Basic tools, methods and approaches for dealing with group and relational conflicts.
Conflict in our groups is common. It’s part of the group and its relationships life cycles. It can be painful and damaging, undermining our efforts and draining our energy. But it can also become a source of learning, evolution and a basis for deepening trust and relationships between us.
Learning to deal with conflicts, developing the skills to find the transformative potential within them, and supporting the group and people to learn and evolve in the process can deeply empower our work for social change.
Our work together sits within a global and historical system of interlinking forms of oppression. These shape the material, relational and psychological conditions that influence every one of us. In order to not reproduce harmful patterns, a systemic perspective on conflict is additionally needed.
This training will offer methods, basic skills, frameworks and tools for transforming and dealing with conflicts, turning them into opportunities for deeper understanding and learning. We’ll learn how to support the building of shared understanding, how to increase awareness of and sensitivity to relevant emotions and inner experience, how to hold such processes more helpfully and ‘safely’, and ways of attending to the healing involved in handling conflict.
A variety of approaches and methods are needed to be able to work with conflict well. Specific interventions and tools we might use, depend on the situation, phase of the conflict, organising culture, available resources, quality of relationships, social positioning of people involved, and more. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. This course will combine different approaches that aim at enabling participants to experience a range of different methods that can be further developed within the specific organising context they are brought to.
The approach that the training team will take, will be:
– Centred around the experiences participants bring into the room
– Based in working with real situations and cases of conflict from the past
– Supporting the creation of ‘enabling environments’ and using the framework of ‘courageous & caring spaces’
– Focused on developing self-awareness and emotional literacy, alongside acquiring specific tools.
Some of the topics that the course will cover are:
– Roles in conflict and understanding group conflict and group processes
– Communication tools and listening skills
– Basic understanding of conflict shapes, phases and mapping tools
– Giving and receiving feedback
– Emotional literacy
– Group processes and feedback loops
– Systemic lenses and power dynamics in conflict situations
– Setting up accessible and caring group cultures.
Who is it aimed at?
Anyone involved in socially engaged action addressing ecological, political and social justice issues. We embrace a broad definition of activism, including: Resistance – action preventing further damage to ecosystems and social justice; Renewal – action focused on developing and creating alternatives for healthier societies and communities; and Building Resilience – action supporting increased resilience in communities to weather the uncertain times ahead.
The main spoken language on the course will be English.
For accessibility and venue information see here.
In the solidarity economy:
(See details of our approach to radical economics here)
Contact us
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Location:
Sergio (all pronouns) was born in Romania and migrated to Germany in the early 2010s. In the past, he was a social worker with homeless people and a social consultant for Eastern European migrants for various organisations. Trained as a filmmaker, he spent two years making a documentary about the ‘civic reawakening’ in Romania and the waves of protest it brought with it. In connection to this, Sergio is currently co-steering the development of an online open-source participative knowledge production platform on activism in Romania. Over the past nine years, Sergiu has offered his skills to various journalists, grassroots collectives and campaigns, mostly working within the labour rights, climate justice, international solidarity and anti-authoritarian movements in Germany and Romania. Nonetheless, his biggest focus since 2020 has been his work as an organiser with the anarcho-syndicalist Free Workers Union, where he focuses mostly on organising Romanian migrant workers on construction sites, in factories and in the agricultural field.
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an introduction to a holistic and transformative approach to activist training and facilitation
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Go to the people, learn from them. Live with them. Love them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have – Lao Tzu
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Building facilitation capacity through participatory practices.
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a space to think critically, to ask challenging and transformative questions, and find deeper inspiration and understanding to empower social change.
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building and strengthening regenerative praxis for BIPOC organisers.
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making our action count
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Ulex: del Llatí, (argelaga en català) nom:
1. Arbust espinós de fulla perenne i floració, amb gran capacitat de regeneració i resistència. Les seves pues s’obren en entrar en contacte amb el foc i torna a brollar dels tocones carbonitzats. Planta successional que creix bé en condicions difícils. Millora la fertilitat del sòl mitjançant la fixació de nitrogen, preparant el terreny per a una renovada biodiversitat.
2. Una opció tradicional per a encendre focs. Crema amb intensitat i lluentor.
3. Un projecte en xarxa que aporta nutrició i fertilitat als moviments socials europeus a través de la formació
