Masthead of the new Imaginal Education Collection website

By Steve Harrington

One day at a Spring Sojourn a year ago, Marge Philbrook and Jack Gilles were looking at some of the new ICA Global Archives at the ICA-USA building in Chicago. The Archives have a brand new “innovations” – a computer database for:

• searching for a keyword like Imaginal Education
• creating a “found set” of keyword records using a keyword
  like “Imaginal Education”
• finding the specific file’s location
• then scanning & emailing the document to someone who wants it

They found a real “Gem from the Archives” – a transcribed talk of one of my all-time favorite ICA teachers – then Kaye Hayes – now since retirement – Kaze Gadway.

Marge Philbrook and Jack Gilles look at the Archive Holdings
There are about 23,000 assets under “Find Imaginal Education”.

As a long time ICA guy, I remember the power and clarity of Kaze’s storytelling about aboriginal communities in Australia and other places I’ve never been – but I also remember that particular talk – it has some original insights I’ve carried with me for many years and tried to pass on to others when I had to say something about how to find a place to stand as a human being at work in the civilizing process of the 20th Century.

Personally in my own work even in the 21st Century, I travelled to some pretty unusual places like Moscow and Costa Rica, and I still carry the work of my teacher with me like a tune from some song I sing once in awhile to my self and with others. Finding and forwarding such “Gems” is one reason I’ve been involved lately in the new work of making online collections of Archive materials easily available from any computer screen in any timezone.

Probably that paper from 1971 was part of Jack’s inspiration to start up a Collection on Imaginal Education – to curate the Imaginal Education Collection materials and invite other people to use the Collection when it goes public.

Curating the Collection is actively underway as I write. In August Jack is meeting in Denver with a group of Imaginal Education practitioners to do a little more curating. There are text and video clip stories, online documents, a list of resources from many different eras and new applications of Imaginal Education. The website blog is: http://wedgeblade.net/wordpress/ imaginaleducation

For me a particularly interesting video clip in the Collection is Tim Dove’s story of how Imaginal Education works in an entire Middle School. The new idea for me is they practice a new version of the traditional ORID conversation which Tim calls “ORIO”.

When Jack told me about this in a live video chat between his home in Mexico and mine in Costa Rica, I was astonished.

I said: ‘What does the “2nd O” mean?’. He said, ‘“Ontology” aka in ordinary English “Being”.’ He went on to say, ” The 2nd O question is about inviting people in the school – teachers, administrators, learners alike to express where they stand in the matter at hand; to say who you are being; to listen to others say where they stand, who they are being... in the matter at hand.”

It is really inspiring to find in one place the ongoing practice of Imaginal Educators from two different centuries.

What’s next for the Imaginal Education Collection? I’m hoping that Jack Gilles and the Denver team will have an “Opening” – an “Imaginal Education Launch Party” – something like you do at the museums in Chicago and Costa Rica when there is a new exhibit to celebrate. People have a party, invite some guests to come and celebrate. A couple of “guides” give tours or maybe they give a couple of short talks. I’m hoping they might host a Launch Event – a Google on air live broadcast from the new Global Archives YouTube Channel – broadcast live & video channel to a group of guests participating from their compuer screens.

If you want to subscribe to updates about the “Imaginal Education Collection” plans please contact Jack Gilles on the subscriber form at http:// wedgeblade.net/wordpress/imaginaleducation.

Steve Harrington is a long-time ICA Archives fan, former ToP trainer and co-founder of the International Association of Facilitators.