Reflections on SDN

Reflections on the Social Developers’ Network (SDN) Its Origins, Ethos and Purpose

Historical

The founder of SDN, Dr Ned Iceton, travelled South Asia visiting community development projects, worked as a Flying Doctor in the Northern Territory in Australia with many outlying Aboriginal communities, studied intently the theories and practices of community programs across the world, worked in Distance Education at the University of New England where he initiated Aboriginal men’s groups and a farmer’s collective at Bannockburn NSW, to name just a few of his activities throughout his life.

During most of these engagements, he invariably encountered the same controversy again and again. For example, as doctor to the Aboriginal people in remote Australia, he campaigned within ‘the system’ that the services should be client-driven. He could see that the health programs orchestrated by the NT government were not addressing the problems that afflicted the people he treated.

When he tried to change the focus of the health system to remedy this, he encountered such resistance from the health establishment, who believed that ‘they knew best’ what Aboriginal people needed, and were committed to a top-down bureaucratic approach, that after much stress and pressure he was forced to resign his position.

This theme replicated itself throughout Ned’s life. Whenever he succeeded in generating self-agency within a community he was always challenged by authorities to suppress what was either causing them difficulties, or was not being done in the accepted, recognised way.

In 1972 he gathered together a group of Aboriginal men to talk in a circle, at the University of New England where he was working. They soon identified a number of grievances and ambitions, which Ned encouraged they take to the local Armidale council. The council pressured the university to stop Ned, as it was causing difficulties having Aboriginal men demanding action on their concerns. Ned had to cease these meetings to retain his employment, but it is most likely the Aboriginal men’s natural yarning style influenced his own ideas of how a workshop should operate.

In 1975, Ned convened the first SDN Workshop. The format is deceptively simple – a group of up to 18 people gather and commit to attend for a period of days and nights. The attendees are invited to offer a session on whatever subject they wish, and a schedule of sessions is collectively created at the beginning of the workshop. Each session leader facilitates their session, but discussion participation is imperative, so that presentations without conversation is discouraged – it is not a conference but a workshop. There is no inworkshop hierarchy and participants address all matters arising in a collaborative way, including meal preparations.

The format may appear simple, but the intent of SDN is far deeper than a mere chat circle.

Human Affinity

Ned came to the firm belief that humanity was facing an existential crisis, and this was before Climate Change began impacting the world. His life experiences had demonstrated to him that people are trapped in a chain of busy activity which was increasingly focused on functional outcomes, and what is being forgotten is relationships based on natural humanity.

People usually only join together to acquire or share information, to resolve problems or plan initiatives. Few gather, today, to meet the person next to them, as a human being with all their personal delights and anxieties, to discover the being behind the mask. There are always reasons to engage with others, and those reasons camouflage the meeting of souls. “Yes, I understand what you are saying, but I want to know, are you my friend?”

The theory behind SDN is that humanity is facing a crisis of identity. Identity has become what we do, not who we are, of our ‘tribe’ instead of our person. Ned believed this was a cultural prescription that must change if we, as a species, are to survive.

Ned believed in the truth of something so simple, and yet consistently rejected by the modern world – belief in the healing force of sharing time and space with other humans behind their self-protective masks, in an atmosphere of serious discussion. The question was, how to reach through to the person behind their worldly personas? What he discovered is that when people spend enough quality time together, talking about what energises them and participating in mundane tasks, they come to the experience of common humanity.

Ultimately, Ned believed, it was an awareness of unaffected affinity that humanity has left behind, in the craving for competitive and material acquisition. And it is this awareness that will be the ethos which can save our species from the horrific consequences of its flawed focus.

The people-oriented approach that he had striven to support and enhance all his life, and for which he had suffered at the hands of those who rejected this, was the quality he came to identify as inherently generated in SDN workshops, and which was essential to saving our species from self-destruction.

Personal Development

A crucial distinction of SDN from other meeting technologies is that Ned Iceton repeatedly emphasised the necessity of engaging in personal development, not just community, mental or productive development. Personal development is generally pushed to the side of mainstream agendas and left to counsellors and complimentary health. But Ned sought to bring it directly into the centre of all his activities – he required that those he mentored or supported in the projects, engage consistently in reflecting on not just why they were involved, but the influence that involvement had upon their own personal growth. The SDN workshop format was specifically designed to incorporate personal development as a key, integrated process within the experience. That aspect is almost never the focus of other meeting formats, yet it was quintessential to SDN.

Quality of Interaction

The quality of discussion within a workshop was another critical aspect of SDN. Many have expressed the insight that even among their family and friends, they rarely speak about topics in a serious and intensive way. This experience is quite different to when people meet to discuss and focus on single or pragmatic issues, as the subject matter creates a façade which obscures deeper personal engagement.

Another aspect of SDN workshops is that attendees can present every kind of theme. It is typically a subject matter which enthuses the presenter, but it can be from the widest range of topics. A session may be about the latest global conflict, the next about a personal domestic problem, and the next about a new book they are reading – the journey between diverse, fervid conversations becomes a profound psychological, interactive experience, which intensifies the relationships generating through the workshop. By the end of the workshop, participants truly feel they have travelled through a multifaceted, consuming and valuable journey together, with keen engagement on many intellectual and emotional layers. This brings with it a camaraderie of shared respect, and the sense of genuine relationship.

Primal Human Instinct

What is striking about the SDN format is that, behind its apparent simplicity, lie echoes of ancient rituals that anthropologists and archaeologists have repeatedly observed as a recurring pattern of society over thousands of years, whereby wandering or separately living small groups would converge periodically for mysterious purposes of convergence. These gatherings were opportunities for reinvigorating something deep within the human soul, that could not be found in isolation – a sharing and merging of spirit with others on a level of significance that resulted in the renewal of a visceral sense of communal purpose. Always hard to articulate yet palpably felt.

The SDN workshops, in a small way, seem to hold a resonance of those ancient ceremonial patterns, that answer to an obscure need we have to meet, not for some productive purpose, but for the relish of human interaction in a manner of shared personal reality. Historically it has been so difficult to explain exactly why people gain so much from an SDN workshop. Perhaps it’s because these events answer a need we all have, now lost in the language and culture of our modern world.

One of the most repeated comments is that people feel the struggle to extricate themselves from their busy life, to take time out and commit to an SDN workshop. Nonetheless, at the end of the workshop, instinctively they acknowledge it was the right decision to attend, yet can’t necessarily find the words to completely explain why. Something primal indeed, is being sustained through SDN tradition.

Michael Maher
NED Business Manager