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Bonfire, the digital publication of the International Institute for Facilitation and Change was published (almost) monthly between January 2003 and December 2010. The collection of over 190 articles on facilitation and effective groups performance is available here.
Categories include:
- Consensus & Decision Making
- Facilitation
- Effective Meetings
- Reflection
- Public Participation
- Conflict
- Techniques
- Outcome Mapping
- Forums and Conferences
- Leadership
The philosophy behind Bonfire
We named this magazine Bonfire to evoke the ancestral power of fire. For millennia the human species has lit fires for worship and ceremony, cooking and warmth, conviviality and council. Fire can inspire, transform and destroy. Along with earth, air and water, it is one of the constituent elements that define life on this planet.
In “Sitting in the Fire: Large Group Transformation Using Conflict and Diversity” Arnold Mindell calls fire “the price of liberty”. Speaking to those who are seeking a way out of the oppression and violence that characterizes much of human interaction, he says:
Creating freedom, community and viable relationships has its price. It costs time and courage to learn how to sit in the fire of diversity. It means staying centered in the heat of trouble. And it demands that we learn about small and large organizations, open city forums, and tense street scenes. If you step into leadership or facilitatorship without this learning, you may spend your time recapitulating the blunders of history.”
Like the entire work at IIFAC, Bonfire is part of our response to the exigencies of the present time. It is an invitation to gather, to question, and to learn together in order to stop repeating the mistakes of the past and to find a better way to use fire.
