Process Arts

The process arts include things such as FaciliTation?, MediTation, CommunityOrganizing?, NonviolentCommunication, OpenSpace and WikiWiki. Even more than a list of particular processes though, process arts is an awareness that however one is doing something, that is one particular way, and one could do it any number of other ways. (This is analogous to PerlLanguage's motto - There More Than One Way To Do It!)

This could apply to any field - cooking, sky-diving, coding, etc., but we use it primarily for human-human or human-self interactions (psychology, sociology, mythology, politics, design, etc.). There are differences and similarities in patterns of process artistry across scales - intra-individual, couples & groups, families, neighborhoods, tribes, towns, cities, regions, continents, globally.

The process arts as a movement has a lot of power in shifting cultures to more power-with ways of being and doing. See AssumptionsOfPowerWithCulture.

Some relevant resources:

GoodQuestions
TheChangeHandbook and the NexusForChange
http://www.collectivewisdominitiative.org/ - web continuation of the excellent - and unfortunately out-of-print - Centered on the Edge. Much of the book is downloadable from the site though.
http://del.icio.us/tag/processarts (if you use DelIcioUs or other tag-enabled systems, please tag anything else relevant you find!)
The Quickening of America (the working title was The Arts of Democracy), by Frances Moore Lappe and Paul Martin Du Bois
NcddWiki - see NcddWiki:ParticipatoryPractices (down, we'll get it back up, hopefully this year)
CenterForGroupLearning
I predict SunirShah's facilitation wiki will be a great resource if he gets it going
CoIntelligenceInstitute

Also see:

MyPractices, ProcessMashupFestival, MultipleViewpointDrama

This movement/field/concept has been emerging as a significant phenomenon certainly in recent decades, or even centuries - consider the scientific method and amendable constitutions. One can even take the perspective that it is as old as "modern" human consciousness, behind the explosion of variety of tool use that took place ~50-100,000 years ago. See ConsciousnessIsOurOxygenChallenge.

BrandonWilliamsCraig? (http://bdwc.net ) coined this term in 1996. His Beamish Process Arts Consultancy became the Beamish Process Arts (501c3) community (http://www.beamish.org ) and then Association Building Community (http://abcglobal.net ).