Facilitation
The third main strand of the workshop will be facilitation.
The aim will to equip participants to facilitate the application
of Permaculture and holistic goal formation with groups. This
strand will be woven in throughout the course in a variety of
ways. There will be one session towards the end of the course
that develops a set of guiding principles for effective facilitation.
Throughout the course the facilitators will use a number of
different tools and methods, discussing them with participants
afterwards. There will also be a number of handouts on facilitation.
Furthermore participants will experience the overall process in
a step by step fashion which should enable them to do something
along the same lines with groups after the course.
Some of the facilitation methods to be used in the course will
include: Open Space Technology, action learning, jigsaw learning,
parallel thinking, giant mindmapping, self-reflection methods,
use of cards, various visual methods that promote and encourage
participation in group discussion such as mapping and transects.
There will also be a number of other tips and methods that participants
will be able to take away with them.
For those participants who have facilitation experience this will
be an excellent opportunity to strengthen their ability, as well
as sharing some of their experience.
Implementation plan
In this session participants will do an exercise to look at current
trends relevant to their ‘group’ - the one they use
in the simulation - and the implications of the trends to the
group and its future plans. These will naturally bring up some
of the dominant trends we are facing in these challenging times
and participants will have an opportunity during the two weeks
to explore and deepen their understanding on some of these trends
such as climate change, peak oil, financial stability, bureacratisation
etc.
Using their holistic goal (their magnetic north) to help them
make decisions, participants in this part of the course will develop
a plan to implement their design. This will include developing
a set of objectives and an action plan and ways to review and
learn and to keep planning ahead creatively.
Group Dynamics and structure - there will be learning on group
dynamics through the workshop, both from previous experience and
from the group experience in the workshop. The holistic goal formation
process is an exercise in group dynamics in itself. There will
also be a session devoted to exploring group dynamics in more
depth, looking in particular at conflict management in groups.
Guest resource person Peter Lipman will come in to run this session.
As with all of the course, he will aim to enrich participants’
own experience with his wide-ranging experience in working with
groups over the years.
Additional information: Participants will be
fully involved in the running of the course in a number of different
ways. This will include support teams, morning starter groups,
and reflection groups. There will also be the possibility to run
evening sessions on any number of topics or issues.
One of the aims of the course will be to create a support group
for the facilitation of land use design work in groups. As we
look ahead to a more sustainable future, Permaculture principles
and methods are becoming more and more important and more in demand.
What will be needed more than anything is a process that enables
groups to work together to design use of land according to their
values. That is what this course is about. The land may be an
urban plot run by a group or a school or a village or a transition
group working with a group of farmers in a watershed or the design
of a transition town. When we use the term ‘land’
we include of course everything to do with the land, the streams
and rivers, the soil, the forests, the roads…
