Mushrooming Together: A myco-solidarity lens on the 2024 Microsolidarity Gathering
In Feb 2024, I co-hosted the Microsolidarity winter gathering in Andalucía, Spain with Richard Bartlett, Jocelyn Ames, Jonas Gröner, and Gui Trevisan. ...And a bunch of tasty mushrooms.
Maybe it's all the mushrooms I ate in the vegan risotto at last week's Microsolidarity Gathering, but I've been thinking a lot about what mushrooms, and the mycelium networks that support them, can teach us about how to facilitate a gathering.
When we reflected as a hosting team about the event, one idea that resonated with us all was "just in time" facilitation. While we had a clear idea of the goal and arc of the event, our planning of the details was intentionally light, leaving lots of room to deliver sessions "just in time", with some of the details being written and rewritten even during the event!
Leaving this planning to hours before curtain could have been disastrous, so I wanted to reflect more deeply on aspects that I think made it not only work well, but beneficially enabled us to respond to the emergent and unpredictable energies of the group superorganism — a lot like mushrooms do.
Nothin’ but a substrate
For an event that sought to engage participants in ongoing collaboration with the Microsolidarity network, we knew we needed to be more concerned with creating the conditions for emergence than anything else. A healthy substrate leads to many fungal fruiting bodies.
In our event context, using patterns from Microsolidarity like Crewing (Pods), Open Space Technology, building shared context, scaffolding for psychological safety, and padding the schedule with unstructured time were our strategies for creating the right conditions for emergence.
We knew we’d made a good substrate when we had event participants stepping in to hosting roles by days 2 and 3 of the event. Although we never could have predicted beforehand which individuals would be most enthusiastic to step into these roles (when considering the potentiated soil of a mycelium, an observer may never be able to predict where exactly the mushroom will sprout up), we had prepared and anticipated confidently that someone would.
Having participants facilitating the logistics, open space planning, and leading sessions was like watching a satisfying time-lapse of new mushrooms sprouting up.
Collective capacity maintenance
To host an event like the mushrooms is to hold capacity to respond to shifting and emergent conditions. Doing this well creates a felt sense of magic, since needs are being met even before someone may have found space to clearly articulate them. If I can learn something about how to develop this capacity from the mushrooms, I’d think it has something to do with staying present with the group, being and becoming part of the shared substrate.
Holding this presence and connection to the collective as an event host can be challenging. Navigating logistics or handling unplanned crises are inherently disruptive. “Rolling with” the unpredictable (like when the power goes out, but you take it as an opportunity to get spooky) not only makes event hosting more joyful, but also invites surprising and charming opportunities to stay together in the shared experience.
We knew we’d struck the right balance of anticipating and responding when some part of our hosting team always had extra capacity to give and move around between ourselves. Even if one part of us got worn out, as long as some other part was ready to fill the gap, our collective system continued without pause.
This practice of collective capacity maintenance is modeled beautifully by mushrooms, whose colonies are constantly re-arranging themselves to repair, strengthen, and calibrate.
All together now!
“Just in time” facilitation requires conditions that enable decision making at the edges of a moment. Designing for an emergent substrate and holding collective capacity for sensing are lessons from the mushrooms on how to do this. Learning how to embody these lessons is a practice, and I have so much gratitude for the opportunity of co-hosting this event which gave me space for this practice.
Now that we've wrapped up this gathering for Microsolidarity, and I’ve returned to my home community of Elkenmist in the Pacific Northwest where mushrooms are abundant, I notice I'm excited and deeply curious to wonder whether there is more myco-solidarity to be found in relationship with the world that hums and buzzes under our feet.
Whether or not you joined us this year in Andalucía, I’m looking forward to seeing everything we do together in the Microsolidarity network. There's a great beauty in watching people grow capacity for meaningful work, especially now in these times when regeneration could mean the difference between dying, surviving, or thriving on this planet. Like the mushrooms, we're all connected in this work.
Interested in “mushrooming together” with others from the Microsolidarity network? Register today for an upcoming online practice program.