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Tag Archives: participation
How do we build a participatory movement? Let’s ask the panel…
A couple of times this year I’ve been asked to sit on a panel as a speaker advocating nonviolent direct action or radical social change. Flattering to be asked. But my take on these topics is that they are fundamentally … Continue reading
Consensus decision-making: go with the flow
In our previous posts we’ve talked about what consensus is and is not and why groups might choose to use it. But we haven’t (yet) got down to the detail about how it works. So to remedy that this post … Continue reading
Words to inspire
I’m going to send you over to Dwight Towers blog (again!) – not for his usual righteous anger about the lack of participation in activist meetings, events and movements, but for some bona fide participation-building inspiration. In his post Gay … Continue reading
Building Bridges
Monday saw me on an early train to Wellington, Shropshire to facilitate Bridge’s staff and trustee ‘Visioning’ away day. It was a fairly short notice piece of work for me, but made much more possible by the clear brief and … Continue reading
Posted in Facilitation, Strategy
Tagged facilitation, participation, Six thinking hats, Strategy, visioning
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Mind your language
I have to admit to regularly using the word ‘guys’ to refer to my fellow human beings whether male or female. To me it has always seemed gender-neutral and I’ve used it with no conscious gender connotations. But no more. … Continue reading
The Curse of Competence?
The problem seemed to be that as facilitators we’d taken on all of the explicit facilitation roles ourselves. Potentially we’d disempowered others, leaving them feeling “I’ll never be able to facilitate like that, so why bother trying”.
For any facilitator committed to participation, it’s a real challenge. I didn’t enjoy the interaction at the time but it’s proved very thought-provoking. Continue reading
Posted in Facilitation
Tagged empowerment, facilitation, facilitation roles, participation
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Building the capacity builders
For us the key message is that people need to be involved in their own learning. As facilitators we need to bite the bullet and accept that it takes more time, but participation gets better results….
We facilitators can be as guilty as anyone of stereotyping people as ‘difficult’. We write them off and try to either ignore them or marginalise them so they cause as little disruption as possible. But if we take the time to think about what’s going on then we can see that the problem often lies with us, or with the group as a whole.
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Why Rhizome?
At Rhizome we believe in making change in the world. Specifically we believe in ordinary people and communities taking control of their lives, environment, and destinies. Change from the grassroots up is powerful and sustainable because it’s rooted in a … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Tagged Activism, co-operative, community, facilitation, grassroots change, participation, Rhizome, right livelihood
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