‘Practice Story Exchanges’ and their Creative Invitation to Informal Learning

This is a study of how members of a collaborative group interested in promoting convivial civilisation in human society took up exchanging practice stories – stories of doing something or seeing something done as examples of convivial backyard civilisation – in order tacitly to create an informal learning environment where practices of such a convivial backyard civilisation could seem normal, desirable and do-able. Practice story exchanges were an attempt to ‘tell the truth but tell it slant’ as Emily Dickenson put it, to work tentatively and collaboratively avoiding too much direct confrontation and rigid debate. This paper talks of the work of creating conviviality to redress an over emphasis on productivity in society; of the nature and importance of informal learning and its links with story exchanges and how this is pursued in the work of the Australian Centre for Convivial Backyard Civilisation (ACCBC).