I ran a short training session with the NGO Capacity Builders Skillshare Forum the other day. Posed with the issue of how to condense what could be a several days long training into 1hr 45mins, I decided to focus on four themes – State of mind Core listening and interactive skills Roles Application State of […]
Reflecting on Daniel Hunter’s article, mentioned in our previous post, a few things come out for me. Firstly, not to be put off using of a group agreement (I don’t do ground rules and find the terminology too reminiscent of school for many of the groups I’ve worked with). It’s a good tool. Whilst Daniel […]
Daniel Hunter of Training for Change has contributed a thought-provoking article to Turning The Tide’s latest Making Waves. In it he talks about ground rules and the various ways in which they can, ironically, undermine the safety of a group. This flows from Training the Change’s emphasis on margins and mainstreams – that every group […]
In this post we interview Kathryn Tulip of Seeds for Change Oxford who has been working to make strategy more accessible to grassroots campaign groups. You can listen to the full interview (12.5 minutes) or Kathryn’s top tips for facilitators (2.5 minutes). Apologies for the background noise. For those that prefer the written word, we’ve […]
A few things grabbed my attention whilst preparing for and facilitating the World Carfree Network‘s annual general meeting. As mentioned in the report back post, it was a very international gathering. I’ve noticed that these gatherings bring with them specific challenges for participation that I don’t encounter so often elsewhere. There are the obvious ones […]
I’ve just read Cooperative Streets – Neighbours in the UK, a recent Co-operativesUK report. It charts the decline in neighbourliness in the UK over the last 28 years. Amongst other things, the average number of neighbours we each know by name has declined from 13 to 7. That’s perhaps unsurprising when you read that only […]
York’s a lovely city any day of the year, but on Friday it was in full sunshine. Perhaps not ideal when you know you’re going to be indoors all day. The World Carfree Network was holding its annual conference: Towards Carfree Cities IX . Friday, day 5 of a 7 day programme, was the day […]
I thought it was time for a more upbeat post on strategy whilst I find the time to edit 2 interviews that I hope to post soon – the first with Kathryn Tulip of Seeds for Change focusing on overcoming challenges in facilitating strategy at the grassroots, and the second with Peter Chowla of Bretton […]
Reading Carl’s recent post I’m seeing some threads developing from our strategy blogging experiment. In some ways I feel a tad guilty – we seem to be posting reflections that support a shift away from the ‘traditional’ strategy tools that facilitators have relied on for I don’t know how long. This post’s no different in […]
I was reading the New Scientist the other day, en route to a friend’s place. Unfortunately, I cannot give you a reference, as I threw away the magazine, but kept my musings. There was an article on scientific peer review. It stated that many more positive research pieces are published, than those that are negative. […]
