Eurythmy in the Workplace
Working With Eurythmy in Organisations "My Path So Far"
A Report from England by Melissa HarwoodAbout 15 years ago I took a sabbatical from my teaching position at the London School of Eurythmy and worked in London at the Royal Opera House for 2 years in the costume department for both the opera and ballet companies. It was not only marvellous to be surrounded by all that music but also to observe how a big theatre company worked and also how it didn’t when workers and management don’t work together harmoniously.
After those two years I moved to the north of England, to the beautiful Lake District, where I was totally without Eurythmy colleagues and with only about 5 local people who were working with Anthroposophy. What was I to do? I gave a few summer courses, taught at conferences and luckily was invited to teach in various Eurythmy schools here and abroad, but this was not full time work. At the same time Annemarie Ehrlich began to give her now yearly courses on” Eurythmy in the Workplace”. This marvellous work of hers was just what I had been looking for and brought together the varied strands of my work; teaching Eurythmy to adults in various situations, the experiences I had working in various factories in my youth and the strong sense that Eurythmy was a social art, which had been planted in me by my teacher Marguerite Lundgren during my Eurythmy training.
After the first couple of Annemarie’s courses, a group of us got together and practiced her exercises, worked with consultants to learn about their world and designed exercises for a series of workshops on Money for the Anthroposophical Society. These workshops, which took place around the UK, were very successful and diehard Anthropops who disliked Eurythmy and wondered what it could teach them about purchase, loan and gift money, ended up saying that they couldn’t have understood it without the Eurythmy!
During this time the Eurythmist Arthur MacDonald and I were asked to give a Eurythmy session at an international conference for consultants and businesspeople called the Learning Company Conference. This was run by a consultant who is an Anthroposophist and he wanted to introduce anthroposophical arts into the organisational world. The sessions went well despite them being held at the end of a day where the participants had attended 5 other intense sessions, had a few drinks at the bar and a 3 course meal with wine!!!! Throughout the following 8 years of giving workshops at this conference I did manage to move my session to before dinner at least.
Aside from the learning curve of the Eurythmy sessions and how to present them effectively to a diverse group of individuals who were curious and nervous, I also learnt much about personal presentation, how to dress for such a function and how to present Eurythmy both at the lunch table when people asked me which organisation I worked for and also in my 1 minute slot in the plenum where I had to “sell” my session.
It was through this conference that I got my first real work in organisations. Participants in the courses would either approach me immediately with a proposition of work or months or years later the phone would ring asking if I were free to bring Eurythmy as a part of their working with various organisations. As a result I have done work for Avery Dennison (an international converting company), The Industrial Society (they do training for all the big UK organisations), The National Health Service (the NHS managers conference), Groundwork UK (working with the managers who organise work with underprivileged young people), the Open University (Business Tutors meeting), John Carlisle Partnership (in house training for business consultants) and Pubmasters (they own a string of pubs throughout the UK).
I found that this was the way that work came towards me, via experience and then word of mouth. I had, at the time, some leaflets about Eurythmy but I hadn’t really thought through – and didn’t really know how to word them in terms which would appeal to a consultant who would take me into a project. (I had tried sending my leaflets directly to consultants and trainers with a free trial and got no response). I decided that I must educate myself. All this time I had been driving south to London to attend network meetings at the Stepping Stones Consultancy where we would spend a day sharing different ways of working with clients. While this was interesting I felt I needed to inform myself more deeply about how a consultant works, i.e. terminology, concepts and practices and so I enrolled on the Consulting in Organisations course run by George Perry and Larsu Salonen. This is a one year course based on Anthroposophy which meets for 5 weeks during the year and gives the participants a real grounding in consulting techniques and practices.
With this course I gained the confidence I needed to stand in the consulting world as a colleague to the consultant who has – let’s face it – taken a big risk in bringing Eurythmy into a company with which he/she is working. They are always pleased afterwards that they have done it because the Eurythmy is magic and helps the people in the organisation to open up to new ways of looking at and experiencing themselves and their surroundings. These people are very open to new ways of working if we know how to make them feel safe from the moment we walk into the room.
I now have professionally written and designed leaflets and am working with a company, Pubmasters, who responded directly to the leaflet which was shown to them by a consultant who had only heard of my work. Through the Eurythmy they have changed their way of working and want myself and the consultant who brought me into the company to travel the country with a “Roadshow” to work with all their staff.
It is so exciting to work with Eurythmy in this new way and I encourage anyone who is interested to learn as much as possible about the world of the consultant and organisations via books (there are thousands), courses and talking with friendly consultants.
George Perry and I are planning a course called “ Introduction to Working in Organisations with Eurythmy” which will begin in September 2001 and be held at Emerson College here in England. This course will contain: understanding how organisations work; learning skills such as observation, diagnosis and remedy implementation; managing change processes; team building exercises; communication skills; handling feedback; presentation and building a rapport with a client; advertising; fee scales and much more.
If you are interested in such a course please do contact me at:
Easedale House, Grasmere, Cumbria LA22 9QL
Tel/Fax: 015394 35231 email: hardyharwood@btinternet.com
Institute for Eurythmy in Working Life/ Instituut voor Eurythmie in Werkgebeiden
Training / Transformation
Course with Annemarie Ehrlich
A NEW PATH IN THE TRAINING FOR EURYTHMY IN WORKING LIFE
For those
*who have a particular interest in people in the work place,
*who have experienced life as a schooling path and feel it is necessary for themselves,
*who wish to learn from their mistakes,
*who are looking for new paths.
*We want to train ourselves to work with Rudolf Steiner's eurythmy exercises in an independent and imaginative way.
*We ant to practice speaking about eurythmy in a brief and clear manner.
*We want to work on the leading of discussions, the dynamic forming of judgement and dialogue skills.
*We want to wake up to the "in between" in social processes.
*We want to become acquainted with the development of the organization and translate the processes of consciousness into eurythmy exercises.
*After observations at the workplace, as a team we want to develop new exercises to complement one-sided activities.
Every year a course for 12 participants can be arranged. We will alternate between a course held in German and, if there is demand for it, a course held in English.
DATES
PRACTICAL ASPECTS OF THE TRAINING
*Start: 2 weeks in Den Hagg NL ( July - Aug ???)
*Then: 4 weeks in Sekem, Egypt ( Jan - Feb ???)
COSTS
Please ask Annemarie directly.
Written application with a short life history and a passport photo included. Send to
Annemarie Ehrlich
Dedelstraat 11
NL 2596 RA
Den Haag
Holland
Tel 0031 70 3463624
OTHER COURSES
She will be travelling around giving courses all through the year. The rough schedule:
Feb 2010 Stuttgart,
March 2010 Oslo, Jarna, Helsinki, Copenhagen,
April 2010 Bologna,
May 2010 Freiburg, Weimar,
If you would like to know those courses I have the contact info.