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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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, […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
