| This online Community Cafe is part of an ongoing series we host every month with and for the World Cafe community for the larger Central Garden of participatory practices.
In 2025, we invite you on a journey with the “Breaths of Design” as our annual companion. The Breaths of Design are another lens, another approach to designing participatory gatherings, to preparing conversations, taking action on important topics and reflecting on the process.
Armed with the strategic insights we gained last month in our explorations of the 5th breath (Harvest), this month we will take those insights out into our wider systems and put them into practice, focusing on the 6th Breath: ACT, as we continue to notice what wants / needs to happen now.
We are looking forward to bringing our insights on this topic together and generating collective knowledge about what it is to Act!
These Community Cafes give us as a global community a time to "lean in"; a time to listen to others and to speak our truth. A time to remember we are in this together.
The Breaths of Design came from an Art of Hosting expansion on the work of Sam Kaner - a great example of the Central Garden community at work. Drawing on this pattern, we’ll take the time - one “breath” per month - to explore this pattern together and go deeper to find the value it offers. This is a time for asking questions and for sharing insights. We’ll learn from and with each other, as we focus on our own experiences and immersion in the pattern.
We don’t assume that Community Cafe participants are familiar with the Breaths of Design or Sam Kaner’s work, and will make sure that each Community Cafe will be accessible to all - no matter your previous experience or knowledge.
The Breaths of Design originated in the Diamond of Participatory Decision-Making from Sam Kaner’s Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making and in many years of evolution in the field of the Art of Hosting. Some of you might know them as the “5 Breaths” or the “8 Breaths”, depending on the context and the time of your first encounter with this concept.
Here is a brief overview of the year's focus: Introduction to Breaths of Design (January) - Feel the Need and Call (February) - Clarify Purpose (March) - Invite and Design (April) - Meet (May) - Harvest (June) - Act (July) - Learning Cafe on the topic of Conversational Leadership (September) - Reflect and Learn (October) - Looking back on 2025 (November)
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