Group Relations Conference celebrating 100 years of Tavistock Thinking: 10-12 July 2020

In 2020, a year of centenary celebrations, our sister organisation – the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust – is pleased to invite you to this Group Relations Conference, entitled Back to the Future: Authority, vulnerability, continuity and change, to mark a 100 years of Tavistock thinking. 

Back to the Future is a 1980’s film in which the protagonist goes back to the past to help with the present. One can immediately see the link to the influence of the historical Tavistock enterprise on our ways of doing things now.

The Tavistock Clinic began in 1920 with its work on shell shock and trauma and developed an awareness of the role of the unconscious in our understanding of the mind, our relationships and how groups function. Further developments around attachment theory, systems theory, group psychotherapy and consultancy are significant areas of work within the Trust and relevant to the group relations model.

Back to the Future: Authority, vulnerability, continuity and change is a three-day non-residential conference. There are no formal lectures but instead a series of events, which provide an opportunity for learning through experience. 

The conference is for people in any kind of working role who are interested in understanding more about how organisations work – and why they don’t sometimes. Participants may also want to discover and reflect on how they show up in groups and systems, what roles they take up and are given, how others experience them and how they experience others.

This Group Relations conference aims to help participants explore:

• Their capacity to exercise authority, to take up leadership and also followership
• The functioning of organisations and their role within them
• The relationship between an organisation and its cultural, political and economic environment
• The unconscious processes that may cause resistance to change or impact creativity and innovation
• The impact of difference – age, nationality, ethnicity, class, gender and sexual orientation – on experience

Find out more details here. If you’d like to express an interest and / or have a conversation about this conference or if you have any questions, please contact the Pre-Conference Administrator.

Rachel Kelly is administrator / consultant for the conference.

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