Offering: Facilitating Collaborative Groups

Starting this November and running through to May we're offering a series of sessions on facilitating group meetings - for new and for experienced facilitators! We invite you to come to all the sessions or dip in according to your level of experience and what you want to learn and practice. See below for more details and sign up to the sessions here. Spaces are limited.

Why facilitation?  What’s its value?
Meetings are at the heart of our groups and organisations. They are spaces where we discuss issues and get creative, where we can put our values into practice, build stronger connections with each other and make decisions that align with our shared purpose.

Facilitation is about easing a group’s path to fulfilling its shared purpose. It's more than a set of methods and tools to be applied, its a practice that fosters collaboration, a way of working that develops a culture of participation which includes all voices, experiences and perspectives, supports deep listening to the wisdom that each person has to contribute, and integrates this to inform and influence the way a group makes decisions and plans, building the group's potential for a more powerful response in the world.

We believe it’s a practice that’s essential to the transformation of our ways of organising and to the transformation of the world we’re creating for ourselves and for future generations. We also believe that anyone can become better at facilitation with practice.

These sessions will offer ideas, tools and new ways of seeing for beginners and experienced facilitators alike. The sessions will offer space to practice and to explore how new concepts might fit into your context. The sessions are intended to support a life-long practice of collaborative facilitation, hearing unheard voices and disrupting power and systemic oppression in our groups.  


Who are the sessions for?
These sessions are for people working in groups to create social, climate, ecological or economic change. They’re for people who want to support their group to make great decisions, benefit from the wisdom of all their members, and have lasting impacts with the work they have chosen to do. They’re for people who are already facilitating and want to deepen their skills, AND for people who want to start facilitating meetings.

Browse all sessions

Overview of sessions

Block 1: Foundational Facilitation Skills - Thursdays 4th - 25th November 2021 
A series of 4 online sessions for people who are brand new to facilitation or who are just starting their facilitation journey. We’ll explore key ideas and tools, like the purpose-process-relationship triangle at the centre of the facilitator’s role, and the ways in which power and systemic oppression play out in our groups and what the facilitator can do to support the group to disrupt it. The course will support you to develop confidence and give opportunities to practice.

Sign up to Foundational Facilitation Skills

Block 2: Deepening Facilitation Skills (drop in) - Mondays 24th Jan - 21st March 2022
A series of 9 online sessions (see the themes for each session below). These sessions are for people who have completed the basic facilitation skills block or who have some facilitation experience already. We ask that you attend sessions 1 and 2 on purpose and power, before accessing the rest of this block, you can then choose which of sessions 3 - 9 you would like to sign up for. 

• Orienting around purpose and power in facilitation 1 + 2  -  24th + 31st January
• Tracking open loops  - 7th February 
• Feelings and needs, listening and reflecting back - 14th February 
• Managing contributions - 21st February
• Engaging with strong emotions - 28th February
• Decision making toolkit - 7th March
  
• Strengthening capacity for naming and framing - 14th March
• Threshold questions - 21st March

Sign up for Deepening Facilitation Skills

Block 3: Conflict Resilience for Facilitators - Thursdays 7th April - 5th May 2022 
Conflict can be hugely painful, hurtful and traumatic.  And, we believe, it is essential feedback to any group about its ways of being and the systems within it and outside of it. Working with conflict is essential to deepen connection and for personal and collective transformation and liberation.  It’s also always going to be with us, in our families and friendships, our romantic relationships, our work, our groups and our global society.

Learning to see conflict as an opportunity for growth and being willing to address tensions together is some of the most important work we can do in our groups. Working effectively with conflict is an intrinsic part of any facilitation practice.  Conflict can help us transform power dynamics in our groups, create ways of being together and meeting our purpose that truly work for everyone.

In this block of 5 sessions we will explore our own relationships to conflict and the impact it has on our bodies, how conflict manifests in groups, as well as how we can respond to conflict when facilitating. We aim for you to leave with a new understanding of conflict and what it means, as well as tools to respond to conflict - as you notice it in yourself, and in a group you’re facilitating. 

Sign up to Conflict Resilience for Facilitators