Facilitators' Hothouse
James Whelan and Anthony Kelly, The Change Agency
The 2008 Climate Camp is an important opportunity to strengthen the climate movement through education, training, skill-sharing and excellent facilitation. To support facilitators and trainers during the Camp, the Change Agency (tCA) will create a facilitators’ hothouse: a place to access resources, prepare to lead workshops or facilitate meetings, to share ideas and inspiration. The hothouse will provide a space to plan workshops, debrief afterwards and brainstorm ideas and possibilities for your facilitation. Change Agency facilitators James Whelan and Anthony Kelly will be at camp, and bring to the hothouse their resources, experience and enthusiasm.
During camp, we’ll lead workshops on ‘educating the activist educator’ and ‘facilitation’. The whiteboard at the hothouse will advertise the timing of these workshops and other discussions.
For queries, suggestions, etc: james@thechangeagency.org / anth@thechangeagency.org
Workshop: Ed2 (educating the activist educator)
Activist education is conducted by and with activists, is openly interested in the processes of change, and utilises educational methods that bring about change toward social justice. Activist education builds a sense of personal agency in the learning environment.
We use the expression ‘activist education’ to describe our work. This has implications not just for what we consider important for community organisers to learn, but how we believe adults learn most effectively. We’ve facilitated discussions and workshops with other social movement trainers and facilitators to explore just what might be involved in working as activist educators.
Activist education is a key theme of our research and resource development. We refer to our activist education workshops as ‘educating-the-educator (or ed2) to consciously distinguish them from ‘train-the-trainer’ work. We believe that training is just one form of education, which more often describes competency-based learning that promotes one ‘right’ way of doing things. The kind of education we are interested in consciously builds people’s own theory and practice (praxis) of education for social change. For more on the educational principles and practices (or pedagogy) that guide our work, see our Activist Education page.
Objectives
- Share and develop understandings of the philosophy and practices of activist education
- Provide safe and supportive spaces to challenge and ‘stretch’ educators to further develop their activist education skills and confidence.
Key elements and tools
Our ed2 work is inspired by traditions of popular education, experiential and empowered learning and informal community education. Key elements of our ed2 work include:
- Understanding education traditions and theories, and the difference between the ‘banking model’ of education and other forms of education;
- Exploring educational processes and techniques;
- Planning and designing experiential learning with the Spiral Model and other action-learning cycles;
- Learning styles and principles of adult learning;
- Facilitation styles and techniques, including co-facilitation; and
- Real-life and supported practice.
Who would benefit?
Ed2 is for people who facilitate workshops and other learning opportunities with activists or those with an interest in doing so.
Workshop: Facilitation: task and maintenance
This experiential workshop helps participants facilitate meetings that address both the task and maintenance dimensions of group life – meetings that achieve results and build groups that are sustainable and enjoyable. Participants develop a shared understanding of various facilitation styles and when to implement them. Resource materials are provided for future reference.
Objectives
- Reflect on facilitation challenges and 'edges'
- Consider the particular challenges of facilitating in a social change context
- Share and enhance participants’ facilitation skills
- Provide resource material for future reference
Key elements and tools
- Exploring the language of facilitation
- Facilitation roles
- Task and maintenance dimensions of organisational life
- Consensus decision-making
- Forming, norming, storming and performing
- The challenges of growth group
- The four Ps of effective meetings
- The 6 stages of a meeting
- Tips for facilitators
- The art of self-facilitation
- The qualities of an effective meeting: task/ maintenance
- Facilitation role-play (fishbowl) and debrief
Who would benefit
- People who are new to facilitation
- Experienced facilitators keen to refresh and extend their skills
- Community group members keen to develop the skills and confidence to facilitate
About the Change Agency
The Change Agency (http://www.thechangeagency.org) is a collective of activist educators and researchers. We work with community organisers to help people clarify their purpose and develop plans that will enable them to be heard, focus their energies and achieve social and environmental justice outcomes.
We research social change, activism and advocacy. What is successful and what isn't? How can people organise and work together more effectively? Based on our ongoing research we facilitate workshops for activists and community organisers and also share many of our resources on this site.
Our mission is to strengthen effective community and workplace action for social, ecological and economic justice by providing facilitation, workshops, resources, research and other learning opportunities.
Our approach draws on traditions of popular and experiential education encourages:
- participatory and empowered learning
- listening and reflection
- questioning not telling
- exercises linked to real and contemporary change work
- supporting, mentoring, guiding, facilitating and tutoring
We avoid the 'talking head' approach to adult education, the facilitator as expert, and treating participants as empty vessels.
Our key strengths lie in:
- facilitation and activist education
- training program development and advice
- curriculum and resource development
- strategic planning and campaign strategy
- research, evaluation and analysis
