13–15 Feb 2027 · Stony Brook University

Events

The Conference Journey

Six events, one system

Each event offers a different vantage point on the same conference system. The conference winds through these six events, and earlier dynamics often resurface later.

Photo credit: Alex Vasey on Unsplash

01
Opening Plenary
Marks the crossing of the boundary from everyday life into the temporary Cooperative — sets the available task, time, territory and resources.
02
Field Learning Matrix
Similar to a classical Large Study Group, with the evolving art installation of dilemmas folded in as live associative material.
03
Small Learning Matrix
Similar to a classical Small Study Group, but turns attention to how hard — or possible — it is to think in the presence of difference.
04
Cooperative Matrix
Members create temporary organizational forms of their own, negotiating sponsorship, authority and resources — with the potential for these projects to live beyond the GRC.
05
Review & Application Groups
Reviewing the conference experience and its relevance to the roles and systems members belong to outside.
06
Closing Plenary
Reviews the GRC as a whole and marks the end of the GRC.

A tall mural on the side of a building crowded with figures from city life — Photo credit: Samuel Regan-Asante on Unsplash

A laboratory for new forms of association

The Cooperative Matrix

Replaces the traditional Institutional Event

Here, participants stop being members of a GRC someone else designed — and start becoming responsible for organizational designs of their own. Around dilemmas that matter to them, members propose a task, look for collaborators, and negotiate the authority, sponsorship, and resources it actually requires. Some cooperatives find their footing. Others struggle, or dissolve. Both are materially worth thinking about.

This is the space of exploration of ethical imagination: can a group stay connected to what actually matters — to each other, to the task, to the reality of what they're facing — while also negotiating authority, resources, and facing resistance? That tension, lived in real time, is what the Cooperative Matrix is designed to surface and work through.

Members may bring projects that emerge during the Cooperative Matrix to its Management for consultation, resource allocation and authorization. Some projects will unfold during the GRC; others may continue beyond it. Members will negotiate how available resources (funds, networks, expertise and institutional support) can advance their work during and after the conference.

More about the post-conference process will be shared during the GRC.

The Art Installation

This time, we bring the field in

Celebrating the eightieth anniversary of this tradition, Living Together in Difference: Authority, Responsibility, and Ethical Imagination invites participants to contribute a professional, organizational or societal dilemma through a collaborative artistic installation.

Co-curated by staff member and consultant Alan Ruiz together with conference members, it draws some inspiration from the Tavistock Institute's pioneering use of artistic installations within GRCs to expand the possibilities for inquiry, reflection and collective meaning-making.

Where the first Leicester Conference sent members out to meet the field, this time we bring the field in: the installation carries the outside world's dilemmas into the conference itself, through artistic representation. It lives in the room where the Field Learning Matrix meets — not as the object of that event's work, but as an evolving presence that informs it, the way a field informs what becomes possible within it.

Throughout the GRC, the installation will unfold as a living representation of the concerns, hopes and uncertainties brought by members.

A mural of a girl with braids and purple hair bobbles, her face a collage of photographs, painted on the side of a row house — Photo credit: Daniel Burka

Art Submission

Application is understood as the first act of authority and participation within the conference.

Participants are invited to submit a creative representation of an unresolved dilemma drawn from their organizational, professional, community, societal, or personal field of experience.

Submissions may includeDrawings · Photographs · Poems · Short texts · Songs · Audio recordings · Collages · Sculptures · Videos · Code · Digital media · Other creative artifacts

These submissions are not evaluated artistically. They are understood as representations of dilemmas entering the temporary learning cooperative. Upon submission, artifacts become part of the conference system and may be revisited throughout the conference as material for inquiry, reflection, and study.

Ready to join us?