Hannah and I were at work with the Detention Forum on earlier this month, facilitating a 5 hour session on consensus decision-making. The Forum is “a loose network of over 30 NGOs who are working on immigration detention issues” and as such is evolving its processes all the time. The co-ordination group are trying to […]
After the workshop I participated in at the end of March, I’ve continued a dialogue with Caroline from Insider Autism Training. We spoke about ways in which the training could have been made more experiential. That led us to the question of “experiencing what?”. Experiencing autism is clearly not possible, and we agreed that there’s […]
The UK government lurches from crisis to crisis. They announce a policy initiative. There’s an immediate and fierce backlash. And then they fudge something to avoid too much humiliation whilst letting the powers that be go about business as usual. Hardly what I’d describe as ‘government’. However on one level I like the aspect of […]
I spent the afternoon in a workshop on autism and social change groups. The trainers were all on the autistic spectrum (diagnosed or undiagnosed), as were several other participants. The rest was a motley crew of activists and activist facilitators like myself – or NT’s as I now know that we’re known (neuro-typicals). As well […]
I’ve commented before that training around power and privilege in groups and society has been gathering momentum in activist circles here in the UK. We’re lagging sadly behind our peers in the States and elsewhere, but at least it’s happening. I’ve been consciously building elements of this work into my group-work trainings for a while […]
I was back at Hinkley power station this weekend for the Fukushima anniversary action. Actions at Hinkley have a new poignancy – the site for the new and much bigger Hinkley C reactor has now been cleared, despite valiant efforts to hinder it (a tree-sit and occupation of some farm buildings), and G4S security guards […]
In early February, Matthew and I delivered a facilitation training for staff at the World Development Movement, which had developed out of a Rhizome discussion last November with all seven facilitators. We had talked then about the difficulties of delivering meaningful training in a few hours, a single day. We understand why this happens – […]
I’ve just debriefed with Denise and Annie, fellow Turning The Tide folk . This weekend we co-facilitated a residential on “effective group working” as part of a year-long course that TTT offer. A lot was learnt – including about the vulnerability of the facilitation role as well as the need to sometimes tell a group […]
Charles Leadbeater, an expert on innovation, once wrote that just as Adam Smith was the key to the eighteenth century, so the key to our era is Delia Smith. Delia, he said, is the example par excellence of how we can learn say cookery from recipes, whereas our ancestors mainly learned from their mothers’ knee. […]
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 […]
