On the first day of the SOLWorld2012 conference in Oxford (within the boarders of Keble College in a very old a pictoresque venue...) the program has ended with a very interesting and peculiar program indeed.
Under the title "Creating change and innovation in SF practice" (w. the subtitle of: 'Lessons from the world of jazz & improvisation') Alex Steele and the Improvise Quartet, UK has shown to the 200 practitioners present in the O'Reilly Thetre how solution-focused approach works, practically in any field, any set-up, showing it in this case through the creation of music (what else is the improvisation if not creation, isn't it?).
After some popular jazz standards already with some embedded improvisations Alex Steele and his band have made three very educative "experiences". Ouch, I almost forget to mention that at this time the band has had a very well-known personality in its rangs: saxophon-player was Mark McKergow himself (those who will read this on #SOL2012 (Twitter) will no doubt know whom I'm speaking about here...).
In one of the experinces, somebody from the audience was asked to come up to the band, walk around and poke/disturb them once in a while, all of them. The effect was that the poked musician abruptly started to play "out of the key" and the others have (as it turned out, successfully) tried to accomodate the whole thing to that "erreur" and make an enjoyable music from it. It worked fabulously. That was the demonstration how to use an erreur in a system to create and not to be blocked by it.
In the second case a "virgin" pianist from the audience (who never tried in his/her life playing on this instrument) and she has had received the half of the piano. She was asked to key-punch anything she wanted and the rest of the band (including Mr. Steele on the other half of the piano) successfully tried to make another enjoyable piece of improvisation of it. It demonstrated that exploration (even if it comes from originally complete ignorance) in a part of a system could lead to a very new way of thinking, to creation (a new, completely original piece of music...).
In the third case four persons were asked from the audience to each join one of the musisians with a hat in their hand. Their job was to lead the band in the way that when the hat was put on somebody's head, he had to do the leader in the tune (and the others followed him), when a hand was put on any of the musisian's shoulder, he had to follow the others's (the leader's) melody and when no hat, no hand on the shoulder, the musician stopped playing on his instrument. The helpers then very ingeniously and in a not prealable decided manner but by observing each other's moves have in this way created another wonderful experience what has also received a long standing ovation from the solution-focused brief coach practitioners present. It demonstrated - together with the already mentioned "experiences" a lot of things and among them - that in a system you can have beautiful results (during e.g. a change) by a heuristic/exploratory way of operation...
That was quite an SF (solution-focused) experience... It was something (together with the magnific venue, the formidable sessions, workshops, friends) we will never forget...
How our world is constructed and how you can profit from it...
