Rhizome Blog
Here you’ll find stories of successful organising, training and facilitation, what’s new in these areas already helping us build the world we want, news of Rhizome’s activities, and news of upcoming events. Have a browse or use the search for interesting topics we’ve written on. Please do feel free to comment and leave your own reflections – we feel that we’re on this learning journey, together.
Step outside for a moment…
Occupy London was in court last week. The court found against them and, subject to appeal, the City of London can proceed to evict. The occupation is illegal. I can’t help feeling that the power of the Occupy movement is tied into that very illegality. In a way I’m glad the court ruled as it […]
Consensus decision-making: guiding groups to good decisions
We talk a lot about consensus on this blog. Supporting groups to navigate the sometimes less than clear waters of consensus is a large part of our work. Over the last year or so I’ve spoken to several fellow consensus trainers about work we’ve done together from the 2005 G8 protests onwards. One of the […]
Sustaining Resistance
This just in…. If you go along, why not let us know how it goes?
co-operative mediation training
I spent two days working with people from worker coops on the theory and practice of mediation. The first day also coincided with the UN International Year of Cooperatives. We started by looking at and discussing what mediation means – what mediation is and how it differs from other dispute resolution approaches some understanding conflict […]
Just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean…..
Here in the UK undercover cops infiltrating activist movements has become big news. We’re not alone. In response to increased repression in Australia, Holly, over at Plan To Win has pulled together a very comprehensive list of security-related resources in her latest post: Spy vs Activist. Some snippets from a very thorough and full post: […]
Women of the World 2012
Towards the end of last year I attended a discussion session to brainstorm ideas for the second Women of the World Festival, to be held March 9th-11th at the Southbank Centre in London. This was one of a series of 3 ‘think-ins’ facilitated by Jude Kelly, Artistic Director of the Southbank, to find out what women […]
Intuition – a guide for facilitators
There’s an excellent post, The Intuitive Facilitator, over at the FacilitatorU blog. If you’ve ever found yourself thinking or saying “I wish I’d gone with my instinct’ or ‘I knew I should have done that differently’ then I’d strongly suggest you read it. For the time-limited here’s my highlights: “As a facilitator, intuition helps me […]
Co-operation – 2012's not all about the Olympics
As of yesterday, it’s International Year of Co-operatives, a UN initiative to promote co-operative models of business. Rhizome is a co-op, so it seemed a good idea to tell you a little about that – what does it actually mean, and why would we bother? I’ve been involved in 2 previous co-ops, both workers’ co-ops […]
Thoughts from Belgrade
I’m visiting Belgrade on family matters, and have been reading through the guide book in the apartment. Up the road is the huge Kalemegdan park and the Belgrade Fortress standing on a bluff overlooking the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers. There is a huge column with a statue of the Messenger of Victory […]
Talking with, not to: Ten tips for talking with your grassroots
I had a phone conversation with Casper ter Kuile in the run up to Christmas. He’s exploring stories of organisations talking effectively to their networks. We chatted about the Fairtrade Foundation work Rhizome has recently completed. That got me thinking, and here are my top ten tips for any organisation wanting to have an effective […]
Five go blockading
Stop New Nuclear have an ambitious plan to surround the Hinkley nuclear Power station and then blockade the gates in a 24 hour action to mark the anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear accident on 10th and 11th March. They’re asking us all to be there and pledge to bring 5 friends. Here’s a snippet of […]
New Rhizome mediation guides
A little late for Christmas, here’s a gift from us to you. We’ve been busy over December and early January working with Stig – our designer of choice – on a range of guides to all aspects of mediation. The first few are on our Resources page already. More to follow in the next week. […]
Looking forward to it….
The start of 2012 is a bit hectic here in the rhizosphere. The exciting thing for me is that almost all 7 of Rhizome’s facilitators are in action in January and February. Perry’s facilitating a day of meeting facilitation skills with the folk at Climate Rush, looking at their own meetings as well as public […]
On team building, timelines and Gillian McKeith
On November 17th I went to Halifax to spend a day with the co-ordinating team of Suma Wholefoods. In terms of workers’ co-operatives where everyone is paid the same, Suma is the largest in Europe. The team meet regularly, and already work well together, but wanted to spend a few hours together to look at […]
Consensus training: Talk Action, January 26th, London
Rhizome don’t put on many open courses, though we do get asked. As it happens 2 of our facilitators are at work in an open course on Consensus Decision-Making next month, courtesy of the team at Talk Action. We’ll look at the values that underpin effective consensual decision-making as well as at 2 models of […]
Chris Corrigan's life's learning…
We’ve mentioned and linked to Chris Corrigan from time to time on this blog. He’s just uploaded a page he’s entitled A collection of Life’s Lessons with over 80 links: For a while thought, I have kept a set of writings apart from this blog, titled “A Collection of Life’s Lessons.” I’ve just spent the […]
No more Fukushimas – Stop New Nuclear
Stop New Nuclear are building towards a Fukushima anniversary action in March. Rhizome folk will be there to help support the process of the action. See you there? Can you download and distribute the flier?
A new space for community and voluntary action?
Here’s news of an interesting event…. NCIA Assembly at the Bank of Ideas – Occupy community groups and public services: a discussion to find a new space for community and voluntary action. Tuesday December 13th, 2pm to 4pm, Room 1.05, The Bank of Ideas, 29 Sun Street (near Liverpool Street station), London Amongst other things […]
Communicate and connect for common cause
In July the Common Cause Handbook, from which the quotation below is taken, was added to the original Common Cause report (along with lots of other nice stuff on the valuesandframes.org website) “Social and environmental concern and action, it turns out, are based on more than simply access to the facts (a finding that may […]
Occupy: learning from Climate Camp? Part 2
We’ve had a lively 3 way conversation about what the Occupy movement can learn from the experience of movements such as Climate Camp. We (Dwight Towers, Seta and myself) ranged quite widely – leadership, accountability, meetings that work even for those with little time and so on. One area we didn’t cover was vision and […]
How do we build a participatory movement? Let's ask the panel…
A couple of times this year I’ve been asked to sit on a panel as a speaker advocating nonviolent direct action or radical social change. Flattering to be asked. But my take on these topics is that they are fundamentally participatory – empowered social action making change from the grassroots up. And yet we revert […]
dominance in meetings: margins, myths, and small group magic
Recently I facilitated part of the second day of a 2 day gathering. I arrived on the night of the first day in time to catch the end of the day’s meeting. Energy was flagging a little and that meant that some of the dominant dynamics of the group were asserting themselves – a handful […]
An appreciative audience for Crowd Wise
I spent the afternoon in London on Wednesday at a meeting of the Capacity Building Forum. You may be glad to know that there was, finally, talk of agreeing a new name (the current one hardly trips off the tongue) and creating a website so that the outside world can locate and get involved with […]
New possibilities… sharing, prioritising, communicating
In their 8 Tools for New Possibilities post, ISIC have pulled together 8 social media tools for connecting, hearing and organising people and their views. I’ve had a quick look and can see some of them being valuable additions to the toolkits of networks and NGOs with networks of grassroots groups. I imagine that next […]
Learning to be more flexible and creative
Last Sunday I ran a short 4 hour NVDA training session for People and Planet at Leeds University, an interesting experience as, because it was the same weekend as Shared Planet , only 3 people attended which meant I had to really re-think what we were doing and how. It was actually wonderful to have […]
And then there were 7: Rhizome expands
Rhizome started small. We always had plans to involve new people but times are hard and we wanted to offer them a living. Well, we changed the offer and instead offered a place in an interesting co-op doing interesting work with interesting groups and organisations (and a very modest contribution towards a living). Emily Hodgkinson, […]
Rage, rage against the dying of the light…
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light. Dylan Thomas Groups die. Networks die. Movements die. It’s meant to happen. It’s part of a natural cycle and we should embrace it rather than rage against it. Why? […]
Crowd Wise: ongoing learning
Here at Rhizome we’ve recently completed a piece of consultancy work for the Fairtrade Foundation. We used the Crowd Wise consensus process as a central plank of the work – running five regional Crowd Wise conversations with grassroots fair trade campaigners to develop options around grassroots membership of the Foundation, prioritise the options and then […]
Are you listening?
Thanks to the folk at the Interaction Institute for their post The Art of Listening. They quote extensively from an essay on the power of listening by Brenda Ueland. In facilitation and group work circles listening is more than a core skill, it’s a core state of mind, but one that’s often undervalued and under-practiced. […]
Transition US on Occupy and lasting change
The latest Transition newsletter has some interesting looking links to conversations on all kinds of Occupy related topics. You’ll find them on the Transition US website under the heading of resources for creating lasting change. Sounds good to me. As with all these things there are links to pages with links and so the journey […]
Occupy: Learning from Climate Camp?
Until recently in the UK Climate Camp could, with some justification, have been called the most dynamic force in activism. Now that baton has passed to the anti-cuts movement, and specifically the Occupy movement. There are lots of similarities between Climate Camp and Occupy. Both have strong anti-capitalist leanings (it’s not true to say that […]
Process, power and privilege in the Occupy movement
Ivan Boothe has written an excellent post on the Fellowship of Reconciliation website. He talks about the cornerstones of the process used by the growing occupy movement in the States such as the people’s mic, consensus decision-making, and general assemblies – useful stuff about the purpose and problems associated with them, including some insights for […]
Facilitating occupation
In another recent post Chris Corrigan (see our previous post) has also collated a few links to support Occupy protests in facilitation. Plan to Win have done the same in their #Occupy 101 post, with some specific tools for general assemblies of the kind being used at Occupy Wall Street. The resources include a fantastic […]
In praise of activism
I’ve been feeling a little guilty about recent posts on the Occupy movement. Not because I’ve said anything that on reflection I disagree with, but because I know that I’ve been offering a negative critique of both choice of tactics and the robustness of the actions so far without balancing it with a positive critique. […]
Gathering More Momentum
Here’s some info about the latest event from Stop GM Gathering More Momentum: Sunday 13th November 10am – 5pm A day to refine plans against the return of genetically engineered crops at the beautiful Hawkwood Nursery in Walthamstow, one of London’s most spectacular community growing projects. For directions see here: http://www.organiclea.org.uk/contact-us/ The agenda will include: […]
So many tactics. So little time….
The Academy of Change (credited with a significant role in preparing the ground for the Egyptian uprising) have posted Political activists reveal 65 ways to start a Syrian revolution, which gives some examples of the range of tactics open to activists. Clearly Gene Sharp, and others, have compiled similar lists in the past, but it’s […]
Post-capitalism – errr, I thought you had a plan?
After my last post on the tactics of Occupy movement an old friend called and berated me (nicely) for not giving an alternative vision to capitalism. So here goes. And before you put the kettle on and settle down for a long read, no need. I’ll be brief: I don’t know. Nor do I feel […]
Are we overly occupied with occupation?
The Occupy movement is spreading. The Occupy LSX camp outside St Paul’s in London continues to make it into the news bulletins (even if a lot of the coverage isn’t about the real issues). And yet I feel dissatisfied. I get the reasoning. The Arab Spring has galvanised people, created hope that systems can change […]
News release – test your knowledge
OK, so a quick caveat – the following is based on experience of using the media as activists. We’re not professional journalists (though we’ve taken the time to talk to a few). The answers are below. No fancy technology, just scroll down….. On your marks, go! The Questions Name at least 3 things it’s worth […]
Panels, participation and press releases – Rhizome at the Rebellious Media Conference
Both Carl and I were busy at the Rebellious Media Conference last weekend. We facilitated the 2 participant-led sessions – a short Open Space on ‘Activism and the Media on Saturday, and the “Have Your Say” session on Sunday. Neither were heavily attended, but that’s hardly surprising given the weight of other things in the […]
Building a strong grassroots foundation…
We’ve not been reporting back on so much work of late. It’s not that were not working, just that we’ve been working more on one project – facilitating a dialogue between the Fairtrade Foundation and their grassroots campaigners. The Foundation wants to offer campaigners membership – a place in the formal governance structure of the […]
Spokescouncils – learning from Stop New Nukes
Hinkley Point nuclear power station was successfully blockaded on Monday 3rd for an entire day. The Stop New Nuclear organisers had decided in advance on an affinity group model of action, and therefore that communication and decision making would happen by spokescouncil. I joined the fray on the Saturday to help facilitate the spokescouncils both […]
The Empowerment Manual
Whilst we’re plugging books, here’s news that Starhawk‘s latest book will be out soon. Once again she returns to look at group process in The Empowerment Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups. Starhawk’s previous work is required reading on consensus, and has been mentioned on this blog in that capacity, so expect good things. She’s […]
History of Nonviolence – Counterpower
We mention a few sources of case studies for nonviolent action and lo and behold we’re told about another. Tim Gee, author and activist (and reader of our blog – thanks Tim) has written Counterpower: Making Change Happen, in which he covers case studies of successful movements from India’s Independence Movement to the Arab Spring. Tim’s […]
Occupy Wall Street
Some interesting stuff over in New York. Good site to look at – Occupy Wall Street for an ongoing story of the occupation and resistance. Some food for your media thoughts in the week running up to the Rebellious Media Conference. And if you’re just thinking of going we’re afraid it’s sold out.
Spokescouncils: blockades and briefings part 2
I’ve been pondering spokescouncils this week as I head off tomorrow to join the facilitation team at the Hinkley Blockade. Before writing the short briefing for participants I looked around on the web to see if it already existed. Whilst doing so I stumbled across some reflections by a facilitator on The Change Agency’s website […]
History of nonviolent action
Thanks to Plan to Win for bringing together three essential tools for anyone involved or interested in nonviolent action in one place. They include the very recent Global Nonviolent Action Database which pulls together case studies of nonviolent action from around the world and from different historical periods in enough detail that we can learn […]
Spokescouncils – blockades and briefings
I’ll be at the Stop New Nuclear blockade of Hinkley, site of the first proposed new nuclear power station, this weekend. My main role is as part of the facilitation team facilitating spokescouncil meetings at the camp and on the action itself. For the uninitiated a spokescouncil is a method of making decisions by consensus […]
When consensus doesn't work
Over at how to save the world, Dave Pollard has written a thought-provoking piece on consensus entitled When consensus doesn’t work. It comes complete with a ‘will consensus work?’ flowchart that highlights some of the issues we raised in our When not to use consensus post. He touches on some situations in which consensus does […]
Biofuels – meet and protest
The folks at Biofuelwatch have asked us to let you know about a couple of events coming up in October. The first is a public meeting on 4th October, entitled The real cost of subsidies for biofuel and biomass electricity. The second is a protest outside the Department of Energy and Climate Change on October […]