THE GOLDEN POND
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Specialised behind-the-scenes support for leaders, creators and experts who are working on the creative edge of transformative projects.Helping you access and articulate your core intuitions, insights, inspirations and innovations—when something vital is stuck, murky, tangled, or tantalising just out of reach.Breaking through more quickly, richly and crisply, than if left on your own.We go deep, we go fast, we go vast, we go to the point of it all.To crystallise the next illuminating, enabling patterns that are waiting to emerge from you—brewing within 'the golden pond' of your embodied expertise, frontline knowledge and unique life experiences.And from this crystallised "aha"—which will be very precise, unique, robust, meaningful and workable—everything grows. You feel it. You flow it. Your know it. You share it.So you can get on with transforming the world.
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THE EXPERIENCE OF WORKING WITH ME
I had the privilege of being companioned by Luke... and it was one of the most powerful, clarifying conversations I’ve had in years.In one 90min session he created such a deeply curious and attuned container that I found myself articulating, with surprising ease, what I most deeply care about in my work — and why I’ve been struggling to bring it into the foreground.Luke’s way of listening, questioning, mapping, and mirroring back nuance helped me understand not just what I do, but why it matters... I left with both clarity and sadness — a recognition of how long I’ve held back the work that most wants to be shared through me. But more importantly, I left with a way forward.Luke has a rare gift for drawing out the golden threads that want to emerge — with clarity, care, and quiet brilliance. He’s not just facilitating a method, he’s holding space for deep articulation and transformation.This process is something truly special.Nicola, community story weaver, AustraliaLuke is very good at getting the essential shape of things, and giving it back to people. It’s palpably obvious he is a highly talented, caring person with tremendous creative energy.Rob, focusing expert and music teacher, Scotland, author "Feeling Heard, Hearing Others"
This work is emancipating and creative. And very rare.In the process with Luke, I noticed that I actually have words for this... that there are places to enter... sensing the deeper layers, almost like time dimensions between the things that came up.What I absolutely loved about it was that it had a continuum… of not leaving the process, that it could be fed… It pulled me in, and Luke's steady questions of tell-me-more kept that going, keep me in it. The tiny steps given in each next questions, were crucial especially with any resistance lurking in me. Such great questions, thanks for guiding me through it. This was precious.Anna, researcher, FinlandLuke is my go to expert for insightful, revealing and big-picture advice.I particularly turn to him in the early stages of my creative education and technology projects to get design and 'sense' feedback, and I've always found Luke's input saves me reams of time I would have otherwise spent on redundant or unnecessary elements.Jonathan, educational leader in creative tech, Australia, FutureWe, Edunauts
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WHAT I BRING TO THE PROCESS
I love supporting people to swim in the "golden pond" of their inner wellspring of possibility—the brewing place from which all good things come, including love, care, play, wisdom, vital innovation, genuine transformation, and creative action.When companioning of others, I draw upon a rare blend of advnaced skills: uber empathic embodied listening, hyper analytic systems mapping, vast and fast pattern recognition, and a very practical, enlivening process-generative and process-hacking capacity.Over the last two decades I've worked with hundreds of people in the formative phases of creative change, across many diverse fields. Because of this, I'm able to connect with anyone in their uniqueness of their context, their craft, their vocabularies, and their personality.My experience spans:/ practice-oriented research methodology (teaching, tutoring and supporting over 200 researchers, across a dozen disciplines in arts, design, media, humanities and education, and covering all the major research approaches in theoretical, empirical and practical domains, QUT Creative Industries 2006-2010),
/ experience-oriented creative arts (music, performance, immersive installations, multi-arts community collaboration showing in festivals, arts venues and public spaces across Australia in into the US and UK, including co-directing of Compost Composers 1997-2001, Super Critical Mass 2008-2016 and Theatre of Thunder 2016-2023),
/ systems-oriented visual design and mapping (acknowledged with a global Information is Beautiful infographic award 2019),
/ innovation-oriented cultural research (for local government, universities research centres and community agencies, in innovation and arts policy and education, creative cities, community-led disaster coordination and more),
/ conceptually-orientated scholarship of philosophy and psychotherapist Eugene Gendlin (including landmark research on his entire 60+ years of publication, and foundational discussion papers of his Thinking At The Edge approach),
/ and immersion in embodiment-oriented expressive practices (Butoh, Jungian expressive therapy, theatre improvisation, wholebody Focusing, ideas whispering).For a poetic impression of how I might work with you on elegant realisations in the midst of swirling vastness and granulator details, take a tour of several recent immersive experiences I've created in iconic public spaces, at www.mesmerism.space
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SMALL GROUP PROCESS
EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST ARE NOW OPEN, FOR A NEW 'THINKING BEYOND THE EDGE' SMALL GROUP COHORTIntensive, specialised and customised.Selected participants will be practitioners, experts and leaders with over a decade of experience in any field (or several)... whose work hinges on the quality of their awareness, insights and approaches... who thrive on the alchemy of small group sharing... and who have a strong sense that their 'brewing intuitions', if crystallised, could unlock so much more for themselves and the communities they serve.Informed by Gendlin's Thinking at The Edge approach -- but we go beneath the formulated steps of the method to the underlying moves. Which means we can operate from a stronger, deeper and more adaptable place.Prior acquaintance with Gendlin's methods and/or philosopher is not required. Because we go to the basic dynamics of human creative process, the material we cover together will support any creative process methods you already work with (such as Theory U, creative arts processes, design thinking, non violent communication, Open Space group work and so on).
