Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I think I'd add a few words just to introduce myself there 'cause I appreciate I'm not the easiest of persons or people to introduce. In terms of my involvement with [? mountain ?] tourism, I think probably the first time I was involved in Morocco goes back to 1995 when I was still a veterinary student, actually. And I witnessed the suffering that the animals that I saw on trek were actually subjected to. And this subsequently led, when I retrained in education years later, to develop a training program for the national mountain guard training school in Morocco, specifically for the guides. And one of the things that I guess I'm wanting to contribute to this discussion today is a different perspective about the role guides, the role certain professionals play within the industry. And this then fed into an actual research project destined to help the international mountain tourism industry develop policy and practice for pack animal welfare within their industry. I appreciate some of the terminology here's going to be a little bit unusual, so I'm expecting some questions at the end. But I want to start with a few questions here. If we're to work together, if we're to talk, how should we meet? And hopefully, you can sense that we're traveling upstream here. And I'm drawing on [? Goethe here ?] and other ideas within science of going upstream to the source of problems. If we invert those questions, however, and ask, how do we attend, both inwardly and outwardly, how do we meet? How do we then dialogue? And what does that co-creative project that then ensues look like? I think you can get a sense for some of the ideas that underpin the actual research work that I've been undertaking with the industry. And I'm going to try and unpack this, particularly with regard to ideas around attention and dialogue, in this presentation. So in terms of background, there's obviously growing awareness of animal exploitation and abuse across the tourism industry. But this doesn't always translate into meaningful action. Very often, the responses are quite knee-jerk. They're hitting in downstream really. They're not actually addressing fundamental root causes. I mean, clearly here we're all able to appreciate some of the physical or mental suffering that this mule is probably experiencing, but the causes of that suffering are far less clear. And I think that's the kind of thing that the Action Research project that I've been engaged within -- sorry, that I've been engaged in over the last 10 years has tackled. So the aims of this presentation are to explore how the fostering of attention and dialogue as part of Action Research work can transform relationships by furthering presencing and at the same time countering absencing. So those are two terms that I'll unpack, two further terms I'm going to unpack with you today. In the first part of this presentation, I'm just going to talk a little bit about the concept of attention and dialogue. I'm then going to explore the role that attention and dialogue actually play within Action Research itself. And those of you who are interested in how this played out within my own work and continues to play out, I'll welcome to ask me for the third part of my talk, which I'm obviously not going to be getting around to today. Why is this important? At some level, I think it's pretty obvious. But essentially, this kind of work allows us to attend to and address the fundamental causes of unhealthy relationships and poor animal welfare. And what do I mean by that? Well, intervening downstream would lead us to seek the cause of a biting injury, such as is seen in the top left-hand corner there, by substituting a more humane bit where a traditional Moorish bit has been identified as the problem. But this is very much a downstream intervention, and it's not really something that's sustainable given that it doesn't address the fundamental causes of that poor relationship, of the poor communication that actually goes on there. So in terms of attending, we need to be conscious of where we direct our attention and how we understand these issues. We could obviously direct our attention to the bit itself. We could actually look at the hand that is actually controlling the bit, that is directing the bit. We could consider the mind, and indeed, the person and the person's intentions, their values, their understanding that is directing the hand that has indeed chosen the bit. We could actually look at the invisible line that I'm drawing here between the mind of the mule and the mind of the mule handler. And this invisible line represents the between. And the between is a key thing within dialogical theory, which forms the basis of a lot of peace and reconciliation work since these ideas were developed during the First World War by the likes of Martin Buber. So to the first part of the talk, I'm just going to say a little bit about attention. Now I think the poet and philosopher David Whyte has summed this up really beautifully in his challenging line when he actually says to us that attention is the hidden discipline of familiarity. And it's something that the team led by Otto Scharmer at MIT who are working on transformational change, who are currently running a really exciting lab on transforming capitalism worldwide, this is a key part of their approach. And Otto actually says that for him, energy follows attention. Wherever you place your attention, that is where the energy of a system goes. And what this means is that we need to pay attention to how our attention itself shifts from what we are trying to avoid to the creative project we are engaged in, to what we are trying to bring into reality. And this is something that's inputting into the training of the leaders of the future as we speak. So Otto Scharmer and his work argues that successful leadership depends on the quality of attention and intention -- you can detect the Buddhist mindful influence there -- that the leader brings to any situation. And he emphasizes that two leaders in the same circumstances doing exactly the same thing at an outward level can bring about completely different outcomes depending on the inner place from which this -- from which they are actually operating. So what I want to illustrate here is that the field structure of attention, which you are seeing on the left there, has an influence on the quality of listening that we can engage in. So broadly speaking, we have got three fields of attention, one that is essentially egotistical where we are attending from an I-in-me state. And this can actually be developed such that we are no longer attending from an egotistical state, but from what Buber would describe as an I-and-thou state, which here is kind of reduced a little bit to an empathic state. And I think the key takeaway I'd like you just to see here is that how we attend impacts on how we listen. And I'm now going to explore with you how that then influences what kind of dialogue arises from that. In terms of dialogical theory, this draws very much on Martin Buber's work. And I'd like to distinguish between three types of dialogue. So monologue, which is obviously one-way, is often disguised as dialogue and mistaken as dialogue. And I think it's something that we need to be aware of. Discussion, so factual discussion and debate, is what Martin Buber would call technical dialogue. And arguably, this still isn't dialogue. There is not a degree or a significant degree of mutual reciprocity within this kind of dialogue. So Buber distinguishes these two forms of dialogue from genuine dialogue in which participants are truly present to the other. And this is equally true of interhuman dialogue as it is of interspecies dialogue. And I think that's one of the exciting things I think that we can take away from this. How do we move though from those false forms of dialogue -- so monologue disguised as dialogue and technical dialogue -- into genuine dialogue? The key thing here is the turning, and there is a turning from an I-it, i.e. an objective relationship with the other, to an intersubjective relationship with the other where we actually recognize the soul of the other. And that's very much what Buber means by the I-thou form of relating. And it's distinctly non-egotistical, OK? In Cramer's work on Buber's life work, he summarized why he -- he states that dialogue is a turning away from a self-reflexive monologue, which is obsessed with self-enjoyment, towards the wordless depths of genuine I-thou dialogue. I can provide further information on some of the characteristics of this turning, but I think the only thing we really appreciate here is that an awareness of which of these states we're attending from is very valuable. And it's perhaps best summarized by the namaste greeting where neither party are present with an agenda. And in any encounter, that presence of judgment, that presence of an agenda is often what gets in the way of dialogue. It's what leads to non-genuine meeting. For those of you who are not familiar with the namaste greeting, it's about divine in both parties actually recognizing each other. Why is an awareness of self -- so the inner listening -- and of other and of the moment and how we meet and commune so important? Well, if we talk before meeting, if we haven't genuinely met, we have to ask ourselves whether we are genuinely talking. If we fail to meet genuinely, can we really know? And I'm making a very important distinction here between knowledge and knowing. Two completely different things. And if we don't attend to how we meet, how we talk, how we know, genuine dialogue will remain out of reach. And this is true of animal encounters. So moving into the second part of the talk, I just wanted to say some things about the role of attention and dialogue in Action Research. Theory U, which is the model of transformational change developed by MIT over 10 years ago now, proposes that the quality of the results that we create -- and this is in any kind of social system-- is a function of the quality of awareness, attention, or indeed, consciousness that the participants in the system operate from. So I guess what I'm offering you here is a tool that applies to every single social system there is. It's been used around the world to produce change as we're speaking that address the economic, spiritual, and environmental divides that are part of the Anthropocene that we're living in today. So since its emergence, it's being used as a method for leading profound change. It's also -- and I think this is quite interesting on a personal level -- being used as a way of being, as a way of connecting to our better selves, to our more authentic or higher aspects of self. And I think -- you can probably sense  why it's become very popular in a number of leading business  schools around the world.  It emphasizes attention dialogue as pathways to better conversations. So please don't pay too much attention to the detail of the diagram. But I do want you to see that in moving from the field of attention into the quality of listening, and indeed, dialogue that this can actually give rise to better conversations, which, ultimately, can become generative. So what Otto Scharmer's team has brought into this practice is a move beyond genuine dialogue into generative dialogue. And this actually creates new possibilities of living together. And this, for me, is very powerful where animal welfare is actually concerned because the solutions are not known to us for so many of the problems we face today. We actually need to create them. And this is where dialogue is -- created dialogue -- is so important. In developing our listening skills, our deep listening skills, that is, and suspending the things that get in the way of those skills -- so judgment, cynicism, and fear -- we actually create a space for seeing and sensing. And this is something that the tourism industry can actually engage in tomorrow, actually undertaking, co-seeing, co-sensing journeys that help develop and deepen awarenesses is easily within reach. This space actually allow stakeholders to be taken on a journey that allows them to see the system in a more holistic way. So they can actually see the system from the edges. Where this is particularly powerful is that it exposes them to the view that the marginalized, so the view that stakeholders on the margins have of that system. So if you can imagine a factory owner going out onto the factory floor and genuinely listening to what is actually going on within his organization, the same is actually true of the tourism industry. And this allows stakeholders to connect to the sources of their deeper humanity. Bringing us back to the title of the talk, we can distinguish between two cycles, one in which we are present to ourselves, to the other, to the present moment, and in which we actually see and sense more clearly, and one in which we absence ourselves and we remain stuck in one truth, remain stuck within our own individual or organizational boundaries. And that actually has an impact on the will we have to change. The upper cycle is obviously an economy of destruction, it is profoundly destructive, whereas the lower one is an economy of creation. Interestingly, MIT are using this to describe the Trump administration at the moment, and there is a very exciting program going on there to actually highlight how this is playing out within the US as we speak. So you're welcome to read up more about that. Bringing it back to animals in tourism, attending to how we meet, to how we listen, and dialogue can of itself transform relationships. We don't actually need to do a great deal more. And it allows monological relationships to be transformed. So monological relationships here are heavily influenced by power. And I've illustrated what lies between some of the different stakeholder groups here. So clearly, the bit is a tool for control rather than communication between the mule and the mule handler, the muleteer. And the financial system determines or characterizes the relationship that the agencies have with their ground staff, so in this case, the muleteer. And all of these things have very, very direct consequences on animal welfare. When we actually move to a more dialogical approach, we actually find that we open up listening organs within all of the different individuals. So the mule develops a better understanding of the owner, the owner of the mule. And in turn, this actually moves up through the supply chain to the agencies because that awareness is actually deepening. And the thing I want to emphasize here is the growth in the actual circles. So one of the things that actually happens when awareness deepens is that the eye itself grows with the knowing. So who we actually are is changes in and of itself. In summary, I've covered concepts of attending and dialogue at a theoretical level, and how these allow us to head upstream to the source or sources of unhealthy relationships and poor welfare. And I've emphasized the role that attending, attention, and dialogue have in Action Research and in affecting and delivering transformational change. Fundamentally, I think this is pretty well demonstrated now, turning, being aware of how we turn, being aware of how we open to the other, attending to the I-thou and the I-now, which is the challenge in terms of generating emergent futures, is transformative. And one of the key things I think industries such as the tourism industry can do to actually enable this kind of thing to happen is to create the spaces in which genuine meeting and dialogue take place, and to facilitate those processes. And these are essential parts of Action Research, but they will, in all industries, become part of how we go about our practice. And I don't know how much of the tourism industry is actually engaged with these ideas, but it is something that is very current and becoming increasingly urgent. So in conclusion, I think that we can say that exploitative relationships, which exist in all industries, sadly, can be addressed by ensuring that the stakeholders involved see themselves not on different sides of the fence, but actually collectively as co-creators of the system. We need to actually be able to say that this is our system. This is our industry. We are creating this apocalyptical situation. In doing so, we can actually create sustained opportunities for creative solutions to be found through genuine meeting and dialogue. It's not about finger pointing or actual blame. It's actually about just seeing more clearly, suspending the things that get in the way of seeing. And when that system actually starts to see itself and stakeholders are empowered to co-create the relationships that they genuinely want -- and I think that's another thing to emphasize is that if you are to ask anybody who had all the information at hand, they would tell you that the relationships they want are not the relationships they've got. So this was a very striking finding in some of the early work done on transforming some of the German health system. All the stakeholders involved didn't like the system they had, and they were very clear that they all wanted another system. Once that was actually very clear to all, they could ask the question collectively, how on Earth have we ended up with this system, and how do we create the system that we all want? And the kind of process that gives voice to that is one in which mutual reciprocity, mutual trust, respect, and understanding, and everything else that goes into the dialogical approach are found. So I guess I'm just throwing this into the mix as something that the tourism industry can actually call on to meet some of the challenges that it currently faces, OK? Thank you very much.