Chapter Eleven - Fraser House Outreach
ORIENTATING
EXTENDING FRASER HOUSE WAY
Neville’s intention and outreach after
leaving Fraser House is neatly stated in his 1980 letter to the Therapeutic
Community Journal:
The Therapeutic Community model
has been extended into humanitarian mutual help for social change’ (1980b)
Recall that Maxwell Jones had written:
The psychiatric hospital can be seen as a
microcosm of society outside, and its social structure and culture can be
changed with relative ease, compared to the outside. For this reason
‘therapeutic communities’ to date have been largely confined to psychiatric
institutions. They represent a useful pilot run preliminary to the much more
difficult task of trying to establish a therapeutic community for psychiatric
purposes in society at large (1968, p. 86).
Having had his Fraser House experience, Neville
was commencing to do just what Jones had been intimating – establishing
therapeutic communities for psychiatric purposes in society at large. Neville began applying Cultural Keyline with the same
pervasively interwoven and ‘total’ pattern of action of Fraser House process in
many varied action research projects in the private sector. Neville created
many contexts where people were sharing experience and responsibility in
helping each other in evolving and sustaining social action research. In each context,
the social reconstituting potency of the ongoing action research was as
important, or more important than the outcomes. As in Fraser House, Neville’s
intention was to explore Cultural Keyline in action - community processes for
people embodying how to move towards being well together. The different
outreach actions were interconnected with each other, as well as with Fraser
House way. In each action Neville used all of the aspects of Cultural Keyline
mentioned above - in broad terms:
1.
Attending
and sensing and supporting self-organising, emergence, and Keypoints conducive
to coherence within social contexts – monitoring theme, mood, values and
interaction
2.
Forming
cultural locality (people connecting together connecting to place)
3.
Strategic,
design and emergent context-guided theme-based perturbing of the social
topography
4.
Sensing
and attending to the natural social system self-organising in response to the
perturbing, and monitoring outcomes
A framing theme in all of the
action research outreach was:
‘Exploring what works in community-based
reconstituting of society through humane caring community mutual-help action -
towards epochal change’.
Neville’s aims were:
1.
to explore re-constituting process among people on the margins
within the old cultural synthesis, and then
2.
to move as far away as he could to evolve a new cultural synthesis
- first Sydney, and then the Australia Top-End.
The ways in which Neville
extended Fraser House processes into the wider community include:
1)
Taking on advisory roles with peak bodies in health and other
areas – for legitimating and protecting action
2)
Taking Fraser House ways into the community by being
3)
Extending intercultural action research towards global change by
evolving links with many Asian and African community groups in
4)
Evolving (with others) festivals, gatherings and other happenings:
i)
ii)
The Paddington Festival, and from this, the evolving of Paddington
Bazaar (a community market) for ‘villaging’ his first mental health centre (in
Paddington)
iii)
iv)
Other community events
v)
Campbelltown Festival
vi)
Aquarius Festival
vii) ConFest (Conference Festival)
viii) Cooktown Arts Festival
5)
Forming the Keyline Trust to spread the word on Keyline
6)
Contributing suggestions which were adopted in divorce law reform,
and spreading the use of mediation
7)
Writing newspaper columns called ‘Keylines’ and ‘Yeomans Omens’
8)
Introducing Cultural Keyline implicitly to business and other
organisations
9)
Forming and evolving self-help groups
10) Becoming an election candidate
ADVISORY
ROLES
During the Sixties and early
Seventies, Neville was very active in many advisory roles in mainstream
organisations, including peak state and national bodies advising government. Neville
said (Aug 1999) that he was intentionally very active on advisory bodies at
this stage of his life in order to have, and sustain a very high public and
professional profile, and to legitimate, protect, and support Fraser House and
Fraser House outreach. This was the same reason he went out of his way to be
featured in a constant stream of newspaper and magazine articles (1965a; 1965b). These links helped ensure
Fraser House’s survival for as long as it did (discussions Neville, June-Oct,
1998; interview Cockett, April 1999).
Neville
advised a number of health organisations as well as organisations focusing on
softening drug and alcohol abuse, as well as Aboriginal Affairs and
criminology. Neville was the chairperson and founding director of a number of
them. For Example, Neville was a Member of the NSW State Clinicians Conference,
a founding director of the NSW Foundation for the Research and Treatment of
Alcoholism and Drug Dependency and a founding director of the national body of
the above organization, a member of the Committee of Classification of
Psychiatric Patterns of the National Health and Medical Research Council of
Australia and an advisor to the Research Committee of the New South Wales
College of General Practitioners (Yeomans,
N. 1965a, Vol. 12, p. 96).
Neville hinted to me (Aug 1998) that he had more than the twenty five advisory
roles listed in Appendix 24.
The extent of Neville’s advisory
work evidences firstly, the breadth of Neville’s acceptance in many spheres,
secondly, his acceptance at the highest level in these peak advisory bodies,
and thirdly, the breadth and inter-relatedness of his praxis.
COORDINATOR
OF COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH SERVICES
Despite
extensive enquiry, the best I could determine was that Neville finally left
Fraser House some time in 1968/9. He began extending the model of the Lane Cove
and Ryde Community Psychiatry Programs that he had energized prior to leaving
Fraser House. Neville focused his energies on extending the healing ways
evolved at Fraser House into ways of individual and communal self-help healing.
He and his personal assistant Margaret Cockett were extending the therapeutic
community option (as shown in Figures 1 and 3 in Chapter Ten) into the wider
community as dispersed (not all living together) urban therapeutic communities.
This was the precursor to the Laceweb as networked dispersed remote area
therapeutic communities and networks.
Prior to leaving
Fraser House, Neville had spoken continually of the need to create a new
section within the NSW Public Health System called Community Mental Health.
While still at Fraser House, Neville wrote a detailed monograph entitled, ‘The
Role of a Director of Community Mental Health (Yeomans, N. 1965x). This was a proposal, a ‘job
description’ and a ‘CV’ all rolled into one. His suggestion was adopted and
upon leaving Fraser House he became the coordinator of the New South Wales
Community Mental Health Services. Margaret Cockett characterizes Neville’s
leaving Fraser House as his being ‘promoted upstairs’ - because he was becoming
too well known, and also a threat to parts of the Health Department hierarchy.
Neville made ‘Margaret Cockett going with him
as his personal assistant’ a condition of his taking the position of the first
head of Community Mental Health; this was accepted. As an indication of the
lack of support for this new section within the Health Department, Neville and
Margaret were provided with an unfurnished room a couple of blocks down from
the main Health Department building. According to Margaret Cockett (August
1999), some evenings in the few weeks after Neville got this new position,
passers-by would have seen the two of them ‘spiriting’ ‘unwanted’ desks, filing
cabinets, chairs and other little needs to make their section a little more
functional. Neville and Margaret were finding it hard to get departmental
cooperation. Neville said (July, 1998) that his Fraser House detractors in the
health department were making things difficult for him in setting up Community
Mental Health.
Neville set up
Photo
1. ‘Villaging’ the Church in
Paddington
– photo by M.Mangold - reproduced with permission
Neville’s suggestion was to surround the
Paddington Community Mental Health Centre and the Church with a Saturday community
bazaar. This was fully consistent with the Fraser House model of imbedding the
Unit within the local community, as well as inviting the community into Fraser
House.
In Photo
31 the Vestry where Neville had his first Community Mental Health Centre is the
brick building on the left. The Church is on the right. Between and around both
buildings is where the Paddington Bazaar is held each Saturday morning. Adjacent the Vestry was a hall
Neville used for community meetings. This is where Neville and his friends
planned a series of Festivals (Mangold 1993, p. 4-11). Neville wanted to create the
public space of a small friendly village market reminiscent of Tikopia, where
everybody knows everybody and meets each other regularly. Neville wanted to
replicate the healing and integrative aspects of ‘small village life’ (Tönnies and Loomis 1963) of Fraser House around the
vestry in Paddington. The community mental health centre has long gone, though
Paddington Market survives to this day as a
Photo 2
Mangold’s photo of where Neville’s Community Mental Health Centre was
surrounded with community - reproduced with permission
The next section details Neville’s intercultural outreach.
Community Health
In 1968/69 there were moves to merge the Hospital’s Commission
that ran the
Neville and Margaret began linking with as many people as they
could that were initiating innovative action in the community towards health in
the widest sense. Margaret said (Sept 2004) that when Neville and Margaret went
looking for those broadening the views of community about ‘community’, very
prevalent among the community innovators were Fraser House ex-patients and
members of the Psychiatric Research Study Group. The late Sixties and early
Seventies were times when there was a great spirit of change in the community
and Neville and Margaret through their Fraser House action and momentum were
well placed to be catalysts energising and linking possibilities. One aspect of
this outreach by Neville and Margaret was forging links with the Asian and
African community in
EVOLVING
ASIAN LINKS
Neville’s interest in action towards epochal transition within
intercultural contexts is further evidenced by his extensive involvement in
cultural bodies during the late Sixties. He involved himself in the bodies
listed below in the following roles (Aug, 1998):
Senior Vice President Japan -
Councillor
Council member
Member:
Africa -
Australian Institute of
Internal Affairs
As
head of Community Mental Health, Neville and Margaret Cockett started community
based psychosocial groups. After sustained networking action by both of them,
they had a number of university students studying in
This involvement enabled Neville and Margaret to attend these
organizations’ joint and several activities and help them in forming/extending
mutual support networks among participants. Neville said he used this
interaction to refine what he called ‘intercultural enabler’ competencies and
sensitivities. Joining the
It was through the Asia Club that Neville met and married his second
wife Lien, a Vietnamese exchange student (Yeomans and Yeomans 2001). The photo below was taken from Lien’s book, ‘The Green Papaya’
with permission (Yeomans and Yeomans 2001).
Photo
3 Neville and Lien on their wedding day
on 27 November 1972 –
photo taken with permission from Lien’s book, ‘The Green Papaya’ (Yeomans
and Yeomans 2001)
SIDNEY
Neville was a founding member of
the Sydney Opera House Society formed in 1968 that worked to have the Danish designer
Jorn Utson complete the building. It was through this society that Neville met
Elias Duek-Cohen a town planner who would be involved in endeavouring to
further Nevilles father’s City Forest (Yeomans, P. A. 1971b)
processes in the Nineties.
Duek-Cohen explored the
implementation of P.A. Yeomans’ ‘
As an indication of the
‘positioning’ of the Sydney Opera House Society, as well as Neville other
committee people included:
Mr Gordon Samuels – QC, later
Judge, Chancellor of University of NSW, and Governor of NSW
Michael Baume - Top Diplomatic
post in
Peter Coleman - Premier of NSW
(From a copy of membership
application form posted to me by Elias Duek-Cohen)
WELLBEING
ACTION USING FESTIVALS, GATHERINGS AND OTHER HAPPENINGS
The Watsons Bay
The following section
uses the Watson’s Bay Festival as an example of Neville’s use of Festivals
towards new cultural syntheses. In the Sixties, Neville joined with Margaret
Cockett and others in forming, and becoming the president of the Total Care
Foundation, a registered charity. This entity was one of many formed by Neville
to replicate Fraser House community mutual help. This Total Care foundation was
used to evolve and hold the Watson’s Bay Festival in 1968 on
The process of exploring how people change as
they work together to change aspects of society was as important to Neville as
evolving and holding some event. Neville used the process of organizing festivals
and events in order to evolve networks and community. In the process of coming
together to put on the Watsons Bay Festival the participants were forming cultural locality (people connecting
together connecting to place. During Festival-based preparatory interacting
Neville was using Cultural Keyline - constantly attending and sensing and
supporting self-organising, emergence, and Keypoints conducive to coherence
within the festival generating contexts – monitoring theme, mood, values and
interaction. He would strategically perturb to foster emergence.
The
A planning
letter from Neville’s Total Care Foundation (Appendix 26) to the
Another letter
to the Town Hall in Sydney (Yeomans, N. 1965a, Vol. 12, p. 13) speaks of the Women’s’ Social Group, called
the Care Free Committee of the Total Care Foundation, helping with the evolving
of the Watson’s Bay Festival. This social group was another process for bonding
people together. Neville always gave some care to his naming of groups and
collectives. “Care Free’ has multiple meanings; ‘care-free’ as in ‘joyous’,
‘care provided free’ and ‘being free of care’. Having a women’s group was
consistent with cleavering into sub-groups at Fraser House. The letter states
that during the Festival there was an art exhibition at the Masonic Hall. One
Gallery alone lent $14,000 of paintings.
Neville timed
the Watson’s Bay Festival to coincide with the Sydney All Nations Waratah
Festival during 6-13 October 1968. This timing to coincide with a large
festival is a precursor to Neville’s evolving micro-gatherings as pre or post
gatherings to large global conferences in the Nineties, discussed later.
In keeping with
Neville’s intercultural synthesis focus, the Watson’s Bay Festival featured the
cultural artistry from twenty-three different countries (Appendix 25).
This is resonant
with lines from Neville’s poem about Inma (meaning Intercultural Normative
Model Areas):
It believes in the
coming-together, the inflow of alternative human energy, from all over the
world.
The
Second Festival – The Paddington Festival
To launch
Paddington Bazaar to surround his Paddington Community Mental Health Centre,
Neville worked with the local community in evolving the Paddington Festival.
Creating a community public place (cultural locality) – the Paddington Bazaar
was one of Neville’s themes in exploring community mutual help in energising
the Paddington Festival. It was held over the weekend of 21 - 22 June 1969. On
the Saturday there was a market bazaar in the main
Festival Three - Centennial Park
The next Festival Neville and
others evolved was the Centennial Park Festival, a few kilometres from the
Sydney Central Business District. The Festival covered 540 acres in the
Neville was also a founding member
of the Sydney Arts Foundation. This Foundation was the organizer of the
Centennial Park Festival (Yeomans, N. 1965a, Vol. 12, p.
36). Again, for Neville, the shared
experience of foundation members working out how to get things happening
together was a central focus. The key aim of the Sydney Arts Foundation was to
establish an arts centre in Sydney (Yeomans, N.
1965a, Vol. 12, p. 36). The Centennial Park Festival was
supported by many Embassies, Consuls, civic groups, arts groups, national and
international societies and clubs and schools.
Neville’s inviting the support of many foreign embassies continued his
‘intercultural cooperating’ theme in events. He was also exploring the
strengthening of civil society based artistry. The range of events at the
Festival
Four - Campbelltown Festival
Neville, Lien, his younger brother Ken, and
Ken’s wife Stephanie were the key organizers of a small, though very important
Festival in 1971. It was held at another country property Neville’s father had
acquired off Wedderburn Road five kilometres from Cambelltown, which in turn is
around 50 kilometres down the main highway from Sydney towards Melbourne.
According to Bill Elliott (Sept, 2004) (a long term ConFest attendee – ConFest
is described shortly), as well as Ken and Stephanie Yeomans (Sept 2004), the
Cambelltown Festival was small, with around 150 attending.
Many of the cast and crew of the hit musical
‘Hair’ attended and added to the passion and artistry. Neville, Ken, and
Stephanie have all attested to the fact that there was a real fervour among the
attendees to mount a very large festival that would celebrate and engender
possibilities for a New Age – to quote the ‘Hair’ hit tune, a festival for the
‘Dawning of the Age of Aquarius’.
After the attendees had packed up the
Cambelltown Festival they held a meeting in an old shed near the Yeomans’
farmhouse where it was resolved to put on a festival and call it the Aquarius
Festival. They had a target figure of 15,000 people attending.
In their preliminary discussion
at Campbelltown about the proposed Aquarius Festival, they decided that they
wanted to work cooperatively with local people around the proposed Festival
site, have local people having a say in the Festival and sharing in any
profits, and preferably using the farm lands of more than one farmer. They also
wanted the whole process for evolving the Festival to be organic and natural –
to be self-organizing.
It is possible to see Neville’s Cultural
Keyline design principles being introduced by Neville as a theme and having an
influence on the decisions of this planning group. Note the implicit Cultural
Keyline principles:
1.
Enable and design contexts where resonant people self organize in
mutual help
2.
Have outside enablers work and network with the local people in
the region
3.
The local people have the say in meeting their own needs
4.
Support the local people in networking – (Festival on a number of
farms)
5.
Local people get flow-on (share in profits)
6.
The local action is self-organizing
Photo 4
Article and Photo on
At the Cambelltown
Festival meeting Ken Yeomans used his knowledge of Keyline to search maps of
Festival Five – The Aquarius Festival
The Aquarius
Festival did take place in Nimbin and 15,000 people did attend. It became the
first of the large alternative festivals in
The Festival did
make a profit and the local community decided that their share of the profits
be used to create a municipal swimming pool. This was agreed to, and Ken
Yeomans designed it using Keyline principles. The pool still functions well to
this day. It is round and has a sand base over concrete. It very gently slopes
in from the edges to become deep in the centre. The water flows up from below
in the centre, and flows out at the edges. The sand stays in place. The young
children enjoy the shallows. The Tuntable Falls Commune was started from some
of the Festival proceeds, and was designed on Keyline principles. That commune
continues to this day.
Festival Six – ConFest
When Jim Cairns,
Australia’s Deputy Prime Minister under Gough Whitlam, his personal assistant
Junie Morosi, David Ditchburn and others in the mid Seventies began preparing the
first ConFest - short for ‘conference-festival’, Jim Cairns and his group chose
to meet in the Church Hall next door to Neville’s Community Mental Health
Centre in Paddington (Mangold 1993).
Photo 5
Ken Yeomans – Photo from Ken Yeomans’ Web Site (Yeomans, K. 2005)
Neville and
others had energized a small urban commune focused around the Paddington
Community Mental Health Centre and the Bazaar. The Hall next to the Vestry had
become a regular
Photo 6
Photo by Michael Mangold - Used with permission. The Hall (next to the Vestry)
where the ConFest planning meetings were held
Neville attended the ConFest
planning meetings next door and contributed to the planning of the first
ConFest -
Walking
workshop/conferences were held on Keyline. ConFests have been held since the
Seventies. The Australian Down to Earth Network (ADTEN) was formed as an
administrative body and ADTEN subgroups formed throughout
Photo 7
Deputy Prime Minister Jim Cairns speaking at ConFest -
photo from DTE Archives
Following
encouragement by Neville to become involved in ConFest, I am one of around ten people
who select ConFest sites and energize the initial site layout and set up; a few
days before ConFest, site volunteer numbers swell to around 100. I have
surveyed 36 potential sites. Since 1992, I have regularly attended ConFest and
have been the one providing enabling support to the workshop process since
1994.
Between 150 and
300 workshops and events are held each ConFest on a very wide range of topics
relating to all aspects of the web of life consistent with Cultural Keyline.
Also consistent with Cultural Keyline, the ConFest workshop process is totally
self-organizing.
Photo 8 Photo
I took of ConFest Workshop Notice Boards all prepared for ConFestors to arrive
- December 2002
Photo 9 Villages
at ConFest
(photo from DTE archive)
With Neville’s
subtle orchestrating during the initial planning of the first ConFest, the site
set-up process for this Conference-Festival after twenty seven years is still
based upon the enabled self-organizing community and implicitly uses Keyline
and Cultural Keyline features. Nature guides design and layout. A few
volunteers with the way walk the site till it becomes familiar to them. The
land ‘tells’ the set-up crew where things can be well placed. Natural barriers
such as creek banks may mark the self-organizing edge of the car free camping
area.
The ConFest site is ‘organically’
set up. It is set up by voluntary action. No one is ‘in charge’ though there
are a few designated coordinators. Knowledge of what needs to be done and ways
to do the things are distributed among the volunteers. It is self-organizing.
It works. It is designed - roads are made, beaches created on creek or river,
showers and taps installed. There are hot tubs and steamrooms. Everyone attending
is asked to volunteer two hours during the ConFest. Site pack up takes around
two weeks and we hardly leave a trace that we have been there at all.
Consistent with Fraser House and
other action research contexts energised by Neville, only four people linked to
ConFest and the Down To Earth Cooperative that puts on ConFest have any
knowledge of Cultural Keyline, even though the site set up and pull down people
as well as ConFest itself generally follows Cultural Keyline way – some people
have embodied the way and can pass this on to others as lived experience. The
core group and the thousands who attend have embodied the Cultural Keyline
process without any understanding. Like Fraser House, ConFest is a
‘transitional community’; there are always enough people who already know the
ConFest way to induct first-timers into the ConFest Community experience.
ConFest does continually attract some mainstream people who want to manage,
direct, and control and these typically give up and leave, or adapt to the self
organising organic unfolding way.
Some feel for
the potency and mood of the first ConFest (at
Photo 10
ConFest sites are always chosen with special places –
photo from DTE’s archive
Festival Seven – The Cooktown Arts
Festival
Shortly after
the Aquarius Festival and the first ConFest in the Seventies, Jaciamo
Caffarelli a musician and painter (who was a Fraser House outpatient in 1961
who gave me permission to use his name) along with his wife Pamela were key
energizers of the Cooktown Arts Festival in Cooktown on Cape York, Far North
Queensland. Jaciamo had stayed in touch with Neville after Jaciamo ceased being
an outpatient. Coincidently, Jaciamo was living directly opposite Neville in
Yungaburra when Neville bought his house there in the Nineties. I spoke
extensively with Jaciamo and Pamela about the Cooktown Arts Festival and his
memories of Fraser House and Neville while I stayed with them at their place in
Yungaburra for a week and travelled with them to the Laura Aboriginal Festival
in June 2001.
At the time of
the Cooktown Arts Festival, Cooktown was an extremely remote outpost of about
350 people on
Photo 11
Photo I took of Jacaimo at Laura Festival
Given the
remoteness, the festival was very rich. Jaciamo told me (July 2001) that the
events included three three-act plays - complete with stage, scenery, costumes,
orchestra and lighting. One was a Chekhov play – The Cherry Orchard. A
puppeteer put on regular shows. As well, the Cairns Youth orchestra played
along with a number of swing and trad jazz bands, pop groups and a
xylophone/percussion group. Spontaneous acoustic music jamming sessions
abounded. Neville Yeomans, Jim Cairns (Deputy Prime Minister), and Bill
Mollison, one of the founders of permaculture, were speaker/workshop
presenters. There was a very active workshop scene on all aspects of wellbeing.
The next six
sections detail other outreach by Neville.
THE KEYLINE TRUST
As part of Neville’s adapting of Keyline to Cultural Keyline and
merging the two of them in his action research, Neville set up the Keyline Trust
with support from Ken and Stephanie Yeomans as well as Margaret Cockett and
others (Yeomans,
N. 1965a, Vol. 12, p. 44).
The Objects of the Trust were:
a) To produce and distribute documents, papers, photos, stickers,
films and other communications, cultural and artistic materials and productions
b) Such materials and productions to be Australian in origin and
dominantly for the purposes of enhancing community cooperation and mutual
support, locality, self respect, friendliness, creativity, culturally
appropriate peaceful nationalism and multinational regional cooperation
c) To assist other bodies with similar aims
The
middle object of the Trust, clause (b), is a succinct statement of Laceweb
action. Notice (i) the use of the term ‘locality’ in that clause - meaning
connexion to place and (ii) the implied ‘cultural locality’ at the local,
regional and global levels. In using the word ‘dominantly’ in the context of
the gentle purposes of the Trust, Neville is using the juxtapositioning of the
incongruous for provocative effect. The Trust
gatherings were another opportunity for Neville to explore community mutual
help, this time with a Keyline and implicit Cultural Keyline theme.
Neville
always took great care in wording documents. Neville was very interested in the
derivation and meaning of words. Often we would look up word meanings together.
Neville took the time to very carefully draft letters and other documents. We
often engaged in hundreds of hours on some documents. Examples are firstly the
‘Extegrity Document’ (Yeomans
and Spencer 1999)
discussed in Chapter Thirteen; we worked jointly on that for
ten months. A second example is the paper, ‘Governments and the Facilitating of
Grass Roots Action’ (Appendix 31) (Yeomans,
Widders et al. 1993a). That
paper was only six pages in length and three of us worked on it for nine weeks.
DIVORCE LAW
REFORM
Neville studied
law at the
Neville was a
key enabler in the development of the Divorce Law Reform Society of NSW.
Branches of the Society spread to other states. In the early Seventies Neville
prepared a series of submissions for the Divorce Law Reform Society,
particularly the desirability of setting up family and individual counselling
and family mediating processes. Neville told me (Aug 1998) that his writings
along with submissions from other members became a basis for submissions by the
Divorce Law Reform Society of NSW to Justices Evatt and Mitchell. These
submissions played a substantial part in the formation of the new Family Law
legislation.
Neville with
John Carlson wrote a monograph that researched the use of mediation in China
and other places as part of their law degree at the University of NSW (Carlson and Yeomans 1975). Mediation in the context of
what Neville called ‘mediation therapy’ is discussed in Chapters Twelve and
Thirteen. From these beginnings, the use of mediation has been growing in
Australian society. Neville told me (Dec 1993, Dec 1998) that
WRITING
NEWSPAPER COLUMNS
Neville edited a
regular weekly suburban newspaper column called Keylines. He used this to keep
before the Sydney readership, Keyline, Fraser House Way and the various
outreaches that he was energizing (Yeomans and Yeomans 1969) – refer photo 41 below.
The columns
always had themes consistent with Neville’s interwoven action and included
information about his father’s work being applied to creating city forests (Yeomans, P. A. 1971b), mediation and events Neville
was organising.
IMPLICITLY APPLYING CULTURAL
KEYLINE IN BUSINESS AND OTHER ORGANISATIONAL ENVIRONMENTS
Neville’s quest extended to fostering caring and being
humane in every aspect of life including work-life. During 1969 and the early
Seventies Neville held a regular small group in
In the late Eighties when I was consulting
in organizational change I was approached by the Federal Government’s
Department of Administrative Services about creating paradigm shift as well as
cultural change among their senior executive in Canberra. Neville and I wrote
on one page what he described as a global-local realplay as a resource for
senior executive change. When the Department decided to use American
consultants the department was not shown the Hypothetical Realplay. The
Realplay is included as Appendix 29. Consistent with Neville’s ‘On Global
Reform’ paper (1974) discussed in Chapters One and Thirteen, Neville set the hypothetical
realplay in an indefinite future time where there has been a shift in World
Order to regional governance, with local governance of local matters.
Photo
12 One
of Neville’s columns – Now Newspaper 24 April 1971
Neville had me prepare both
‘The Realplay’ (Appendix 29) and the ‘Rapid Creek Project’ (Appendix 37)
potentially for politicians in federal, state and local government, as well as
senior executive service people. Neville intentionally structured these
documents so they were both strange and novel, in order to act as a filter in
determining who we may be able to usefully engage with. In Neville’s view, only
those open and curious would engage. Deputy Prime Minister Brian Howe in the
Keating Government requested his head of the Federal Department of Local
Government to see me about the Rapid Creek Project (discussed in Chapter
Twelve) as that department was having difficulty in getting inter-sector cooperation.
I spoke with the Departmental Head in November 1993 who invited me (and
Neville) to link with people in their department and the Northern Territory
Government and Local Govenments in that Territory for possible consulting work.
At the time Neville and I where very busy and we did not take up this
invitation.
EVOLVING FUNCTIONAL MATRICES
In talking about
the connexity based energy-in-action in his various outreaches Neville used the
term ‘functional matrix’. Neville said (Nov, 1993) that he used this term to
refer to the ‘generative and formative developing and shaping of functions and
fields or foci of Laceweb action’.
Neville had
sustained Fraser House during 1959-1968 as tentative and transitional. He
resisted having anything he did being categorised and put into little boxes.
Creating all of his functional matrices allowed him to talk and act without
being pinned down to definitive specifics, which would in his view, limit and
distort.
The list of
Laceweb self-help and mutual-help functional matrices in Appendix 30, most of
them dating back to the late Sixties and early Seventies, is not exhaustive and
there is overlap between categories. Neville spoke of ‘matrix’ being from the
Greek word having the meanings listed below:
·
the womb
·
place of nurturing
·
a place where anything is generated or developed
·
the formative part from which a structure is produced
·
intercellular substance
·
a mould
·
type or die in which anything is cast or shaped
·
a multidimensional network
Neville was using
the word ‘matrix’ in all of the above senses. The word ‘functional’ was used to
convey that both the name of the entity and the social action involved had
related functions. Describing organizations as functional matrices was also
implying that Neville was not talking about top-down bureaucratic structures.
Neville said that he was talking about flat local-lateral networks by reference
to what they do rather than what they are. Neville used the terms
‘local-lateral’ and ‘loca-lateral’ in describing networks to denote that rather
than being bottom up or top down, local people were laterally networking
with other grassroots people. This networking may however have bottom up
influences. Like in the festivals, in each of these functional matrices, the
reconstituting potency of process was just as important or more important than
outcome. This mirrored the processes Neville used in all of his Fraser House
outreach.
Neville told me
(Dec 1993) that in talking about the Laceweb, people may refer to, for example,
the ‘Inma Nelps Lacewebs’. When they used the term ‘Inma Nelps Lacewebs’ no
specific organization in the usual sense was being referred to. Rather, it was
the function, field or focus of the action. Neville then drafted out for me the
names of many of the Laceweb Functional Matrices that he and others had evolved
since the late Sixties and what he termed their ‘function, fields and foci’ of
action (Appendix 30).
While typically
functional matrices were not formally organised, in 1969, Nexus Groups was registered
in NSW as a not-for-profit charity engaged in setting up self-help groups for
people with psychosocial stress. An abbreviated version of Nexus Groups’
constitution is attached as Appendix 32. The Total Care Foundation was another
registered charity evolved by Neville and others.
Nexus Groups
changed its name to ‘Connexion’ in the early Seventies and as one of its foci
of action became the publishing of the ‘Aboriginal Human Relations’ Magazine
(AHR) started by Dr. Ned Iceton in Armidale NSW
(Aboriginal Human Relations Newsletter Working Group
1971b). This Aboriginal Human
Relations Magazine reported on community healing action among Aborigines
throughout
Neville spoke
(Dec 1993, July 1998) of a person providing a chaplaincy role in Fraser House
who formed the self-help group that evolved into the organisation called Grow
which is now an international self help group assisting people recover from
mental dysfunction (Grow 2005).
Mingles was another of Neville’s functional matrices
dating back to the 1960’s. Mingles’ function was making it easier to form
friendships. It was one of a number of mutual wellbeing, support and
self-help/mutual-help networks/groups that emerged from Fraser House.
During September
1985 till late 1986 Neville, Chris Collingwood, Neville’s son David (and others
linked to that first workshop in Balmain during August 1985 where I first met
Neville) held regular experiential wellbeing sharing gatherings on the first
floor at 245 Broadway in
Celebrating and
re-creating
Community
wellbeing
Social
networking
Wellness
Enriching
families
Many of these
gatherings would also move for a time across the road into adjacent parklands
where we would engage in all manner of theme based sensory micro-experiences to
increase mind-body flexibility and choice – self and group trust and all-round
wellbeing.
Photo
13 A
photo I took in July 2001 of 245 Broadway in
Neville and this
same Mingles network energized a monthly event called Healing Sundays in Bondi
Junction in
It was
experiential, that is, simple healing ways that others have found to work were
tried out. No prior experience was necessary. Attendees could experience and
learn many healing ways. It was also a day for extending social and nurturing
networks. Some attendees were open to sharing their healing ways with the
gathering. Anyone who wanted to could link in with the enablers for the day and
arrange/enable a small segment - sharing with the group some healing ways.
Neville was the
key person in evolving and sustaining Healing Sundays. Neville stated
emphatically that he did not need to do this to discover process, as he had
done it a number of times before. He did it to give the core group of twenty
(and other attendees) the experience.
Notice again the
use of Cultural Keyline in the Healing Sunday:
1.
The
process encouraged every one to engage in attending and sensing and supporting
self-organising, emergence, and Keypoints conducive to coherence within social
contexts – sharing micro experiences while monitoring theme, mood, values and
interaction
2.
Forming
cultural locality (people connecting together connecting to place at Neville’s
home in Bondi Junction)
3.
Using
the emergent micro experiences for strategic design and context-guided
theme-based perturbing of the social topography
4.
Fostering
everyone’s sensing and attending to the natural social system self-organising
in response to the perturbing, and monitoring outcomes
Like creating a village to
surround Paddington Community Mental Health Centre, Neville would use Healing
Sunday to work with his psychiatric clients in a group context (by inviting one
to three to attend). One Healing Sunday attendee had been a patient of Fraser
House in the mid 1960’s. Neville would engage in strategic subtle and not so
subtle interventions during the Sundays (like unexpectedly telling me to work
with a patient of his in the group context when I alone knew she was furious
with Neville, and Neville had provoked the fury to prevent her suiciding
earlier that morning).
ON BECOMING AN ELECTION CANDIDATE
Neville and Ken Yeomans both entered as independent
candidates for the NSW electorates of Wentworth and Phillip respectively in the
1969 Federal election (Yeomans and Yeomans 1969). Both were against sitting
members and knew they had no chance. Neville, Ken and Ken’s wife Stephanie all
said that they were very active campaigners and used this as an opportunity to
raise the profile of all of the various themes that were dear to their hearts –
use of water, sustainable agriculture, community mental health, pollution,
intercultural harmony and the like.
Photo 14
Photos of Neville and Ken Used in Their Election Campaign from Neville’s Archives (Yeomans, N. 1965b)
Photo
15
Advertisement in the Now Newspaper where Neville wrote a regular column (Yeomans,
N. 1965b)
As part of their election campaign, Neville
and Ken and Stephanie created an extensive set of humorous and creative bumper
stickers using a variety of fluorescent colours. These were called Licka
Stickas. Some are shown below.
INFLUENCING OTHER STATES
A casual conversation (July 2002) with a woman giving me a lift to
the airport in Hobart, Tasmania after some Laceweb gatherings there revealed
that she and many of her friends in Tasmania, especially in Hobart in the late
Sixties and early Seventies, closely followed Neville and Fraser House
developments. They used these as inspiration to push for all manner of changes
in that State’s Community and Family Affairs departments. She said that they
had many successes and that they evolved very effective wellbeing networks
throughout
Photo
16
Sample of Bumper Stikkers from the collection in Neville’s archives in the
Mitchell library (Yeomans,
N. 1965b).
FINDINGS
Neville’s
outreach was consistent with Cultural Keyline and demonstrated how ways evolved
in Fraser House, within a government funded professional service delivery model
could be interfaced with lay (non professional) self-help/mutual-help
networking that in turn could be self organising and self sustaining. This
further extends Neville’s biopsychosocial model and provides processes that may
be used in extending societal psychosocial resources as well as by the likes of
the Victoria Workcover Clinical Frame work. Neville’s outreach has demonstrated
ways in which new cultural syntheses may be fostered, and ways collapsed
societies may be reconstituted (in contrast to power-over pathologising (Pupavac 2005)). This is discussed further in Chapter 13.
SUMMARY
This chapter has documented Neville’s outreach from Fraser House
and detailed the links between Fraser House process and Fraser House outreach. In all of the various outreaches
from Fraser House, Neville blended seemingly disparate things into his action
research. He linked