Braziers Park Community

At the dog end of summer 2009 I spent two months living and working at Braziers Park, a community hidden away in the Chiltern Hills, just the other side of the river from me. It is a constant source of incredulity for me that I never knew of this place until about a year ago. Now it seems as much a part of my countryside as Wittenham Clumps or The Bull’s Hole.

Visit the Braziers Park website here: http://www.braziers.org.uk/.

About Braziers Park School of Integrative Social Research

Braziers Park isn’t just a community; it is an on-going intellectual social experiment set up by Norman Glaister in 1950. The aim of this experiment is:
“To make concious in ourselves the shape of the process of which we are a part, so that we may facilitate its development more efficiently and harmoniously.”
And this is all done on a small-holding estate in the middle of the Chilterns, where the community members work the land, raise the animals, cook, clean and host courses.

So how have the members – and Braziers Park is 60 years old in 2010 so there have been many and a lot of work has been done – facilitated the development of the process of which they are a part?

The central concept at the heart of Braziers Park is called the Sensory / Resistive method. This basically contends that there are two types of mental activity, the Sensory and the Resistive. Sensory is fond of abstract ideas and cogitation and Resistive is given to executive decision making. Hence, to facilitate the cooperation of these two halves of our nature, Braziers Park has two kinds of meetings: Sensory meetings and Executive meetings.

The Sensory Process

No decision are made in Sensory meetings. This can be very hard for newcomers to understand. It is, essentially, a talking shop. That is not to disparage it either – I love talking shops! People can voice their concerns, their feelings, their ideas and their facts about the topic under discussion. It is a ‘safe place’ for all views because decisions are not made. You could make an outrageous suggestion without fear that it would be laughed out in favour of something more ‘practical’; you could criticise another idea without fear that your criticisms will be made personal – everyone has a cooling off period to cogitate before the Executive meeting and the dreaded decision making.

This is how it all works in theory.

There are a number of problems, however. Different people (as Glaister knew well) are different in their tolerance of Sensory or Resistive processes. Some people get frustrated with the Sensory process because it seems full of air, with no substance. Likewise, some people prefer not to get involved in the dirty business of the Executive meetings and are then surprised when the decisions taken there do not seem to tally with how the topic was discussed at Sensory.

Furthermore, this doubles (at least!) the number of meetings that the community has to gather: one to discuss the topic at Sensory and a second to make a decision at the Executive. Sometimes the topic then has to go back to Sensory for more thinking – and then back again to the Executive!

I am rather fond of the Sensory process, however I am aware that the problems are real and have been cropping up again and again over the last 60 years at Braziers Park. A solution has not been reached, but I wish them all the best in their endeavours and hope to be involved again soon.

Published by

David

David Charles is co-writer of BBC radio sitcom Foiled. He also writes for The Bike Project, Thighs of Steel, and the Elevate Festival. He blogs at davidcharles.info.

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