Building facilitation capacity through participatory practices.
Working in social movements, we can often find our collective processes painful, unsatisfactory and poorly fulfilling of our values of inclusivity, care and collaboration. How can we stay creative, responsive, effective, and most importantly – in relationship – amidst the inevitable tensions of working with others? The Participatory Facilitation course will be a space to engage with these questions, opening opportunities for exchange and exploration of a range of facilitation tools and methodologies, deepening facilitation skills and sensibilities, for those who already hold facilitation roles in their groups and organisations.
Working in social movements, we can often find our collective processes painful, unsatisfactory and poorly fulfilling of our values of inclusivity, care and collaboration. The (important!) tensions that arise between exclusion – inclusion, tasks – processes – relationships, diversity – commonality, autonomy – cooperation, innovation – conservation and so on, are often present in our groups as we are trying to create collaborative visions and projects. The interlocking systems of oppression in which our organising takes place do not make this task easier! Being able to navigate and facilitate collective spaces for discussion and decision making requires skills, tools and thoughtful processes that can remain responsive and adaptive to different organising contexts and situations.
How can we stay creative, responsive, effective, and most importantly – in relationship – amidst the inevitable tensions of working with others?
The Participatory Facilitation course will be a space to engage with this challenge, opening opportunities for exchange and exploration of a range of facilitation tools and methodologies, deepening facilitation skills and sensibilities, for those who already hold facilitation roles in their groups and organisations.
Aims of the course:
This course is aimed at trainers and facilitators who want to deepen their skills in facilitating participatory processes and collective spaces – including addressing challenging topics and situations. This course won’t be focusing on basic, entry-level facilitation skills.
The course aims to:
We will explore methodologies such as Radical Popular Education, Participatory Action Research, Appreciative Inquiry, Theatre of the Oppressed, Theory U, Improvisation, Process work, art of hosting, generative dialogue, observation and mindfulness amongst others.
Who is it aimed at?
Anyone with experience in facilitation and 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 course will be delivered in accessible, international English.
This course might NOT be for you if you are looking for a basic, entry-level course on facilitation skills.
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.
Location:
Jeroen (he/him pronouns) has been involved in grassroots social movements for more than two decades now, starting back when he was fifteen. Throughout the years the fights for “climate justice” and “migrant justice” have been consistently on top of the list of struggles that make his heart beat faster. A key transformative moment for Jeroen was reading Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire’s revolutionary pedagogy gave him a language to support the creation of emancipatory learning environments, rooted in a desire for collective liberation. Jeroen has also been exploring in depth Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed and Joanna Macy’s The Work That Reconnects among other methodologies to build his trainer’s toolkit. Inspired by the liberatory possibilities of these traditions, he started an organization with a friend, LABO vzw, based in Belgium, where he has worked as a trainer and campaigner between 2013 and 2023.
new stories: different worlds
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Knowledge, skills and perspectives to challenge oppression and create spaces of solidarity.
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Tools for effective and sustainable activism
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Navigating the complex terrain of migrant and migrant-solidarity organising
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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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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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Ulex: del latín, (tojo en castellano, argelaga en catalán) nombre.
1. Arbusto espinoso de hoja perenne y floración, con gran capacidad de regeneración y resistencia. Sus púas se abren al entrar en contacto con el fuego y vuelve a brotar de los tocones carbonizados. Planta sucesional que crece bien en condiciones difíciles. Mejora la fertilidad del suelo mediante la fijación de nitrógeno, preparando el terreno para una renovada biodiversidad.
2. Una opción tradicional para encender fuegos. Arde con intensidad y brillo.
3. Un proyecto en red que aporta nutrición y fertilidad a los movimientos sociales europeos a través de la formación
