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 see more here

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

Block 3: Conflict Resilience for Facilitators Thursdays 7th April - 5th May 2022 continue reading for more on this block

Each block consists of weekly online sessions, and in some blocks there will be a small amount of preparation work betweenthe 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 3: Conflict Resilience for Facilitators
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. And 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.  Working with conflict is essential to deepen connection and for personal and collective transformation and liberation. 

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 also an intrinsic part of any facilitation practice. Conflict can help us transform power dynamics in our groups and 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. This course will not make you a conflict mediator. 

Dates: 5 online sessions, Thursdays 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th April and 5th May 2022 from 7-9pm.

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

Session 1 - 7th April  - Making sense of conflict 

Session 2 - 14th April  - How power dynamics impact conflict

Session 3 - 21st April  - Building our own conflict resilience

Session 4 - 28th April  - Responding to conflict in the moment 1 

Session 5 - 5th May  - Responding to conflict in the moment 2

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 at 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 signing up: 7pm Wednesday 6th April 2022

To book a place on the other blocks in this series, Block 1: Foundational Facilitation Skills and Block 2: Deepening Facilitation Skills see here

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