I’ve recently finished my second stint doing jury service. Jurors are cautioned not to talk about their experience of their time as jurors but trials are held in public so I am allowed to talk about information that’s in the public domain. My first time as a juror was around 35 years ago in the […]
So what can we make of the US election results, and what’s that got to do with us over here? Is it a last hurrah of a beleaguered set of people feeling left behind in a changing world? Is it simply another demonstration of the dangers of populist leaders stirring up the depths of racism, […]
Last month, I went to the idyllic Abbey, in Sutton Courtenay in Oxfordshire, to attend a training on Convergent Facilitation, led by the woman who devised this method, Miki Kashtan. Her background is in Non-Violent Communication (NVC), and many of the forty-plus people there also had an NVC background. They came from at least a […]
Where? Forest of Dean (just north of Bristol) When? 6pm 28th October – 4pm 30th October 2016 FROM BURNOUT TO BALANCE: CO-CREATING CULTURES OF COLLECTIVE AND SELF CARE SLIDING SCALE £25 – £150 When we think of our escalating refugee/hospitality crisis, mounting inequalities, eco-systemic collapse and runaway climate change – the challenges we face can […]
Craig Freshley’s Good Group Tips pop into my inbox regularly and have done for several years. I have to admit I don’t always read every one. Some I skim, some I bin. A few even get the attention they deserve, like the most recent one on “Different views”. It’s well worth the few minutes it’ll […]
In Rhizome’s occasional series sharing thoughts and perspectives following the EU Referendum, polarisation is a key issue that we need to learn from and deal with now, both in the wider Brexit world and in our social change groups. What are your thoughts? Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised at the desperate polarisation that occurred […]
I think the diagram to the left, the Diamond of Participation, is by far the most helpful diagram for anyone interested in running better meetings that come to better decisions. I’m very grateful to the “Facilitators Guide to Participatory Decision-making” i for providing it. I’m writing this blog both to explain it and also to […]
In a blog on June 6th, I described the Wee Play conversation kit that I helped develop and use for the Scottish independence referendum in 2014. In this blog, I’m going to explore how the Democs conversation kits, of which Wee Play was one example, get across information about complex topics. Each kit supports a […]
The Hive runs a series of one-day co-op skills training sessions, delivered by experts, available to existing co-operatives looking to strengthen in key areas. Many of these training sessions were co-designed and run by Rhizome in previous years. Still to come this year, we are delivering the ‘Communication and Working with Conflict’ workshop in London […]
My title is taken from the title of a recent book by a Canadian author called James Hoggan. It sums up neatly what the attitude seemed to be of many people involved in the EU referendum debate, whether that debate was face to face or on social media. By accident, I and my colleagues in […]
