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.
Reclaiming the fields: rivers, cafes and commercial greenhouses
Saturday, I was co-facilitating a day’s meeting with the emerging Reclaim the Fields UK network. RTF exists elsewhere in Europe as a network of mainly young people trying to take back control of food production. Until Saturday there was no equivalent network here in the UK. 45 people came together from a range of projects, […]
Emergent design
I’ve been pondering what Training for Change call emergent design a fair bit of late – comparing it to what I do at the moment, wondering how much further I have to go to be allowing the flow of a workshop to be genuinely emergent. I often plan in detail. I have argued in the […]
Sharing values, Graphic Guides and Common Cause
Following our earlier phone meeting which I blogged about at the time, I met with Steph and Jeannie today to progress work on creating “effective meeting” resources for Transition initiatives. Steph and her son have produced a great 3 minute video – a Graphic Guide to Groups which draws on John Adair’s action centred leadership […]
On the threshold of consensus
I spent Saturday night and Sunday with a Dorset co-housing community – The Threshold Centre. Their numbers have soared in the last year, from around 8 people to over 20 so they felt it was appropriate to pause and reflect on their group decision-making process. 18 of the community came together for the workshop. The […]
Words to inspire
I’m going to send you over to Dwight Towers blog (again!) – not for his usual righteous anger about the lack of participation in activist meetings, events and movements, but for some bona fide participation-building inspiration. In his post Gay marriage rally and movement building he gives us the speech he would have made had […]
Opening Open Space
One of our jobs recently was to provide some mentoring support to groups organising an Open Space in the wake of 6 Billion Ways. I spent an hour with people from FoE, WDM and the Jubilee Debt Campaign talking through how they might use an Open Space format with anything from 20 to 200 people. […]
Lunching out on accountability
I recently left a comment on Dwight Towers blog. It turned out to be quite a long one and had the makings of a post in its own right. So I’ve taken it and made it even longer. The problem as posed by Dwight: there are also some people [and their track record goes on […]
Cycling to Palestine – P.E.D.A.L
Towards the end of last year I spent a day with a small group of folk planning a bike ride to Palestine. The plans are now complete and the group is now P.E.D.A.L. an acronym that stands for their aims: Popular resistance movements Environmental justice Direct action on BDS Art and culture Linking stories of […]
6 billion ways
Nip over to Political Dynamite for a quick preview of this weekend’s 6 Billion Ways event. Carl’s been busy mentoring a handful of the organisers in facilitating the Open Space session on Sunday. Meanwhile I’ll be in Dorset, working with the Threshold Centre, a co-housing project, on their consensus process. More on that next week.
I expect, we expect, you disappoint
Lynn Walsh has posted on expectations with a nice link to some wise words from Craig Freshley, whose Group decision tips I look forward to browsing when I have more time. Craig writes: when we have expectations of others that don’t pan out it often leads to resentment which often brews discontent which often causes […]
Virtual meetings
Just a quick nudge towards Adrian Nixon’s recent post Facilitating Virtual Meetings on his On Facilitation blog. Some good and detailed tips on using Skype in particular, but I imagine many of them are relevant to other VoIP applications. Lest we forget that other applications exist, and allow Skype to become the new Hoover, I’ve […]
Warm ups, comfort zones, and corporate raiders
In the process of planning yesterday’s Steiner school meeting I worked with the existing core group and they in turn shared the plan with a couple of other folk involved in the meeting. One or two revisions came back to me. Nothing unusual there except that, if I’m honest, one of them frustrated me slightly. […]
The many faces of activism
I’m not long back in from facilitating a 2 hour ‘information meeting’ for the Steiner School Leicestershire Interest Group. As meetings go it was relatively straightforward – no crucial decisions to make, no deeply embedded history of conflict and so on. The group’s very recent, and I got into conversation with them about building their […]
Clicktivism….a few links
The debate about clicktivism (online activism) is raging on… is it an effective substitute for good old-fashioned face-to-face activism? does it encourage shallow, almost meaningless engagement? is it the way forward? are local groups a thing of the past. All good stuff. Political Dynamite have just uploaded a clicktivism post sparked by 38 Degrees recent, […]
Are we nearly there yet?
From time to time I find myself in discussion (or facilitating discussion) about whether or not campaigns and campaigners should declare their true colours and publish their vision and the route map for getting there. It’s not often that happens. More likely an organisation takes a step by step approach, raising awareness of, and lobbying […]
Studying direct action at the University of Life – in Sheffield
Following the support we gave to Leeds Uni students at the end of last year, we were asked to facilitate a 3 hour nonviolent direct action (NVDA) workshop on Saturday, as part of a weekend of activities at Sheffield Uni. People & Planet staff were on tour supporting their university groups. Our workshop made up […]
"Take me to your leader!" 2
It’s easy to point out all the potential problems for groups with hierarchical models of leadership. It’s less easy to know what to do about them. If you support groups, whether on a local or regional level, or as part of the team at a national NGO or community organisation what’s to be done? A […]
Roll out the welcome mat…
A recurring theme on this blog and on others such as Dwight Towers and Chris Johnston is welcoming newcomers into groups. Dwight has pointed us at Beyond The Choir’s take on welcoming new folk. Read their article Orienting new members and volunteers to a local group. Some wise words. In short they recommend welcome interviews […]
campaign resources and ideas
I subscribe to the e-newsletter from Campaign Strategy. Good analysis of approaches to campaigning and guides on making it more effective. Be pioneering.
connected conversations
Went to a seminar hosted by the New Economics Foundation on Friday. It was partly to launch their new publication, Connected Conversations, but the main event was to experience the game of Democs. As NEF say, Democs was created so that policy discussion can be open to anyone. While traditional deliberative methods, like citizens juries, […]
"Decruitment", far easier than recruitment
Here’s a quick signpost to Dwight Tower’s latest addition to the English language: Decruitment. His post Decruitment: sarcasm and social niceties is well worth a read for a few ‘how not to’ notes on welcoming people to groups…. It also brings to mind a fun activity a trainer friend of mine is fond of – […]
"Take me to your leader!"
I’ve had leadership on the mind this week, mainly due to spending some time writing a proposal for some work developing a youth leadership programme for young people involved in the Woodcraft Folk. For some leadership is a dirty word. It’s too closely related to hierarchy. Indeed there’s a moment on many direct actions when […]
Sharing values
I spent an hour and a half on the phone today to Jeannie and Steph, 2 of the facilitators that attended the Transition Network Dreaming Circle back in December. We were talking about meetings, more specifically trying to shape some meeting training agendas for transition groups. Very quickly the conversation turned to values, and how […]
Responding to Workfare: challenges for the voluntary sector
Short notice plug for a meeting a friend is involved with: Responding to Workfare A meeting for voluntary sector workers and benefits claimants to develop a shared response to government plans to make ‘voluntary’ work compulsory. Speakers from: London Coalition Against Poverty|Unite (Not-for-Profit Sector) Time: 7pm|Date: Wednesday 9th February|Venue: Hackney City Farm, Goldsmith’s Row, E2 […]
Facilitation – moments of clarity
Thanks once again to Dwight Towers for the lead to Chris Corrigan’s Facilitation Resources (which he in turn got from Johnnie Moore). A long and detailed list of approaches, specific tools and more. I haven’t found time to dig around in it just yet, but suspect I’ll be mining it for goodies for a while […]
Speaking in public? Some helpful hints…
I’m not much of a newspaper reader, but I did pick up the Work section of last Saturday’s Guardian, which had been left on the seat of my train home from Gathering Momentum. The front page advertised a guide called The secret to public speaking. Once you cut past the decision to hang the whole […]
Activist Mediation Training
19-29 February’s proving popular. This also just in: Want to learn mediation skills Interested in helping support activist groups engage with disagreements and conflict, to make them more effective? Want to deal with conflicts in your personal life that interfere with your activism? Mediation training for activists in London on 19-20 February, from 11am – […]
Nuclear Resistance Teach-in & Skillshare
This just in: NUCLEAR RESISTANCE TEACH-IN AND SKILLS SHARE WEEKEND, 19-20 FEB, LONDON A chance to learn and share info about why we urgently need to resist new nuclear build and promote sustainable alternatives, and skills to help us do it. Workshops from 10am Saturday to 4pm Sunday Crash space available Friday night to Sunday […]
A slap in the face for nonviolence? Musings on nonviolence 2
Steve Biko – martyr of the anti-apartheid movement: check founder of the Black Consciousness movement: check practitioner of violent action??? errrr, not so sure Why do I ask this? Well previous musings on self-immolation took me hop, skip and jumping (mentally, that is) to a scene from Biko’s life. Biko’s in police custody being […]
Gathering Momentum
On Saturday, I was one of a team of facilitators working at the Gathering Momentum event. The turnout was significantly higher than expected – maybe 70-100 people. They were a mix of individual activists, volunteers and staff from community groups, and NGO campaigners. A fair few were veterans of the GM campaign of the late […]
Greener Together
The community development folk at Sostenga, in co-operation with Co-operativesUK, have produced a new resource for greening up your act – The Greener Together Toolkit to complement their website. What I particularly like is the focus on making collective action accessible to newcomers, on proactively involving them, and on assuming that they may have skills […]
Training by tweet?
Brighton Uncut put on a twitter direct action ‘training trail’ on Sunday. I was very sceptical, but finally got round to looking at it today and enjoyed my meander through their material. I’d be interested in your views. What do you think? Where does this stand on the waste of time => better than nothing […]
A burning issue: musings on nonviolence
One part of what we do here at Rhizome is to work with activists to explore what it means (for them) to take nonviolent action for change. We’re also practitioners of nonviolence in our own activism. After you’ve been around a while it’s easy to get complacent and to think you’ve heard all the arguments […]
Planning the year ahead…but no blue tea thinking
Carl and I met this week for a general catch up and planning session. He very kindly made the journey to Leicester and after an early lunch we adjourned to a local cafe and explored a wide range of topics. Naturally we had to cover the mundane stuff like finance, developing this website, publicising our […]
5 tools for co-operation
Kate Whittle over at Co-operantics has produced 5 cartoon booklets for Co-operativesUK in a series called From conflict to co-operation. They’re aimed at community co-ops but look useful for any community initiative or enterprise. The tone, length and content all seem great from a first glance. Take a look: Booklet 1: Conflict – where it […]
Who you gonna call?
We regularly report back via the blog on workshops, meetings and events at which we’re working. We often don’t find time to mention the support we offer by phone. I type this because towards the end of last year I seemed to be doing this quite a bit. And it’s something I find quite satisfying […]
Facilitation? Why bother?
Just a quick signpost to Adrian Nixon’s On facilitation blog, and especially today’s post Why do we need facilitation anyway?, I particularly appreciated these 2 bullet points: Good facilitators do have their preconceptions and expectations but have the ability to put these aside and create fresh improvements Facilitators have the ability to listen to what […]
Catching up….
In case you (very sensibly) spent less time reading blogs over the festive season, here’s a quick catch up with a few gems that were posted recently…. First the usual suspects: Chris Johnston’s Shepherd and Flock offers a critical analysis of the relationship between campaigning NGOs and their grassroots networks. Here’s a taste: The bottom […]
Breaking and entering (or why newcomers need to be old lags)
A couple of weeks ago there was an attempted break-in at a neighbour’s house. This prompted the local police to drop a ‘Burglary Alert’ leaflet through all our doors. OK, so you’ve just checked the web address and confirmed you’re on the Rhizome blog and not some neighbourhood watch site. What’s all this got to […]
Rhizome resources now online!
Finally we’ve started the process of uploading our resources to our new resources page. Help yourself. Feedback always welcome. And if there’s anything missing that you’d like to see up there, get in touch and we’ll see what we can do.
Rhizome: spreading the word
Rhizome’s still fairly new and there are plenty of organisations and networks out there that haven’t heard about us. We’d appreciate your help to change that. We’ve finally got round to producing some publicity materials – a series of 8 postcards with a little bit of info about Rhizome and a funky photo on the […]
Mapping the activist experience
Take a look at Chris Johnston’s latest post: A journey through time, space and Leed’s global justice movement. It would be easy to be put off by the Leeds-specific title and the early mention of the-less-than-thrilling-named Customer Journey Mapping, but hang in there. There’s something here for anyone trying to start, sustain or facilitate activism. […]
Using the media – online
I had a quick chat with Anna at Labour behind the Label whilst running a couple of workshops for them earlier in the month. I was running a session on using the media, she was running one on using new media. However neither of us planned to cover the relatively recent phenomenon of the social […]
One against the many? Changing the culture of groups
Not for the first time in recent years I spent some of the time at the Transition Dreaming Circle advocating the design of some training to support individuals in making change in their groups. As a trainer I regularly find individuals coming to open workshops searching for some ideas on how to change the culture, […]
GM: Gathering Momentum
Anti-GM update, networking and strategy session for grassroots and NGO campaigners Saturday 22nd January 2011, 10am – 6pm, Central London The GM threat is gaining momentum: GM test crops are being grown in the UK again, GM food oil is frying our chips and most farm animals are fed GM soya grown on former rainforest […]
Dreaming of Transition: sharing assumptions
There’s a joke amongst facilitators that groups of facilitators are the hardest to work with. Last week’s Transition Network’s Dreaming Circle saw 24 facilitators drawn from diverse cultures and facilitation approaches come together to talk groups. It was an immensely creative space, but inevitably there were things that could have worked better. Apologies in advance […]
Spreading the message
Saturday, London: Labour Behind the Label were holding a campaigners weekend and asked Rhizome to deliver some of the skills training. To that end we ran short sessions on using the media and another on successful street campaigning. The latter’s one of my favourite workshops. How difficult can handing out a leaflet be? For answers […]
Dreaming of Transition
It’s been a busy week. I spent a couple of days mid-week last week in Oxfordshire at Braziers Park. Transition Network were running a “Dreaming Circle” that drew together facilitators from across the UK and further (Norway, Germany). The common bond? Wanting to support transition initiatives in creating good group process. Like so many other […]
negotiation
Recently did some training with an NGO on negotiation. The training was on a live issue and so I took people through several concepts in negotiation and then did a follow up meeting to help them identify how to proceed and how to gather the data to back up their arguments. Here’s a link to […]