated in the social learning circle, on a personal or collective level. This is another cycle in which plentiful value has been created within the D&D circle.

This has been facilitated by regular moments dedicated to sharing insights, personal experience, and engaging in collective reflection. In particular, since October 2020, we have been convening monthly learning circles; and since February 2021, we have been starting each call with a brief round of "sharing successes" - referring to any instance of positive change in our lives or beyond, particularly in reference to the mission of our circle.

At times, these moments of sharing have also been the occasion to comment on insights and information received in other spaces (for example, courses and trainings), or to update one another on certain challenges and difficulties as we try to "do the work." Our discussions have tended to focus on a few recurring themes, including:

• The ontology and history of racism, colonialism, and other forms of systemic oppression - in other words: What is the object of our work, and how did it come about? How is it related to the wider global predicament? Etc.
• Cultivating discernment: How to distinguish and grapple with various forms of oppression? How do we become better at distinguishing our own assumptions, and recognising expressions of harmful patterns within ourselves? Etc.
• Issues of language: How does language help us or betray us as we try to create change? How does it affect how we see ourselves and the world? What vocabulary is most helpful to us to discuss our intentions with others? Etc.
• How to do the work: How to improve our practice? What pitfalls must we avoid? What attitudes or behaviours can support us? Etc.
• On occasion, we also share personal stories, dreams, and other musings that may or may not have a direct connection with our practice, but which often illuminate a conversation topic from a new angle;
• And we often recommend various resources to one another - including books, films, articles, etc. - to further our collective learning.

From these reflective conversations, ideas for new initiatives, practices or processes sometimes emerge. For example, during our July 2021 learning circle, one of us suggested we add a new recurring practice towards the end of each of our calls, to check whether anyone is withholding any discomfort. Since then, we have made a point to ask the question every time: "Is there anything that needs to be said or heard?" Occasionally, this has allowed uncomfortable feelings or comments to be voiced and heard.

These rich conversations and rounds of story-telling, along with various other activities undertaken as part of our involvement in the circle, have helped us to develop new skills and capacity, and new forms of understanding. This includes a refined understanding of our practice, new language, as well as a refined awareness of oneself and the world.

"I no longer feel a need to defend whether or not I am racist. Before I started in the circle, I wanted to defend, claim or at least think maybe I wasn’t racist – or not very, or not deliberately – but since, when we went public, with the training in particular, I realised, in the course of our work together, I no longer need to defend whether I am racist or not – it shifts the dialogue." (LC1)

"I'm increasingly aware of how language is structured, and how it separates. In my life and work right now, I don't have much opportunity to address race, as I mostly interact with White (non-multicultural) people - but being in this circle has raised my awareness, particularly of privilege. And this is being reflected in my work." (LC1)

"[Participating in the circle] made me reflect on how... conditioned I've been to just ignor[e] conflict, and [how I] sort of minimize it and turn away from it." (LCR)

Each of us has also reported an increased sense of self-confidence and self-worth as a result of being part of the circle. This has often inspired us to keep going with our work, or take it to new directions.

"Now I feel I can reach out and create more space for people who don't feel heard." (LC2)

"I had taken the ecofascism workshop, and we'd had this all those conversations in the circle. So that gave me this sense of being having some competence with that topic." (RC2)

"We've been building safety and trust in this circle. Now we're ready to engage with various people and be prepared to invite input into our [Theory of Change tree diagram]." (SSR)

Some of us have also reported creating important new relationships, particularly with people from marginalised groups, as a result of our work.

Finally, participating in the circle has led us to devise certain methods and processes to support our learning (e.g. the success-sharing round), and to co-create a number of publicly disseminated artifacts reflecting our learning and our intentions - such as:

• The D&D mission statement⁶⁴;
• Our list of circle agreements⁶⁵;
• Our theory of change diagram⁶⁶;
• Several individually or collectively authored blog posts and videos documenting various aspects of our learning, for example on the topics of self-organisation, or conflict resolution - including individual "learning journeys" containing the value-creation stories that I will present in the next section ("Contribution Data")⁶⁷.

3.1.6 Applied value: What have we been learning in the doing?

Table 11: Applied Value - Consolidated indicators and data sources

Applied learning has to do, on the one hand, with putting into practice potential forms of learning (such as the ones mentioned above), and reflecting on the results; it is also about "creatively engaging in practice" in trying to "address a particular challenge, situation, or opportunity" (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020, p.90). Both kinds of applied value are present in the data-set.

We have been sharing with one another many stories illustrating our use of potential value - be it knowledge, skills, self-confidence, resources created or shared, etc. - thus "looping" the learning back into the social learning space, enabling us to further our collective learning.

"I was recently invited to take part in a great initiative for woodlands protection. I think it's an important and meaningful project; but I discovered that I'm the only woman being invited to take part. So I've decided to not get involved until more positions of responsibility are given to women and/or BIPoC in this project." (LC1)

"I had a conversation with a friend who is very disturbed by climate change but who is reluctant to face the truth of it. I was able to share a link with her from our Conscious Learning blog and she received this with much appreciation." (SSR)

On occasion, some of these stories also specifically refer to us learning from previous mistakes discussed in the circle - for example, around conflict management - and avoiding making these same mistakes.

We have also been creatively engaging in our practice. Firstly, by initiating new collaborations based on connections made in our social learning space. For example, a newsletter specifically focused on the topics discussed within D&D (“The Composting Times”) was launched in May 2022, in collaboration with a DAF volunteer.

Secondly, our circle collectively initiated a number of new initiatives as a result of our participation in the circle, including two anti-racism trainings, five workshops, calls with participants in these activities, etc. Individual members of the circle also provided other educational activities on similar topics, within DAF and elsewhere, with varying degrees of support from and collaboration with their fellow members. For example, two of us collaborated on bringing an anti-racism training to an environmental organisation in the UK, which had encouraging results (see Annex 5.2, Story #1).

Feedback from participants in these new activities has often been a source of useful insights, be it in terms of how to better design educational spaces, but also as regards developing our sensitivity to a very complex field (see below).

3.1.7 Realised value: What difference have we been making?

Table 12: Realised Value - Consolidated indicators and data sources

Realised value speaks to the difference one is trying to make by participating in a social learning space. In the D&D circle, as mentioned in the previous section, I believe we have remained consistently focused on the following (broad) intentions from the beginning:

1. Bringing about generative change for others (particularly BIPOC) in DAF – with a particular focus on finding ways to share our experience of participating in the circle as we do so;
2. Allowing ourselves to change in generative ways – especially by attempting to decolonise our ways of being and doing and to co-create a new culture.

I consider that indicators speaking to the second kind of value-creation can already be identified in other cycles - particularly as Potential and Transformative Value. Therefore, I will not further elaborate on these aspects here.

There are two main data sources as regards realised value corresponding to the first objective:

• Responses to anonymous feedback questionnaires following D&D activities;
• Informal feedback from stakeholders affected by D&D activities, conveyed to members of the D&D circle who then relay it to the circle.

I will first examine negative forms of value creation, then turn to positive value.

Testimonies in the data set and from other interviews carried out as part of this research project speak to episodes of discomfort experienced by several stakeholders beyond the circle as a result of our individual or collective activities.

For example, following "Dismantling Racism," the first anti-racism training we organised in November 2020 and in which 32 DAF participants took part, two respondents to the feedback questionnaire (n = 17) voiced dissatisfaction with the training approach. In the report I wrote and shared with training participants based on the responses to this questionnaire (Cavé, 2021), I mentioned that their criticisms focused on:

• The fact that the training was only geared towards White participants, and discouraged participation from BIPOC, which one respondent experienced as segregating; and
• The general training approach, which one respondent experienced as preventing a more open-ended way of engaging with the topic of racism.

A third training participant relayed their impressions to one of us in the D&D circle privately. They regretted the lack of safety agreements (concerning confidentiality, ways of interacting and listening, etc.) for the breakout rooms in which participants were invited to discuss their insights from the training - as well as a lack of nuance in terms of defining racism and presenting people's experience of discrimination. They also expressed their familiarity with the topic, and felt they had not learned anything new.

Another instance of negative feedback was voiced during another workshop three of us co-organised, in June 2021, on the topic of silenced stories of oppression. On this occasion, a participant identifying as BIPOC also complained of experiencing faulty facilitation and a lack of safety in a breakout room. This led us to reconsider how to structure such activities in the future, particularly for spaces bringing together White and BIPOC participants (see Annex 5.2, Story #5).

Besides, in two interviews carried out as part of this research project (and not included as part of the data set for this section), two former DAF participants indicated that they had chosen to withdraw from actively participating in the network, partly as a result of their discomfort around the framing we adopted in the D&D circle with regards to the topics of racism and colonialism (see also Chapter 5, Section 3.2). Both of them considered that this framing did not feel relevant to their respective cultural backgrounds.

Therefore, it appears that the work of our circle has had some non-generative impacts on certain stakeholders in DAF. To a certain extent, we were expecting this when we started our work, as we expressed during some of our reflective sessions:

"Even though I went into [this work] with an idea of how challenging it might be... it has also been way more challenging than than I thought it would be." (CLF)

"People might not like us, they might not be comfortable with the things we do. It happens everywhere." (RC1)

While mistakes were made in the circle, and harm may even have been caused, I believe we collectively came to the conclusion that given the difficulty of doing this work, pain and discomfort are to be expected for everyone involved.

"We were entering into a very difficult subject, right? Diversity, decolonizing... Why environmental movements are so white, and... it's a difficult, difficult, uncomfortable topic." (LCR)

I will now turn to signs indicating more generative changes have been experienced by people from outside the D&D circle as a result of our activities.

1. Feedback on D&D workshops and trainings

To begin with, I would like to draw attention to other findings from the report I wrote to present participants' feedback on "Dismantling Racism," the November 2020 anti-racism training organised by the D&D circle (Cavé, 2021). There were 17 respondents to the feedback questionnaire, representing 53% of training participants.

In the "Key takeaways" section (p.3), I wrote that my key findings were...

• That the majority of training participants seem to have been successfully disturbed out of their usual ways of thinking and being, brought to acknowledge their privilege and racism, and connect emotionally with the impact of systemic racism on BIPoC (Black, Indigenous and People of Colour);
• That this awakening has brought most attendees to consider various ways in which they might change their practice and/or start new initiatives in order to help dismantle racism, within or outside of DAF (although several were unsure what they could or should do);
• That feedback on the training and especially the facilitators was overwhelmingly positive, although three respondents didn't connect with the approach that was chosen and voiced constructive criticism about the training.

In particular, many respondents mentioned experiencing discomfort as they awakened to difficult truths around their own racism and privilege - which often manifested as shame.

"It may sound odd, but I guess a kind of innocence, a blithe way of being, has died within me. Except that innocence is something pure and wholesome, which this wasn’t. It’s difficult to explain. They say ignorance is bliss but in this case I feel nothing but profound dismay and shame at my ignorance."

"[What died for me was] My sense of myself as an essentially ‘OK’ person"

This discomfort was often mingled with empathy for the painful life experience of BIPOC around the world, which was vividly expressed by the facilitators during the training. This emotional resonance appears to have facilitated many respondents' acceptance of their limited awareness of the topic and complicity in systemic oppression.

"I learned how heavy this burden is for BIPOC, and how much I have justified that through my life, I learnt that is not ok to call myself progressive and not be laser focussed on racism."

As a result, several respondents expressed a wish to inform themselves better, or to explore other avenues for generative change as a result of the training - including by creating shifts in their current practice or starting new activities and projects.

"I am so grateful as the training has raised many relevant concrete doorways for me where I can go forward with this dismantling racism work inner and outer. Eg questions about how I am in my projects both those involving people of many races and those just with WP. eg I work with asylum seekers and while I dont believe I respond differently to the BIPOC asylum seekers than to the caucasian ones that is now one area to explore for me."

A number of respondents also made specific mention of their wish to experiment with new practices, bring extra mindfulness of the topics of racism and privilege, and go deeper into anti-racism work - within the context of DAF:

"I have goals…to run a movement meditation space on the 4 R’s for PDA (but this is not a new goal) and I can only imagine it would be a safer space than it would have been before I began my own race work two years ago…this, for both BIPOC and whites I hope, as I know how personally challenging this territory can be."

Therefore, while the Dismantling Racism training drew some criticisms, overall its results were largely encouraging to me and, I suspect, to the rest of the D&D circle. Importantly, this participant feedback shows that experiencing difficult emotions in "doing the work" of addressing systemic oppression does not prevent one from wanting to create generative change - and in fact, it may even be an important condition for this commitment to emerge.

Other events organised by the D&D circle since November 2020 have taken place on a smaller scale. And while participant feedback has been requested on every occasion, low response rates to the questionnaires makes it more difficult to gauge the overall impact of these initiatives. On some occasions, oral feedback was privately transmitted to D&D circle members.

I will briefly present feedback received for two other initiatives:

• The Silenced Stories workshop (June 19 to July 3, 2021) - 10 participants
• The Ubuntu anti-racism training (March 5 to 12, 2022) - 8 participants

These attendance figures may seem small, with regards to the overall number of participants in DAF (see Chapter 5, Section 4). They are also three times lower than the attendance of the first “Dismantling Racism” training. However, I would not conclude from this that interest in D&D circle activities diminished over time. The first anti-racism training was strongly promoted toward the DAF volunteer community, with the full support of the Core Team, which was not the case of subsequent events. Besides, based on my observations, such attendance figures are well within the average range for events and workshops in DAF, which tend to be free and have much lighter demands (both workshops above were paid events, and required multi-week commitment from participants).

We received responses to the feedback questionnaire from 3 participants to the former, and from 4 participants to the latter event. Each questionnaire included four categories of questions, about:

1. the format and structure of the workshop;
2. any important insights that may have emerged from the process;
3. any particular curiosity that may have been awakened, and/or new intentions, goals or objectives;
4. respondents' involvement and/or self-identification with any particular role in DAF.

In terms of the workshops' format and structure, questionnaire responses on both events were overwhelmingly positive, though some suggestions for improvement were voiced. However, oral feedback from two participants in the Silenced Stories workshop mentioned a feeling of lack of safety in the (non-facilitated) breakout rooms.

As regards personal insights and understanding, four questionnaire responses mentioned improved awareness of one's own behaviour, assumptions, and/or personal history; and three responses spoke to better understanding of systemic oppression.

"Throughout this training, my blindness to privilege, power and rank really came into my awareness. Also reflecting on my personal privileges and conflicts within the system of power and rank within white culture society."

"My understanding of oppression in all forms was greatly expanded, as well as my understanding of how racist oppression in particular manifests."

Three respondents also mentioned improved self-confidence and more inspiration to take action as a result of their participation.

"[What is being born for me is] More of an openness to getting involved. I think one of the things this did was removed the unknown and the scary from racism issues. I feel more comfortable with it."

Seven respondents expressed ideas of new projects they wanted to undertake, and/or new goals or objectives they had set for themselves as a result of their participation.

"I've taken back up a personal memoir project I started about 5 years ago, having realized how much I'd like to know more about the now silenced voices of my dead parents and their parents."

Finally, five responses made mention of the facilitators' quality of presence, openness, and vulnerability as key elements that enabled participants to lower their own defences, and therefore engage in deeper learning.

"How do individuals talk with one another about vulnerability and need, without feeling attacked? I saw good examples of facilitation that allows this in the context of the workshop."

It therefore appears that like Dismantling Racism, Silenced Stories and Ubuntu have also had generally generative impacts on participants. And while there is much less documented feedback for the other activities initiated by the D&D circle, minutes from our meetings show that what feedback we received (generally orally, or in private messages) has been very positive. It is therefore tempting to conclude that generative changes similar to the ones documented for Dismantling Racism, Silenced Stories, and Ubuntu, have occurred for participants in our other workshops and events.

2. Other data on generative changes for stakeholders

Besides organising online events, we in the D&D circle have also been bringing the practice and awareness developed within the circle into various areas of DAF in which we are present, but also into our personal and professional lives, on an everyday basis. From our self-reports, mainly in our learning circles and our success sharing rounds, it appears that we have also been creating generative change around ourselves in this way - notwithstanding the situations of conflict that have erupted between us, and the other forms of discomfort mentioned in the previous section.

Firstly, by sharing resources and information with others in our respective circles, we have been able to spread or enhance their awareness of systemic oppression. For instance, one of us reported helping a close family member to become better aware of their unconscious racism as a result of difficult conversations with them; and a DAF participant shared this testimony with us during the Conscious Learning Festival webinar we organised to reflect on our learning and activities:

"I've been aware of racism, environmental damage, anti democratic forces, capitalism, entrenched inequity, the taking away of rights, colonialism, injustice, gender inequality, but they were in silos and not fully in my life. The full understanding of the intersectionality has been a very slow progress, and especially the awareness in my everyday life has taken a great step forward with participation in this circle. And experience of the principles of DA and action in DA meetings in general have made me aware of ways I have not practiced the awareness of these intersectionalities in everyday life." (CLF)

Our activities have also helped inspire others to engage in continuous activities to further their own learning on the topic of systemic oppression and decolonising. For example, following the anti-racism training that two of us brought to a UK environmental organisation, a learning circle was initiated by the training participants, who have kept convening and furthering their learning ever since.

There is also anecdotal evidence that as a result of our presence in DAF, the network might be becoming more literate in terms of our topics of interest, and that others are helping to spread this awareness. For instance, as a result of taking part in our workshops, at least two participants have written blog posts documenting their learning and shift in awareness and shared them broadly in DAF.

Another indicator worth mentioning is the number of DAF participants taking part in the workshops and other activities organised by the D&D circle. See Table 13 below for the number of registrations to several workshops and trainings⁶⁸.

Table 13: Participation in D&D circle workshops

Success on this level is difficult to gauge. The initial Dismantling Racism training drew over 30 participants, but attendance in later workshops has fluctuated strongly. However, not all of these events were promoted on an equal footing. While the Dismantling Racism training was officially endorsed by the DAF Core Team, who proactively and personally invited all active volunteers throughout the network to take part in it, later efforts were advertised no differently than other online events in DAF. This may help to account for their comparatively lower attendance (together with other factors, such as workshop length, donations being strongly encouraged, event visibility, etc.).

Besides workshops and trainings, the D&D circle has also convened community discussions in DAF, with the aim of establishing an informal circle of supporters and enablers for our activities (see "Strategic Value" section, below). See Table 14 for attendance data.

Table 14: Participation in other D&D circle activities

These monthly calls have been regularly attended by a steady number of participants expressing a strong interest in the work of our circle. Some of them spontaneously started new initiatives related to our circle's topics of interest within DAF, which is a positive sign of engagement likely catalysed by these gatherings.

However, issues have also emerged in the course of these meetings, which led us to rework their scope and purpose (Section 2.4.4.1). Therefore, it is difficult to assess whether “on balance” these monthly calls might have had a more positive or negative effect within DAF as a whole.

Finally, given that the original goal of the D&D circle "to make DA spaces safer for everyone, particularly people identifying as Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour," how to assess whether our presence and activities have helped to further that goal?

The data set shows a few instances of D&D circle members explicitly supporting people identifying as BIPOC, within DAF and elsewhere, and seeing this support acknowledged and validated.

In spite of this anecdotal data, given the absence of comprehensive data on DAF membership - particularly regarding ethnicity or other forms of systematic oppression - it is very difficult to answer this question. However, it may be telling to notice that at the level of "network leadership" (including the DAF Core Team, the Holding Group, and the most actively involved volunteers), representatives of marginalised social groups do not appear to be more present - as of March 2022 - than they were in August 2020⁶⁹.

It should also be mentioned that a BIPOC affinity group was launched by several DAF participants in early 2021, with the active participation of a former member of the D&D circle. Unfortunately, following an episode of conflict, the group ceased to actively engage in DAF, although one of its participants stated that it kept meeting regularly several months later.

Another member of this group stated that there was too little active attention placed on countering the effects of racism and colonialism within DAF, particularly in the DA Facebook group, which made it less safe as a result (see Annex 5.2, Story #6). She recommended the development of more small affinity groups to form across the network in order to engage in more mutual education and support in countering unhelpful cultural patterns in DAF.

My personal observations lead me to conclude that the demographic makeup of DAF remains overwhelmingly White, Western, and middle-class. This alone is not enough to deny that our spaces may have become safer, especially for BIPOC or other marginalised groups. Nonetheless, until a more thorough investigation is carried out in this regard, my assessment is that this is an area in which our circle has likely had little influence overall.

It is worth noting, on this matter, that bringing more BIPOC into DAF, or raising awareness of Deep Adaptation among BIPOC, outside of the current membership, is not in the D&D Circle’s remit – and, as a result, we haven’t been doing anything to make this happen. Therefore, this may point to an area of future action for the circle.⁷⁰

3.1.8 Enabling value: What has made it all possible for us?

Table 15: Enabling Value - Consolidated indicators and data sources

Enabling value can be described as "learning how to enable learning" (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020, p.98). In other words, it has to do with the extent to which a social learning space becomes a more effective container for social learning to happen. It has an internal dimension - whereby participants in the space are proactive in learning how to learn, or take a facilitative attitude - as well as an external dimension - when various resources or other forms of support are provided from outside the space, for example by an external facilitator or a budget (ibid, p.98).

Within the D&D circle, enabling value has been created internally in different ways. First of all, as I have mentioned previously, regular conversations and reflection rounds have been taking place among us to reflect on the conditions that support the learning we are trying to bring about. This involves reflecting on the design of our public-facing activities, both retrospectively - by considering comments and feedback received from participants - but also prospectively. For example, ahead of the Silenced Stories workshop, which I co-facilitated, I was coached by another circle member who, as a proficient facilitator, shared much precious advice with me on how to make the space safer.

Besides activity design, our conversations on how to enable ourselves and others to learn and change have mainly revolved around three key questions:

1. What processes and work culture have been helpful to us?
2. What containers are most useful for people to do this work?
3. What attitude is most generative in doing the work?

In reflecting on these questions, we referred to certain rituals and processes that have assisted us in learning together. I will provide some insights from our circle to each of these questions, and about these rituals and processes, in Section 3.1.12 below.

These conversations have taken place in spaces dedicated to our learning and reflection. This includes, first and foremost, our circle’s weekly meetings. Indeed, besides allowing us to discuss operational matters relevant to the projects we undertake, these meetings also make space for “success sharing rounds” that enable us to gain a clearer awareness of the broader effects of our participation in the circle. Other spaces dedicated to learning and reflecting have also included the D&D Conscious Learning Festival webinar, our monthly learning circles, and the retrospective sessions that took place between September 2021 and January 2022 (see "Strategic Value" below).

But other important spaces focused on "learning how to learn" have also included two conflict transformation processes, convened by two different facilitators, to help resolve tensions and conflict between members of our circle. These processes seem to have created deeper trust and mutual affection between all parties involved.

This episode points to another important indicator of Enabling value-creation in our group, which we often reflected on: the presence of "key enablers." I use this term to refer to circle participants who have played a particularly important role in facilitating our collective learning.

"Nontokozo's been great, she's been able to hold a space of holding us accountable. And also being able to feel her love. And that is not an easy thing. I feel I've that find it very rare. But she's been pretty clear with us at times when we really needed to act up and call someone to get that damn plumbing fixed." (CLF)

The rest of us in the circle, too, have been instrumental in fostering our collective learning - and it appears that our mutual care and encouragements played an important part, especially at moments of tension.

"Thank you to everybody that I've worked with in this circle for being so gentle and so compassionate and so incredibly supportive." (CLF)

Finally, enabling value was also created for the circle thanks to external support. In particular, the DAF Core Team strongly supported the D&D circle from the very beginning. This sponsorship - for example, by allowing the circle to have its own page on the DAF website⁷¹ - helped the circle gain legitimacy, for example when inviting DAF volunteers to the Dismantling Racism training. Communication and trust-building was facilitated by several Core Team members (including myself) being simultaneously part of both the Core Team and the D&D circle.

"Thanks to the core team, that really is, for me an example of where the DAF governance structure has worked tremendously well." (CLF)

3.1.9 Strategic value: What has been the quality of our engagement with strategic stakeholders?

Table 16: Strategic Value - Consolidated indicators and data sources

Strategic value has to do with "the extent and clarity of conversations and relationships that help clarify the direction and usefulness of a social learning space" (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020, p.106). Like Enabling value, it can be created internally - through strategic conversations among participants - as well as externally - by engaging with external stakeholders. In the case of the latter, this involves "processes by which participants adopt, renegotiate, or resist external expectations and figure out how they can realistically adopt, contribute to, or subvert external goals" (p.107).

This type of value creation has been less of a focus within the D&D circle, compared to other cycles. However, I believe such value has also been created, both internally and externally.

Our internal strategic conversations mostly took place in the process of co-authoring several strategic documents:

• Our initial Mission Statement, first published in August 2020, which was then revised and expanded in October 2021;
• Our Theory of Change diagram, first published in March 2021, and then revised and expanded on several occasions since then. This diagram lays out the current shared intentions of our circle as regards the change we aim to bring about, and the main directions and activities through which we hope to enact this change. Since late 2021, the monthly D&D open meetings have also invited the co-creation of this diagram on behalf of stakeholders beyond the D&D circle.
• Our Circle Agreements, first drafted in February 2021, and finally agreed upon in October 2021. This document details the shared intentions of our circle as regards the way in which we wish to do carry out our work together.

Another important strategic conversation was our 2021 retrospective (September 2021-January 2022). Facilitated using an online tool, and inspired from an Appreciative Inquiry process, these sessions enabled each of us to anonymously express:

• What we enjoyed about working in our circle;
• What else, what more we wanted to do;
• What we felt we should stop doing;
• Ideas for actions based on the three first questions.

This process enabled us to share honest feedback with one another, and thus gain a better sense of how to improve what we do. It also led us to vote on the suggested actions that emerged, to create a set of 12 priorities for our circle in 2022. These priorities are now displayed in a new document, which we have been sharing in our monthly open meetings, to invite new collaborations.

Noteworthy external strategic conversations, so far, have mostly involved two types of stakeholders:

1. Strategic individuals within DAF;
2. Strategic groups within DAF.

The first type of conversations have been most prominent. Since late 2021, they have mostly featured online calls with DAF participants who took part in our workshops, trainings, and other activities (see "Realised Value" above), and whom we have been inviting to collaborate and strategise with our circle ("Community Connectors" call and monthly Open Meetings). This has led to important new input into the our work. For example, one regular participant in our monthly open meetings has been suggesting many improvements to our Theory of Change diagram, which has led to rich conversations. Another person decided to create a newsletter about the activities of our circle.

Conversations with interested parties also regularly take place by means of the #diversity-and-decolonising discussion channel, within the DAF Slack workspace. This channel was initiated by D&D circle members in June 2021, but is not moderated by our circle.

In early 2021, a strategic interaction also took place between the D&D circle and an influential DAF participant. We pointed out that a video recently produced by the latter contained some statements we viewed as problematic, and invited this person to a discussion. As a result of this conversation, they decided to remove that segment from their video (see Annex 5.2, Story #5).

In early 2021, conversations also began between the D&D circle and two groups of external stakeholders:

• a group of BIPOC participants in DAF;
• a network of Global South scholars and activists from outside DAF.

However, as a result of a situation of conflict within DAF at the time (involving some members of the D&D circle and of the DAF Core Team), both groups stopped interacting with DAF spaces in February 2021. No further conversations with these groups have taken place since then.

The stakeholder group with which we have had the most conversations is the DAF Core Team, which plays a stewarding role within DAF. As mentioned above (see "Enabling value"), the Core Team has provided various forms of support to the circle since its creation. In recognition of the D&D circle's strategic importance within DAF, a Memorandum of Understanding "providing outlines for extra support and collaboration between [the circle] and other important stakeholders within DAF" was agreed between the two groups in May 2021.

Overall, external strategic value-creation appears to be an area towards which the D&D circle has only recently started to focus on more fully. It may be the case that important conversations needed to take place internally, for more collective clarity to exist, before sustained engagement with external stakeholders could happen. There is certainly much unexplored potential in this area.

3.1.10 Orienting value: How and where have we been locating ourselves in the broader landscape?

Table 17: Orienting Value - Consolidated indicators and data sources

Whereas strategic value addresses "relationships with people who have a direct stake in the effect of [the] learning" that is taking place in a social learning space, orienting value reflects "a general orientation to any relevant aspects of the broader landscape" of which that social learning space is part of (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020, p.114). Here again, both an internal and an external dimension may be present. Internally, orienting value is about the participants taking the time to discuss similarities and differences of their respective contexts, which they bring into the space as part of their identities and practices. Externally, it has to do with reaching out and better understanding the broader historical, cultural, and political landscape that it is inscribed in - and which includes other spaces, but also institutions, practices, relationships, individuals, etc. (ibid, p.114)

Within the D&D circle, the trust and strong relationships that have emerged for us (see Potential Value section), as well as the learning spaces we have convened (see Enabling Value section), have led to many conversations enabling us to better understand our respective backgrounds, life stories, identities, and professional contexts. For example, stories of deep personal trauma were shared with the circle on several occasions, translating the topic of systemic oppression into vivid personal experience.

"Sometimes, when someone with privilege brings up my lack of privilege, it can become a very vulnerable conversation. I can feel as if the person is feeling sorry for me - so I don't want to talk about it. Even if I did want to talk about it, I wouldn't want to if there was a possibility for the person feeling sorry for me." (LC2)

A situation that enabled us to become much more familiar with one another was the conflict that erupted between two of us in early 2021, and which led to one of us leaving the circle for several weeks. As mentioned above (see "Enabling value" section), another member of the circle volunteered to hold a conflict-transformation process. Although the process took a long time, and was difficult and painful, this process enabled both parties to understand each other's perspective much better, and to become reconciled.

"And... [we] took quite a bit of time, actually spending time trying to sort out what had created a conflict. And it wasn't a meaning-making as I thought it would be like, it wasn't, 'Oh, we misunderstood this. And if we only...' It actually turned out we had different working styles, different ways of thinking. And in the process that we were led to very skilfully by Katie Carr, that became clear to me that we have different ways of thinking, and [I] quit trying to make the person think like me, and just gave them more space." (LCR)

Externally, orienting value has mostly been created through collaborations initiated on the occasion of some of our workshops and trainings. Two other networks (Permaculture CoLab and Radical Joy for Hard Times) provided support for promotion and funding on several occasions; and collaborations with external workshop facilitators took place on two occasions. Besides, one of us (Sasha) started to facilitate workshops on topics of systemic oppression outside of DAF, through their collaboration with another group of facilitators. It is likely that this will soon lead to these workshops being offered within DAF.

Overall, as with strategic value, external creation of orienting value has not yet been a strong focus of the D&D circle - contrary to internal orientation. However, our recent efforts to document and disseminate our learning and practices, particularly through videos, as well as our initial collaborations with other networks and groups, may soon provide occasions for more such value being created.

3.1.11 Transformative value: What have been some broader or deeper individual and collective effects of our activities?

Table 18: Transformative Value - Consolidated indicators and data sources

This last type of value-creation is the most difficult to recognise, as it is generally unplanned, and deciding what counts as "transformative" is "a matter of judgment" (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020, p.120). Transformative value is about broader or deeper changes happening for participants in the learning space, and/or further afield, often as an unexpected side-effect of the social learning taking place in other cycles.

In this cycle, too, this value can manifest internally or externally, depending on where the transformation manifests - not where it originates. Internal transformative value is about "an internal transformation in the social learning space that takes place because of a radical or disruptive change" (ibid, p.119). Conversely, external transformative value refers to "something happening in the space that causes a transformation outside the space" (ibid). Both types can be about changes experienced by participants in the learning space: for example, it can lead them to reconsider the difference they are trying to make, or it may reflect an important change in a person's trajectory, their identity, and the way they interact with the world.

Within the D&D circle, each of us has expressed undergoing deep personal transformations as a result of our involvement, on several occasions. While it often seems difficult for us to pinpoint precisely what these shifts have been, three recurring themes in our discussions on this topic may be indicators of transformative learning occurring.

The first one is about considering oneself and/or the world from a very new perspective. Some of us, particularly with a more privileged background, expressed how the work we have been doing in the circle has enabled us to become much more deeply aware of systemic oppression and our role in perpetuating it. For one of us, this realisation completely shifted her idea of what the work of this circle was about.

"When you invited me to join the circle, I was naive, and definitely came into it with an attitude of, 'I can learn better skills to make the spaces I host more accessible and more inclusive.' And definitely ignorant about my own embedded white privilege and internalized oppression and racism and that, you know, that I inherited as being part of this modern culture..." (CLF)

"And so for me being part of this circle, and the early work that we were doing in the run up to and then in response to the anti racism training was deeply, deeply, deeply transformational, for me personally, because I started to really understand systemic racism and just how blind nearly everybody is to it unless they are suffering because of it, unless they are a marginalized group unless they are black or indigenous." (LCR)

One of us also stated that coming to terms with this awakening of their role as perpetrators of oppression was particularly difficult. A crucial aspect of it was to understand the difference between personal and collective responsibility.

"If you buy a house, and the plumbing is bad, you're not to blame for the plumbing, but don't you want to get it fixed? ... We're all responsible, but we're not to blame. And I think that this is one of the really big obstacles of trying to get through this work, is trying to get through that thing of it landing in your body that you've that I, I have benefited massively, from a system of white supremacy. I didn't create it. And I don't consciously want to perpetuate it. And I need to really pay attention to how I might inadvertently, and I need to use my voice, as somebody who stands in the system, to say, 'We really need to change this, this plumbing really is leaking, and it's leaking on other people's heads. I'm in the top apartment, and they're living underneath me'." (CLF)

Several of us also explained how engaging in the work of the D&D circle has enabled us to gain a clearer, deeper awareness of our own experiences of oppression (particularly those of us who self-identify as women), and how this may have constrained our ways of being and acting in the world.

"Transformative aspect of this work: an opening into my own ways of experiencing oppression. Working on behalf of people who have experienced more oppression than me enables me to look at my own experience without drowning in victimhood." (LC1)

One of us, who identifies as a Black and Indigenous person, testified she found a depth of safety and trust within our circle, among White people, unlike anything she ever experienced elsewhere. This has enabled her to be more fully herself, and showed her that it is possible for Black and White bodies to form such spaces together. She expressed it was critical for more people to know that this is even possible.

"If I had to study what happened... in our group, I will say that the most incredible thing happened is that we created... for me, a space of safety with white people was created. Where I can speak about racism, I can speak about... I can just be myself without all the complications and all the reactions that I had received in the other organization that I was in... And even when I made mistakes, I could speak loudly about those mistakes. ... So it's so profound... I don't think I have Western words to describe that. ... You know, more people need to just be witness to this, that it is possible... not just showing it to other white people... it's showing it also to the BIPoC people who are so wounded, who were rightfully hurt and angry and looking for justice, that there are other ways. You know, there are other ways, and these ways involve us being able to just relax and be able to heal and not having to fight so much. Yeah, like we can create those spaces. Spaces of trust, right?" (RC1)

As a second indicator of transformative value-creation, several of us spoke of important changes that took place in the group, largely as a result of the challenges we faced - especially conflict - and of our perseverance in overcoming these challenges, which led to much deeper trust (as expressed above) and mutual understanding between us. In particular, the conflict transformation process that reconciled two of us appears to have played a very important role.

"I think [as a result of this process] we then backed off and reoriented on our work. And that gave us a pause, enough where there could be healing and growth. And then we could come back together with more understanding, and great affection, and trust that we could handle really difficult experiences." (LCR)

Finally, several of us mentioned having become empowered by our participation, especially as a result of learning new ways of expressing ourselves and overcoming our internalised oppression.

"This work has been deeply transformational. For me. I almost feel like I've got a fluency and the language that will allow me to speak up anywhere." (CLF)

"I've benefited so deeply from taking a look at how oppression works. Because... for myself, I'm both the oppressor and the oppressed. And when I can get the attention off my own pain and pay attention to how it is impacting other people, I get the benefit of understanding how it's playing out in my life. And I get better at speaking up when I'm in a situation that I need to defend myself." (CLF)

While most of these statements appear to put the emphasis on internal transformative value, it is likely that some of these changes - by affecting our identities and ways of being in the world - also have external ramifications within the other learning spaces in which we participate.

What broader conclusions can we draw from the value that has been created in these different cycles for us in the D&D circle?
 

3.1.12 Four integrative themes

I will end this section on Effect Data with a discussion of some of the most important learnings that I believe have occurred for us in the D&D circle, organised in four integrative themes. I see these themes as forming the main "undercurrents" of the conversations we have had in the D&D circle, as we reflected on our practice and the changes that happened in our lives as a result:

1. Conflict and tensions
2. Mutual support
3. How to do this work?
4. New awareness

These themes will connect many of the areas of value-creation presented above. For me, they bring to light important answers to the research questions I am exploring in this chapter.

The insights below are "my story" of what our group has experienced and (un)learned - although I draw much of this understanding from the two recorded group conversations convened by our circle to reflect on our experience: in our Conscious Learning Festival webinar (Oct. 2021); and in our recorded Learning Circle (Feb. 2022).

Conflict has been very present in the discussions of our circle, particularly during the first half of 2021.

Tensions around the work of the circle started to occur in the run-up to the Dismantling Racism training, the first event organised by the D&D circle, in November 2020. Some of us took on the responsibility to extend personal invitations to all the active participants in DAF, and experienced a backlash from several of them - particularly White males - in this process. Thereafter, a few participants in the training voiced their disapproval with certain aspects of the training (see section "Realised value").

In late January 2021, a series of difficult interactions happened between several members of our circle who were also working together in the DAF Core Team. One of the Circle members, who identifies as a Person of Colour, experienced others as exhibiting white supremacy behaviour patterns, but other people's interpretations of the issues causing the conflict, were different - and resolution proved unachievable. For the Person of Colour this unresolved conflict resulted in them ceasing to be part of both the D&D circle, and the DAF Core Team. As a secondary impact, relationships between the Circle and two other groups of stakeholders were also interrupted (see section "Strategic value"). Following reflection within the D&D circle, and the Core Team, people involved in the conflict published statements acknowledging responsibility for harmful mistakes. However, these were not successful in mending relationships.

Parallel to this, for some of us in the circle, the Dismantling Racism training brought about a deep awakening to our complicity in systemic oppression. On top of this, other strong emotions were evoked by the conflict mentioned above. This situation appears to have contributed to inflamed tensions between two of the remaining members of the circle, which led to the departure of one of them. However, a conflict resolution process facilitated by a third member of the circle led to reconciliation and to the return of the member who had left.

Besides, at various points in time during and after the main two conflict episodes above, other tensions emerged for some of us in other groups we are or were part of, and were discussed in our circle.

While interpersonal conflict appears to have been a source of very difficult emotions - or negative Immediate value - for most of us in the circle (it certainly has been the case for me), it also has been a source of very rich learning and change, individually and collectively, particularly in the process of exploring conflict transformation within our circle. Many insights and changes emerged from our collective reflection on this topic, and space does not allow me to touch on them all here.⁷² Suffice to point out this statement, voiced as a piece of advice to other groups by one of us who took part in the conflict-transformation process mentioned above:

"Welcome conflict! Don't create it, but welcome conflict, and welcome that as an opportunity for the group to shift. Because our circle became so much more intimate after we'd gone through that process. I do think I do think a lot of things shifted." (LCR)

Another important aspect I will draw attention to is that it appears that in nearly all of the cases of tensions or conflict we discussed in our circle, these tensions seemed related at least partly to our topics of interest - i.e. addressing systemic forms of separation and oppression. This may be a sign that working on such topics is likely to bring about frictions with others, particularly in a context of increasing social polarisation. It may also be an indication that members of our circle are more consciously "facing into conflict," and therefore living by our Agreements (DAF D&D Circle, 2021), which state the following:

We understand that conflict avoidance is an aspect of white supremacy culture, and that it plays a key role in keeping various structures of oppression in place within society. As such, we commit to placing a special emphasis on acknowledging conflict as an opportunity for deep cultural change, and to do so tenderly and with dedication. ...
We recognise that our social and cultural conditioning brings unconscious behaviours that are expressions of systemic racism, white supremacy and other patterns of oppression. We are committed to identifying these patterns in self and others and commit to inviting and providing feedback when these patterns emerge in the spirit of learning.

My assessment is that interpersonal conflict, as an object of reflection, and as an impetus for generative group processes and renewed mutual understanding (when we succeeded in doing so!), has ultimately been a major source of positive Potential, Enabling, and Transformative value for the D&D circle.

This was confirmed in 2022, as the outcome of a second round of conflict-transformation in our circle (Section 2.2.4.2).

As we have often reflected on, an essential factor enabling our group to keep going, in spite of the difficulty of the work we set out to do, and the magnitude of the challenges we faced - particularly with regards to conflict - has been the strong relationships, deep trust, and psychological safety that we have been cultivating in the D&D circle.

This appears to have been enabled by such things as the relaxed pace, and the open and democratic atmosphere of our calls, which has made it pleasant for us to keep attending them week after week; the many occasions we created to get to know one another better, including our respective personal and professional contexts; our willingness to prioritise mutual care above project outcomes - while still paying attention to the latter; the emphasis in our circle, as elsewhere in DAF, to connect with our emotions, and voice our mutual affection and gratitude to one another; etc. Much positive Immediate value was created as a result, including our feeling of commitment and identification with the group.

The presence among us of key facilitators, bringing with us essential skills, wisdom and processes - thus generating Enabling value - was also critical to provide a more structured container for these bonds and this atmosphere to be continuously nurtured.

This container of safety and trust provided the critical foundation enabling us to keep attending the places we convened in which to focus on our own learning, for example by transforming our conflicts, or discussing our challenges, difficulties, and other stories (often of a very personal nature). It has also been a source of self-confidence, and of inspiration to experiment with new initiatives or engage in new collaborations, which yielded generative (and sometimes, painful) changes for others. In this way, Immediate and Enabling value helped us generate Potential value, which in turn led to Applied and Realised value.

For many, and perhaps all of us, this space of trust has even been a direct source of Transformative value: in and of itself, being part of it has been a uniquely rewarding experience in our lives, despite the challenges we have faced and keep facing.

Therefore, I see this foundation of trust and mutual care as an essential enabling condition for everything we have done, and even for the very existence of the D&D circle.

Previously, I mentioned that an important aspect of Enabling value-creation in our circle has come from discussions on how to enable ourselves and others to learn and change.

As this topic directly addresses my Research Question 2.b, for each of these questions I will provide a brief summary of some insights that have emerged from our recorded conversations on these topics - particularly from the Conscious Learning Festival webinar, and in the Learning Circle session we organised specifically to reflect on our work and insights.
 

• What processes and work culture have been helpful to us?

Some general principles

First of all, several of us have stressed the importance of pace: we have found that slowing down is both an antidote to the modern productivist ethic focused on efficiency, and that it affords us the possibility of developing more trust and weaving stronger relationships among ourselves. For example, during our meetings, we have normalised setting aside our formal meeting agenda to take care of one of us going through a difficult personal time. This may take the form of an informal Wisdom Circle process, during which all members of the circle listen to that person sharing their thoughts, feelings or dilemma, reflecting back what we heard, and optionally offering counsel.

This is not to say that we haven't given attention to projects helping to further the aims of the circle; rather, we have been trying to find a balance between being efficient, and getting to know and take care of one another. This can also involve us laying back and listening to someone playing music once in a while! Such practices may be particularly important in an online setting like ours, in which occasions to make friends "outside of the project" can be hard to find.

"And I think getting - also in the Zoom space, intentionally creating those times when you get to know other people. Because as as other people have said, you're not meeting at the watercooler, you're not taking a moment break while you drink some coffee, you come into a meeting, and then you leave the meeting. And that's so, you know, creating those moments, and whether it's that you connect with each other outside of the specific meaning space, meeting space in other ways, or in the meeting, you take time to just get to know - who are these people? And how do they think? that's really been important." (LCR)

On several occasions, some of us have mentioned the importance of regular attendance of our online calls. Doubtless, present members’ commitment to the group (as described in Section 3.1.4) has been helpful for us to develop better mutual understanding.

We encourage leadership to be distributed, with each of us stepping up at times to take the initiative on certain projects or activities. This has allowed our group to avoid relying on a single leader, and therefore, may be helpful for more co-creation and mutual accountability to happen among us.

We have also been trying to allow ourselves to be frank with one another, and thus deal with the conflict aversion that the dominant culture has trained us in. Considering how deeply ingrained this attitude is in most of us, since July 2022, we have decided to dedicate specific time and space for discussions of uncomfortable feelings – even very minor – in our calls, so as to encourage such frank conversations (Section 2.2.4.2).

"A culture of being able to name what you're observing is really powerful in any group I think, permission for a member to say, 'I'm noticing...' or 'I feel...' and be able to actually speak it into the space, is really powerful." (LCR)

Similarly, we try to become more comfortable with uncertainty, and with making mistakes, to deal with our perfectionism.

"Maybe for other white people who might be watching this, and who might be wanting to do this work or hesitating to do this work: it's okay not to know, it's okay to make mistakes." (LCR)

Other important principles are listed in the D&D circle Agreements (DAF D&D Circle, 2021).

Of course, all of these principles are part of a long process of individual and collective unlearning which we are only just beginning. To help us as we put them into practice, we rely on certain processes that we routinely use in nearly all our calls, and which I will describe now.
 

How do our calls unfold?

An important part of our calls has to do with bringing our attention back to our whole being, including our affective and somatic states. As is commonly done in DAF, we begin our calls with a moment of "grounding," which is a moment of collective meditation.

"The grounding means different things to different people, and depends on who in this group feels like doing it on a particular day... Sasha very often reminds us of gravity and our feet on the floor, our connectedness through through the planet. And that's really, really helpful, because Zoom is such an esoteric, mind-based thing, to bring us back into our bodies, but then also remind us that these bodies that we're looking at on the screen are actually connected in some way. And just a whole lot of lovely stuff around that. And I think for me, that often brings me out of the work mode, 'I'm going into a zoom call to achieve something.'' And back into, 'I'm sharing a space with these other beautiful human beings who have wonderful intentions.' And actually just sharing the space with these and other wonderful beings is actually enough." (LCR)

The grounding is followed by a check-in, in which each of us in turn express where we are in our day and in our lives, and can touch on such personal issues as health, bereavement, mental health, etc.

We make a point to rotate roles and responsibilities in our circle. Therefore, after check-ins, we negotiate who will facilitate, who will take notes, and who will be the "vibes-watcher" paying attention to the energy in the call and pointing out tensions when necessary.

The first "work item" on our calls tends to be a round of success sharing. In this round, each of us is free to tell the others about positive changes in our lives or in the world, generally in relation to our topics of interest.

As an outcome of our work on conflict transformation (Section 2.2.4.2), we then open up some space for a round of “hot spots,” in which anyone is invited to express feelings of discomfort or dissatisfaction with the work of the circle or with any individual circle members, for collective exploration in a spirit of compassion, curiosity and respect.

The call then proceeds from there, with agenda items being selected from the circle backlog document and suggested by whoever is present.

Towards the end of our call, the facilitator asks everyone whether anything needs to be said or heard. This provides another occasion for any unvoiced discontent or friction (or, indeed, positive feelings) to be expressed. If necessary, the group (or some of us) may decide to stay longer on the call to address the issue more fully.

Finally, we end our calls with a round of check-outs, which are similar to check-ins.
 

• What containers are most useful for people to "do the work"?
   

Our discussions have led us to consider several important aspects to the design of a container that may enable difficult conversations around systemic oppression to take place, for maximum individual and collective learning.

The issue of psychological safety often comes to the fore in such matters. As we have seen above, for us in the D&D circle, this feeling of being in a "safe enough" space - and our sense of trust in one another - have been critical in enabling us to be more present with one another, and to support each other as we worked through considerable tensions and difficulties. For one of us, this feeling of safety even appears to have been transformative. (See Annex 5.2, Story #2)

"[Doing this work] is really about making people safe enough to envisage alternate possibilities." (LC1)

Therefore, one type of container that appears most likely to foster this sense of deep trust and safety, as a result of strong mutual relationships and mutual appreciation, would be that of a small group of people doing what we did in the D&D circle - i.e. committing to regular meetings, gathering around a clearly stated intention, and finding ways to engage in a common journey of learning while holding each other accountable. Developing strong facilitation skills as part of this journey may also prove particularly useful⁷³.

However, most people are not fortunate enough to be part of such a group, and might only engage in work around systemic oppression within the confines of a short workshop or training. How to bring enough of a sense of safety within such a space?

Following expert advice shared within our circle, event facilitators may help to create a safe-enough space through such practices as:

• Giving participants a sense of agency to do what's best for themselves, including choosing when and how much sensitive personal information to share with others;
• Articulating clear requests on issues of confidentiality, within and outside the workshop;
• Letting participants know exactly what they are going to be experiencing from the start, to avoid any surprises;
• Inviting everyone to travel to their "tender edge," with one foot outside their comfort zone - and to assume that everyone else is at their tender edge. This can encourage more mutual kindness;
• etc.

However, creating this sense of safety is an art, and cannot be reduced to a simple to-do list. In the D&D circle, we are trying to continuously learn from our mistakes in this regard. For example, we found out that inviting workshop participants to make themselves vulnerable and share very personal stories with complete strangers may feel unsafe without the presence of a facilitator.

In particular, inviting the sharing of stories of personal oppression and trauma requires special care and attention, due to the charge underlying this topic. While we have found that finding space to voice such stories can be liberating, safeguards should be in place to elicit respectful attention from the audience, instead of objectification, expressions of empathy, or even dismissal as part of "oppression Olympics" reactions. This extends to the need for confidentiality around repeating or commenting on personal issues outside the space where such aspects may have been voiced.

Much of the art of facilitating such difficult conversations seems to revolve around a difficult balance: that of inviting others to remain at the edge of their comfort zone long enough for personal growth and transformation to occur - but not to venture completely outside this zone. Otherwise, it is likely that people will shut down or turn away from such conversations.
 

• What attitude is most generative in doing the work?
   

In our conversations, we often came back to the importance of bringing humility and loving kindness to all work around systemic oppression. Given the complexity of the topic, no one can ever pretend to mastery of it; and everyone is entangled in the suffering it brings.

Personal commitment and dedication to transforming one's way of being and doing are also important - as opposed to hoping for more inclusive policies, or a reform of the justice system. On the group level, particularly during certain conflicts that rocked our circle, this sense of a shared mission was also very precious.

"So for me radical change comes from inside as well, so I want to work with people that are doing the work inside of themselves, not just saying okay, I'm not going to say this because if I say this I'm going to get fired because there's a policy - no, real people know that I can't say this because it's not the right thing to say." (RC1)

"We really feel a commitment, a deep commitment to that mission, which helps to lift us out of some of the personal difficulties that we might have or somebody's style." (LCR)

We also stressed the importance of patience, perseverance, and courage - including the courage to make mistakes - in doing work of cultural transformation that is likely generational.

"It takes time. It takes patience, it takes courage, it takes relationship building. It takes those moments that we were talking about of where we disagree with each other... and having to find loving responses to our disagreements. And that is learned. And it's like sitting in the fire. Because the fire will always be there." (CLF)

Finally, the role of anger emerged in several occasions for us. We acknowledged that anger may be righteous, and that it is fully understandable coming from individuals and collective groups living with a daily experience of oppression that is not being met by corresponding reparations or policy changes. We also recognised that anger can act as a source of strength and courage. Nonetheless, some of us expressed scepticism as to the effectiveness of acting from anger alone in the course of seeking social justice - and stressed the importance of trust-building and mutual healing as an alternative.

"You have a right to be angry. But the way you go about it, is it bringing you results? Is there another way to address these issues that isn't seen as taking care of white people's fragility? How do we make these spaces more visible - spaces that are safe for both black, and white people?" (LC2)

The reflective conversations that we have had on the topic of how to carry out the difficult work of anti-racism and decolonisation have led to the creation of much Potential and Enabling value for our circle. Sharing our insights on these questions has certainly helped us build up our skills, and to simultaneously maintain our circle as a social learning space, while providing better spaces for others to learn in (thereby creating Realised value).

Thanks to the mutual care and trust within our circle, and to the other features of the containers we co-created as part of our social learning space, we have been able to engage in a continued individual and collective process leading us to voice new insights and information, share stories of practice and experience, undertake new initiatives and interact with various stakeholders. Thanks to our regular meetings, and the various occasions we created for sharing and collectively processing our thoughts and feelings on all of the above, we have been developing various skills, and new kinds of awareness.

This awareness covers many domains: from learning about systemic oppression, recognising its various shapes and forms, and acquiring new language to talk about this domain of practice, all the way to new forms of understanding ourselves and the complexity of our entanglement with systemic violence, oppression and separation. We have crystallised some of this newfound information or awareness into various artefacts, such as blog posts and videos - and on occasion, we have heard back from others who drew value from these creations. A virtuous cycle of Potential, Applied and Realised value was thus allowed to unfold.

Where these insights have been most profound, they have even contributed to deep shifts happening within us (Transformative value), allowing for new identities to emerge, as well as new ways of being in the world, and expressing ourselves. In turn, this probably is enabling us to become more skilled at the work we do, and therefore, to ultimately bring about more generative change around ourselves.

2.2 Contribution data: How is the learning space contributing to the value-creation?

While the effect data presented above accounts for the creation of value in various cycles, a second part of this evaluation process needs to look more closely into how each of us consider our learning as attributable to our activities in the circle (as opposed to other causal factors). This requires contribution data – that is to say, cross-cycle data taking the form of value-creation stories. These stories “connect specific activities to outcomes by going through each intervening value cycle, with each cycle marking a rhetorical move in the story” (Wenger-Trayner et al. 2019, p.10-1). This helps one to “build a plausible case that the intervention [or social learning space] contributed to changes in practice that made a difference” (ibid, p.11).

Cross-referencing effect data and contribution data allows one to build a more robust picture of the value of a social learning space. Effect data “corroborate statements in stories, and… amplify a story’s significance by linking it to the bigger picture”, while contribution data “give meaning to numbers and... provide plausible claims of contribution to effects by social learning” (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020, p.192).

2.2.1 Value-creation stories as expressions of social learning flows and loops

Another important aspect of value-creation stories is that, because they bring the participant’s experience of agency into the evaluation, they “reflect the lived logic of generating, recognizing, and translating value in order to make a difference” (ibid, p.208). This logic is manifested through the flow of social learning between one cycle and the next. “Social learning happens not just within cycles, but more importantly when value flows across the cycles – and in the process, gets translated into new forms” (ibid, p.128). This flow is social learning itself – what enables someone to make a difference by translating one type of value into another.

For example, a new insight emerging from a conversation (Potential value) might lead to a person changing something about their practice (Applied value), and therefore obtaining better results (Realised value). The reason why value-creation stories are so important is that the Wenger-Trayner social learning framework views participants “as both carriers and the witnesses of the flow of value creation across cycles” (ibid, p.130). It is therefore crucial to hear participants’ stories.

Stories are also useful as vehicles to spread further afield the learning taking place in a social learning space, by inviting the listener’s identification with the storyteller, and by “captur[ing] the concrete experience and uncertainty involved in practice, which makes it easier to use them to learn concretely how to make a difference” (ibid, p.131). Nonetheless, it is better for stories to be “taken with a pinch of salt,” as they may contain what other practitioners might consider to be exaggerations and distortions; therefore, it can be useful to invite people familiar with the context of a particular story to consider its plausibility. This feedback can then help the value-creation detective to go back to the storyteller with more clarifying questions, eventually leading to a more nuanced picture of the created value.

When a participant’s story of value creation is fed back into a shared social learning space that played a role in generating some of this value, a learning loop is created – as “a value flow that returns to its origin or an earlier point in the flow – enriched with additional learning gleaned along the way” (ibid, p.133). This loop can take the form of a verbal account, but also be expressed in the shape of a video, text, piece of data, etc.

Loops play a critical role in terms of optimizing the learning taking place in a social learning space:

Since paying attention is a key component of a social learning space, loops are a crucial element: they bring back something to pay attention to. While any flow through the framework can represent valuable social learning and make a difference, loops accelerate, deepen, and widen learning. The question for cultivating a social learning space is how to systematically transform flows into loops. Becoming adept at designing activities and creating the conditions for loops is a key skill for facilitating social learning. (ibid, p.133)

These loops can be short – as a flow of learning looping between two cycles, often iteratively. For example, a pleasant and thought-stimulating conversation will likely create a short loop between the Immediate and Potential cycles. Such loops help propel the social learning by giving it “interactive momentum” (ibid, p.139).

As for long loops, they provide the context for the shorter loops. They are longer flows of value, traversing several cycles along the way, and help participants in a social learning space to get a clearer idea of what difference – if any – is being made as a result of their individual and collective learning (ibid, p.135).

Both kinds of loops can be identified in value-creation stories.

2.2.2 Collecting and sharing the value-creation stories

Value-creation stories are articulated by the participants in the social learning space themselves. The role of a “value detective” is to help participants elicit such stories, record them, and check with the participant whether the story corresponds to their experience.

See Annex 3.3 for more details on the process of collection and analysis of value-creation stories in DAF.

With these criteria in mind, I collected (or co-produced) five value-creation stories with each of the members of the D&D circle, myself included. This process lasted between October 2021 and early March 2022, and was carried out mostly through research interviews, group calls, and follow-up emails with each participant. I wrote my own story (see Annex 5.2, Story #5) in February 2022 as a first-person narrative, on the basis of a conversation with my co-researcher Wendy Freeman. Each story was elicited by the question: “What have been some important experiences, changes or learnings for you, as a result of taking part in the D&D circle?”

Once every participant felt satisfied with the way their story was written, I offered them to publish it openly on the Conscious Learning Blog, as a way to share our learning with the rest of DAF. Every person agreed to do so⁷⁴.

2.2.3 Stories and effect data indicators

This process was completed before I carried out the Template Analysis referred to in the previous section. However, I had already began collecting certain effect value indicators prior to and during the conversations that led to the compiling of these stories (see this list of initial indicators in Annex 5.1). Monitoring these indicators prompted me to ask questions that affected how the stories were articulated. And ultimately, some of these indicators became part of the Initial Template which I first relied on in my Template Analysis – following the methodology presented by Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner (2020, p.190-2, 224-5), which relies on the dynamic integration of indicators and stories:

- Indicators to stories. If an indicator becomes salient (strong or weak, positive or negative), it suggests the need to collect some stories that refer to that indicator to understand what is happening and see how the social learning space contributed to it.
- Stories to indicators. A good story usually mentions some interesting effect at one or more cycles. If there is no indicator being monitored for that effect, the insightfulness of the story may well suggest the need to derive an indicator and to monitor it more systematically. (ibid, p.225. Emphasis in the original)

In this section, I will present five value-creation stories that, in my role as a value detective, I have been collecting from – or co-producing with – each of the members of the D&D circle, myself included. For each story, I will show which of the effect data indicator(s) listed above is being referenced (if any)⁷⁵, and point out the learning loops that are present within the story. This will help provide a clearer image of how the D&D circle has been creating value for each of us.

Among the value-creation cycles I identified in Stories #1 to #5, the Immediate, Potential, and Applied cycles were most present (see Table 19). Two of these stories have featured Immediate cycles most prominently; two others have stressed the importance of the Potential cycle; one has focused more on Applied value-creation, while another laid more emphasis on Enabling Value.

On the other hand, Strategic and Orienting value are barely present at all, such cycles occurring only in two stories. As for Transformative value, it is rare too, but I saw instances of it occurring in every single story.

This accounting is necessarily reductive, and of limited usefulness: indeed, these five stories are of very different lengths and degrees of complexity; and these figures refer to the entirety of these five stories, which all include cycles predating the creation of the D&D circle as a social learning space. Nonetheless, I chose to include these statistics in order to compare them with my assessment of the overall effect data created for each cycle. They seem to confirm that Immediate, Potential, and Applied forms of value-creation have been most present for us in the D&D circle, and with Strategic and Orienting value-creation least frequently referred to.

Table 19: Proportion of cycles represented in Stories #1 to #5

Integrating effect and contribution data enables one to “make a robust case for the value of the social learning space and the difference it has made to practice” (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020, p.224):

On the one hand, stories make indicators more meaningful by anchoring them in the experience of participants in a social learning space. On the other hand, the plausibility of story is enhanced by reference to monitored indicators that corroborate its statement… In addition, a large indicator can also amplify a story’s significance by suggesting that it is not an isolated anecdote. An indicator shows how representative the story is likely to be of the contribution to a broader effect.

What then are the effect data indicators most consistently “traversed” by these five stories? And what are those which aren’t referred to? Answering these questions may help to sketch the outlines of commonalities and differences between our respective stories and experiences.⁷⁶

Table 20 presents a list of all indicators that are referenced by Stories #1 to #5, sorted by decreasing degree of presence (as measured by the number of stories referring to them, and the total number of references).

Table 20: Indicators referenced by Stories #1 to #5

Interestingly, only two indicators are referred to by all five stories:

• “R2 - Statements mentioning generative changes happening for others beyond the circle” and
• “I2 - Statements reflecting difficult or painful learning”

This confirms an assessment of the social learning taking place thanks to the D&D circle that was already present in my analysis of the effect data presented in Section 1.2.1 – namely, that much of this learning has been painful and difficult for us (which one story – #3 – makes particularly clear), but that we think we have created positive value for others nonetheless (as my story seems to emphasise).

The two most frequently traversed indicators overall are:

• “A3 - New initiatives or risks taken by participants because of their participation” and
• “P3 - Statements indicating that new skills, awareness or capacity were acquired”

Although they are only referred to by four out of five stories, and much more prominently by two of these (#4 and #5), both of these aspects appear to have been central to our experience of value-creation in the D&D circle.

Two other indicators are referenced in four stories out of five:

• “E4 - Presence of key enablers or facilitators” and
• “T1 - Statements referring to a capacity to see oneself or the world in a very new way”

Each of them is a prominent indicator of effect data, as we have often remarked on in our rounds of sharing (see Section 1.2.1). To me, this confirms that “developing the capacity to see oneself and/or the world from a very new perspective” is the clearest marker characterising transformative personal change happening in our circle; and that most of us view this change as having been facilitated (at least partly) by key enablers among us.

Broadly speaking, the other indicators referenced in Table 20 as less present in our stories tend to correspond with scarcer effect data. However, there are some important exceptions. Several of the indicators of value-creation that appeared important to me in the previous section are not referred to (or barely) in any of our stories – most notably:

• “P1 - Statements referring to shared stories of practice and experience”
• “P4 - Statements indicating increased confidence and inspiration to keep going”
• “A1 - Sharing of value-creation stories looping experience of adoption of innovation or practices back to the space”
• “E1 - Reflection rounds on what works well to support learning in the space”

I would tentatively account for the absence from our stories of three of these indicators (P1, A1, and E1) by pointing out that they refer to the “bread and butter” of the conversations taking place in the D&D circle. Could it be that they refer to activities that, while useful to our learning, have become so normalised as to be invisible?

A quick examination of Stories #1 to 5 is enough to ascertain that they overwhelmingly point to positive value-creation overall – although every story does include instances of negative value being produced, largely captured by the following indicators:

• “I2 - Statements reflecting difficult or painful learning” and
• “R1 - Statements mentioning uncomfortable changes or experiences for stakeholders”

The latter was often present simultaneously (within the same cycle) with its positive counterpart R2.

I did not identify any cycle in our stories that could be characterised by an absence of value creation. This may be due to a subconscious intention, on my behalf, to present the activities of the D&D circle in a positive light; it may also be due to the guiding question that elicited these value-creation stories in the first place (i.e. “What have been some important experiences, changes or learnings for you, as a result of taking part in the D&D circle?”).

Moving from the discrete learning cycles to the stories they compose allows us to venture several observations.

First of all, Stories #1, #3, #4 and #5 can be seen as composed of several shorter value-creation stories, which I will refer to as “subplots.” Sometimes, the learning flows explicitly from one of these shorter stories into a subsequent one; at other times, the flow is less explicit.

For example, in Story #3, cycles 1 through 11 can be understood as a subplot on “How the idea of the D&D circle came about”; this led directly to cycles 12 through 14, in which we learn more about “how the circle was launched”; cycles 15 through 18 describe “the circle’s first activities, and an episode of conflict that emerged at that time.” From this point on, two parallel subplots branch off:

• cycles #19 through #24 are about Loretta Ross’s course;
• cycles #25 through #28 are about the facilitated conflict-resolution process which happened in parallel;
• both of these subplots then seem to converge into cycle #29, although this is not made explicit in the overall story arc.

Secondly, as might be expected in a small, close-knit group like the D&D circle, some subplots are explicitly present in more than one story, thus speaking to the shared history of learning in our group. For example, the conflict-resolution process is featured in Story #3 (cycles 26 to 28), Story #4 (cycles 21 to 25) and Story #5 (cycles 27 and 28).

Thirdly, examining the social learning spaces into which the learning has been “flowing” shows that each of us has been bringing this learning into various spaces beyond the confines of the D&D circle – often as a result (or by means) of an Applied learning cycle. This cross-boundary flow can be referred to as as an “outgoing branch” (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020, p.143). For example, in Story #4, the Applied learning cycles 13, 14, 18, 19, 26 and 27 are all instances of learning branching into other social learning spaces.

Several of our stories also tend to hint that the flow of learning likely continued, as a result of these branches, in the lives of the other participants in these social learning spaces. For example, Story #1 mentions several activities taking place in various professional contexts (including a national environmental movement, and the UK National Rivers Trust) that led other participants to starting their own learning groups on the topic of anti-racism and decolonisation.

Charting these flows of learning therefore enables us to visualise more concretely how the activities of the D&D circle seem to be creating some of the changes that motivated the creation of the circle (see also Section 1.2.1, “Realised Value”).

It can also be useful to look at where flows of learning come to form loops within value-creation stories – as these loops are crucial elements of any social learning space (see above): “While any flow through the framework can represent valuable social learning and make a difference, loops accelerate, deepen, and widen learning. The question for cultivating a social learning space is how to systematically transform flows into loops” (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020, p.133). So what learning loops can be identified through these stories of the D&D circle?

Interestingly, few loops appear immediately obvious in our stories. As for short loops, the most frequent iterations seem to involve (mostly negative) Immediate value-creation followed by (mostly positive) Potential value-creation – for example:

• cycles 4 to 7 in Story #1;
• cycles 4 to 5 in Story #2;
• cycles 16 to 19 in Story #3;
• cycles 10 to 11 in Story #4;
• cycles 22 to 24 in Story #5.

This confirms the close relation between uncomfortable, or even painful experiences, and useful insights for us in the circle.

In terms of long loops (which traverse a series of cycles before coming back to their origin), they tend not to be explicitly mentioned in our stories, save a few exceptions – most notably perhaps, the results of the conflict-resolution process mentioned in Stories #3, #4 and #5: following this process, a conversation took place in our circle (as mentioned in Story #5, cycles 27-28), which “looped back” into the social learning space our respective insights about the process and its outcomes (this even led to the creation of a new video).

In fact, what is not remarked on in any of our stories is that when they were published on the Conscious Learning Blog, barely any of their content was news to any of us. Nearly every subplot had already been mentioned and discussed within our circle on some occasion or other – be it during one of our webinars, our learning circles, or rounds of success-sharing at the beginning of each call. In other words, all of these learning flows had already been looped back into our social learning space, thus fostering and feeding into our collective learning.

I take this as a sign of the vitality and usefulness of the D&D circle as a social learning space: even though our stories do not touch on critical indicators of value-creation such as P1 (“Statements referring to shared stories of practice and experience”), A1 (“Sharing of value-creation stories looping experience of adoption of innovation or practices back to the space”) or E1 (“Reflection rounds on what works well to support learning in the space”), as I mentioned above, we do have a solid container in place which enables such long loops to form, and our learning to deepen.

2.2.4 The plot thickens: Two reframing loops

In April 2022, a few weeks following the co-creation of this group’s value-creation stories (and the writing of the sections above), two events took place that led us to reflect critically on the circle’s activities. First, an incident occurred during one of our monthly “open meetings. And secondly, some tensions re-emerged within our group.

Each of these uncomfortable events have been an occasion for a productive reconsideration of our intentions and vision concerning the D&D circle. Indeed, I will argue that they triggered useful reframing loops (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, p.154-5). While the other long loops referred to above have helped to bring back to our learning space some information about the content of what we had learned, these other learning loops prompted us to critically reconsider:

• unspoken assumptions as regards the outcomes of our collective learning, particularly concerning our ability to deal with problematic situations; and
• our collective aspirations for the work of this circle.

I will conclude this case study by presenting an overview of the learning that emerged for our group on each of these occasions.

In the April 2022 “open meeting” of the D&D circle, a conversation unfolded on the complex and fraught topics of human population growth, family planning, as well as on “anti-patriarchal” and ecofascist forms of discourse. During the discussion, comments were made that were unacceptable to the only Person of Colour on the call, who decided to leave. Most importantly, while one White person who articulated these comments had been challenged over them, other White participants then came to their help. The call ended ahead of time, and the D&D circle offered apologies to the Person of Colour who had left.

Among other things, this incident led our circle to realise that:

• we were hosting these publicly advertised open meetings, on ostensibly charged topics, without requesting any prior fluency with these topics from participants – nor, for our part, being sufficiently prepared for situations in which offensive statements might be made that would be harmful to others on the call;
• while we had hoped that these open meetings might enable more collaborations to form between D&D circle members and other DAF participants, or new initiatives in DAF, in order to extend the scope and impact of the circle’s work (Section 3.1.7), there were too few signs that these aspirations were truly being met.

As a result, we agreed on a “damage control” process we could follow, in case any similar situations happened on future calls.

We also decided to transform the format of these open meetings. Instead of a free-flowing conversation, we invited rounds of sharing (without discussion) following a modality shared by a participant from a similar group that formed in another context: the “Deep Decolonising Recovery Circle.”

This carefully structured format aims to “connect personal, relational and social change and healing” by “bring[ing] together the personal and political, the inner and the outer” by means of allowing each circle participant to share vulnerably with others how they feel their everyday existence has been colonised by forms of systemic oppression and harmful ideologies.⁷⁷

Our experiments with this format so far have led to very good results, as they have led to meaningful conversations. It remains to be seen whether or not this modality will stay as a structuring feature for our open meetings, going forward. Nonetheless, the incident that prompted this change in our way of hosting these meetings has been the occasion to discover a useful new process to enable important conversations around difficult topics, and to improve our collective capacity to host such conversations.

Around the same time, and in an unrelated way, tensions re-emerged within the D&D circle. That they did so between the two circle members who had gone through the conflict-resolution process mentioned in Stories #3, #4 and #5, made us wonder whether that process had been as successful as we thought it had been. Had we been fooling ourselves? Had we just papered over some deep disagreements that remained present, in order to be nice to one another?

This learning loop prompted us to critically reconsider certain assumptions as regards the outcomes of our collective learning around conflict.

We approached this situation with curiosity. In order to get to clarify things, we invited another experienced conflict resolution facilitator to “hold space” for two in-depth group processes. In the course of these conversations, what emerged were three important realisations:

1. That as a group, we did not fully agree on the purpose of the D&D circle;
2. That we needed better ways of organising and structuring our work, in order to carry out our initiatives; and
3. That our calls did not provide enough occasions to voice feelings of discomfort.

I will briefly present some learning outcomes that followed this realisation.

Reframing the work of our circle

First of all, we discovered that the framing of our social learning space, as we understood it, had not been exactly the same for all of us. Some of us agreed that the framing was such as I expressed it in Section 1.2.1.1, above – i.e. that our circle had the twin ambition to create generative change for others beyond the circle (in DAF at large, and perhaps wider afield), as well as "within" (in the hearts and minds of D&D circle participants) – and that learning achieved in the process of pursuing change in one of these areas would also help us create change with respect to the other area. But for one of us, this was much less clear. As this person expressed during a reflective call, following this new round of conflict resolution:

“I think my vision was quite narrow - we do initiatives, and then we go on to the next initiative.”

This led to misunderstandings and tensions between them and other members of the group, who considered that although they were less directly involved in particular initiatives launched by the circle, they were playing their part by actively carrying the learning of the group into other social contexts – for example, their professional environment, or the DA Facebook group. As another one of us put it:

“Our group is a lot about personal change and transformation that we then want to bring to other spaces. … [We are] committing to starting new stuff, starting new experiments once in a while, and just seeing what kind of new challenges we bump into and what - and try[ing] to make new mistakes.”

Our group realised that this framing was in fact more tacit that it should have been, which we agreed was a breakthrough. As for the person who did not have this twin framing in mind originally, they decided that it was in fact a useful way to envision the work of our circle. As a result, in this same reflective conversation, we decided to amend the circle’s mission statement in order to make this twin framing more explicit – to ourselves and to others.

Instead of simply changing the wording of the statement, however, we seized the opportunity to engage in a deeper process of collective reflection on our circle’s mission and vision. This process, led by one of our circle members, focused on answering several questions inspired by the work of the Gesturing Towards Decolonising Futures collective (GTDF, 2020c):

• What is our work (really) about?
• Who is benefiting the most from this work?
• What are we doing this for?
• Who are we accountable to?
• What do we want our work to move in the world?

It was through the emergent collective process of answering these questions that we co-created a new document presenting our new mission statement, which now appears on the DAF website (DAF D&D Circle, 2022). The following paragraph was added as part of this new text:

“We take action by convening workshops and training sessions, but also by creating spaces in which to share insights on these topics with one another and with people beyond our circle. These learning spaces help us pursue our mission, individually and collectively, both within and outside DAF.”

The process also led us to agree on new priorities for the foreseeable future, by answering this extra question:

• What are the steps we need to take in order to be where we want to be - as persons, as a group (D&D), and as a network (DAF)?

At the time of writing (August 2022), circle members are actively working on taking action within DAF to materialise some of these new priorities.

Better organising and structuring our work

Another important realisation from our conflict-resolution process was organisational. We understood that in our calls, we easily generated ideas for new initiatives, but struggled to clarify who would handle the concrete tasks necessary to bring about these projects, and by when. As a result, we often failed to hold each other accountable with regards to carrying out these tasks, which at times was a cause for resentment: some circle members experienced the feeling of being left to “pull all the weight,” but felt unable to express their discomfort given that tasks and roles had not been formally agreed.

As a result of this realisation, our circle decided to adopt a new project management spreadsheet that might help us to overcome such difficulties in the future, by laying out clear tasks, responsibilities, and deadlines.

Allowing more fully the expression of discomfort

Finally, a third insight that emerged from this conflict transformation process was that although our calls did feature time towards the end for voicing feelings of dissatisfaction (Section 2.1.12), these time slots were not being used to our satisfaction. This might have been because our calls often run overtime, thus creating extra pressure on whoever experienced discomfort among us to remain quiet, instead of “opening a new process” which would compel everyone to stay on the call beyond its end time. As a result, unhappy feelings had been left unaddressed in some of us, which contributed to the emergence of tensions.

In the hope of giving more conscious awareness to such affects within our group, we decided to alter our weekly meeting schedule and make time for a round of “hot spots”⁷⁸ early in the call. During this time, anyone is invited to express feelings of discomfort or dissatisfaction with the work of the circle or with any individual circle members, for collective exploration in a spirit of compassion, curiosity and respect. If no such feelings are present, the meeting simply moves on to business items.

Having experimented with this new meeting format, at the time of writing, we have found that it seems to be better enabling us to welcome and address difficult feelings. It may therefore help us to enact more rapid learning loops, and to defuse tensions before they are allowed to grow.

Reflecting on this second conflict resolution round

The above leads me to venture several conclusions.

First, the new conflict resolution process was not simply a rehash of the issues that were discussed during the first round. While the first round enabled two of our circle members to understand one another better, and for the whole group to develop more skilfulness in our approach to tensions and conflict, the second round uncovered a different set of issues altogether – around the framing of the circle’s work, ways of carrying out our projects, and the expression of difficult feelings. Therefore, it seems incorrect to say that the first process had been unsuccessful: on the contrary, it may be that it enabled our group to develop the capacity to surface and explore areas of disagreement which otherwise might have remained hidden.

Secondly, each of these conflict transformation processes were occasions for very rich learning within our group. They became occasions for reframing loops. In the first case, two circle members discovered that their communication was problematic, and that they had different thinking and working processes, which led them to reframe their working relationship (Stories #3 and #4). In the second round, several circle members found that we had different tacit assumptions as to what the purpose of our circle was about. This realisation led us to rewrite our circle’s mission statement, review our action priorities, and adopt new tools.

Thirdly, these processes have showed us that while we are learning about conflict resolution and transformation through our continued engagement, we still draw precious help from mediators who are not actively involved in the circle in order to work through our difficulties. In fact, I believe it was due to this realisation that our circle agreed to invite the mediator from our second process to meet with us on a regular basis (every three or four months), going forward.

4. Discussion and conclusion

4.1 Summary of findings

I have argued that the D&D Circle was launched with two main goals. First, to bring about generative change in "the Deep Adaptation movement and spaces," by "reflecting on and addressing the main forms of separation and oppression that characterise our modern industrial societies" - and in the process, "mak[ing] DA spaces safer for everyone, particularly people identifying as Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour." And secondly, to develop more critical self-awareness among circle participants with regards to these issues.

In view of these two goals, taking stock of the circle's activities and achievements strikes me as particularly important in order to answer my research questions: indeed, I contend that these goals speak directly to the possibility of radical collective change, as they have to do with enacting profound changes of consciousness as a way of addressing the current global predicament. Besides, as I mentioned, in terms of its role within DAF the D&D circle may be perceived as a fractal image of DAF itself in the wider social context - both aim to bring about radical collective change by means of social learning. Therefore, while the D&D circle remains a small group of people compared to the much wider system it is "nested" within, understanding what has worked or not for us in this small circle may help inform ways of structuring or envisioning social learning processes taking place in DAF.

I have investigated the social learning taking place in the D&D circle by means of an evaluation process combining the collection of effect data - documenting the creation of value in each value-creation cycles of the Wenger-Trayner framework - and of contribution data - via the co-creation and analysis of value-creation stories, which can attribute more strongly the social learning to a given space.

In the effect data, I found signs that the D&D circle has been producing generative changes for stakeholders beyond the circle, in DAF and beyond, although the depth and extent of these changes remain difficult to assess. In particular, whether or not DAF spaces have become safer as a result of the D&D circle's existence, particularly with regards to BIPOC participants, remains unclear. Nonetheless, the steady attendance of public online events set up by the circle is encouraging, as it may indicate that more DAF participants are supporting the circle's action in the network. The data also shows that the circle's presence and activities have been a source of discomfort for several DAF stakeholders, some of which even decided to stop engaging in the network as a result. Nonetheless, negative feedback on our activities appears to be more than balanced by more positive feedback.

The effect data also displays signs that deep, and even transformative changes have been occurring for each of us participating in the circle. In particular, several of us mentioned having come to see ourselves and/or the world in very new ways; having acquired a proficiency in expressing ourselves on topics of systemic oppression; and having experienced profound changes in the circle, as a group, due to our participation in it.

The four integrative themes I identified in the data-set, which I believe can be viewed as the main "undercurrents" informing our social learning, may help explain how the changes above came about. First, conflict and tensions have occurred within the group and between the group and our wider social setting. While these frictions have of course been a source of pain and discomfort, they have also allowed generative group processes and deeper mutual understanding to emerge for us. In this respect, as a second point, our strong focus on fostering mutual support and trusting relationships within the group - sometimes at the expense of "getting things done" - has helped us to prevent tensions from tearing the group apart, to create a space with enough safety for us to discuss our individual and collective challenges, and to build self-confidence to undertake new initiatives or engage in new collaborations. The role of key enablers in the group, helping to maintain this container of trust, appears to have been critical.

Thirdly, our circle has been very intentional on systematically reflecting on our work and our learning, by setting aside time in our weekly calls, and convening spaces dedicated to reflective conversations. These conversations on "How to do the work?" have led us to be more conscious of the principles, processes, containers and mindsets we find most useful, both to our own learning and change, and to encourage such change in others - for example, by means of workshops and trainings. The videos we recorded on such topics, as well as documents such as our list of circle agreements, are important artefacts crystallising these reflections into a coherent whole. Besides, they also constitute encouraging signs that our circle has been actively focused on pursuing its aspiration to “spread awareness and share our experience.”

Finally, the painful and difficult learning, the trust and mutual care, and the reflective conversations we have had have all enabled us to build new skills and awareness, which we bring not only to our activities in the circle but also beyond, into our personal or professional spaces.

The value-creation stories each of us published, to share some of our experiences and insights that have emerged in the process of engaging in the circle, confirm many of these conclusions. In particular, they stress the importance of the Immediate, Potential and Applied value created in our social learning space, reflecting both the pain and the joy, the new insights, and the strong intention to make a difference - in our lives and the lives of others. Indicators of Realised learning in these stories point to several instances of making that difference, no matter how big or small; and signs of Enabling value-creation confirm the importance of key enablers providing guidance to the whole group, and convening new spaces of learning when necessary - for example, in order to help transform conflict. However, learning leadership has never been the exclusive domain of such enablers: our stories and the effect data show that our group has empowered each of us to lead on certain initiatives, in a distributed way.

Our stories also confirm the relatively low priority we have granted so far to strategic conversations, or to explorations of our circle's action within the wider landscape of social change. I believe this points to new horizons to explore within the perspective of the change we are trying to bring about, particularly beyond the boundaries of the circle itself: indeed, while our learning has "flowed" into other social learning spaces on many occasions, becoming more strategic about these interactions may be a critical component of us further exploring the D&D circle's leadership role, going forward.

More recent developments in the life of the circle, as exemplified by the two reframing loops described above, also point to two other important areas of learning that our group is beginning to explore: firstly, inviting difficult conversations with others beyond our circle in ways that enable learning while reducing harm; and secondly, becoming better able to voice discomfort and disagree with one another. This points to the possibility of better inviting generative failures, as expressed by Stein (2021, p. 492):

While we remain accountable for the harmful implications of our mistakes, failure can be an important site of learning from those mistakes if it is treated ‘as an educational moment and learning opportunity’ ... In fact, it is often the case that the deepest learning becomes possible when we fail. However, generative failure requires strategies for honesty and self-reflexivity about where we are in the learning process (note: we are often less advanced than we would like to think), and clearly discerning the true extent of the challenges we face (note: we tend to underestimate their scope and scale).

4.2 A community of practice?

In this chapter, I have referred to the D&D circle as a “social learning space.” Indeed, I view this group as displaying the characteristics that define a social learning space (Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner, 2020) – i.e. a social space in which:

• participants care to make a difference;
• engage their uncertainty;
• and pay attention to the feedback they receive.

However, with regards to the evolving theory of social learning from which this concept has emerged, it may be useful to consider the extent to which the D&D circle may have become, over time, something slightly different: a community of practice.

E. and B. Wenger-Trayner define communities of practice (CoP) as “sustained learning partnerships among people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” (Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner, 2021).

The defining characteristics of CoPs and social learning spaces are presented in Table 21 below (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020, p.32).

Table 21: Comparing communities of practice and social learning spaces

The D&D circle began as a particular social learning space. We who co-founded the circle came together of our own accord, propelled by our respective desires to create a difference in DAF, and valuing the existing or emerging relationships between us (as clearly demonstrated by Stories #1 to #5).

However, over time, through our sustained activities and engagement, a particular regime of competence emerged from our learning – i.e. a set of (often tacit) criteria and expectations defining conditions for competent membership in the group (Wenger, 1998, 2010). For example, awareness of the pervasive presence of systemic racism in society would constitute a key element of the repertoire of practice constitutive of this regime of competence. Moreover, this prolonged engagement with one another – and with other interested parties beyond D&D itself – led to solid relationships and to a sense of belonging and identification with our group (Section 3.1.4). The conditions therefore seem met to consider D&D as a CoP.⁷⁹

Nonetheless, because D&D circle members continue to “engage with each other to address difficult issues, solve problems, and push the practice” (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020, p.33), the circle’s regular calls still function as an active social learning space. In particular, on several instances, we have shown willingness to challenge our regime of competence and avoid the ossification of our practice. This is exemplified by the instances of conflict that have occurred within our group, and which have led to evolutions in our repertoire: notably, the introduction of “success-sharing rounds,” and later, “hot spots rounds” to our weekly calls – which respectively speak to the importance of appreciating generative changes taking place in the world thanks to us or to others, and to the need to make space for the exploration of interpersonal tensions. In other words, we have transformed our regime of competence as a result of the change in alignment between this regime and our experience.

These results support emergent findings from the field of transformative education. Discussing the outcomes of a course aiming at fostering transformative learning towards sustainability by means of a relational and justice-oriented approach, Walsh and colleagues (2020) show that communities of practice (as “a group of supportive and like-minded people to learn and practice with” – p.1600) were very helpful in enabling participants to grapple with issues of social justice and to feel supported in taking action on these issues.

Could it be that the circle’s double function, as both a social learning space and a community of practice, has allowed for greater innovative capability than if it were only one or the other?

Wenger (2009) outlines several fundamental characteristics that condition the social learning capability of a social system. I consider that each of the following generative characteristics can be identified in the D&D circle:

• The production of livable knowledge, or “knowledge that is meaningful because it enables new forms of engagement in the world” (ibid, p.4); and the ability for circle participants to express our experience of practice and who we were in this experience – e.g. through very personal forms of storytelling;
• The commitment to candor in sharing our challenges and struggles, which has deepened with time together with mutual trust – thanks in no small part to our cycles of conflict-transformation – and our “shared commitment to an open inquiry” (p.6) in our mutual engagement;
• The presence of learning citizenship – or the ethical commitment to our own learning and that of others – through our extensive engagement in the work of the circle, our convening of new learning spaces such as workshops or monthly open meetings, and our brokering between the circle and other spaces in DAF and beyond (e.g. with groups of moderators on DAF platforms).

Through our sustained engagement with each other, a shared history of learning has emerged in the D&D circle, along with a regime of competence that we began to identify with. However, this evolution did not prevent us from continuing active explorations, in a spirit of open inquiry, commitment, and mutual trust, out of our comfort zones. This led us to make many mistakes, and we have been faced with conflict on several occasions, but in this process we have produced much livable knowledge that keeps enriching the social learning spaces we convene or take part in.

4.3 Systems conveners in a landscape of practice

The circle has been attempting to raise awareness around anti-racism and social justice within DAF. However, as mentioned in Annex 5.4, the network framing has not incorporated these themes until fairly recently as part of its focus, which has likely made the work of the D&D circle more difficult.

The circle’s leadership role on these issues can be understood using the notion of systems conveners (B. Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner, 2015). Systems conveners (SC) seek to reconfigure a social system, in order to create new configurations of people and activities, which will bring about new capabilities. They seek to create lasting change, by brokering between various stakeholders to encourage participation in new endeavours and activities from people with different interests and expectations.

By convening educational events on the topics of anti-racism and decolonisation, and in several instances, sending invitations to representatives of various DAF stakeholder groups (e.g. Facebook group moderators, Facilitators, etc.), the D&D circle has attempted to change the configuration of DAF so that these topics may become a more central area of interest and action, and to enlist support in doing so from various areas of the network – or rather, the DAF landscape. Indeed, as mentioned elsewhere (Chapter 3), DAF can be viewed as a complex landscape of practice composed of various communities of practice, including the one initiated by the D&D circle itself (E. Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner, 2015b).

Garnering support for new configurations, however, requires difficult identity work on behalf of SC:

The only way conveners can get people to join them is to allow them to make the endeavor their own - part of who they are and what they want to do. Conveners need to offer people new ways of seeing and experiencing themselves in the landscape. They have to go beyond simply inviting people into a project; they invite them to reconfigure their identity to become part of a reconfigured landscape. (ibid, p.106)

Indeed, what the circle has been trying to do has been to invite more and more DAF stakeholders to personally identify with the work of anti-racism and the decolonising agenda, and by so doing, to develop a sense of accountability to the new configuration. According to B. and E. Wenger-Trayner (ibid.), achieving such a reconfiguration of identity requires doing work through the three main modes of identification that characterise social systems:

• Imagination: SC need to tell a new story (express aspirational narratives) about the landscape, in a way that may generate buy-in. For example: “Deep Adaptation is also about anti-racism and international solidarity.” Others should identify with this story, or at least part of it, from their own perspective.
• Engagement: SC must find locations in the landscape where new forms of engagement across boundaries of practice could be productive, then "facilitate meaningful encounters where people from relevant locations in the landscape can negotiate who they are to each other and what they can do together" (ibid, p.107). Boundary activities should be designed that help participants “stretch their understanding while also addressing key current concerns from their existing contexts” (p.107). Indeed, “The most successful learning activities tend to engage people in doing something concrete relevant to stakeholders' practice and calling for collective engagement in negotiating significant issues" (ibid). For example, a useful boundary activity might be a workshop in which the D&D circle would invite members of the DA Facilitators community of practice to reflect on decolonising facilitation.
• Alignment: For changes in practice to be sustained in time, they need to involve a realignment of practice across the landscape. This calls for SC to “propose aspirational narratives ambitious enough to transcend specific locations in the landscape” (p.109). In order to reach effectiveness at scale, they need to challenge everyone – not just specific stakeholders.

It appears that so far, the D&D circle has not succeeded in bringing about such a wide-ranging reconfiguration of identification in DAF. This could be explained by the lack of attention placed on some of the dimensions above, coupled with too little co-creation.

For example, the circle has organised anti-racism workshops to which various DAF stakeholders were invited. These constitute boundary activities (the work of engagement), enabling encounters across boundaries of practice. Some of these activities have been well-attended. However, my understanding is that mostly these activities were framed without specific concern for the particularities of the practice characterising the various parts of the landscape that participants hailed from. Anti-racism workshops, for instance, were designed “for White people to better understand their own racism” instead of “for Facilitators to enact anti-racism in their practice.” In other words, they may not have sufficiently addressed the concrete challenges and concerns faced by various DAF stakeholders in their daily practice.

As for the narrative on anti-racism and decolonisation championed by the circle (the work of imagination), it has not been - for the most part - co-created with other stakeholders across the landscape, which may explain why it seems not to have gained much traction: “Telling the narrative must be an invitation to a variety of stakeholders to share in its creation” (p.106). At the time of writing, there were signs that we in the circle had improved our ability to “refine and rehearse the telling and retelling of the aspirational narrative” (p.107) by engaging in a more wide-ranging consultation process with various stakeholders over the topic of ecofascism.

Finally, while several efforts in the circle have attempted to disseminate skills and awareness at all levels of the network (the work of alignment), the lack of participation in some of these efforts could signify that these activities were not perceived as relevant value propositions. “The convener’s push for alignment does not displace people’s agendas; on the contrary it embraces these agendas to make them more ambitious, more connected, and in the end more likely to be effective” (p.109). This, of course, points to a fundamental challenge in convening reconfigurations in the domain of anti-racism, particularly among White participants: such work is generally very challenging and confronting, in many ways – and it can be difficult to relate it with concerns for “effectiveness”… particularly in a social context (DAF) in which proficiency with these topics may not be considered essential to one’s practice.⁸⁰

In summary, systems convening initiatives such as the D&D circle might need to pay closer attention to the social learning process for reconfiguring identification – “identification with a broader, more ambitious endeavour with other players in the landscape and with effectiveness to be achieved across practices and at multiple levels of scale at once” (p.110). This likely requires more in-depth consideration of current characteristics and challenges of practice across the landscape, and the co-creation of aspirational narratives that would invite the creation of new relationships, synergies and capabilities. More and more people should be invited to appropriate the vision for themselves, and in so doing, engage in new forms of participation within the reconfigured landscape.

This section, by assessing and articulating the impact of the circle on DAF as a landscape, is a contribution to the emerging discipline of systems convening.

4.4 A transformative, collaborative inquiry group on anti-racism and decolonisation

The D&D circle can also be usefully considered a self-directed, collaborative inquiry group focused on facilitating learning and social action in the field of anti-racism and social justice. According to John Bray and colleagues (2000), Collaborative Inquiry (CI) is “research based in personal experience” (p.38) and “a fully collaborative method for practicing inquiry into questions of shared importance among all the participants” (p.46), based on a philosophy of knowledge that honours the full range of human sensibilities and various ways of knowing (including experiential, and presentational knowing). It is carried out through a “systematic process… consisting of repeated episodes of reflection and action” (p.6) led by a “group of peers” who “bring a diverse set of skills and experiences to the group” (p.39).

Besides, as Lyle Yorks and Elizabeth Kasl explain, “CI is democratic… links learning to lived experience, values action, and is often emancipatory in its intent” (2002, p. 93). And while such groups are often convened with the help of an educator, they may also “bootstrap themselves into existence” (p.101). This “systematic structure for learning from experience… is especially appropriate for pursuing topics that are professionally developmental or socially controversial or that require personal or social healing” (Kasl and Yorks, 2002, p. 3).

All of the above characteristics apply to the work of the D&D circle, which appears to qualify as a “bootstrapped” CI group. Indeed, the circle alternates between cycles of reflection and action through the succession of regular “business-oriented” weekly calls, monthly community calls, and monthly learning circles.

Importantly, CI groups strive to give attention to four different kinds of knowing that form the extended epistemology theorized by John Heron and Peter Reason (Heron, 1996; Heron and Reason, 2008) – including: experiential (knowing through empathy and attunement with present experience); presentational (a form of knowledge construction expressed in graphic, plastic, moving, musical, and verbal art forms); propositional (knowing expressed in the form of formal language); and practical (the ability to change things through action).

In this regard, presentational knowing has received less attention than the other three dimensions above in the life and practice of the D&D circle. Although the circle has strived to co-create resources – such as videos – to document our learning and share it with others, we have not devoted a lot of attention to nurturing forms of knowing “rooted in the imaginal and expressed through intuition and imagery” (Yorks & Kasl, 2002, p.6).⁸¹ This points to a potentially fruitful area of exploration and co-creation to be investigated by the circle.

This aspect notwithstanding, I consider that as a method for learning and action, CI corresponds very closely to the experience of the D&D circle, and the latter can therefore be usefully compared to other documented instances of CI learning groups. One relevant example is the bootstrapped CI group described by Martin Leahy and Sue Gilly (2009). They describe their collaborative group as focusing on four commitments or ways of being (p.26):

1. “being intentional about creating the time and space hospitable for both persons and transformative learning;
2. being willing to struggle, to step into the space between us and stay there without rushing prematurely to answers;
3. being determined to do this together, that is, meeting, including, and connecting with others and all aspects of ourselves; and
4. being in inquiry around questions that matter.”

They also stress how “at the center of all four of these commitments was relationship.” (ibid)

Although this group focused on different concerns than the D&D circle, the commitments underlying their work – and especially, the “willingness to struggle together in the space between us” (p.39) – strongly echoes the intentions and practice of the circle.

Steven Schapiro (2009) integrates the characteristics mentioned by Leahy and Gilly with findings from other settings, and outlines five common themes or characteristics of transformative learning spaces, which seem to aptly describe the D&D circle (p.111-2):

1. “learning happens in relationships
2. in which there is shared ownership and control of the learning space
3. with room for the whole person
4. sufficient time for collaboration, action, reflection, and integration
5. to pursue a process of inquiry driven by the questions, needs, and purposes of the learners.”

He describes transformative learning spaces as “relational spaces characterized by affirmation, challenge, and creativity,” in which “the learning relationship and process are primary, the content secondary.” (p.112) Because we, in the circle, have made a point to foreground relationships in our practice (Section 2.1.12.2), this points to the possibility of investigating the work of the D&D circle from the perspective of transformative learning theory.

In later work, Schapiro, Wasserman and Gallegos (2012) introduce a useful framework to investigate groups centring their practice on group work and dialogue, and consider how various kinds of groups may provide a context for transformative learning. They argue that the following qualities are vital to successful transformative dialogical groups:

• continuity in members' commitment and motivation
• curiosity and openness
• emotional engagement through storytelling, and
• reflection and mutual sense-making

Again, these qualities all correspond to critical aspects of the life of the D&D circle, as presented above.

Further, these researchers present a typology of transformative groups, based on the main developmental outcomes they are designed to provoke:

• personal growth and awareness;
• relational empathy across differences; or
• critical systemic consciousness.

A single group may attempt to bring about several of these outcomes at once. Indeed, the authors argue that groups that enable the emergence of all three outcomes have the most potential to bring about deep personal and collective change.

Although space does not allow me to fully compare this model to the experience of the D&D circle, suffice to say that while enabling personal growth and group relational empathy have been important elements of the life and practice of the circle, D&D has been more centred on the development of critical systemic consciousness (among its members and others beyond it). Indeed, D&D explicitly foregrounds forms of dialogue aiming at bringing social-emancipatory learning, by “understanding and changing group members’ social realities, locations and context” and exploring ways in which “the personal is political” (p.366).

This social-emancipatory approach is characterised by an attention to praxis – “a continuing process of action, critical reflection, and dialogue” (ibid), which is another prominent feature of the D&D circle. As the authors point out,

Although such dialogue can lead to an awareness of how individuals have unconsciously internalized the rules and norms of the hegemonic status quo, the focus is not on our individual psyches alone, but on the necessarily concurrent transformation of our individual consciousness and our social contexts at various system levels—small group, organization, society, and even planetary … the emphasis here is not on personality integration but rather on unpacking and transforming our internalized oppression and domination. (p.367)

Therefore, I contend that the D&D circle can be viewed as a self-directed Collaborative Inquiry group, focused on fostering critical systemic consciousness in its participants and other stakeholders while integrating an attention to personal growth and group relational empathy in the process, with the intention of effectuating transformative personal and collective change. Its shared history and experience is worthy of further investigation, in order to better understand the challenges this group has faced, and the positive change it has brought about. The perspective of transformative learning theory appears to be a useful one to adopt in this regard.

In conclusion, I want to express how my personal experience as a part of this circle has enabled me to fully agree with the following statement by Schapiro, Wasserman and Gallegos:

There is an ineffable element of mystery to the transformative power of group experience, and it is at that nexus—where our individual, group, and systemic levels of consciousness come together—that we have the opportunity to change in the most profound ways. (p.368)

4.5 Who has benefited the most from the work of the circle?

Over the course of a reframing process that took place in the first half of 2022, it appeared that for some of us in the D&D circle, our purpose was mainly to enact change as directly as possible within DAF, particularly with regards to issues of systemic injustice, by means of educational activities – as part of our role as systems conveners. For others, such “outer” change was important, but equally so were activities leading to “inner” change within each of us, and enabling us to bring useful insights individually to the various groups and social learning spaces we participated in – within DAF and elsewhere (Section 2.2.4.2).

As a result of this process, we reached a new agreement on the second perspective, which was reflected in a rewritten D&D mission statement. In this text (DAF D&D Circle, 2022), we acknowledged the following:

“So far, the clearest benefits [from D&D circle activities] seem to have come to us in the group, individually and collectively, thanks to the learning and personal growth we have experienced in this circle. However, we have also been bringing these insights into other groups and spaces, in this network and beyond, and there are signs that others have benefited from our conscious interventions or involvement. We aspire to make our work much more visible, and for this work to spread further afield.”

It is important to reflect critically on this assessment.

First of all, each of us in the circle has mentioned undergoing deep personal changes due to our participation in it. To what extent may our stories be showcasing a flattering and reassuring image of personal and collective change, for our own and others’ consumption?

Scholars from the field of decolonial studies, such as Vanessa Machado de Oliveira (2021), point out that we – as individuals immersed within the context of modernity-coloniality – are “unreliable narrators of our own experience” (p.75) and that we must therefore cultivate self-reflexivity and remain suspicious of our own subconscious motivations and desires to “feel good,” “look good,” and “move forward” (p.113). Similarly, according to Sharon Stein (2021, p. 491),

There is a common misconception that if we say we are doing something differently, then this means we are already doing it. In reality, despite our best intentions, we often fail, because the well-worn grooves and ditches of our existing system pull us back in.

Therefore, we should be very cautious not to exaggerate any personal changes and “decolonising” that we, as individuals, may have undergone.

Furthermore, as we acknowledge in the excerpt above, it would seem that the impact of the circle’s activities in terms of addressing forms of systemic injustice within DAF has been quite limited (see Section 3.2 above). For example, it does not seem that DAF spaces have become “safer” for participants identifying as Black, Indigenous or People of Colour, although lack of data makes this an area difficult to assess. Besides, the circle has not attempted to engage directly as a group with representatives of marginalised communities since an episode of conflict that took place in the first half of 2021 (Section 1.2.1.9).

One could therefore charge that the circle, so far, has mostly been a conduct for personal development for its (mostly privileged) members, and that it has done too little work to address structural forms of oppression, which is something that may qualify as “radical collective change.” It would even be possible to consider this part of a performative strategy aiming at reclaiming a degree of innocence with regards to systemic oppression – i.e. “If we are talking about it, then we are not as implicated in it!”⁸²

Indeed, as Thompson (2003) points out, for white educators to demonstrate any degree of interest in antiracism can help to make them stand out as “disinterested, citizen-minded individuals” (p.18). Due to the moral economy of white liberal framings, “the very acknowledgement of our racism and privilege can be turned to our advantage” (p.12). Teel (2016, p. 33) agrees:

If I ignore whiteness, I experience no obvious ill effects; I get to feel good about myself, as is white people’s modus operandi, and put all my energy to advancing the cause of me. If I fight whiteness, I get to feel good about myself, as well as sometimes receiving accolades and admiration from people of color and white people who (aspire to) ‘get it’, which also advances the cause of me.

Because studying the tools of whiteness can even provide white people like me, a doctoral student, with “ways to further exploit [our] white privilege” (Thompson, 2003, p.16), my decision to include this case study within this thesis, in itself, could be a particularly egregious case of my own “advancing the cause of me.”

We, in the D&D circle, may have been wanting to feel like “good white persons” (ibid, p.13) as a result of our personal growth and self-actualization occurring in our learning spaces. For this reason, one could argue that political action has taken second space in the work of our circle. As the D&D circle is mostly composed of white people, to what extent have we been engaging in this work in order to assuage our feelings of guilt? Have our activities truly been part of “a conscious strategy to disrupt the operations of… the racial system” (Owen, 2016, p. 164)? Or have we just been seeking to obtain our “good White people medals” (Hayes and Juárez, 2009)?

Because modernity-coloniality has conditioned us to want to “feel good, look good,” and have a sense of “moving forward,” we members of the circle ought to be considering our subconscious drives for taking part in its work with suspicion, and exercise renewed self-reflexivity. Indeed, “this threat of acting out of self-interest can neither be eliminated nor overcome; it is a constant companion for white people who seek to perform authentic antiracist practices” (Owen, 2016, p.164).

One way to conceptualise the work of the circle is that of aspiring “allies” – i.e. “people who work for social justice from positions of dominance” (Patton and Bondi, 2015, p. 489), such as white people engaging in anti-racist work within a racist society. Many scholars (e.g. Patton and Bondi, 2015; Kivel, 2017b, 2017a) have pointed out the tendency for aspiring allies to fail to address institutional inequities, and avoid placing themselves in contentious relationships with those in power, by focusing on the “micro-level, leaving larger issues unaddressed” (Patton & Bondi, 2015, p.505). Following the model developed by Edwards (2006), to attempt becoming “allies for social justice” (and venture beyond being mere “allies for self-interest” or “allies for altruism”) would involve the D&D circle becoming more deeply involved in building social justice coalitions with marginalized persons, and directing more of our attention to oppressive systems and processes.

Besides, the intention to embody “allyship” itself is not altogether unproblematic. As Kluttz, Walker and Walter (2020) point out, the word “ally” can insinuate that one has achieved a certain status, a permanent identity end goal (“I am an ally”). This label, particularly when self-granted, can all too easily become a pretext for absolving oneself of any implication in systemic harm. So instead of claiming allyship, members of the circle might choose to engage consciously in practices resonant with decolonising solidarity – that is to say, “a strategy for as well as a process towards decolonization” (Boudreau Morris, 2017, p. 469) that involves both enacting deep and unconditional solidarity with Indigenous struggles, and critical reflexion on how to decolonise the solidarity effort itself. A key aspect of doing so is that of “taking active steps towards building ‘right’ relations, with a commitment to both naming and righting the material, epistemic, cultural and political injustices of present and past” (Kluttz, Walker and Walter, 2020, p. 56). Indeed, this approach is predicated on building “purposeful, positive relationships” (ibid.) as a goal in itself, while developing tolerance for the discomfort and messiness that this relational work often entails. Some of the more recent initiatives taken by the circle seem to point in this direction – for instance, the launch of a page on the DAF website designed to support international solidarity projects (DAF Core Team, 2022e).

However, when referring to “decolonisation” (including in its name), the D&D circle has mostly pointed to the aspiration to “decolonise the mind.” This has exposed the circle to critiques from DAF participants positioned within a settler colonial context. Like Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang (2012), they argued that “decolonisation is not a metaphor”: while these authors recognize the importance of the cultivation of critical consciousness, they warn against “allow[ing] conscientization to stand in for the more uncomfortable task of relinquishing stolen land” (p.19). They consider this a “settler move to innocence,” that is to say, one of the ways that non-Indigenous people have used to alleviate the historical impacts of colonization, by attempting to “reconcile settler guilt and complicity, and rescue settler futurity” (p.3). Given that for most of its history up to the time of analysis, the D&D circle had been mostly composed of white British, French, US, and South African members, in other words representatives of national groups heavily involved in the violent history of settler colonialism, this critique carries a particular sting.

Philosophically, the work of the circle has drawn from scholarly work in the field of decolonial studies (Chapter 2), which often centres the need to “interrupt modern/colonial patterns of knowing, desiring, and being” (Stein, V. de O. Andreotti, et al., 2020, p. 5) over considerations of representation, recognition, and redistribution – although the two are not antithetical. Nonetheless, this last critique is another reminder that the D&D circle may consider enacting deeper involvement in more political efforts aiming towards forms of reparations for historical harms. Doing so while trying not to reproduce destructive patterns would likely require starting by cultivating relationships based on decolonising solidarity with groups of Black, Indigenous, and People of Colour, while foregrounding consent, trust, accountability, and reciprocity (Whyte, 2020). This could enable the circle as a whole, and its individual participants, to bring about more generative external action in the pursuit of its mission, and simultaneously to enable deeper social learning with regards to what the difficult work of solidarity actually entails. Indeed,

learning towards decolonising solidarity is not simply a cognitive process, and it does not happen in isolation. It is instead active and takes place through the informal learning that occurs through collective experiences of taking social action. (Kluttz et al, 2020, p.62)