‘Field Notes’ is a fortnightly column in which Regen Melbourne’s Lead Convenors provide on-the-ground updates and insights from their work and focus areas.

As she continues to explore emerging governance practices in her role as New Urban Governance Lead, Caroline Sanz-Veitch has been spending time in the field, learning from community and cultures close to her (as well as some a little further away). Here, she shares some of the insights she’s started to glean — and the importance of understanding how different people and groups relate to a place. 

Lately I’ve been grappling with questions around what it means to belong or connect to a place, and how our sense of responsibility and care for that place, and the people in it, develops over time. As my focus has shifted to more deeply interrogating our current models of urban governance, and even the concepts of governance itself, I keep being drawn back to first wanting to understand how people relate to a place in order to be able to make collective decisions about what happens there.

Perhaps due to my ongoing fascination with ethnography (the exploration of peoples and cultures through their customs, habits, and mutual differences), I decided to explore these questions out in the field. I sought to immerse myself in different forums that were engaging with customs, practices or rituals that surfaced alternate ways of understanding how we see ourselves within a place and the roles we have in relation to it. Incidentally, I kept finding myself drawn to First Nations’ conceptualisations and wisdom surrounding these questions, and in particular some of their age-old practices of participation and collaboration. 

During this immersion experiment, I turned to communities I was already a part of as well as welcoming invitations to newer ones that were tackling some of these questions. Each of these offered distinct forms of knowledge and wisdom in service to their people and places. I engaged in both group gatherings (formal and informal), mentorship-type conversations and communities of practice. 

“In a time of endless meetings and overcrowded calendars. many of us have lost the ability to be intentional about how we come together. These practices have reminded me of the importance of considering not just what we are hoping to discuss, but how we go about the discussion.”

Over this time I was introduced to, and particularly influenced by, a series of approaches or concepts that seemed to ground people in place as well as in connection with others, which greatly helped me more deeply engage with what it means to belong, to connect and to participate in collective decision-making. Here are some that brought new understanding to how I might address my earlier curiosities: 

• Wayapa, as a practice both facilitates sharing of cultural knowledge but also holds space to connect to each other and to country. It was also introduced to me as a toolkit that helps us learn from nature — how to regulate and understand the different postures we can leverage, to help us navigate challenges or explore different perspectives. 

• Ho’oponopono, explained to me as a forgiveness and reconciliation practice that roughly translates to returning things to balance and making things right. What stood out to me was how this practice helps us recognise tensions both within us and between ourselves and others, giving us an opportunity to work through that tension and build deeper connection.

• Deep time diligence, as a way of making decisions with a deep relationship to time, and collective wisdom. I’ve now heard Tyson Yunkaporta talk about this from a few different perspectives and what stands out most is how he explains the importance of everyone’s role in observing our systems, bringing those data points together and collectively sensemaking, to guide us in what needs to change — as a continuous process. 

• The Va, a multi-faceted concept part of Samoan and Maori cultures (as well as Japanese I’ve recently learned!) that describes the spiritual and social relations between people — particularly drawing attention to the ‘in between space’ that due to the communal nature of these cultures is seen as a relational space rather than an empty or separational space. This distinction in and of itself opened up a different way of viewing how we relate to others that creates a much deeper foundation for understanding. 

Whilst each of these could have their own dedicated exploration, I thought I’d share with you a couple of things I believe they can teach us about how we look at community participation and how we govern ourselves and our places. 

1. Relationality unlocks deeper understanding

   In a time of endless meetings, overcrowded calendars and a constant feeling of racing between engagements, many of us have lost the ability to be intentional about how we come together. Learning about or being part of these practices has reminded me of the importance of considering not just what we are hoping to discuss, but how we go about the discussion — how we can be in the right “time-place” as Tyson puts it, to engage with the depth and relationality of what we are discussing. 

   
   For example, If we seek to have more participation in local decision-making, perhaps first we need to start looking at how we are creating space around our “discussion time” for building connection, understanding and relationships with each other. This could enable more fruitful conversations, difficult though they might be, and the interpersonal understanding needed to make meaningful decisions collectively. It also allows us to be better equipped to have these sometimes difficult conversations, because we are prioritising relationships and shared purpose over being right.
   

2. Recognising our responsibility to place

   Throughout this immersion and learning time, I realised that people were also considered as ‘in relation to’ something, seldom in isolation. Perhaps this has to do with more communal values in the Indigenous cultures I engaged with, but it highlighted to me that when we only focus on people as individual entities, we often forget about the reciprocity that is inherent in how we exist within a place — whether it be to the others or the environment around us. 
   
   If we think about ourselves as in relation to others or the environment we exist within, it encourages us to recognise our responsibility to that entity and how we are each contributing to each other's existence. I wonder if we changed our mental models and language to encourage this kind of relationality, how this might influence the way we engage with our places and with the decisions we make about them. I also wonder how it might reframe how we think about ‘work’ and what it would mean to consider our contributions to our communities and society instead. Further curiosities to explore!

This immersion and learning process has been profound in supporting and stretching my intuition around the significance of relationality in creating change and making meaningful decisions. It has me feeling hopeful for the possibilities we are capable of unlocking if we can harness the potential of the collective and the power of connection, both to each other and to place, even amongst the most difficult challenges. 

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