Workshop in North America
June 24-27, 2025
Bellingham, WA, U.S.A.
the art of enabling social learning
Communities of practice and systems convening
We’re excited to host a single North American workshop for people who are leading social learning initiatives. To explore social learning and work on your project, we focus on various perspectives. such as communities of practice, systems convening, and value creation.
The workshop takes place in fun-times Bellingham, Washington State, USA. We will be at the beautiful campus of Western Washington University, a 15-minute walk from downtown.
This workshop is hosted in person by Bev and Etienne. We’re also working in partnership with Travis Tennessen who, as well as being Director of the university’s Center for Community Learning, is a social artist and inventor of social learning activities, especially in the service of place-based learning.
Program
You will find this workshop useful whatever your role is in enabling social learning — cultivating communities of practice, systems convener, sponsor, or evaluator. The program focuses on a different dimension of social learning each day. This provides various lenses to apply to your project
The foundations
Foundations of social learning capability
What projects people are bringing
Exercising social learning leadership
Tuesday
Evening: dinner on the town and meeting the locals
Communities of practice
Key concepts and cultivation steps
Story-telling
Working on your projects
Wednesday
Evening: kayaking on the bay, dinner at the beer garden
Value-creation
The value-creation framework
Value-creation stories
Working on your projects
Thursday
Evening: celebration
A landscape perspective
Landscape mapping
Systems convening
Leadership group reflections and reports
Friday
Evening: travel home
Travel and lodging
Location. Bellingham (Xwotqwem) is a university town of 90,000 on the beautiful Salish Sea, located on the traditional homelands of the Lummi and Nooksack peoples. Vancouver, British Columbia is 60 miles to the north, and Seattle is 90 miles south. You can enjoy views of the bay, mountains, and islands and walk the serene campus and trails in the adjacent arboretum.
Lodging. Good options that are convenient to the WWU campus include the Heliotrope Hotel, Fairhaven Village Inn, and Four Points by Sheraton.
Travel. The closest international airport are Seattle and Vancouver. Rome2Rio describes the different ways to get to Bellingham from the Seattle International Airport. Southwest Airlines now flies directly to Bellingham too.