International Clean Conference 2012 - overview

Two full days of fascinating applications of Clean, keynotes and plenty of participatory sessions to try out different ways of working. A rich treat, flowing over into evenings at the pub and a chance to find out more of what draws people to this work.
I found the keynote from Cei Linn Davies very interesting giving the clinical context of how it all developed.
Great to have a second experience of Rupert Meese's Clean Dance - and interesting as a 'dancer' to try out the same theme with a very different group of people, atmosphere, and pace of response.
Another session with little use of words and a similarly exquisite quality of learning through interaction was Phil Swallow's on Sunday afternoon - a great last-session-of-the-conference that also had a dance theme as simple movement of hands between two people exploring the boundaries of Clean questioning led into movement and music with a celebratory feel.

I presented my Clean and Colourful activity, slightly adapted from the trial at the TDC a couple of weeks before. Being the first session of the Sunday morning, a few latecomers arrived after the session started, but still managed to join in and enjoy the activity - so it seems successfully robust after it's first test of joining in part-way-through! As promised in my abstract, the session also included a background to the activity, my experimentation with Clean in the context of academic research and arts practice - which I chose to give as a more formal 'paper', pre-written so as to keep concisely to time. An hour session seemed harder to plan time-wise than a 20 minute presentation slot! Although challenging in this context where practice, personal experience and application are the common exchange of dialogue, I wanted to bring in the contrasts of the practice and the written document, as well as providing as much information as possible to convey the relationship of the experiential activity with my research in pervasive media and community arts.  Overall I think it worked as intended - and was received quite personally with a range of feedback including a couple of requests for the transcript to read again. I intend to post the transcript, slides and an edited audio recording from the session. Links to follow in a week or two....
There was some very touching feedback and a lovely end to the session whereby the group 'self-organised' (as Phil observed) to create a spontaneous 'gallery' of colour grids at the front of the room.

An enjoyable and rewarding experience, and a delight to be able to bring this work, modelled from the practice that was modelled with the use of Clean, back to this 2012 conference, 20 months after the previous conference at which I had my first immersion into this generous community of people and insight to the diverse ways Clean is being tested and applied.