Our ambition at this point is to evolve a narrative frame for a pattern language as distinct from a full pattern repertoire. Here we explain why a narrative frame matters, rather than just having a repository of patterns.
# A fly-through the space of the language A narrative frame is something like Chris Alexander does in *A pattern language*, pp xvii-xxxiv: 'A summary of pattern language'. Chris Alexander et all, 1977.
This is a beautiful read-through, almost like a Whitman poem (in two voices: a narrator-traveller, and 'a toastmaster' or 'town crier'), invoking a flight through a city from the outer regions to the intimate spaces. This kind of evocative fly-through is valuable, we feel, and needs to be attempted also for a pattern language of activist life, making a living economy.
This is not often done by pattern developers it seems (programmers, for example) and it is not easy. But foprop is in large part an aesthetic venture (the whole of one of the four zones of reach Evolving structures of feeling; and more), and the narrative framing - the cinematic zoom-in - is part of that.
As regards pattern descriptions rather than narratives, although poetry has its place(s) inside a pattern description - after all, patterns must be **sung** into living practice - they are more prosaic and formularised than narratives; assembled within a template for usability. The full repertoire of patterns is a long haul, calling for multiple collaborations across plural communities, evolving individual patterns-in-families.
So: to start with, focus on the narrative flow. Best way to assemble a pattern language(ing) community too, perhaps, thro scoping-type conversations?
Here is a first-cut guess on what the structure of foprop might be, in terms of pattern families, situated within the imaginative space of the foprop weave.
Pattern families across four zones of reach and three landscapes of practice
# Narrative flow The narrative frame needs to cascade the mind down into this populous space, giving a sense of its texture, dimensionality and diverse, organic aliveness.
The narrative sequence in foprop goes like this: - The **weave architecture** - zones of reach, landscapes. The nature of practice, and theory of practice, and activist commitment. - The 'dance' of the **zones of reach**, in 'singing' patterns of very different kinds, into a practical frame of activist living - Care work - **In-here**; and the pattern families of care work - Subsistence work - **Here**: and the pattern families of subsistence work - Formación work - **We**: and the pattern families of formación work - Stewarding work - **Region**: and the pattern families of stewarding work
These might be seen as segments of a 'cascade' of narrative, from the overall frame of commitment and insight (the weave), right down into the fine grain of the pattern-within-family (and its relationships - resonances across zones, affiliations within zones - with other patterns-within-families).
**Segments of a cascade** Pattern descriptions are needed not only for detailed patterns-within-families, but also for each segment is this narrative cascade: - The weave/project patterns We are engaged and Blessed unrest in the face of clear and present danger - The zones-of-reach pattern Beyond fragments - A fourfold dance *From here downwards, not currently developed* - Four families-within-this-zone patterns, for the four zones of reach - A whole bunch of patterns of patterns-within-this-family - Many individual, detail patterns, each at home in its family
> It probably helps to see this as an Alexandrian centres-and-wholes relationship, between weave/zone/family/pattern. Holmstad 2014, 'Fifteen properties of wholeness' Chris Alexander.