Chapter Eleven - Fraser House Outreach
ORIENTATING
This chapter details the various ways Neville extended
Fraser House into wider society, and discusses how these varied social actions
were consistent with Cultural Keyline and fitted into Neville’s evolving
frameworks for fostering humane caring transitions in the global-local
social-life folk world. The term ‘Functional Matrices’ is defined,
and Neville’s evolving of them towards creating the Laceweb is discussed.
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:
- to explore re-constituting process among people on
the margins within the old cultural synthesis, and then
- 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