Y Parc / The Park
Y Parc is what happens every time people meet.
What is The Y Parc / The Park
The Park is a tool to help you think about, plan and run meetings & events - to Rewild them, to make them inclusive, enjoyable and full of potential - whether in person, online or hybrid.
The Park encourages you to consider how you might set up different kinds of ‘spaces’:
The Park Gates - what are the aims, working method, etiquette for using the park (your meeting/event).
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The Band Stand – a place to gather, perhaps to share, or to make plans for exploring other areas of the park.
The Quiet Garden – a safe place, where there are no expectations, you don’t have to do anything.
The Picnic Area – a space for chewing over ideas, coming up with different solutions, new recipes, sharing and basecamp for exploring with others.
The Park Bench – a place to go to work through specific problems and get help to sort them.
The Hill Top – a place with a view, to look at potentials, noting what’s working and what is not & to reimagine how things could be.
The Adventure Playground – a place to play, to get support from others to build your confidence to try out new things.
The Wild Edges – a brave place to explore left of field concepts, questions, the unexpected
The Park also has a Park Warden, who helps ensure everyone is able to take part safely, and who will work with people 1:1 to resolve any difficulties.
Try a Walk in The Park
These are a few ideas to try:
When hosting a Zoom call, open a breakout room called the Quiet Garden, where people can go if they want some time out from the discussions.
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At the beginning of your meeting/event, after everyone has arrived, give some space (a couple of minutes) with a grounding or meditation or other short calming activity, to mark a boundary between what you were doing in your daily life and what everyone is about to do together.
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Normalise silence as a useful space to listen and reflect. Make time to breathe and reflect in between the words, allowing for growth in the conversation in a considered way. Take time to listen rather than just hear, digesting other’s points of view before focusing on your own point of view. It also enables neurodiverse participants to know when is a good time to contribute.
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Quiet Garden Story
How the Park concept came about
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“It really started at school, with the “Quiet Garden”, a small garden to the side of a big 1970s concrete playground. The main playground was noisy and full of children. It was just too loud and busy and harsh for me. So, as a very small person in that school, I would spend a lot of time in the Quiet Garden because it was a place of peace and calm - the quiet within the storm
The garden was circular with an almond tree in the centre and a small (big to me at the time) wall around it. It was a place where I could connect to the natural world. I remember the joy of the snowdrops, the beauty and excitement of the pink almond blossom and the softness of the outer casings of the almonds that had fallen off the tree. I got so much joy from walking around the circle, with the tree and wall and shrubs and snowdrops.” - Gaia Redgrave
Working with Utopias Bach
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Over the last two years, Rewilding the Artist been working with Utopias Bach, regularly attending the monthly ‘Collaboratory’ meetings over zoom, as well as other hybrid events. One aspect of finding out how to work within a culture of care has been finding ways to deal with difficult situations within meetings: Perhaps the room is too noisy, or you find a conversation difficult, or simply you are having a bad day: for whatever reason, you just need a bit of space to be and to breathe.
These situations can feel a bit like that old concrete playground! And the idea of Quiet Garden at school, a space out of the turmoil, got us thinking about how to provide an escape route to collect yourself when interaction with others is feeling difficult.
And it was thinking about this with Utopias Bach one day that led to the idea of using the Quiet Garden within a ‘hybrid’ online-in room meeting - a space in which you can ‘dip out’ for a moment to collect yourself, without having to leave the meeting completely. This permanently open breakout room on our zoom meetings has proven essential for access and care.
“I think having the Quiet Garden room in meetings is just beautiful, because it gives you a feeling that there is somewhere to go if you need to. I just went in there to write something before I lost the idea.” Kar Rowson
From the Quiet Garden to the Park
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The Quiet Garden is one aspect of The Park. The Park consists of different types of spaces to cater for different needs. For example, struggling with technology can affect everyone; it can be very tiring and stressful, trying to work out how you need to be, juggling technological issues and coping with unfamiliar online environments, all while trying to be intelligently involved in what is going on in the room. We realised that we needed a space to go if someone needed help, and someone to facilitate this, so we introduced the Park Bench and the Park Warden.
The other spaces in The Park came from meetings with The Tribe and from writing the Rewilding the Artist Workbook. We found that there were other aspects of being together that needed to be considered; What about the wild edges, the difficult and imaginative conversations? What about looking at the horizon and seeing the big picture? What about the sharing aspects of what we do?
Everything we wanted to consider made sense as a Park. A space where you could meet others, explore, spend time by yourself, play, and enjoy the environment.
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Image Credits: Lindsey Colbourne & Lisa Hudson
Learn how to use Y Parc in your work
If you are interested in using the Park in your hybrid, online or in room meetings, and would like to know more, we are delighted to offer taster sessions & training for organisations & individuals.
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Please register below or contact us for further details.
