History and Development of the Commonwealth Study Conferences

The first Commonwealth Study Conference held in the UK in 1956 was, in the words of its founder HRH Prince Philip, The Duke of Edinburgh "an extraordinary experiment". It set out to provide an opportunity for people from all over the Commonwealth and all walks of life to leave behind their usual roles and, with a diverse group of people, examine the relationship between industry and the community around it. The purpose was not to produce high sounding resolutions and weighty conclusions but to challenge the participants' assumptions and prejudices; to give them the chance to examine real situations and the issues arising from the interaction of businesses, their employees and the communities in which they operated. The members were, at Prince Philip's insistence, to be "people who appeared likely to be in the next generations of leaders so that when the time came for them to take important decisions they would have the benefit of what they had discovered on the Study Conference to help them".

A number of people helped shape the final format of that first Study Conference and were delighted to find that the "great experiment" was turned into a continuing series of Study Conferences by those who found the experience so valuable themselves that they wanted to make it available to subsequent generations. Further Conferences were organised every six years. The dates, locations and themes are listed in the attachment. In addition in the UK and Canada, between the main Study Conferences, national conferences were organised using a similar format.

Each Conference Member was selected to attend as an individual, not as a delegate representing an organisation or even a specific country. They were people who were judged to have acquired considerable occupational experience in their chosen fields, and in many cases had or were likely to achieve positions of influence. Approximately 40% of the members have been from corporate management, 40% from trades unions and 20% from public administration or the voluntary sector.

Each Study Conference has followed the same basic format of short introductory plenary sessions followed by Group Study Tours and closing sessions to which each group reports back with its impressions and observations. Each member is allocated to a Study Group which is a reflection of the diversity of the whole membership.

The Study Groups then spread out across the country to look at the interaction between industry and commerce and the community through a series of locally planned visits and discussions. The Study Tours are not orthodox conducted visits with the visitors looking at machines and watching unknown people at work. The host organisation understands at the outset that uninhibited individual and group face to face discussions with people at all levels are essential to the success of the visit. The locations for the tours are selected because of their potential usefulness as learning sites. They are, in essence, the Study Conference laboratories. There is universal agreement amongst previous Conference Members that the study tour is the unique edge of the conference experience.

The Group must try and reach a group view of what they have seen to present to their fellow members at the closing sessions. Reaching that consensus is where the real work of a Study Conference takes place. No one who genuinely engages in the process will fail to find their most basic assumptions challenged and themselves giving consideration to entirely new perspectives on a whole range of issues.

Although the basic structure has not changed since 1956, changes have been made in the light of experience and comments from members. The first event was 3 weeks and 300 participants, but with greater time pressures and leaner organisations, this has been reduced to approximately 2 weeks and 200 members. The 6-year cycle which developed is now being reduced to 4 years over the next 2 conferences (i.e. 2003 and then 2007, 2011 etc) which will allow the momentum of the Conference movement to be more readily maintained.

Over the years in a number of countries non-profit/charitable educational bodies have been established to organise Study Conferences, recruit participants and maintain the network of previous members. Each conference has, in a sense, risen like a phoenix from the ashes of the previous one and if at any point no host had come forward with a viable proposal the series of Conferences would have ceased.

Whilst this approach has worked well in the past, a new Commonwealth-wide liaison group has recently been established as a central co-ordinating group of the national study conference organisations. The purpose of the group is to support the continuation of Study Conferences by co-ordinating future events and promoting communication.

When the first Study Conference experiment took place in 1956 the approach was unique in terms of who attended, the format, the issues covered and the objectives. Forty five years later, many of these features have been adopted by others and issues such as the environment which were new in 1956 are world-wide concerns. Yet the Commonwealth Study Conferences remain a unique training and development opportunity for personal development for prospective leaders which participants continue to find valuable. Past members have said that they continued to discover insights from their study conference experience many years after.

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