Art of Hosting in Karlskrona

Last weekend I was in Sweden! And although I studied abroad in Sweden (in 2004/2005), I really didn’t remember much of my Swedish language courses. I did remember how to ask if we could pay by card in the train, but the Swedish answer was so long (and so Swedish), that I was forced to ask the salesman to repeat his answer in English. This much to the amusement of my fellow travelers by the way, who were from Mexico, Germany and Slovenia, and were headed to the same training as me.

The Art of Hosting training in Karlskrona in action

The Art of Hosting training attracts many international participants, and participants from all walks of life. I do think that many of the people you meet at trainings such as this one are mostly honest, open and passionate individuals who care about the world and each other. When my partner identified my training weekend to his friends as ‘Hippie Camp’, I protested at first. But to be honest, it is a bit like hippie central. There is just a lot of hugging and sharing going on! And although that’s a little out of my comfort zone, I was very thankful that one of the organisers shared her house with me, so that I didn’t need to pay for an expensive hotel in the city. Also, whenever there were hugs, I was mostly grateful to share a hug.

This is the (very Swedish) house I stayed in! Veeeery nice people, and lots of wooden interior walls and Knäckebröd.

Art of Hosting is a way to facilitate (host) meetings and conversations for groups of people. In this line of teaching there are very many useful models that you can use when you want a big group to share knowledge and inspire them to have valuable conversations. This monday, for example, I will be hosting a World Café for a conference on health & research.

Me in Karlskrona, happy to arrive safely and trying to not fall off the dock

When I recognized myself and my experiences in Karlskrona in this image, made by the ‘Harvesting team’ of the meeting, I knew that I was at ‘Hippy Camp’, and really it didn’t matter.

The surroundings of the training facilities were very beautiful.

View from the training room.

In this training, I learned many things about hosting groups, presenting to groups and learning with groups. We practiced:

• Check-in & Check out
• Harvesting
• World Café
• Appreciative Inquiry
• Circle practice
• Fish Bowl
• Open Space
• Collective story harvest
• Rope game
• Designing for wiser action

All of which I plan to use in future sessions with either my students or external groups. Furthermore we had teaching sessions on:

• The 4-fold practice
• Mental models
• 2 Loops
• Powerful questions
• Graphic recording
• 8 Breaths of design

I am so excited to put into practice all the new models and methods I have used! Are you curious what we could do together with Art of Hosting methods? Just invite me over for a coffee!