Transforming systems : the Hawkesbury initiatives in systemic development

Over a period of little more than 15 years, starting in the late 1970s, a small group of academics in the School of Agriculture at the Hawkesbury Agricultural College in Richmond, Australia developed and sustained a unique participative systemic experiential approach to rural development. Their approach came to identify the significance of the transformation of prevailing worldviews as the pre-requisite for transforming systems in the material and social worlds. From this perspective, participative research directed at social development was recognised essentially as a social critical and systemic learning process that represented the transformation of shared experiences (both real and imagined) into collective knowledge to inform responsible, consensual action. In this article, the writer, who was the designated leader of the group through that period, discusses the context, genesis, structure and potential significance of its multi-functional and multi-modal systemic learning approach to transformative development which is systemically inclusive of people and the rest of nature alike.