Pete's podcast on community development

This is a short conversation between Peter Westoby and Anthony Kelly on What is Dialogue, and Who it could be helpful for. This is the first episode in our season on the contribution of dialogue theory and practice in different social and ecological fields.

This is the first episode of my short 4 part series on Soul and Community Development. Building on my two books Creating Us: Community work with soul, and Soul, Community and Social Change, we explore what I mean by soul, drawing on the depth psychology tradition (C. Jung, James Hillman, Mary Watkins, Marian Woodman) and consider what it all might mean for community development. It's exciting stuff - from the heights of the Icarus Myth to the depths of Covid ruins.

In this 3rd episode of the Soul and Community Development (CD) series, Rachael Donovan and Peter Westoby have a 15 minute conversation about colonisation of the soul, resistance and what it all means for CD workers/thinkers. The conversation explores the 'politics of attention' within capitalist economics and also focuses on "Bifo's" work around soul and the contemporary workplaces where most of our creative energies are directed - leaving little 'in the tank' for community and convivial life. Soul, felt as gravity in the body summons us to follow 'the nudge of the soul'.

In this fourth and final episode on Soul and Community Development (CD), Rachael Donovan and Peter Westoby consider first the Gandhian tradition of CD, particularly the contributions of nonviolence, collective resistance, self-governance and economic self-reliance; and second R. Tagore's bringing together of the poetic and political work, rescuing the 'soul from the Great Machine world'.

In episode #1 of this new series - which will include a number of interviews/conversations with Peter Westoby, Rachael Donovan and Anthony Kelly - we introduce Participatory Community Development (CD) as an approach to social change. This 14 minute interview considers the differences between service delivery and participatory CD, introduces what a framework is, and particularly the 'method framework' that this series will explore in depth: implicate, micro, mezzo, macro, meta. The series explores the content of the 2018 book by Anthony Kelly & Peter Westoby Participatory Development Practice: Using traditional and contemporary frameworks (Practical Action Press).