Getting to know the Sunflower Co-op community of practice

“Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. They are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain or human endeavour.”

—Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner

Communities of practice are central to the very formation of the Sunflower Co-op. In fact, our co-founders met while working together for many years with another CoP that centered on challenging power in food systems and food work.

The work we did as part of this group was radical, grounding, purposeful, relationship-centred, joyful, uncomfortable, stretching and creative. When we formed Sunflower we knew this was a type of space we couldn’t imagine working without.

What defines a community of practice?

Communities of practice are trendy, and that’s great! But a lot of things get called CoPs that might actually be more accurately named networks, working groups, or committees.

CoPs can be networks, but not all networks are CoPs. We’re certainly not about conformity or formulas, yet there is a distinctiveness to how we approach this term. One distinguishing feature is that CoPs don’t need to have shared work, workplans, action items, or productivity in the way white supremacy culture understands it.

Some of our guides in what it is to actually steward a CoP are our co-learner and mentor Nancy White, the Liberating Structures global community, and Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner who write extensively on CoPs. As the Wenger-Trayners responsibly acknowledge, while CoP is a relatively recent term, “the phenomenon it refers to is age old.”

Three crucial characteristics that define a CoP:

Domain: An identity defined by a shared domain of interest. For example, what we care about and want to work on in our practice. Membership in a CoP implies a commitment to the domain.

• Further to commitment, consent to the domain and work is also implied. This is inspired by the Spring Up Workers Co-op who have “Consent” as their first core principle. As a workers co-op governed by and practicing Sociocracy, we are all about consent at Sunflower! (Learn more on this in a future blog post.)

Community: Those who are interacting and learning together. They know one another and are in active relationship, although they don’t necessarily work together day to day.

• The Sunflower CoP community is currently made up of our member facilitators and counsellors. We’re excited to see how this might shift and expand over time.

Practice: CoP members are practitioners with a shared practice that takes time and sustained interaction to develop. This is different from just having similar interests.

• We employ an expansive definition of “practice” and “practitioners” at Sunflower. While a more conventional understanding, like a doctor having a medical practice, is one example, other practices are also valid. Building a campfire, writing a song, parenting, or facilitating and counselling in ways that are just and joyful—it’s all practice!

The Sunflower community of practice

The Sunflower CoP was launched as a container to explore how holding space in counselling and facilitation can relate. It serves us by nourishing our understanding of how our two distinct work areas are actually interconnected.

Through it we are also exploring how our practice and co-op might expand our connections to ourselves, each other, our communities, land and water. This is the first working “purpose statement” for our CoP. Read about our inaugural gathering where we explore nervous system activation and regulation.

Our CoP provides a regular point of connection for our members to be in relationship, and a place for us to share ‘co-op education’ and shared learning/practice of our governance model. We’re all about starting small, experiments, and iterations. The Sunflower CoP is no exception, we’ll see where and how its first scattered seeds grow.

If you’re thinking of starting or reviving a CoP, our experienced facilitators would love to support you!

Thanks for reading 🙂

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