Written by Joel Lazarus I am the lead author for the recently published Handbook for Relational Needs-Based Organising. I wrote it together with fellow Rhizomista Maria Franchi alongside Neil Howard and John Michael for international NGO Terre des hommes, an organisation working for and with children to defend and extend their rights. The Handbook […]
This blog was published at https://www.talkshopuk.org/the-worlds-first-agree-athon-in-hereford and is reproduced here. Picture credit: Jo HenshawPerry Walker writes: On Friday 13th March, the Left Bank in Hereford witnessed the world’s first Agree-athon. There are so many mechanisms in the media and in politics to divide us, so few to unite. The Agree-athon aimed to show that there is […]
By Gill Hay When someone I care about dies suddenly I’ve often felt a huge loss that I didn’t get to know them half as well as I would have liked, and my reaction to Matthew’s death was no exception. So when his partner asked if anyone in Rhizome wanted any of his Rhizome-related books […]
This year I went to the annual conference of the IAF (International Association of Facilitators) England and Wales chapter held in the Priory Room in the centre of Birmingham on the 25th and 26th April. I’d been once before, a couple of years ago, but that was a hybrid mix of ‘roomies and Zoomies’, which […]
I love a paradox. The two methods below embody one of my favourites: the fact that competition can produce cooperation. Who’d have thought it? The Win-Win Workout The Win-Win Workout separates the ‘what’ from the ‘why’. if you are familiar with the excellent method of Convergent Facilitation, developed by Miki Kashtan, you will also familiar […]
It has been a tough few years for Rhizome. In 2023, we lost our founder and dear friend, Matthew. This was a truly devastating blow. Since then, for various reasons, our once 12-strong team of facilitators has shrunk down to four co-op members. We are, however, a rhizome: resourceful and resilient. We can’t be got rid of […]
We have a responsibility to educate ourselves about the contexts, the historic and current interrelationships and intersections between different marginal groups, and then to watch out for the ways we as facilitators might be pulled in to become aligned with some of the people who have privilege in the world, if not the room
Facilitation, as it’s usually conceived of, leans towards an ‘All Lives Matter’ approach, with all the problems that entails. By that I mean that facilitators are often trying to be so scrupulously fair that they end up perpetuating unhealthy power dynamics in groups. Fairness often plays out, for example, as ensuring that everyone has the […]
Adam spotted aspirationtech.org’s blog on Power Dynamics and Inclusion in Virtual Meetings. This far into using online tools instead of face-to-face meetings, it would be easy to believe we’re up to speed and doing a great job. We’ve probably all read a number of how-to guides and sat through webinars on facilitating online. Still, I’d […]
The successor to feudalism, capitalism rests on the past enslavement of Black people and ongoing globalized exploitation of Black people and people of color as the cogs of production
