The Host Leadership Gathering 2024 in Summary

As August 2024 begins, I initiate a new series of blog posts about our most recent Host Leadership Gathering of 3-4 June 2024, in Sofia.

In more ways than one it was a special gathering and we all loved the way the Gathering panned out. It marked the 10^th anniversary of McKergow and Bailey’s HOST book, published in 2014. The programme boasted a remarkable keynote speech, an exceptionally personal guest speaker talk, five workshops, in-person and online, and three more very good talks. Without any hard lines separating them, several thematic strands stood out:

These focused on:

• How understanding of the six roles of a host leader has developed over time
• Host Leadership practices in the field of education
• Host Leading in sensitive, and often painful, social work settings
• The need to sometimes multiple Host Lead

In this first blog post, I offer more pictures than text in a well-meaning attempt to re-create the overall flavor and dynamics of the Gathering. Each of the postings that follow will in turn focus on one workshop or talk. Look forward to Mark’s keynote next week.