CDRA Lets Go!

​…an organisation closing and a call for contributions to a final
CDRA publication on developmental practice
from Farid Esack, CDRA Chairperson

Yes, dearest friends, fellow travellers, co-sojourners, practitioners, after 33 years we have  decided to let go!

Since 2012, our director Nomvula Dlamini, with a small group of associates, have been holding the core of an increasingly dispersed CDRA while looking for an organizational form appropriate for the times. Since reluctantly accepting Nomvula’s resignation at the end of last year, the Board, in consultation with the remaining practitioners, has reflected on its role in holding up the CDRA’s concerted attempts to find a new form. While there is still important work being done by those who have been holding the core, it is clear that the work inspired and supported by the CDRA increasingly lies widely spread and held in the web of relationships spun out of the organization over the past thirty years.

When we look for the work, we see it everywhere. Over recent years the practitioners who built the organisation and did its work have ventured out to make their contributions independently.

In seeing how CDRA lives in the world, we have concluded that its contribution can no longer be meaningfully held and supported by an “old school” NGO-with-board type structure. So, at our 2018 AGM we decided to let go of the formal organisational CDRA for which we as board are responsible. This was partly because the work, as we are practicing it, is no longer funded, and therefore no longer needs a funding accountability structure. But it also feels timely and right to   close this chapter, honour the people and work, and in that farewell possibly open spaces for the new to emerge. As active practitioners we are very much alive and will still be working out of the CDRA impulse, whether individually, or in new association. Over the many years CDRA has offered various forums for practitioners to meet, reflect and work, starting from its internal homeweek, the OD Event, the Biennial Practice Conference, and in recent years, the Barefoot Guides.

Wherever we go we find traces of CDRA’s reach: common sense about good development practice and the values from which it flows, a sense that CDRA played some part in helping create; fellow practitioners and colleagues with whom we partner, and work with from inside of a shared language and ethos; clients, partners and old friends to whom we might wave from a distance and say of each other, with a fond smile, “Yes, I know them.” Students, practitioners and teachers who cite reference to one or other CDRA publication as being seminal in supporting their thinking through, and about practice; thousands of people who recall with an intensity of feeling (sometimes delight, sometimes horror), their experience of a CDRA facilitated process, be it OD, courses or a gathering like the OD Event or the Biennial Practice Conference. An intensity of feeling and a connectedness to living process that taps into lived experience, makes meaning of that, and invokes the next practical steps.

In keeping with our understanding of how organisations develop and evolve, and our commitment to working with living process, the board and practitioners have initiated a ‘process’ to finally release the CDRA from its old form, in ‘finding a good death’, as quoted above.

We do this fully cognisant that the approach and practices that the CDRA has been using and promoting are in their ascendancy and have never been more needed. We are deeply mindful that the times, and young people especially, are expressing a need very close to the need that gave birth to CDRA’s own founding 33 years ago. As I said in my last Chairperson’s annual  message, “We stand back in awe of what we have collectively brought to the field; this inimitably “’CDRA thing’, the detailed attention to process, to “the incorporation of the message and the meaning in the method of our practice. As terrified as we are, we are heeding the call to enter the wilderness of death in search of new forms of be-ing and growth, seeking new avenues of exploring personal and professional spaces for expanding and deepening our presence in the world.” (CDRA Annual Report, 2018)
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We have decided to put in place a process for winding down which includes the following bricks:

• Since Nomvula’s resignation I have been acting as Director with the assistance of Marlene, our Administrator and our remaining consultants. We have overseen management of our building that continues to be a viable self-financing hub of organizational activity, largely to guests and tenants. We are working on putting processes in place to carefully consider the future of this, our primary asset, the property at 52-54 Francis Avenue, Woodstock.

• Hosting a final creative process, with our wider community of practitioners, to write a “culminating book” of contemporary practice which will bring together, capture, and celebrate what CDRA has come to represent and what it continues to manifest – both in form and in process. Please see below, and on the website, for the invitation to you to contribute to this process.

The launch of the book and that last hurrah, in the second half of 2020 will be a sad, joyous, reflective and celebratory event and we will ensure that we invite all our friends and associates.

AN INVITATION TO
CONTRIBUTE TO A
PUBLICATION :

A gathering of community; a process of reflection; a publication on practice.​

After 33 years, the CDRA as an organisation is closing, even while its ideas, practices and practitioners persist in many parts of the world and in the working relationships and initiatives that endure way beyond its organisational bounds of time and space.

In the coming year, and as its last public organisational
activity, CDRA will host a process that supports reflection on the context that gave birth to and called it forth for three decades, the practice that emerged and the practices and organisations that it contributed to, as well as CDRA itself. This will result in a publication (online and in hard copy) that shares the outcomes of these reflections and in so doing, offers a contemporary perspective on the condition of organisation today.
Practitioners and colleagues who have been in some way reached by CDRA or touched by its work, or who, in some way, might consider themselves part of the broader CDRA community, are invited to submit proposals for their contribution to this publication.
This will collectively seek to show, through reflective writing, a perspective on contemporary organisation, seen through the lens of a practice that is reflective, grounded in experience, conceptual and oriented to practical action, this being the practice that CDRA contributed to articulating, promoting and working out of.
What we have in mind:

• A publication made up of the contributions of various contributors that reflects on the state of contemporary organisation, an offering to the word as it is and preceded by ...
• an event, to be held in mid-2020, in which a broad gathering of the community associated with CDRA will join to share perspectives, engage in reflection and discussion about our current context, what it calls for, and the ways in which the practice with which CDRA is associated can contribute, preceded by ...
• an intensive, supported writing process (including a 5-day writing retreat) of a group of practitioners, generating writing for the publication, used as prompt to their own thinking and ...
• contributions from others who may not be able to join the intensive process.

The intensive process leading up to the final event and publication will involve:

• A selected group of practitioners meeting, initially, in a process of a facilitated reflection and writing process, to be held at Towerland Retreat, Southern Cape, South Africa, on 17 to 23 November, 2019
• A further gathering in early 2020 (dates to be determined by participants) in which drafts are further refined
• Supported writing time between and after gatherings, including a modest stipend and editorial support.

To that end, we invite proposals from potential contributors:

• Please send, by 1 August 2019 to info@cdra.org.za, a brief outline of what you might contribute to the process: your reflections on your experience of the state of organisation, in SA, the region and the world.
• This might be confined to a particular topic (eg: gender justice, or climate emergency, or health, etc.) or it might be focused on organisational form (eg: the state of contemporary organising and mobilising; funding social action; projects and organisations in the 21st century, etc.). It might be theoretical, or possibly a case study. It might involve reflection on an experience or a method, or it might offer a reflection on context and history and the times.
• Whatever it is, we are interested to hear what it is you have to say. You may want to suggest more than one contribution on different themes.
• Please do indicate whether you would like to make your contribution through the intensive writing process at Towerland, or remotely.
• Proposals will also help us to further refine what this publication should or must focus on, thereby helping us select and curate the contributions, and to select the contributors who will participate in the intensive writing process.

What this offers the potential contributor to the intensive writing process:

• One residential week of supported and facilitated writing experience, in community
• A stipend (for those who are not salaried) to support your writing time, with editorial support
• A published and well distributed platform for your writing
• An opportunity to present at the final gathering

What it asks:

• Your proposal for your contribution by 1 August 2019 - indicating whether you can join us for the Towerland Retreat 17 to 23 November 2019 or whether you will contribute your writing remotely;
• That you cover your costs of reaching Towerland Retreat, if attending;
• For those who are salaried, that you seek supported time to write in between gatherings.

Please send your proposal to info@cdra.org.za
If you have any queries about any aspect of the process please write directly to doug@cdra.org.za
​
(Graphics courtesy of the soon to be published Barefoot Guide: Generative Leadership - Releasing Life in a Turbulent World - Illustrator: Zach Stewart)