Echoes of the Triarchy Press Seminar:
‘'The Shadow Organization': Human Rights and the absence of justice in the workplace and beyond’
Tooks Chambers on 5th February 2007
By Mary Lidgate of Theatre4Business
Background to the project, 'in the absence of justice':
This unique and collaborative project explores human rights and civil liberties in the context of art and organizational practice. It is an imaginative partnership between internationally renowned artist Ricky Romain, Tooks Law Chambers, Amnesty International, Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID), Dartington Creative Enterprise and Triarchy Press.
The whole project, consisting of the exhibition, seminar programme and various publication and creative outcomes, runs for approximately one year from Human Rights Day in December 2006 to December 2007.
Background to the Triarchy seminar:
On 5th February this year, Triarchy Press organized a discussion in the atrium of Tooks Law Chambers in London. As a legal practice specialising in issues of civil and human rights, Tooks is a symbol of the search for justice. The work of Ricky Romain, which dominated this space for a period of three months, embodied the spirit of justice and its absence - and challenged us to consider how we can, together, discover a way to centralise justice in our hearts, minds and practice.
In this space, the seminar set about exploring spectrums between human rights abuse (asylum seeker and migrant worker issues) and organizational abuse (whistleblower and workplace bullying issues). The seminar aimed to provoke an audit of individual and collective attitudes towards asylum seekers and migrant workers through the human strategies and behavioural patterning of workplace and other social organizations.
Background to Echoes:
This piece, by Mary Lidgate, provides a narrative (not a report) on the discussion that took place. The decision to invite Mary to do this is grounded in the spirit of the collaboration between key players in the Arts, the law, organizational learning, and issues of migration and asylum.
Mary's twin passions of art and the environment are reflected in her work in which she uses theatre to explore and enrich relationships in organisations. Mary believes that we have a lot to learn from nature about systems and relationships and that climate change presents us with a special opportunity to rethink the way we organise ourselves both at home and at work. This conviction colours the narrative presented here, adding another important dimension to how we view our relationships and the way we organize ourselves in business, in governments and in society.
Mary is a partner in Theatre4Business (www.theatre4business.com) and a
Director of Carbonsense (www.carbonsense.org)
The seminar reflected Triarchy's increasing awareness of, and engagement with, complexity.
Complexity theory: Complex systems are 'in process' and evolve constantly over time. The evolution of a complex system is extremely sensitive to initial conditions or to small perturbations, one in which the number of independent interacting components is large, or one in which there are multiple pathways by which the system can evolve (Whitesides and Ismagilov). Whilst a complex system is difficult to understand and verify (Weng, Bhalla and Iyengar) it clearly demonstrates multiple interactions between many different components (D. Rind). The awareness of complexity allows us to consider multiple facets of human organization and the way we relate to each other and the world, in such a way that we become conscious of the dangers and impact of our interrelating behaviours, as we seek better, more nuanced and ethical ways to interact. Click here for more information about Complexity theory.An awareness of complexity helps to explain the interdisciplinary groupings of the invited audience in the following, usually unconnected but now collaborative, areas of:
- Justice and the law
- The Arts
- Public and corporate responsibility and strategy
- Organizational learning
- Migration and asylum
Read Mary Lidgate's narrative about the seminar >>>
