Movement Building
‘A Movement Like We’ve Never Known’
We believe we need to find ways to organise collective power at a level that we’ve not known in this part of the world for generations - and to focus it in strategically wise and effective ways, in order to transform the systems that are devastating life on earth.
In 2023, we laid out our perspectives on the need for a different scale of movement building, the challenges that movements for change face and what we believe could lead us through those challenges. You can listen to the recording here - and read accompanying notes sharing our influences here.
Our Strategy for Movement Building has four elements:
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Movement-wide decision making processes to develop coordinated strategy and effective ways of collaborating.
We want to establish a legitimate, effective, decision making structure for developing powerful strategy and mechanisms for collaboration. We’re envisioning something that has diverse participation, careful process, and is therefore trusted to integrate different perspectives, and make decisions that we can throw our collective weight behind.
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Supporting conflict to be a source of learning and growth, rather than fragmentation and challenge.
We know that conflict and mistrust in what might broadly be called ‘The Left’ is severely limiting our capacity to make the change we need. We want to provide support and set clear pathways for listening to the wisdom in conflicts, and using them as opportunities to learn, upgrade our ways of working, and transform relational challenges into greater connection.
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Residential trainings that support people to unleash themselves
We want to give people the support to shift debilitating dynamics and provide leadership in weaving connection, inspiration, and empowerment in social movements and beyond, so we can bring ourselves much more fully to creating the world we want and need.
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Training and Supporting Flocks of Facilitators
We believe that the kind of movement we’re dreaming of will need far greater facilitation capacity than we currently have.
In 2024-5 we ran our first in-depth training programme to support others to step into the work we do as conflict mediators in social movements. This was a beautiful, powerful experiment - forging a strong community and a ‘Skein’ of new mediators who are now out in the world transforming conflicts, with continued mentoring from us at Navigate. Find out more about the Skein here.
We are currently collaborating with Tripod in Scotland, who were keen for us to also build the mediation support capacity up north. Once more, we’re enjoying getting deep into the nuances of this work and offering this unique training in Navigate’s approach to conflict mediation.