ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects upon the experience of attending Belgirate IV: "Exploring the Impact and Relevance of Group Relations Work Within and Beyond Its Network". Within group relations conferences (GRC), the intergroup event (IG) often represents a key transition. It is common for GRC consulting staff members to be instructed to keep the IG groups from veering too much to either extreme: settling into an isolated in-the-room process as against going out to test. Like the GRC in China that had been presented in the keynote talk, a European-based GR organisation was taking its approach to group relations and putting on GRCs in another continent, but, unlike the China example, the result was competition with the "native" GRC. One might argue that the apt model is a Darwinian "survival of the fittest": GR organisations must "evolve", must meet the demands of their environments in order to survive, let alone thrive.
