What is the Dialogatory?

The Dialogatory is a regular gathering of the LiLo community with two complementary purposes.

1. a space for exploratory dialogue that may generate complex forms of knowing—including experiential, embodied and personal knowing—and cultivate new insights into Life (Living) and Love (Loving), broadly construed.
2. a laboratory for experimenting with dialogue itself: creating, adapting and evaluating dialogical methods, strategies, practices and processes.

Participation

Mode: The Dialogatory is normally held online, although occasionally hybrid/in-person gatherings may also be organised.

Scheduling: Sessions take place on the first Saturday of each month. To enable participation from different parts of the world, the meeting time rotates periodically to accommodate different time zones.

Structure: Sessions are 120 minutes. The first 5-10 minutes are dedicated to welcoming and warm-up exercises; the core of the session is dedicated to dialoguing (shaped by the stimulus and the facilitation strategy); the last 10 minutes to wrapping-up, integrating, reflecting and exploring ideas for following sessions.

Functions

Each session depends on a number of complementary functions that support different aspects of the dialogue and the well-being of the group. These functions may be undertaken by individuals, shared among several participants, or emerge collectively through mutual stewardship or self-facilitation.

Hosting is responsible for bringing a stimulus that invites inquiry and dialogue. The stimulus may take the form of a question, text, artwork, object, piece of music, lived experience or other point of departure. Hosting may also involve collaborating with others in shaping the overall framing of the session.

Facilitating attends to the quality and dynamics of the dialogue. Depending on the session, it may involve introducing or supporting particular dialogical methods, structures or practices that help the group engage more deeply with the inquiry.

Facilitating also includes helping to ensure that:

• all participants are treated with respect;
• critique is directed towards ideas rather than individuals;
• everyone has opportunities to participate;
• implicit assumptions or emerging insights are invited into awareness where appropriate;
• the group periodically reflects on its relational and emotional dynamics.

Caring attends to the well-being of both participants and the dialogue itself. It helps cultivate conditions in which participants feel safe and comfortable to participate, remains attentive to signs of disturbance or exclusion, and may invite the group to pause, reflect or, where necessary, suspend the session.

Entry and exit. To minimise disruption to the dialogue, the session is closed 10 minutes after the scheduled starting time. Participants who need to leave before the end of the session are asked to do so discreetly and are encouraged to share any reflections afterwards through the session chat or in a shared document.

Practice

The Dialogatory is concerned with three complementary dimensions of practice: content, process and reflexivity.

Content. Each session begins with a stimulus introduced through the hosting function. The stimulus may take the form of a question, reading, object or artefact, artwork, piece of music, lived experience or another point of departure for inquiry. Occasionally participants may be invited to undertake some preparation beforehand (for example, reading a text or viewing a short video), although many sessions require no preparation.

The stimulus is intended to initiate rather than determine the dialogue. The Dialogatory is therefore not a reading group. When papers or other written materials are suggested, they are intended to operate as stimuli for dialogue rather than as persistent objects of discussion. The dialogue is free to develop beyond the initial stimulus as participants collectively explore the questions, perspectives and understandings that emerge.

Where no host or theme has been identified beforehand, participants work together towards the emergence of both the focus and the direction of inquiry during the session.

Process. The Dialogatory also serves as a laboratory for exploring different ways of supporting dialogue that are coherent with LiLo’s values and organising principles. In collaboration with those undertaking the hosting and facilitating functions, different dialogical methods, strategies and practices may be introduced, adapted and explored by the group. The process dimension is concerned with the ways in which dialogue is organised and supported.

Reflexivity. Participants are invited to engage reflexively with both the content of the dialogue and the process through which it unfolds. This may include reflecting on the assumptions, perspectives and understandings that emerge during the dialogue, as well as on the methods, practices and relationships that shape the unfolding dialogue.

Although reflexive discussion typically forms part of the closing phase of each session, reflexivity is encouraged throughout the dialogue. Insights arising from this reflexive inquiry may inform the continuing development of the Dialogatory and, more broadly, contribute to the ongoing development of LiLo’s practices, relationships and inquiries.

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