Togetherness Table
Living our constitutional values & co-creating 5th Spaces in intergenerational groups
About the game
“Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. What does social democracy mean? It means a way of life which recognizes liberty, equality and fraternity as the principles of life.”
~ B.R. Ambedkar
So how do we create this way of life that recognizes of equality, liberty, fraternity. These values are enshrined in our constitution but like all value statements they are just aspirational statement that represent the ‘should’ of a society of the ‘future’ with no connect to real action in the ‘now’. In most spaces that young people occupy the focus in on how they ‘ ougth’ to be with little effort on creating an experience of what that way of ‘being’ means or feels like. What people are experiencing in the moment has as much validity as to what ought to happen in the future and it is these moment to moment experiences that arouse certain positive feelings in us on a daily basis that really build the culture of our inner and outer worlds. It is this ‘ feeling’ level experience that young people ( and indeed everyone in society) this ‘ is’ experience will help us understand the values that ambedkar talks about thus they will be actually be able to be lived in everyday society and from there percolate into politics and governance.
Through our work with millions of young people across across many diversities and backgrounds we find that the 5 feelings of Love, Learning, Freedom, Ownership and Social Hope are core to the making of such an experience.
We bring you the togetherness table to open the infinite possibilities of dialogues and conversations in the family space and other inter generational settings. It is game that includes a process of doing fun actions followed by reflection in the form of refl-action tasks where groups earn gold,silver and bronze points. Each refl-action task creates an opportunity for deep dialogue and conversations which are preceded by an experience to love, learning, freedom, ownership and social hope which can gently guide us to nourish values of liberty, equality, and fraternity in society.
Co-creating 5th spaces
How do we create a space where young people can co create experiences for themselves and others to nourish these feelings?. We believe that as a society we have ‘legitimized’ four spaces for young people – that of family, friends, career / career-related education and leisure or recreation. More often than not, the norms of these spaces that young people occupy are not set by young people themselves but either by their elders or society at large. On the margins is another spaces called the 5th Space that exists beyond and between the 4 legitimate spaces and is an alternative space that is governed and co-led by young people. It focuses on transforming young people by engaging them in social change experiments and creating a powerful personal and social dialogue. This space builds on the aspects of understanding the self, developing meaningful relationships and impacting society – all of which are critical to youth leadership.
How can we bring this 5th Space into our families, schools and colleges, work spaces, as well as friends and recreation spaces such that young people can be listened to and learned from and where they can take co-leadership in the common spaces with adults while fostering the 5 feelings we talked of above. Unfortunately the hierarchical and patriarchal society we live in has skewed the power equation in favor of the adults. To democratically and peacefully shift this balance both sides need to have an experience of the wisdom of each other such that this balance shifts back to a co- leading dynamic as it was in the Independence movement. Thus intergenerational dialogue become to key to renewal of society and a health democracy. The family space is one where there are hardly any such interventions in this field and has been left to the parents to negotiate.
