Extract from Insights in Space: How to use Clean Space to solve problems, generate ideas and spark creativity by James Lawley and Marian Way. Order from cleanlearning.co.uk
James’ Story
I first saw David Grove demonstrate his ‘clean’ approach at a seminar in 1993. He worked with two volunteer clients simultaneously, asking one client a few questions before turning to the other, going back and forth between them. I was bemused and enthralled. I had never heard of Clean Language nor seen anything like it before. I had no idea what was going on but I could sense that something extraordinary was happening.
Eighteen months were to pass before I had a chance to observe David at work again and to experience him asking me those unfamiliar questions. I still had no idea what he was doing but Penny Tompkins and I just knew we had to find out, and the best way to do that was to use the skills we had acquired from NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) to model his expertise.
We thought it might take a year to model David but at that stage we hadn’t realised he was a serial innovator and our modelling project was to become a lifelong quest. Penny and I wrote Metaphors in Mind: Transformation through Symbolic Modelling as a generalised model of David’s work up to 1999. However, within two years of the book being published, David had taken a major innovative leap that took his work in a new direction.
I remember clearly the workshop in April 2002 when, for the first time in the UK, David unveiled his latest innovation: Clean Space. Surprisingly for a man who was normally so confident, he appeared a little nervous and eagerly sought our opinion. We said we first needed to try it with ourselves and others. A few weeks later David came to stay with us and almost the first thing he said was, “Well, what do you think?” to which Penny replied, “This one’s got legs.”
At the time no one realised the scale of the change in direction he had embarked upon. David used to say, “I chase ideas and wrestle with them.” He fervently pursued this idea for the remaining six years of his life, creating a suite of processes he called Emergent Knowledge.
Many are called ‘genius’ but few can be as worthy of that title as David Grove. David loved etymology and the Latin root of genius is ‘begat’, a perfect metaphor for his knack of birthing so many practices. The 25-year span of David’s work has provided a deep seam of wisdom for those who wish to mine its riches. This book is but one example.
Marian’s Story
While James came to this work through direct contact with David Grove, most of my learning came from James and Penny Tompkins. My first introduction to Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling was at an NLP Conference in 1999, where James was giving a talk on ‘Binds and Double Binds’. I became the volunteer client and that session set the direction for a new phase in my life. I was bowled over by what I learned about myself and determined to learn how to use the skills James was demonstrating.
My first introduction to Clean Space was also with Penny and James. I was attending my third or fourth Clean Language workshop with them when on the last day they hired an enormous local hall for us to try Clean Space. The floor of the hall was covered with netball court markings and each pair of participants had half a court to work within.
Despite what I’d learned about Clean Language – itself a somewhat unusual practice with often surprising results – I can recall my amazement that day when we discovered that we could know wildly different things in different spaces. The term ‘sacred space’ also took on a new meaning as we learned to respect those court boundaries and keep out of our fellow participants’ spaces.
Between then and now I have trained hundreds of people in Clean Language and Clean Space and have written a book of my own, Clean Approaches for Coaches. James gave me masses of useful feedback during the writing process, so when he asked if I’d like to write a book with him on the topic of Clean Space, I immediately said, “Yes.”
We have spent many happy days together surrounded by Post-it Notes®; I think every single concept in this book, as well as a number that didn’t make it, has been on a Post-it on a wall, oor or table at some point.
One of our challenges was how to do justice to a very spatial process which involves lots of moving about, within the confines of a book. We know the best way to understand Clean Space is to experience it, so overleaf you’ll find a mini version to have a go with.
Grab some Post-it Notes (or pieces of paper) and do it now. This quick exercise will give you insights, both into the Clean Space process and into whatever topic you choose to consider.
