This was my first Forum. It was great: the two keynotes, the posters, the workshops, the fishbowls, the cake. And, on reflection, its underscoring conviviality. It was one of the first words I wrote down in my notebook and an idea I kept returning to.

Conviviality defined is: “the quality of being friendly and making people feel happy and welcome”. This is the Forum. This was communicated through the physical space: Seven Stories was bright, beautiful, covered in fairy lights. It set the tone.

Conviviality also seems to be one of the over-riding qualities of people working in the knowledge mobilisation space. A very unscientific search for the term AND “knowledge transfer” brings up a range of hits on Google Scholar. Journals in business, management, clinical practice, product design, nutrition and knowledge management turn out results.

As a concept, conviviality has dominated sociological approaches to multiculture, particularly in ways of understanding relationships between space and people with diverse backgrounds and how we all ‘get on’ (Neal et al. 2018). As I was sat in the beautiful space of the Forum, engaging in convivial exchange, it occurred to me that sociological understandings of conviviality could be – and maybe should be – stretched to the principles and practices or the ways of ‘being’ and ‘doing’ knowledge mobilisation. In the Google Scholar ‘hits’ conviviality seems to be mentioned in passing, as just one obvious aspect of what people do when exchanging knowledge. Maybe we should interrogate this underlying assumption a bit more? This would make us ask questions like:

  •         (How) Do convivial spaces and exchanges contribute to the mobilisation of knowledge?
  •         (How) Can convivial spaces be generated to encourage knowledge mobilisation?
  •         What are the characteristics of conviviality in a KMb context?
  •         (What) Is conviviality as a mechanism of KMb?

The Forum was a delightfully and effortlessly convivial place: friendly, happy, welcoming. This was because of and further encouraged generativity, connectivity and deep exchange; a virtuous circle of KMb, if you like.

What we might gain by better interrogating these processes of KMb and applying ‘borrowed’ theories? Possibly some progress beyond ‘how to’ do knowledge mobilisation? A better understanding of the complexities and interdependencies of KMb practice? Greater academic credibility? Whatever it might or might not deliver, the contributions by all at the Forum – the collective effort – was a joy and a brilliant example of how we all ‘just do it’, possibly without any conscious effort.

 

Reference:

Neal,S., Bennett,K., Cochrane,A. and Mohan,G. (2018) Community and Conviviality? Informal Social Life in Multicultural Places, Sociology, https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038518763518