Facilitating Collaborative Groups - Block 1 - Foundational Facilitation Skills

Welcome to Facilitating Collaborative Groups, a series of online sessions, all around the theme of facilitating group meetings. Come to all the sessions or dip in according to your level of experience and what you want to learn and practice!

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.

The Blocks of Sessions

Block 1: Foundational Facilitation Skills Thursdays 4th - 25th November 2021 - keep reading for more info on this block

Block 2: Deepening Facilitation Skills (drop in) Mondays 24th Jan - 21st March 2022 - for more info see here

Block 3: Conflict Resilience for Facilitators Thursdays 7th April - 5th May 2022 - for more info see here

Each block consists of weekly online sessions, and in some blocks there will be a small amount of preparation work between the sessions. The sessions will be varied and participatory, with time given to learning from and practicing with others in the group.

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Block 1: Foundational Facilitation Skills

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.

The block consists of 4 online sessions:  Thursdays 4th, 11th, 18th and 25th November 2021, from 7pm - 9pm.

Please come to all the sessions in this block, as they will build on each other.

Session 1 - 4th November   What is facilitation? What does a facilitator do?

• Definitions of facilitation
• The purpose-process-relationships triangle at the centre of the facilitator’s role
• What the facilitator needs to track or look out for, to support the group to have great meetings

Session 2 - 11th November   Meeting flow and facilitation tools for effective meetings

• Designing the flow of the meeting 
• Tools you can use to support the group to have collaborative and effective meetings

Session 3 - 18th November    Power and systemic oppression 1

• How power and systemic oppression play out in groups
• The facilitator's role in supporting collaboration, supporting the group to hear unheard voices and disrupting power and systemic oppression in our groups.

Session 4 - 25th November    Power and systemic oppression 2 

• More on the facilitator's role in supporting collaboration, supporting the group to hear unheard voices and disrupting power and systemic oppression in our groups. 

Cost: The fee for this block is on a sliding scale from £20 - £80. We want to make these sessions as accessible as possible. Please pay what you can and if the cost is prohibitive please contact us bookings @ navigate.org.uk . If you have the means and would like to pay more, we welcome additional donations. If you’re coming on behalf of an organisation that has funding, please ask your organisation to pay for your participation, at the top end of the fee scale.

Deadline for registration: Thursday 28th October 2021

To book a place for the other blocks in this series, Block 2: Deepening Facilitation Skills and Block 3: Conflict Resilience for Facilitators, see here

If you have any questions about the course, please contact us  bookings @ navigate.org.uk