But the fact was, this was an Olivier Mythodrama workshop www.oliviermythodrama.com
led by Richard Olivier himself. Would we be able to get the balance right between professionalism and young gun-ho?

I have been to two of Richard’s incredible workshops before – one at a conference in Findhorn Eco-village (with a veritable army of helpers milling around making sure things go smoothly), and one more corporate-tailored event in with ushers, trays of pythagorian sandwiches and white linen table cloths in polished-floored ballrooms. Oh, and laminated nametags.

All very nice but not very Ecomotion. This is where the BASH boys come in with their Shoreditch studio and unisex toilets with graffiti’d doors – no linen, no floorboards, but as carbon neutral a building as they come and with heart, art and soul oozing through the cracks in the walls.

The real point here is that no matter the stage, no matter the sandwiches (or lack of – sorry guys!), all Richard really needs is the oracle of himself and an audience with which to engage.

We are first introduced to the Olivier Mythodrama concept – a method developed along the three strands of leadership, personal development, and storytelling. Richard’s background in theatre directing and his experience with Shakespeare mean that each workshop holds a particular moral message and is focused around a specific Shakespearean text. For us – Transformational Leadership using The Tempest: www.oliviermythodrama.com/transformationalleadership.asp

Richard’s passion and open-heartedness is instantly engaging and all-consuming. He is a paragon of reference, wisdom and poetry. Every point is backed by a quotation, anecdote or experience that allows a theory to take form, paint a picture, and therefore be taken into your head.

Each act of the play dissipates mini moral messages that are always relevant and tailored to the audience at hand. Richard is sensitive to his crowd – tears of passion are not out of place at Findhorn, but may not be best placed for the blue suits in the City. Similarly, when talking to a group of predominantly under 30’s, there will be quotes that float and others that wont, Richard’s not only float, but stick.

I was particularly struck by his message about the importance of engaging with politics. Entrepreneurs and visionaries like to do things differently and shun common protocol. But, we are reminded, everybody is involved with politics and choosing to be apolitical is a not altogether helpful stance. If you disagree with the politics and choose to remove yourself from it, then all you are doing is allowing those who agree to remain engaged with it and hold the sway.

We then proceeded to identify and explore our respective leadership elements. My business partner, Rosalie, and I often marvel at our polar opposite approaches and attitudes to the world. Richard teaches us all that a well-rounded organisation needs a palette of personalities to work on all levels. We may not always agree on the transportation method, but we are travelling towards the same end goal so must learn to work together.

Richard and his incredible team at OM have created a format of workshop and a method that is accessible, digestible, and inspiring. It was a day filled with questions, challenges, knowledge and even a Blue Peter style exercise involving balloons, pipe cleaners and sticky-back plastic. A massive thank you to everybody that made this day the success that it was.

Miranda

With the rise of twittering and fast-paced updating spanning a multitude of platforms, blogging is the perfect outlet for streamlining thoughts in a systematic way (and I do love a good system). It will teach me that spending a week on a well-structured arguement with a beginning, middle and end is not the only way to get a point across. Perhaps this will be good for me! There is no time to be precious. And with Ecomotion moving and morphing everyday, this is an ideal way to keep our followers up to speed with how things are panning out. We’ve all been working so hard for the past 2 years getting the website and structure of the business just right, and now we feel it’s important to talk openly and transparently about how we’re moving forward. So let’s summarise, shall we?
www.ecomotion.org.uk has been dubbed the ‘next generation of social networking’ (why thanks very much!) - harnessing existing technology and using it as a force for good, promoting green businesses and projects, encouraging collaboration, and, crucially, trying to engage people with action offline. Ironic, maybe, for a web-based organisation, but creating a one stop hub for ethical living should give people all of the tools they need to get offline and back into the 3D world as soon as possible.
So what’s taking us so long? Oh, you know, the usual. Lack of funding, (wo)man power, finding the strength to keep the vision alive when it’s so gosh-darn difficult to get a start-up mobilised during a recession. But we haven’t given up, and every day feels like we’re making amazing progress, covering new ground, and receiving incredible feedback from people that tell us that Ecomotion is what the digi-world is missing.

Our motivation for creating this portal is that there are so many wonderful organisations and projects out there that aren’t communicating with each other, and are all striving towards the same goals around sustainability, so our ethos is: Why reinvent the wheel? Why usurp existing efforts when we’d all move forward a lot quicker if we’d just join up and work together? Idealistic, us? Maybe, but aim high is our philosophy, and the combination of good intentions and good ideas will carry us forward.
So what are we doing right now?

1) Improving our homepage. There is so much you can do on the website that it can feel a little overwhelming. Our current magazine-style homepage is great if you’re used to the site, but we want to ease people in gently and direct them to the stuff that is relevant to them
2) Going local – Localmotion is a way for us to roll out to geographical communities and encourage them to use this as their own reconnection platform, maybe even to run it as their own green innovation business in the not-too-distant future.
3) Boosting our online presence – this is where the blogging, tweeting and forum-ing comes in.
4) Boosting our offline presence – We need to get some pilot projects running on the Ecomotion platform so we can showcase all the amazing things you can do through our Hubs. We have some great things in the pipeline so watch this space.
5) Funding – We’ve come this far without any significant financial support (we turned down corporate funding early on in the project so that we could maintain control of the Ecomotion voice and remain a neutral platform) but we could do so much more with a little bit of help.

Anyway, looks like I need to learn how to rationalise thoughts in order to keep the length of my blogs down – hard to do when there is so much to say. As with Ecomotion, just have to keep at it and it will all come good in the end.

Miranda