The new AI Practitioner is out: 'Strengthening Community with Appreciative Inquiry – Stories from a Learning Network'.
The spark for the theme of this issue came from an Appreciative Inquiry Learning Network on Strengthening Community that the authors initiated and co-facilitated last year. Participants came up with Appreciative Inquiry interventions in many different shapes and forms to foster cohesion and connection in their teams and organisations. Even more, the authors felt the group itself grow into a community. Thus, the idea was born to share some of these experiences with the broader international community of AI practitioners. This issue is a remarkable and rich collection of these stories, demonstrating how participants have been strengthening community in their context.
In this introductory article we set the scene: first, we describe the tradition of the Appreciative Inquiry (AI) Learning Networks that we have been hosting since 2008! Then we explain the design of this particular AI Learning Network and reflect on how we sought to host the network as a community in itself. At the end of the article, there is an overview of the stories in this issue, which describe how to strengthen a (sense of) community with Appreciative Inquiry interventions. Most, but not all, are from participants and facilitators of the learning network, illustrating the impact of being part of that network.
'AI Practitioner', the International Journal of Appreciative Inquiry, is brought to the world by a partnership between the David L. Cooperrider Center for Appreciative Inquiry, and Kessels & Smit, The Learning Company. The journal is designed to highlight examples, case studies and research on strength-based approaches to change with special emphasis on Appreciative Inquiry.