The journalist and author Carl Honoré confesses he was a one-time speed freak. Since then he’s become the guru of Slow. He and I spent a deliciously laid back-day together before Easter and if you can find the time – you can, by the way – take a listen to our podcast.
Category: Featured
Home from Home in Haryana
I was expecting Street Wisdom in a village outside Delhi to be extraordinary. But I am a stranger, looking at India though an outsider’s eyes. It’s hard not see even the most mundane Indian street as cinematic and exotic. But what about the wonderful group of professional coaches and facilitators I was introducing to the experience for the first time? They are from India. Would they find their own backyard so magical?
I certainly felt like a stranger, leading the tune up phase in front of some lock up garages on the roadside at Karnki. A temple on the left, cars and trucks beeping madly and a cow ambling past. (Thanks to you Sriram and Abhi for helping me with the facilitation. You’re natural street wizards!)
It turned out my Indian colleagues also felt like outsiders. This is a poor area where the challenges of daily life are hard to imagine. Truly, I think we all felt like strangers. And what made the experience extraordinary to so many was how welcome the residents, shopkeepers and street sweepers made everyone feel. In the sharing, participants swapped stories of how initial reserve (“are you from the government?…are you doing a survey?”) gave way to welcome, generosity and genuine conversations. They sat us down, gave us chai, invited us into their shops and dwellings. Curiosity begets curiosity it seems.
Everyone had their own answers to their personal questions, of course, but there was a shared theme of gratitude for the many small ways the locals had made us feel at home. There was also a shared desire to connect like this with our fellow humans more often.
And for me? I didn’t officially go on Street Wisdom. But it had come to me. Remember those garages where I chose – quite by chance – to do the tune up? While I was standing there, waiting for the explorers to return, an old man appeared. He rolled a rickety office chair up to me and gestured for me to sit. I smiled and mimed ‘no thank you’, thinking it would be an imposition. He mimed “a cup of chai?”. Again, I did the polite thing, the Englishman not wanting to outstay my welcome. He looked directly into my eyes for a long time, smiled and bowed. Before he cycled off with his rickshaw piled high with rice bags, he said something incomprehensible to Abdi in the local dialect. I did pick up one word – raj – which didn’t make me feel any more at home. Colonial memories, I thought. Ouch.
But it wasn’t until we returned to the hotel for the Sharing that I understood. The old man had told Abhi that centuries ago, in a previous life, the tall man with the umbrella (me) had been the king – the Raja – of this district. That’s why he was offering me a throne and some refreshment. The Raja had returned and he wanted to welcome me home. A profound quiet settled on the room. I was lost for words.
So, not such a stranger after all…
A Joy To Be Involved. A Joy To Help Out.
There is something very special about taking part in a Street Wisdom and it is even more pleasurable to have the privilege to lead an event. It never fails to have an impact in some way on everyone involved and sometimes that impact can be profound. It is incredibly rewarding to have the opportunity to make a difference for a complete stranger. Strangers they may start but by the end of an event, the shared experience feels like it’s been had with great friends.
We love our RSA events as they attract large numbers of diverse people. Last week found almost 60 wanderers came along and we had a valiant team of 8 street leaders drawn from the ranks of our lovely Street Wizards both RSA fellows and non-follows.
When it came to 5pm people just didn’t want to stop sharing their experience. This was the case for participants and facilitators alike. So big thanks to Ines Alonso, Sarah Storm, Michelle Preston, Justine Clement, Caroline Bond, Rachel Crowther, Kev Wyke, Tony Woods and to Mark Hall and the team at the RSA.
We would love to hear more from those who took part so please add comments below.
I think Tony summed up the general feeling very well:
What a magnificent & fulfilling experience! Reflecting after facilitating my first ever Street Wisdom group of 6 wonderful people, I can’t help regretting that I didn’t do it sooner. It’s such a powerful process – the insights and answers that my group gathered from their wanderings around Covent Garden and the Strand was quite moving – and the process is just so simple to use. Thanks for the opportunity Street Wisdom guys. Can’t wait to do it again soon. TW
If you’d like to lead your own Street Wisdom event download our toolkit. We support you every step of the way, from setting up to running your event.
Mindfulness at Walk
Mindfulness at Work are one of the pioneering companies bringing Mindfulness into the workplace in a way that everyone can easily connect with and learn from. Louise Cox Chester, MAW’s irrepressibly passionate founder and CEO has been a fan of Street Wisdom from the very start. In fact, I think she was the first person to describe what we do as applied mindfulness. Who knew?
As stress, complexity and volatility continue to grow, so does the Business world’s need for clear thinking, awareness and self-direction. And our two ventures will be collaborating more in future to answer this call. So Louise thought it would be useful (and generous) to give Mindfulness at Work’s growing tribe of coaches and trainers a chance to experience street wisdom first hand.
Personally, it was a real joy to be working with them in and around St James’s Park. Freezing cold, but a joy nonetheless. Mindfulness meets wanderful-ness.
What questions did these mindful adventure seekers ask? And what answers did they get? That’s really for them to say. So, if you were there, please leave your comments below.
It’s a cold day for a hot chocolate!
Whilst waiting for the brave group of street explorers to arrive, I began noticing all the brightly coloured clothing being worn by Londoners and tourists alike, to frighten off the crisp cold of a Winters day! As I stood scanning the streets for my fellow adventurers, each person arrived from different points of the compass, curious and all excited to begin.
Despite the cold, there was an air of wonderment in discovering the streets around us which, until now had gone unnoticed. Amazing things happen when we take the time to slow down, relax and begin seeing the world in which we live with fresh eyes. The patterns suddenly stand out in the cobbled streets, the buildings surrounding us come into focus and the places we didn’t even know existed are magically revealed to us.
Suddenly, the bubble of routine is broken and our perspective expands in new and exciting ways. There are some questions that cannot always be answered directly though answers may appear in the following days and weeks, mysteriously popping in to our mind. And some questions can be clarified as a result of seeing and experiencing the world differently especially when one of the local chocolate shops (Rococo Chocolates) very generously helped warm us up at the end of the session with some tasty hot chocolate!
An insight from the group and no doubt many others, is that taking the time to appreciate the streets and towns we live in, we begin noticing the people as individual human beings. Then we’re no longer separated from each other, we’re connected to each other 🙂
Inspiring Times
Freelance journalist Rachel Carlyle (@Rachel_Carlyle) was thinking about the next step in her career when curiosity brought her to a Street Wisdom on London’s SouthBank. You can take a look here at the article she wrote about her experience in The Times. Find out what she learned about wanting it all and being human from seagulls, stickers and a man hunting for treasure with a metal detector.
FLO state…
Florentin is a neighbourhood of Tel Aviv that the average tourist might overlook. But this bustling, hip, multi-cultural quarter – a magnet for new arrivals and refugees – turned out to be a delicious site for the city’s first ever night-time Street Wisdom. It was hosted by Jonah Fisher and the team at FLO a funky new co-working space for social innovators that’s all about creating community. Five minutes before we were due to start no one had arrived – hey, this is Israel! But just after 1900 FLO was buzzing with an international crowd of the curious including participants from Germany, Italy, Russia, Denmark and Australia.
Florentine really comes alive after dark. Street cafes, bars, bakeries making delicious kadayif, late night hair dressers, tattoo parlours even a Flamenco School… The street wisdom explorers set out into the warm night with a wonderfully diverse range of questions: how can I sell my corsets in Israel?…am I on the right path?…should I buy a car now?…how can I feel more safe?…where should I move to? They returned with tales to tell, insights to share, delightful synchronicities to report and answers to act on.
It was a real joy. My personal thanks to the FLO team and also to wizards Rei Dishon and Elsa Pearl (leading a group for the first time!). If you were there, please add your comments below and tell us what happened for you.
Google Summerfest
Summerfest turned out to be perfectly named. Even though it was the last day of August it felt like high summer in the Netherlands. And the annual ‘learn-a-thon’ that Google organises for their people here, felt like a real festival with participants customising their own day at the various experience tents. Street Wisdom was delighted to be taking part – I think we had the best looking tent too!. The only slight issue was – no streets. The festival was held 60km outside Amsterdam in a lovely but very rural setting. No problem for Google who magicked up a fleet of bicycles so we could pedal to the nearby town. And so the first Street Wisdom on two wheels began!
This picture shows us doing a tune up by a synchronous street sign which translates as “Situation Changing”. So true! If you participated and are reading this, please leave us a comment about your experience.
Meanwhile, I want to tell you about a wonderful stranger I met while I was leading the event. Sesay Alpha (picture below) had been observing watchfully from a bench and when the Googlers went off on their quest he introduced himself. A birthday accident in Sierra Leone many years before had severely damaged his spine. It awoke him to plight of other badly injured people in Africa and he helped set up AfricaSurgery.nl to find them the support they desperately need. 
But what about Sesay’s own health? Doctors told him he would never walk again but after a decade in a wheel chair he took a closer look at the drugs he was being prescribed, set them aside decided to try to walk. His first scary attempt took him to that bench. Now he walks 14km every day. It’s an inspiring story. And where did he research the drugs that were keeping him off his feet? Google, of course.
Fathers’ Day, NYC
“My father used to work in the city”. Long Island born musician, Ross was reflecting on what the city had meant to him and meant now, with so much of the city changing. “It’s always felt to me like the real place. Yet it’s always changing. When people complain about the development I remind them it’s always been like this. This courtyard, for instance (we were having iced tea in an ‘authentically French’ tea cafe). 50 years ago this would have been a forecourt covered in machine parts.”
It was Father’s day in New York. So the paternal influence was always going to be felt. But it was a day for mothers too. Irish-born Lucy had been a natural flâneur when she first arrived in the City. She’s had less time for creative wandering since Theo was born. He is now 14 months old and showed up for his first Street Wisdom in a baby sling – with almond butter biscuits on tap. Luxury.
Lucy is a singer and writer. So let’s hear about her experience – in her own words:
David was a very open, jovial and engaging midwife of our encounter with the New York city street one Sunday afternoon in SoHo. New York streets are incredibly information-rich places, bursting with mitochondria and effluence. After several years of living here, I still find it deeply fascinating. So it’s an ideal place for a happening like Street Wisdom, though inevitably because there is so much abundance of stimuli and people busy fighting their way through the infinity of it all to get to where they HAVE TO BE, a lot of it goes unnoticed. But it’s there.
David described the Street Wisdom encounter as being a dance with the street and it was delicious – as a parent of a 14 month old baby – to have a scheduled opportunity to dance with the whispers and shouts and belches of downtown Manhattan on a hot afternoon with little zephyrs blowing gusts of precious air on the avenues if we got lucky. His questions sent us looking for old things in new ways, I found. Probably the most profound moment in the whole experience for me happened within my very first meander, when I happened upon an empty scene beside a playground that I found very compelling, in an open way. I kept returning to it, and I want to go back to that spot and gaze some more, and throw some more questions into the empty swimming pool I found there.
