Emergent Learning - The Seeds of Impactful Social Change
Last year, Heidi Sparkes Guber from Fourth Quadrant Partners met with me to follow up on a case study of ATD Fourth World’s Story Garden in Gallup, New Mexico, that she had carried out while researching the role of “emergence” in complex social change. I had shared the story of ATD Fourth World’s presence at the Gallup flea market and the impact observed by community members. I mentioned our presence in Gamerco—a former coal mining community just outside of Gallup—and how we had more questions than answers about what approach would be most meaningful to that community. From Heidi’s enthusiastic response, I understood that this space of thoughtful questions leading to experimentation is at the heart of Emergent Learning. This is the space where the seeds of impactful social change take root.
Emergence is a relatively new concept for me. In social change work, it’s an approach that enables insights to emerge from a variety of individuals, leading to innovative and effective strategies that could not have been planned ahead of time. Instead, these strategies grow out of a shared experience and call for shared ownership of efforts undertaken. In many ways, this diverges from the conventional approach of formulating strategic plans that are meant to be followed for years and then evaluated. There is a growing realization that complex social change initiatives require a lot more elasticity and rapid-cycle learning than conventional approaches generally allow for.
Around the time of my conversation with Heidi, our team in New Mexico began Story Garden in a new neighborhood of Gamerco. We decided to frame this new step of building trust and joint ownership as a learning question: “What would it take for people to come together around children’s talent and growth in Gamerco?” We gathered the insights we gained over the years. We put words on what we expected to see happen if we were present in a consistent, supportive way. We noted opportunities to test out this thinking along the way. With over a year of sustained presence through Story Garden, we are now seeing people rally around children’s talents in many meaningful ways. This inspires us to consider the next step, and what additional learning questions might propel the work ahead.
ATD Fourth World was built on the concept of deep learning from and with people who experience extreme poverty and hardship. In this way, emergence has always been at the core of ATD Fourth World’s approach. Reframing anti-poverty strategies as a partnership with people in poverty, drawing out their collective knowledge and building on their insights about how to tackle poverty, is not only the right thing to do ethically, it’s also the effective thing to do. It’s how real change happens.
~ Karen Stornelli, Gallup, NM