Trust The People Workshops

Trust the People is a movement of community builders - open to everyone - sharing deliberative democratic tools to support local communities in dealing with global crises. We are building a real democracy from the bottom up. To find out more or sign up to the next course, go to www.trustthepeople.earth

1. Personal Processing

Personal processing is about taking time to connect with ourselves – to reflect on who we are, how we act, and how we relate to others and the world around us. Using a range of activities, this module seeks to provide opportunities to better understand ourselves by thinking about our identity, our relationship to society, our learnt biases, and our needs.

1. Personal Processing

Overview

Why Personal Processing?

Before working to transform our local communities and connecting with others, we think it is really important to start with ourselves. We are all shaped by our experiences, by the society in which we live and by our identity, the features of which we may choose for ourselves or have placed upon us by society. We, subsequently, engage with the world in a way that is unique and specific to us: objectivity does not exist. The more time we, therefore, take for reflection and for understanding ourselves and the complexity of our stories and identities, the more we will understand and empathise with others.

This process of turning the dialogue inwards will also provide opportunities for us to examine and challenge our biases. Only by critically questioning why we think what we do and why we act how we do, will we be able to hold ourselves to account when we make judgements on others. Such critical reflection can transform the way that we communicate with everyone, particularly those who we regard as different.

Moreover, taking time to understand ourselves will enable us to consider and respond to our feelings and needs. Sometimes it is difficult to listen to ourselves and to acknowledge our needs, but it is vital if we are going to create a sustainable society based on compassion - we need to look after ourselves to avoid burnout and to be able to care for others.

By engaging in personal processing, we can strengthen our ability to build genuine connections with the people we encounter, can make space for ourselves and our needs, and can ultimately grow as people.

Useful Link:

1. Personal Processing

Deep Reflection: Understanding Ourselves and Understanding Others

The activities outlined below have all been selected to help initiate a process of self-reflection and understanding.These activities have been adapted from teaching resources created by the educational charity, Facing History and Ourselves. They have been placed in a suggested order, though it is down to each individual to design their journey of self-discovery.

  1. Reflect on Identity and Values
  2. Consider Single Stories and Stereotypes
  3. Acknowledge and Challenge Assumptions

To transform our communities, we must engage with others, but first we must engage with ourselves.

Reflect on Identity and Values

The activities in this section are adapted from the following Facing History and Ourselves’ resources: Teaching Strategy: Identity Charts.

Before we enter into dialogue with others we should be asking ourselves: “Who am I? How does my identity impact my ability to communicate with and listen to others?”. The following activities will help create a foundation for such reflection.

Use the following list to assist you, if desired:

  1. Role in Family
  2. Profession / Skills
  3. Hobbies / Interests
  4. Personality
  5. Background / Upbringing
  6. Heritage / Nationality
  7. Colour you have been racialised as
  8. Physical Characteristics
  9. Beliefs / Religion
  10. Gender

Some aspects of our identities change over our lifetimes as we grow up and get new skills or new interests.

  1. What does this tell us about the concept of identity?
  2. Why is it important to keep this in mind when we are interacting with others?

Some aspects of our identity feel very central to who we are.

  1. Why is it important to be aware of this when interacting with others?
  2. What is the relationship between aspects of your identity and your values?

Some aspects of our identity are labels that others put upon us, but which we do not agree with.

  1. What labels have others put on you? How have they made you feel?
  2. Why do you think people put labels on others?
  3. What are the consequences of such labelling?

Consider “Single Stories” and Stereotypes

The activities in this section are adapted from the following Facing History and Ourselves’ resource: The Danger of a Single Story.

  1. What does Adichie mean by a “single story”?

    • What examples does she give?
    • Why does she believe “single stories” are dangerous?
    • What does she say the relationship between “single stories” and stereotypes is?

  2. Is there a single story that others often use to define you?

    • What is this single story?
    • What impact does it have / has it had on you?

  3. Can you think of other examples of “single stories” that may be part of your own worldview?

    • Where do those “single stories” come from?
    • How can we find a “balance of stories”?

Acknowledge and Challenge Assumptions

The activities in this section are adapted from the following Facing History and Ourselves’ resource: Challenging Assumptions with Curiosity.

  1. Based on your identity, what assumptions do you think people might make about you?

  2. What questions could someone who holds such assumptions about you ask you to better understand your values and perspective?

  3. If applicable, think about one assumption that someone has made about you

    • What was this assumption?
    • How did this assumption make you feel?
    • What were the consequences of this assumption being made?

  4. If applicable, think about one assumption you have made about someone else?

    • What was this assumption?
    • What prompted you to make it?
    • What were the consequences of making this assumption?

  1. About which person in the video do you have the most positive assumptions?

    • What about them do you think creates these positive assumptions? (Consider race, gender, clothing, style of talking, accent, opinions, and other factors.)
    • What questions might you ask this person to better understand their values and perspective?

  2. About which person in the video do you have the most negative assumptions?

    • What about them do you think creates these negative assumptions? (Consider race, gender, clothing, style of talking, accent, opinions, and other factors.)
    • What questions might you ask this person to better understand their values and perspective?

  3. Sit in a public place for at least 30 minutes and observe the people around you. Notice the assumptions you make. Record these assumptions and what you think led you to make them. (The person’s clothing? Their age? Their gender? Their body language?) Then, record questions you’d like to ask this person to better inform your perception of them.

COVID-19 adaptation: If you are in quarantine or isolation, consider the assumptions you make about people you speak to, read about or watch on TV throughout the day.

1. Personal Processing

What Happens In Our Brain When Our Views Are Challenged?

Everyone has had a conversation with someone who shares distinctly different views and has left it feeling frustrated, as if there has been breakdown in communication and there is nothing we can do to make the other person understand our perspective. This conflict is more likely to appear when the discussions centre on topics that we really care about, and that we view as connected to our identity.

To help temper future conflict around the communication of strongly held opinions and beliefs, it is important to understand what is going on in our brain:

It is really important to keep this knowledge of how our brains work in mind when we are connecting people and trying to build a sense of community because:

Understanding a bit about our own identity and behavioural psychology can help us become better communicators, who are able to engage with potentially frustrating opinions more effectively, and who are open to learning and questioning our own beliefs. Such understanding also encourages humility – we may not be as ‘right’ as we think or feel we are.

If desired, use these questions to reflect on the content contained above:

Want to learn more about the brain and the way our mind operates? Have a look here:

1. Personal Processing

Power & Privilege

"Without community, there is no liberation.”

Audre Lorde

Introduction

What & why?

The concept of privilege - and the power that comes with it - is better understood than ever before. But it remains a sensitive topic in many situations. Members of the UK-based New Economy Organisers Network (NEON) seek to make issues of power and privilege easier to discuss and resolve within a campaigning context, and so produced this guide for organisers and activists to use within their own groups and organisations.

Though written for campaigners who hope to practically tackle power and privilege, this guide may also be of use to people who have a general interest in deepening their own understanding of the subject.

What to expect?

This guide contains some tried-and-tested tools and techniques that will help NEON members who are committed to creating truly inclusive spaces by challenging harmful behaviours (including their own) that reinforce certain privileges. The (by no means exhaustive!) content included comes from a variety of sources and features numerous articles, useful skills, tips on starting conversations around power and privilege, and ideas on using the resources you already have to contribute to liberation struggles. If you know of campaigners and activists from beyond the NEON community who are looking for help on this front, this is for them too. This guide is the start of a conversation, not the conclusion of one - its authors welcome suggested contributions from any readers with practical tips to add.

Who is it for?

This guide is for people who are seeking to deepen, share and open up their existing awareness of power and privilege with others - be they colleagues, fellow activists, or friends and family. We hope to offer another edition at a later date for those who are unfamiliar with the concepts outlined here, but curious to learn more.

A note on discomfort

Power and privilege can be uncomfortable or upsetting to explore when it relates to your own advantages. This is natural and if you stick with the challenge at hand, the feeling can become something much more positive.

Power & Privilege

What do we mean by power?
  1. The ability or capacity to do something or act in a particular way.
  2. The ability or capacity to direct or influence the behaviour of others or the course of events.

Here, we use the word power to particularly describe the inherited and learnt abilities and behaviours that help people influence their community and wider society. Power itself is neutral. In an abstract sense power can damage or strengthen a community, sometimes both at once. It’s all about being mindful to how power is applied.

Campaigners are increasingly able to recognise and seek to understand their own power, or lack thereof, and understand how they can use it for the benefit of creating inclusive communities.

For many of us, understanding power and privilege will be a matter of seeing both sides to this - how we are simultaneously disempowered and empowered by social structures and deep, embedded cultures, and how we can disadvantage others whilst at the same time being disadvantaged ourselves in other contexts.

What do we mean by privilege?

Privilege refers to the collective advantages that a person can inherit from birth and/or accumulate over the course of time.

These advantages aren’t innate - they’re constructed by the society in which they exist, and can be seen wherever there are normalised power relations. Everyone is privileged in different ways - your own privilege may lie within your genetics, upbringing, current circumstances, or luck. Some are within our control, and some are not.

Privilege is also related to context - you can enjoy advantages in one culture or social setting that can easily become disadvantages in others.

It's worth taking a lesson from critical race theory, in part to understand white privilege, but to consider others too. This sees racism as an endemic part of society, deeply ingrained legally and culturally, which means it tends to look normal. Formal equal opportunity projects can remedy extreme forms of injustice but do little to deal with the business-as-usual forms of oppression. In such a context, claims to objectivity and 'meritocracy' act as camouflages for inequality.

Why understanding power & privilege matters

We all know that white hot feeling of injustice - we’re activists and campaigners, it comes with the territory. The grassroots groups, trade unions, faith groups and NGOs that many of us might be members of - or work at - understand that it’s important to call out organisations that use their power to treat people badly. If we don’t call out the Home Office or Shell, who will?

A sharper view of power and privilege will help us spot more injustices to fight. You have to see it first to tackle it. Moreover, always focusing on what's wrong outside of your organisations and campaigns means that problematic power structures in our own movements, organisations and groups often go unscrutinised. We are part of an unfair system, and it takes active work to not replicate it. Luckily, resources and advice that can help us do that are more accessible than ever before - and hopefully this guide will come in handy as a starting point.

Recognising injustices of power and privilege is an ongoing process. We've all spent many years adapting to inequality and it can take a while to challenge it. This isn't a free pass to dawdle, but rather a challenge to keep at it and get used to making an awareness of power and privilege an everyday occurrence. If you’re working through this personally, you might want to keep a diary of times where you catch yourself inadvertently being sexist, racist, taking a cis-centric view, lacking understanding of disability issues, or similar. Even if it's only a mental note, go back to these thoughts and make them every day. If you're working with a group don't just run a one-off diversity awareness training event, but schedule regular discussions where you ask colleagues to check in with an example of a time they spotted power and privilege at play, and an example of something new they are trying to help tackle it. Since the Stephen Lawrence case, we've talked about institutional racism and, on occasion, institutional sexism too, the way in which groups and organisations may inadvertently be structured to exclude, and may, gradually be reformed. Try to work towards a position where you recognise the institutional privileges around you, and try to shift to be institutionally aware of power.

Redressing privilege ultimately means creating a new kind of freedom - feminist Kay Leigh Hagan sums it up for multiple strands of liberation thinking when explaining how evolving gender norms brings benefits:

For both men and women, Good Men can be somewhat disturbing to be around because they usually do not act in ways associated with typical men; they listen more than they talk; they self-reflect on their behaviour and motives, they actively educate themselves about women's reality by seeking out women's culture and listening to women…

They avoid using women for vicarious emotional expression... When they err - and they do err - they look to women for guidance, and receive criticism with gratitude. They practice enduring uncertainty while waiting for a new way of being to reveal previously unconsidered alternatives to controlling and abusive behaviour. They intervene in men's misogynist behaviour, even when women are not present, and they work hard to recognise and challenge their own.

Perhaps most amazingly, Good Men perceive the value of a feminist practice for themselves, and they advocate it not because it's politically correct, or because they want women to like them, or even because they want women to have equality, but because they understand that male privilege prevents them not only from becoming whole, authentic human beings but also from knowing the truth about the world...They offer proof that men can change.

Kay Leigh Hagan in The Will To Change: Men, Masculinity, And Love by bell hooks

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Getting Started

If you feel like the only person in your organisation or group that cares about addressing power and privilege issues, it’s very daunting and can feel lonely. Here are ways to get the ball rolling before you dive into tricky conversations with those who currently hold power.

Find an ally

Who is the most open to conversations about these topics? Start with them - it’s possible that they feel as strongly as you do. If they’re cautious but open-minded, make time to chat about your shared perceptions of power and privilege. Exploring this may lead to a deeper alliance that enables you to share ideas, support each other and change the wider culture together.

Gather research

If there have been instances where people have been systematically disadvantaged in some way, get the background on this. Find out about recruitment practices and sound out what most people’s take on diversity is. Is it a sore point? Something they feel they do well already? Or not on their radar? You can shape your approach accordingly.

Use existing procedures

Raise concerns with your trade union representative, staff forum convenor, or a member of your group that holds power over setting agendas and facilitation. See what kind of structured support they can offer you.

Start team-wide conversations

If you feel confident about raising the topic and proposing a meeting to discuss power and privilege within your campaign group, department or organisation, take that leap! Making it a series of workshops or conversations will help develop a sense of shared awareness and accountability.

Skills & practices

Here are some practical things you and others can do to address privilege-related problems within your sphere.

Check out the linked articles for further detail.

Active listening

‘The opposite of listening is preparing to speak’ - Three Faiths Forum.

Active listening is a skill in which the listener remains silent until the speaker finishes, then feeds back to the speaker what they have heard - this will help confirm what has been heard and allow both parties to ensure they have the same understanding.

Active listening is a key practice to make sure certain voices are not dominating in meetings, workshop spaces, etc. It’s a great habit to practice if you’ve ever caught yourself talking over someone else, and opting to silently listen to someone is a good way to earn their trust. Here are a couple of articles to help you hone your active listening skills:

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Facilitating

Facilitation is the practice of adopting a neutral position within a meeting or workshop in order to help people move through a process together and draw out the opinions and ideas of the group members. When you become a facilitator, you can ensure that everyone in the room has the chance to participate.

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Reflective practice

The habit of thinking about the words you’ve said and the actions you’ve taken, considering what happened next, and using that experience to improve your response to similar situations in future.

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Stepping back

If you have privilege within the group dynamic, use it to make speaking room for those who tend to go unheard. For example, if you are in a group where you’ve contributed lots but there are others that are yet to do so, you actively say ‘I’m aware of how much I’ve spoken already so I’m taking a step back’. At a higher level, it might mean turning down offers to speak on panels with an unrepresentative line-up, and suggesting alternative contributors in your place.

Being an ally

An ally isn't just something you become - it’s something you do! If you actively challenge oppressive behaviour towards marginalised groups that you don’t identify with, you’re practicing allyship. So listening to someone who describes being marginalised is allyship. Educating yourself on structural oppression is allyship. Stepping back from opportunities in order to make way for underrepresented people is allyship.

The following articles on being an ally are very useful:

Self-care

This is basically giving yourself a break - switching off, forgetting the struggle for a little while, and doing whatever brings you a sense of wellbeing, no matter how brief or frivolous it may be. Being tired and stressed leads to illness, mistakes and total burnout.

For example, if you’re working to a major deadline around a planned action, whether a small occupation or a large march, self-care can be as basic as stepping out for a walk or going for lunch with your fellow stressed-out campaigners.

You no doubt know what works for you. Keep making time for it, savouring it, and remembering that ‘Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare’ (Audre Lourde)

You may find the suggestions in these articles a helpful starting point:

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Attributes that will stand you in good stead

Patience

Learn to recognise when you find listening to the concerns of others difficult, and then learn to manage your reaction. It’s important to acknowledge the validity of people’s thoughts and feelings even when they don’t match your own perspective. Wherever you can, opt not to derail the conversation.

Self-awareness

Questioning yourself and considering the way you interact with others gives you a chance to subvert traditional power dynamics.

Showing solidarity

You might hear the word ‘solidarity’ a lot - it’s the act of standing alongside others fighting for a cause that often you aren’t affected by but wholly support. Understanding what it mean to stand in solidarity alongside others will help you do it better.

Resilience

We all mess up, make badly judged comments and reinforce crappy power dynamics from time to time. You’ll call people out, and it’ll be awkward at first; perhaps you’ll get called out another time, and it’ll be tough in a different way - but learning to adjust your approach to dealing with calling out or being called out will enable you to make society fairer for everyone.

Tools & techniques

Tools and techniques you can use to understand, confront and challenge the problems that arise. If you have something to add, do let us know – this is just the tip of the iceberg!

The cycle of oppression

You already have a sense of how identity can work in your favour or against it, but it’s possible that this is still unclear to those you work alongside and requires closer analysis. A great tool for exploring this is the cycle of oppression - a simple model that is highly relevant to discussions you have about power and privilege.

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For example, if you’d like to discuss whether new recruits require a higher education qualification, you could use this model to explore why employees who have degrees feel uncomfortable about hiring someone who has taken a different approach to learning.

Oops/Ouch

This is a technique used by the interfaith charity 3FF in their education work. The idea is to create space for people (particularly young people) to explore ideas even if their language isn't perfectly sensitive first-time. 'Oops' allows somebody to rephrase something which they realise might be offensive after they said it, while 'ouch' flags up a painful reaction to a comment.

E.g.: Person 1: ‘Oops - I’d like to amend the phrasing I used as I think the term x expresses my meaning more clearly.’

N.B. this technique is designed for facilitated spaces where the group has gone through a process of agreeing ground rules (setting a safe space). Also, the assumption is that people are speaking with good intentions and causing offence accidentally – while this usually holds in 3FF's youth and education work this may not be a safe assumption in other environments.

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Behaviour, Impact, Feelings, Future - BIFF framework

A simple method of speaking to someone about a disagreement or issue that you have had with them, making sure you focus on how their behaviour has affected you and how they can do things differently next time.

More about BIFF here.

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Theatre of the Oppressed

Sounds dramatic but is actually pretty good fun, and gives participants a chance to learn through acting out scenarios rather than talking, and identify the role body language plays in power dynamics.

Read more about Theatre of the Oppressed here.

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Spoon analogy

This illustrates the challenges that everyday living presents for disabled people and people with a chronic illness. You provide the participant with, say, 12 spoons - each represents a limited unit of ‘energy’ for a normal day. Ask them what they have planned for tomorrow, and remove a spoon for each activity they mention, and ensure they start right at the beginning - from getting up to eating breakfast.

The goal is to have some left for the next day so they can stay active - so if they run out of spoons, their only option is to rest. You don’t really need spoons to do this - the metaphor is enough for most people!

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Making Use of What You’ve Got

There are things you can do with what you already have. Using your resources (financial and otherwise) more efficiently contributes to tackling inequality, both in everyday situations and at a larger scale - within your organisation or group, within your movement, and even within your friendship circles.

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Energy

Energy is the main resource that we have as campaigners - we rely on it to get through times of little funding, little capacity and sometimes little motivation. It’s a precious resource, so where does it get spent?

Time

Not so different to energy. Some people may have a work/family situation that gives them almost no free time, but those with more time have a privilege that can support others.

There are many grassroots groups, organising with small amounts of money and on a voluntary basis, that regularly put out call outs. Take a look at their websites / social media pages for more information. Groups include: UK Uncut, Sisters Uncut, Focus E15, Sweets Way Resists, Boycott Workfare, Disabled People Against Cuts, Reclaim the Power.

Money

Where work is funded, invite the group involved to use money in a way that supports a fair distribution of power and resources.

Spaces & materials

Do you have physical space and spare materials which you can share with groups that might not have much money and very little access to spaces for meetings and organising activities?

Keep an eye out for requests amongst your network and offer help where you can.

About This Guide

This guide has been produced by the New Economy Organisers Network (NEON), a UK-based organisation that exists to strengthen the movement working to replace neoliberalism with an economy based on social and environmental justice. NEON runs training courses, campaign hacks, political education programmes, socials, and a mailing list, amongst many other things.

NEON is made up of a community of activists, campaigners and other types of change makers, and this publication has been written by members who are determined to improve the collective understanding of inequality in our activism and daily lives. Tackling power and privilege is fundamental to NEON projects, and we work towards three broad goals:

NEON started life as a project of the New Economics Foundation (NEF) but has since set-up as an independent not-for-profit company. The network is coordinated by a small staff team with projects run in collaboration with members and their organisations. This introductory guide has been written in collaboration with NEF.

If you would like to contribute to this work, please get in touch with us: jannat.hossain@neweconomics.org

Here’s a list of articles, blogs, and videos that NEON members have found useful for discussing power and privilege. They can be used to deepen your own knowledge of an issue, but they’re also really handy to share with others that you are talking to about privilege.

This isn’t an exhaustive list and is ever-evolving - share your own eye-openers and we’ll add them in!

Websites

The following websites are every self-aware person’s dream. They contain a bountiful amount of articles and resources for anyone committed to understanding power and privilege better.

On Being Uncomfortable
Articles with Intersectional Relevence
On Ability
On Age
On Class
On Gender +
On Race
On Sexuality

Quotes of interest

"There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives. Our struggles are particular, but we are not alone. We are not perfect, but we are stronger and wiser than the sum of our errors." —Audre Lorde

"If you have come here to help me, then you are wasting your time…But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together." —Aboriginal activist saying

"It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of the pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering…" —Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

"If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there's no progress. If you pull it all the way out that's not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven't even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won't even admit the knife is there." —Malcolm X

"The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house." —Audre Lorde

"It is part of our task as revolutionary people, people who want deep-rooted, radical change, to be as whole as it is possible for us to be. This can only be done if we face the reality of what oppression really means in our lives, not as abstract systems subject to analysis, but as an avalanche of traumas leaving a wake of devastation in the lives of real people who nevertheless remain human, unquenchable, complex and full of possibility." —Aurora Morales

1. Personal Processing

Reflecting on Identity Privilege

If you’ve moved in any social justice circles, or even if you haven’t, you’ve probably come across the concepts of privilege and oppression. The idea that some people are innately advantaged over others just because of who they are.

You may be thinking, duh? Perhaps it’s obvious to you, but for many this idea of axes of advantage and disadvantage can often appear quite abstract, particularly if we are not aware of any immediate effects on our lives. Some of those effects are so deeply entrenched in our culture that we don’t even notice them.

It takes hard work to actively dismantle the harmful dichotomies and systemic oppression that we have been shaped by but it is essential if we are to build strong, resilient and compassionate communities. First, we need to begin by acknowledging and ‘checking’ our own privilege.

This reading will help you reflect on identity privilege, what it means and how we can move forward. It has been divided into the following sections for ease of reference.

Understanding Privilege

Our relationship to Privilege

You are privileged.

What’s your reaction to that statement? Your initial, knee jerk reaction? Sit with that feeling for a moment, let it fill you up. Really examine what’s driving that emotion.

Quite possibly, you don’t see yourself as a privileged person. Many of us do not actually feel privileged. We may have jobs we don’t like, be in financial situations which are less than ideal, and/or we may be being mistreated and undermined by people around us.

It’s completely valid if you hear an ‘accusation’ of privilege and feel defensive, confused, even angry. How can we be privileged when our lives are so uncomfortable and when so many things are out of our control?

The answer is that these things are relative. We all experience privilege within the context of our own experiences. It’s not always possible to see the ways you are advantaged because that would mean understanding something hidden, a series of challenges and hindrances that are invisible to us, unless we take a special effort to put ourselves in others’ shoes.

A right-handed person, for example, is privileged in that most equipment is made for them. They do not have to drag their hand through the ink when they write. They are likely to go through their daily lives feeling as if the hand they use most is irrelevant. They simply write, cook, drive and live their daily lives feeling as if the hand they use most is irrelevant.

A left-handed person conversely has the trouble of needing specially made tools and equipment to be made or purchased for them at additional cost. They must drag their hand through the ink when they write. As children they may have been chastised for doing ordinary activities in the way that feels right for their body.

A right-handed person may not think about their dominant hand because they don’t have to. This is what it means to be privileged. It’s about what you don’t have to put up with. So, by extension the right-handed person might not place any importance in being right-handed. They may not consider it a part of their identity. This is because it’s an example of a majority identity.

Most privileged identities are typical of the majority of people. They are seen as the ‘default’ people belonging to these dominant groups then, are never really forced to examine their place in the world and they grow up blind to the advantages they have over others.

Don’t Put Me In A Box: The Labels of Privilege

Our identities are very complex things. How you feel about yourself, what you consider defines you, or how your loved ones would describe is a closer representation of your true self. We certainly place greater stock on some parts of ourselves than others. We may be more comfortable with some parts of ourselves than others. We may have identities like ‘parent’, ‘artist’, ‘animal lover’, but these are labels we choose; labels we gain through patterns of behaviour and thereby don’t carry the weight of prescribed privilege.

This is not what we mean when we discuss issues of identity privilege. Identity privilege is any unearned benefit or advantage one receives in society by nature of their identity. Something you have just from the lottery of birth. Some examples are: Race, religious heritage, gender identity, sexual orientation, class/wealth, ability or citizenship status.

Identity privilege is connected to the way you are viewed by the people around you and your position in society. The privilege is related to the label on the box you have been put in that gives you a greater status or that allows you to access more opportunities than others.

If we accept this concept of privilege, then it follows logically that there is a flipside. Those who are diametrically opposed to the privileged identity are systematically oppressed instead. They are saddled with an unfair disadvantage due to something they cannot control.

The Lottery of Birth

It can be very easy to see the ways in which we are oppressed. Many of us are far readier to examine these than to face up to how we may be unfairly privileged over others since this can often carry with it many difficult emotions of anger, and guilt.

Consider these hypothetical people:

What have you identified when considering the above scenarios and questions?

Why don’t you try and do the same exercise with yourself – it can be effective to compare notes with others and discuss your different experiences.

Power structures

Now that we understand the idea of identity privilege it’s important to examine how our society is set up to favour some identities over others. This favouritism is connected to the mechanisms and structure of oppression, and the allocation of power and how it is wielded.

Majority identities hold the power by virtue of their privileged position. They serve as the measure of what is normal, real and correct. Much of their power links to their ability to define reality, and this happens on every level of society.

Individual beliefs and values align with this idea of reality, which is skewed in favour of the dominant identity. These beliefs and values are reinforced on an interpersonal level through actions, language and our interactions with others, and then on an institutional level through our political system, which shapes public policy, the legal and education system, and the workplace. the media, which is shaped by our power structures and which reinforces them, also informs collective ideas about who or what is ‘right’, who or what is ‘attractive’ and who or what is ‘dangerous’. These ideas are therefore integrated into our individual belief systems as we grow, and help to create a self-perpetuating and self-propagating system, which builds and sustains itself from one generation to the next.

We can see then, looking at history, how things can change drastically when people begin to question the collective ideas they have been raised with.

The Face Of Oppression

Oppression can take many forms, and can lead to people being scrutinized, marginalized and isolated throughout their lives. Oppression gives life to prejudices, which often form as a means of justifying oppressive structures: women are oppressed by the patriarchal and sexist structures in society, people of colour are oppressed by white supremacy and racist structures.

An important point is this oppression happens at all levels, as we have just seen, reinforced by societal norms, institutional biases, interpersonal interactions and individual beliefs. Even more important: we are all complicit. Some of us may be more complicit than others, but we can all be oppressors, just as we can all be oppressed.

This is a tough pill to swallow. It’s one step beyond telling people they are privileged, to tell them they are also automatically then, oppressors or members of an oppressive group.

Most white people, for example, don’t see themselves as racist. They see racism as a prejudice leading to hateful, violent actions, which horrifies them as they would never do that, they resent being slandered as a racist.

Now while it’s true violent attacks are one manifestation of racism, there is so much else that goes unseen beneath the surface. The violent attacks are only made possible by the structures of power that support them. If white people grow up seeing people of colour as alien, even as dangerous or as ‘less than’ then they begin to treat them that way. Either subtle undermining or direct bullying may take place right into adulthood as people act on their beliefs, and then the laws, the public institutions that are built and maintained by the same people that have unknowingly racist beliefs propagate discriminatory practice – this may not be as overt (i.e. Jim Crow laws) anymore but rather covert (disproportionate incarceration of black offenders) – and these ideals and re-disseminated via the media.

Black author Scott Woods sums it up:

“The problem is that white people see racism as conscious hate, when racism is bigger than that. Racism is a complex system of social and political levers and pulleys set up generations ago to continue working on the behalf of whites at other people’s expense, whether whites know/like it or not. Racism is an insidious cultural disease. It is so insidious that it doesn’t care if you are a white person who likes Black people; it’s still going to find a way to infect how you deal with people who don’t look like you.*
Yes, racism looks like hate, but hate is just one manifestation. Privilege is another. Access is another. Ignorance is another. Apathy is another, and so on. So, while I agree with people who say no one is born racist, it remains a powerful system that we’re immediately born into. It’s like being born into air: you take it in as soon as you breathe.
It’s not a cold that you can get over. There is no anti-racist certification class. It’s a set of socioeconomic traps and cultural values that are fired up every time we interact with the world. It is a thing you have to keep scooping out of the boat of your life to keep from drowning in it. I know it’s hard work, but it’s the price you pay for owning everything.”

Draw a racist. What do they look like? What are they doing? Why are they the way they are?

The intention of this is to examine the ‘racist’ label critically, we may have an idea of what a racist person is, what they look like, what they do but consigning racism to a limited caricature prevents us from examining real systemic racism. The ‘racist’ label is limited. A better way of looking at it is that we are all ‘racist’ to a certain degree as we are unknowingly raised with racist ideals in a fundamentally racist society. Some people may be more overtly racist than others but we are all complicit.

Talking about oppression as an individual act prevents us from fully understanding the problem and prevents us from self-improvement as we are constantly looking for a mythical responsible party to which we can ascribe all the blame. This behaviour locks the whole thing into place.

We are all crew

There are two important things to bear in mind when thinking about this:

  1. This system is no one’s fault.
  2. This system harms everyone.

In this article we say society favours some identities over others rather than society favours some people over others and there’s a reason for that seemingly pedantic use of language. Because even those who seem to benefit rarely benefit holistically as a human person. A privileged person is locked into their position as much as an oppressed person. They are expected to conform to a certain standard, display certain characteristics and do their part to keep the status quo. Those who deviate can often be harshly punished as if in alignment with those they should be pitted against.

People may have a lot of power, but this is not deliberate, and they don’t have to work very hard to maintain it. We are all assigned platforms, positions in society which we did not choose. Unearned doesn’t simply denote that we don’t deserve something, but that we cannot be held accountable for having it.

What matters is our actions going forward. We cannot change the past, but we can continually challenge our attitudes and refuse to participate in a system of sustained inequality.

What Can We Do?

We can push for diversity. Diversity is important, particularly where groups are concerned with transformative community engagement. If these groups are too homogeneous then they can quite naturally end up serving only the needs of their dominant identities. A lack of diversity can cause issues to be forgotten and it is harder to reach those who may feel they are not represented. These divisions can be ruinous. How can we possibly work together with people we don’t trust? Or people we don’t really respect?

We need to understand the power structures that exist in society and our roles within them so we can do the continuous and introspective work of dismantling them and coming together as equals, valuing one another. We must build the capacity to listen and consolidate our feelings. This is the key to preparing ourselves to be part of a regenerative culture.

1. Personal Processing

Personal Visioning

The visioning process helps you to connect with your strengths, your values and what it is you want to achieve, be it in life, in the next few years, or in the process of reaching out to others in your community. Dedicating time to considering what your goals are and how they align with who you are is a great way of staying focused in your actions, of increasing drive and dedication, and of staying inspired. Visioning is also a wonderful way to stay grounded, whatever life may throw at you. Having done some exercises related to visioning it can then be very helpful to summarise your learning, ideas and hopes by writing a vision statement, which you can then refer back to as and when you need to.

It is important to note that having a personal vision statement can mean different things to everyone: some may find their vision change over time, others that vision is something they return to as a source of support. Regardless of the role the vision statement ends up playing in your life, the process of creating one is profound, meaningful, and helps you connect with your values and who you are.

The activities outlined below will help you engage in visioning and take you through the process of writing a vision statement.

This document has been divided into the following sections for ease of reference. You don’t need to complete all of the activities listed, do whatever feels right, but if you are struggling with visioning, doing more of them can help you organise your thoughts, feelings and ideas:

Understanding Your Values

Aligning our actions with our values helps us to find meaning in life. It can, therefore, be really useful to try and understand what our core values are. The following exercises are designed to help you do so.

Hypothetical Advice
  1. What three pieces of advice would you give the teenager?
  2. Why would you give those pieces of advice?
  3. What do they tell you about what you value?
A Meaningful Memory
  1. What was going on during this time?
  2. How did you feel? Why?
  3. Was there anything in particular that you were able to do or anything that stands out? If so, what?
  4. What does this memory tell you about what you value?
The Ideal Day
  1. What happens at each stage of your ideal day?
  2. What do you do?
  3. Who do you see?
  4. How do you feel?
  5. What are you working towards?
  6. What does this ideal day tell you about your values?
Your Values

Identifying Your Strengths and Areas for Improvement

It can be really helpful to think about your strengths and the areas in which you can improve when visioning – the process enables you to create realistic goals that play to your abilities, whilst also encouraging you to think about what it is you would like to get better at. Balancing playing to your strengths, whilst working on areas in which you want to grow can help you reach your potential.

Identifying Your Strengths

It can sometimes be hard to identify our strengths, particularly in cultures that discourage or look down upon self-promotion, but it is important to remember that we all have our strengths and it is not arrogant to identify them or to be proud of them. Strengths come in a range of forms – they might be connected to your values, your roles in life, your outlook, personality or the way you connect with others, and/or your skills.

Use the following prompts to help you identify your strengths:

  1. What values do you possess that you are proud of?
  2. Why are these values something to be proud of?
  3. How might these values be a strength?
  4. How have they impacted your life?
  1. What roles do you take on in life?
  2. In what ways are you good at these roles?
  3. What skills have you developed as a consequence of taking on these roles?
  4. How are these skills a strength?
  5. How have they impacted your life?
  1. What about your outlook in life or personality are you proud of?
  2. Why are you proud of these?
  3. How are these attributes a strength?
  4. How have they impacted your life?
  1. What about your relationships with others are you proud of?
  2. Why are you proud of this?
  3. How are these relationships a strength?
  4. How have they impacted your life?
  1. What skills do you have that you are proud of?
  2. Why are you proud of these skills?
  3. How are these attributes a strength?
  4. How have they impacted your life?

Now you have identified your strengths in a range of areas, write them down in a coherent list. You might wish to start your list with the line “My strengths are…”

Identifying Your Areas for Improvement

We are not static, we are constantly responding to the environment around us, adapting, learning and growing. Indeed, one of the most magical things about existence is that we have the capacity to improve and to respond to what we learn, be this in developing a new practical skill or in gaining a greater understanding of ourselves and how we relate to people. The point of this exercise is not to make you feel bad about the areas in which you can improve, but to feel inspired about what you can do and how you can grow.

Use the following prompts to help you identify your areas for improvement:

  1. What attributes would you like to develop?
  2. Why would you like to develop these attributes?
  3. How would developing these attributes impact your life?
  4. How might you go about developing these attributes?
  1. What about your relationships with others would you like to improve?
  2. Why would you like to improve this?
  3. How would an improvement in these areas impact your life?
  4. How might you go about improving your relationships?
  1. Which skills would you like to improve or develop?
  2. Why would you like to improve or develop these skills?
  3. How would an improvement in or development of these skills impact your life?
  4. How might you go about improving or developing these skills?

Now you have identified your areas in which you would like to improve, write them down in a coherent list. You might wish to start your list with the line “I would like to grow by...”

Sketching Out Your Vision

When responding to the following prompts, you might want to think about your values, your strengths, and the areas in which you wish to grow.

The Magic Wand

Imagine that you have a magic wand then enables you to shape your future and create the kind of life that you want for yourself and for others around you.

  1. Three months?
  2. Six months?
  3. Year?
  4. Five years?
  5. Ten years
  6. Twenty-five years?

What do your responses tell you about what you would like to achieve in life?

The Wheel of Life
A Vision Board

According to the Coaching Tools Company, vision boards are “a way of teaching our mind to focus on the things that are important to us, and can be a great way to connect with our subconscious wants, desires and needs - and make them conscious”.

What is a vision board?

“A Vision Board is simply a collective name for a wide variety of inspirational maps (a collage) that we create from pictures. The map can be WHO we want to be or HOW we want our lives to be, and is a visual representation of our goals and dreams – a powerful way to make our aspirations more tangible and attainable...The very act of CREATING the vision board tells our mind what’s important – and it may just draw our attention to something we might not otherwise have noticed.”

How to create a vision board:

Once you have made your vision board, you can either put it away somewhere and return to it in the future, however many months or years down the line, or you can put it somewhere you will see it every day to remind, inspire and focus you. If you do the latter, you may want to allocate a set amount of time to look at the vision board each day, to review it and feel excited by it.

Writing Your Vision Statement

A vision statement can ensure that you keep sight of what is important to you in life; it can provide clarity for the future, whilst allowing you to stay focused in the present and can act as a support when you are feeling distracted, down or uninspired. The vision you create does not need to be perfect nor does it need to be held back by what feels possible where you are right now: be creative, have faith in yourself and don’t worry about sketching anything out perfectly. Perfection doesn’t exist and things are always a process.

Vision statements will be different for everyone – some people might write a page, others a paragraph, and others a sentence or two. Do whatever feels right for you. If you want some inspiration, have a read of Oprah Winfrey’s vision statement. Her vision is “to be a teacher. And be known for inspiring my students to be more than they thought they could be”.

To help you get into the right frame of mind for writing your vision, plant yourself in the present, and let go of whatever might be hassling you in your mind by first connecting with your breath. Listen to your breath and focus on your breath, and let your mind clear itself of concerns.

Next, think about the following:

Then start crafting your working vision statement to capture the things that are most important to you and the direction in which you would like to go. You might wish to include references to your values, strengths, areas of improvement and areas of focus; to connect to your passions or interests; and/or to root vision statement in time, thinking about something that you will do daily, as in the five principles of Reiki:

Just for today…

I will let go of anger

I will not worry

I will be grateful for all my blessings

I will work with honesty and integrity

I will be kind to all living beings

Write your statement in the present tense and have it highlight what matters most to you, what you stand for and who you are committed to becoming.

Once you have your draft of your statement, you might wish to put it to the side and let some time elapse before you review it. You might also wish to put it somewhere prominent for you to see, or review it a set time each week to help ground you and remind you about what matters to you.

Whatever your relationship with your vision statement, know that you can refer to it if you ever feel distracted, lost or confused, and that you can update it to reflect any changes in your values or ife aims.

Useful Links:

Ten Great Ideas for Life Visioning and Planning

How to Use Vision Boards

How to Craft Your Personal Vision

The Five (5) Principles of Reiki Explained and How to Incorporate them in our Daily Lives

1. Personal Processing

Building Courage

Courage is a sense of inner strength that enables you to persevere, despite fear or difficulty; it is a voice inside that encourages you to be brave and step beyond your comfort zone; it is a drive to speak out against injustice, even if your voice feels small and insignificant; it is something that we all have within us. Accessing the courage within, however, is not always easy, but it is important if we are to go out and connect with strangers in our communities. The good news is that the more we work on building up our courage, the more courageous we will feel and the easier once intimidating tasks become.

One of the reasons why it is hard to access the courage within is that we are not always encouraged to feel like capable agents in our own lives. It often feels like we have little choice in how society is organised and that we are too small to change things; this sense of powerlessness can fill us with self doubt. We also live in a society where it is the norm to criticise others, to shame them and ridicule those who put their heads above the parapet. This can create fear about being brave and bold, particularly as acts that require courage involve us taking ourselves out of our comfort zones and making ourselves vulnerable.

But courage is also about facing such fears. Often what we are afraid of us is connected to our insecurities: what we perceive as our failures and weaknesses. It is quite normal to avoid opportunities or procrastinate before engaging with important tasks if we are afraid of doing badly. We must acknowledge these fears and recognise when we are dodging tasks by hiding or taking on pointless work that fills up our time. When we remove mental roadblocks we are better able to take bold action.

And it is worth it: being bold and courageous has its rewards: it can help us achieve our goals, it can help us feel more confident in who we are, and it can open up new and exciting doors. It is also something that we can practice and get better at over time: courage does not suddenly grow within us, it needs to be nurtured. We need to flex our courage muscle in daily life and get into the habit of pushing ourselves in small ways that help make us braver and more resilient.

Here are some exercises to help you find that inner courage.

Acknowledge Your Emotions

Acknowledging and sitting with our feelings is important pre-work when building courage – they are there for a reason and they can help us better understand ourselves. It is therefore important to take time to recognise feelings, accept them and investigate them to learn about what is driving them. Understanding how we feel is a vital step in allowing us to process our emotions and let go of them; it also creates space for self-care, for ensuring we are looking after our needs.

As we build courage, we will begin to sit with uncomfortable emotions and gain a greater understanding of them and their effects on our bodies. Through this greater understanding of ourselves, we will be able to address our needs, which can make us more confident in moving out of our comfort zone and facing up to more challenging scenarios.

Next time you feel yourself overcome by any emotion, consider reflecting on your feelings using the following approach (you may find it useful to take notes with a pen):

R - Recognise the emotion/feelings

A - Accept the emotion/feelings

I - Investigate what is causing the emotion/feelings

N - Nurture the cause of the emotions/feelings (it is often an unmet need)

Reflect on Your Fears

There are healthy fears and there are unhealthy fears. Sometimes it is healthy and natural to be afraid: the fear we might be feeling is an instinct that keeps us safe from putting ourselves in dangerous situations. It is sensible, for example, to be scared of walking too close to the edge of a cliff as it can result in a fall.

More often than not, however, we find ourselves afraid to do things which are actually not that dangerous and may even be beneficial for us. We might be scared to ask a question, or speak out when we disagree with something, or to ask for something that will help us. We might be scared to go on a date, or try out for a new job. The reasons we are afraid are a little harder to pin down; they may feel unsafe to us: this fear is not centred around risk to life or limb, but more abstract worries – that we won’t succeed, that we’ll be rejected or embarrassed. Often our fears in these situations are linked to certain core beliefs about ourselves and/or to self doubt. We might think:

“My question won’t be interesting enough”.

“I will be criticised for not understanding enough”.

“I will be rejected because I won’t be good enough”.

It is important to think about our fears, identifying what causes them and the impact that they have had on past behaviour.

Identify Your Fears

By identifying what you are afraid of, you can empower yourself to act with courage and face such fears.

  1. Make a list of different things that you fear.
  2. Write down different things you would do if you did not have those fears.
  3. Discuss one of your fears with someone you know.

Identify How Fears Have Impacted Past Behaviour

Calling out these fears will be difficult and painful but it is important to do so if we are to understand what’s holding us back.

Take a pen and note down five situations in which fear or discomfort have stopped you from doing what you wanted to do. Then mindmap each of those situations, using the following questions to help you:

  1. What was happening in the situation?
  2. Why did you feel fear or discomfort?
  3. What reactions did you fear?
  4. Were your fears valid? How do you know?
  5. What were the consequences of your response?
  6. What would have been the consequences if you had followed through with what you wanted to do?

Step Out of Your Comfort Zone

Take a medium sized risk and see where it leads. If there is something you have been putting off, take the jump! It’s important to be gentle and patient with yourself and realistic about what you can accomplish, so maybe best not to go too big for your first time – but do make a conscious choice to take a risk. An act of courage does not need to be an enormous show or act, like standing up to speak in an auditorium in front of a thousand people. It can be a decision to smile at a stranger in the street or strike up conversation with a neighbour. Remember, overcoming our fears and building courage is a process, start small and see where you end up.

What you choose to do should be something that makes you nervous, not petrified with fear, and it’s a good idea to spend a while on this step, and to make a habit of whatever you are choosing to do before moving on.

Then reflect on the process. You may wish to use these questions to help you:

  1. How did it feel to step out of your comfort zone?
  2. How did the experience differ from your expectations?
  3. What did you learn about yourself?

Experience the New

Make a tiny change to experience unfamiliarity. This doesn’t need to be anything significant. You might, for example, choose to start the way in a different way by eating something different or changing your morning routine. Or, you could cook something you have never cooked before or buy an ingredient you have never bought. Or decide that you will spend one week saying yes to whatever suggestions come your way.

The idea of this is to break you out of any ruts you may be in, and to help you be more adaptable to change. Sometimes the familiar and the routines that we have become comfortable and make us averse to change, which can in turn prevent us from taking risks and being courageous.

After you have spent some time experiencing the new, in whatever form it took, reflect on how it felt: How did it feel? What did you learn about yourself?

Pursue a Bold Act of Courage

Once you have become practiced in stepping out of your comfort zone, you can turn your sights to a bigger goal. It should be a bigger risk, something that you have always wanted to do but felt unable to accomplish.This is not about “ripping the band-aid off” this will rarely be achieved all in one go. Usually, it is a case of taking small steps to achieve a big goal. Since it is such a big goal there are lots of things that need to be ticked off on the way and every one of them is important!

If, for example, you want to create a sense of community and get to know all of your neighbours, you might start by reaching out to see if anyone in your area has similar desires by posting on some form of social media or leafleting through people’s doors. This can lay the foundations for connecting with people and creating a community.

Courage is a vehicle, not an end goal. It’s something that we can build to boost our confidence and enable success, but it does require practice. Trust that you have courage inside and find ways to flex that courage muscle daily, and see where you end up!

1. Personal Processing

Understanding Emotions

Having emotions is one of the things that makes us human, although the extent to which people admit to being emotional and experiencing feelings (a term often used when talking about emotions) varies greatly. Despite the differences in how we engage with emotions, we can gain a lot from exploring them, and learn about the part they play in our personal and social lives. This is particularly important if we are trying to create change and build closer connections with others to strengthen our communities. Understanding feelings is also an important step in our quest for solving problems in relationships.

What are Emotions?

Perhaps you would describe, as some do, that at times your mental state is imbued with certain feelings, while at other times your mental state is not. These feeling states are what we can call emotions and some notable examples are: joy, delight, excitement, fear, jealousy, sadness, confusion, embarrassment, and anger. Some of them might be difficult to process, others might overwhelm us; some of them we consider to be good, others less so. But however we respond to or judge our feelings, they are important - they occur for a reason, and we should sit with them to understand ourselves better.

Perhaps the most well-known categorisation of human emotions was that spearheaded by the psychologist Paul Eckman. In the 1970s, Eckman identified six basic emotions – happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust, surprise – that he suggested were universal to all humans across the world and across cultures (though he later updated his list to include additional emotions). The purpose of his categorisation was a bid to understand such feelings, the impact they have on those experiencing them and how they manifest. Someone experiencing fear, for example, could have physiological reactions such as an increase in heart rate, facial expressions such as the widening of the eyes, body language that is indicative of a desire to hide or run, and a tense and alert mental state.

Importantly, emotions do not exist in a vacuum. They respond to and alert us to changing situations that may be instigated by internal or external stimuli. We should, therefore, be in touch with our emotions so that we can process them, identify any triggers and make any changes that we think appropriate.

In thinking about yourself and your feelings, consider the following questions:

Differences in Emotional Expression

  1. What are these emotions?
  2. Why might this be the case?

Something you may well have noticed recently, or even before the onset of the Covid-19 crisis, is the different emotional responses that people have. Why do some people panic at other things people calmly take in their stride? Why are some things stressful to some and to others not? Is this just a question of personality differences in relation to emotions? And what exactly do we mean by personality?

When it comes to emotional expression, there is no right or wrong. We are all different and we all process our emotions differently. Understanding this is important as it can help us better empathise with others and ourselves. Understanding our emotions can also help us better understand our needs and those of others.

Childhood and Emotional Expression

It is also important to understand that people have been shaped by their experiences in life, and that these experiences, particularly if they occur in childhood, can impact their emotional responses.

To understand the connection between childhood and emotional expression, we should step back to the 1940s and to the work of Abraham Maslow, who proposed that humans have a hierarchy of needs. All needs below self-actualisation, Maslow considered as basic needs, which if not met would hinder the process of self-actualisation – becoming the full human being a person could be. Maslow also called these basic needs neurotic or deficient needs, arguing that adult sensitivities and/or neurotic behaviour arose from basic unmet needs in childhood. Neurosis he considered was a fixation on trying to meet that old unmet need, a repeated trying that could never satiate the feeling of need and which was driven by underlying fear. In other words, needs not met produced fear responses that could linger and affect motivation, behaviour and thinking.

Maslow’s model has been revisited and reassessed, and while the levels have been tweaked and the notion of hierarchy challenged, there is something that has persisted in the notion of unsatisfied needs being the basis of hurt feelings. These hurt feelings are associated with the unmet need and persist despite the fact the need may now be fulfilled. This is like feeling hungry when not really needing food, feeling that you don’t fit in or belong despite having friends, and like feeling unsafe and suspicious when nothing is threatening. And these feelings unhealed lead to uncontrollable urges and driven repetitive behaviours: it is as if the unmet needs of early childhood become frozen in time and can never be sated for long.

Does Maslow’s model resonate with your view of the human being?

The Impact of Childhood Trauma

Gabor Mate is a psychotherapist who describes all early unmet needs as being very traumatic to infants and children. This early trauma affects feelings, thinking and behaviour, leaving wounds on a child’s psyche into adulthood – feelings that they are less than completely lovable, or acceptable or worthy; contributing to thoughts that they are to blame for things not being right; or conversely that others are to blame; and addictive behaviours like over-striving, or numbing feelings with drugs.

The Effects

The unhealed distress from these early experiences leaves different kinds of damage:

Chronic Feelings vs Intermittent Feelings

The damage from habitual childhood trauma can become chronic in adults: the upset feelings, which alerted the child to something not being right, can often be replaced by a ‘new view of reality’ based on the experience. Instead of being upset at being told they are stupid, with repeated exposure to derision like this and no opportunity for healing, the child ends up believing that they are stupid, agreeing with the putdown, in order to survive these kinds of situations. When this child as a super striving adult is praised and lauded for their achievements, the hurt child inside often resists this, with the adult clinging to their belief of being stupid.

Intermittent feelings are those that don’t play all the time, and haven’t been totally accepted. The flare-ups and overreactions that we notice are often examples of this. When someone is treated less than respectfully in the present, they are reminded of something similar that happened in the past and are catapulted back there emotionally and sometimes behaviourally. Their reactions of upset may be understandable (yes, there was something not right happening in the original situation), but their ability to handle the current situation is hampered by the triggering of unhealed feelings from previous experiences. These can be generalised or very specific – for instance a person may function very well giving presentations to a small group, but will feel terrified and freeze in front of a large audience.

The Processes of Recovery

The damage created through not having any or many of our early needs met, can be healed, as there are internal mechanisms for doing so, but unfortunately they are interfered with to a greater or lesser extent by a society’s norms and taboos, by the habits of the family, and by institutional practices. In fact, we could add an all encompassing dimension around Maslow’s hierarchy: a need for healing, because we do know that the human mind and body can recover if the conditions are right.

However, it can be difficult to facilitate our healing. One view is that we confuse the expression of pain with its healing. Societies have tried to shut down certain feelings like crying (be strong!) when actually crying is both an indication of pain and an important part of the recovery from it.

One factor that seems to make a big difference in healing and processing pain is the presence of love, care and attention from one person or more (the basis of many therapies). Another is that emotional expression also happens in the recovery process, and this needs to be accepted not stopped. Crying and raging, etc, are as much the healing of grief and anger, as they are an expression that there is emotion there to be healed. Other signs include blushing, yawning, laughing, trembling, and animated talking.

So the good news is that much of what we struggle with – painful feelings, unwelcome thoughts, habits we’d like to be rid of – can be changed, especially if we set out to change ourselves. The evidence is that the healing processes can be initiated years after the hurt or abuse. Humans will take opportunities to heal themselves if the conditions are right.

The not so good news is that helping adults recover is harder work than helping children. Many more layers of more distresses are likely to have been added as well as entrenched habits developed to avoid the feeling of unbearable feelings, making many of these feelings deeply buried in very defended ways. And it does look like we need to face these feelings if we are to fully recover from them.

Implications for Change

Fortunately, therapy is not the only place where healing and recovery can take place. Any structure or group that allows people to relate to each other in a human way can make a huge difference to how people feel about themselves and then develop enough trust to go deeper into recovery.

Acknowledging that we are emotional creatures is an important first step. It is becoming more acceptable in society to show signs of our emotions, and now we can do so knowing that these are also indications of our attempt to recover. When people are interviewed on television recounting past painful experiences they may start crying, and these days the camera does not immediately stop or edit it out as would have happened years ago.

As a prelude to creating a more emotionally intelligent society, and while necessary but not sufficient, we can learn to run our group and community meetings differently, recognising that we are emotional creatures, and that building care and interest in each other into the way we run things will start the work of undoing old hurts.

The description above of how individuals develop difficulties and limitations also happens on a larger scale through social oppression. The fact that entire groups face similar struggles has implications for how we proceed with making change, like in the way we run meetings. Women for instance as a group are not as competitive as men, and thus find interactions in small groups easier than having to compete to be heard in a large one.

Moreover, we need to understand that everyone is carrying emotional baggage. Some people have been so hurt around just expressing their feelings that they have gone numb and silent in order to survive. Others keep away from talking about feelings just in case they fall apart (have a tear or two). We have to be sensitive to people’s different places and needs, and facilitate opportunities for people to gradually engage with their feelings. We could, for example, share our feelings in check-ins or through the use of ice-breakers. Once people are accustomed to this sharing process and trust has been established, deeper check-ins, which provide people space to share more of their struggles and difficulties, can be adopted.

Many of the exercises in the Trust the People modules invite you to reflect on your past, and inevitably this will trigger past painful experiences. If you can share this with others who are non-judgemental it will initiate a healing process and will allow you to better connect with those listening and with people generally: understanding and supporting others is much easier once you have understood and supported yourself.

1. Personal Processing

Active Listening

What is Active Listening?

Active listening is the process of concentrating on listening to what someone has to say. It is resisting the urge to expend our brain power on anything other than listening and processing what is being said. It is not about trying to shape the direction of a conversation, but about letting it flow and absorbing what is being shared. Often when we engage in conversation or are listening to people speak, we are partially distracted: we may have thoughts whirring in our head about how we are going to respond to what is being said, we may be thinking about other demands on our time and tasks that we need to complete, or we may just be unaccustomed to focusing on one thing for an extended period. Listening actively is a difficult and tiring process, and there is no doubt that it is all the more difficult now that our brains have become accustomed to constant distraction – every electronic ping signals another request for our attention.

Why Active Listening?

Active listening can be an incredibly powerful tool that enables you to genuinely connect with members of your local community. The process of simply listening to what people have to say is both humbling and empowering. It can enable us to learn from others, to better understand different perspectives and can focus strong links with others in our communities.

Top Tips for Active Listening:

For further tips on improving your listening skills, take a look at this TED talk:

Julian Treasure – Five Ways to Listen Better

2. Group Support

Group support is focused on enabling people to work with others in a supportive and empathetic way, and on creating group cultures which allow everyone to thrive, provide the emotional support that people need, and give people the skills to deal with conflict constructively.

2. Group Support

Overview

What is group support?

This module is focused on enabling people to work with others in a supportive and empathetic way, and to create group cultures which allow everyone to thrive, provide the emotional support that people need, and give them the skills to deal with conflict constructively.

Why is this module important?

When working with others, it is really important that early on you clearly and honestly establish your expectations for yourself, for the team, for each other and for the project you are working on. Doing so can create a healthy working environment, in which people understand and respect boundaries, and work together for the collective success of your defined goals. Having such discussions initially also ensures that your relationships are built on openness and it can help you to deal with conflict constructively, as and when it arises.

Creating a team that emotionally supports those within it is also incredibly important as only does it ensure that people are looking after each other, it also enables the development of genuine connections, which can help to establish trust. Teams composed of individuals who care for each other’s well-being and who trust each other are far more likely to succeed and fulfil their aims.

2. Group Support

Personal Reflections on Working in Teams

Working with others can be a magical, transformative and inspiring experience; it can help us reach heights that we would not be able to reach alone, and to constantly learn from one another, providing opportunities for growth and reflection. Much of our progress as human animals has come from our ability to work together, and the way we have shaped the world is evidence of this. But it can also be difficult to work in teams: we have to negotiate people’s feelings and perspectives, and forge relationships of trust and understanding. Teamwork is a complex plane to navigate and we no doubt all have different experiences of working with others: some of us may have enjoyed the process of connecting and working in teams, whilst others may have found it difficult to thrive in a team setting. We also all will have different levels of experience: whilst some of us may work in teams daily, others may not have done so since school.

Whatever your experience, these short activities are designed to help you connect with yourself, your previous experiences and your hopes for future teamwork.

  1. What was it that made you feel comfortable?
  2. Was there anything about the situation that stood out to you?
  3. What does this memory tell you about what you need when it comes to teamwork?
  1. What was it that made you feel uncomfortable?
  2. Was there anything about the situation that stood out to you?
  3. What does this memory tell you about what you need when it comes to teamwork?
  4. How has this memory impacted your perception of teams and teamwork?
  1. Why do you think you find that behaviour difficult?
  2. Have you had any past experiences connected to people showing such behaviour?
  3. What do you think you can do to better understand such behaviour?
  1. Why might they find it difficult to deal with such behaviour?
  2. What can you do to check such behaviour?
  3. How might people let you know that they find it difficult?
  1. What values do you think should help guide the team?
  2. What do you want this team to know about you? How will you share this?
  3. If you had to choose three adjectives to capture your dream team, what would they be?
  4. Draw an image which represents this dream team.
2. Group Support

Getting to Know One Another

If your group is new and you’re going to spend some weeks or longer working together, then spend time getting to know one another. You may want to have a meeting, or a section of every meeting, dedicated to this at the start of your team journey. This will lay a strong foundation for the work you will do regarding the remit and operation of the group, like its purpose, goals and roles, and will make your team effective at collaborating, supporting each other and establishing boundaries.

Teams need to be able to work together in adaptable and flexible ways, giving members opportunities to step outside of old habits and established comfort zones to refresh their thinking, and to create new initiatives, and solutions for emerging problems. They need to support people in taking on new responsibilities, whilst enabling them to learn. Such teamwork is vital if we are to respond to, and remain adaptable in the face of the crises we are currently facing. However, it is difficult to build teams like this and to provide the conditions in which all team members can thrive, without first understanding the strengths, vulnerabilities and aspirations of those within the teams. And for this, trust needs to be developed. This guide contains suggestions on how to create a team rooted in trust and connection.

Names

Names are fundamental to identity, to knowing one another. To help people remember each other’s names, either provide sticky labels for people to write their names on, if in person, or ask people to display the name they want to be known by on their zoom name display.

Some people have great difficulty in remembering names, or others might have the same name, so using tags can make the process easier. You might ask people to include the following alongside their name:

If you are using zoom, these are the names that will appear in the chat when people use it, so if people save chat contents at the end of the meeting, there will be distinctive reminders to help them relate comments to people.

Over time, when people know one another the names they choose to use can be playfully altered. You might for example, ask people:

Another way to help people connect through their names is by giving them the following prompts and inviting people, in turn, to share what they feel comfortable sharing:

Check-ins and Check-outs

Check-ins and Check-outs are good opportunities for asking questions to help group members get to know one another. The types of questions that you ask in check-in may be different to those you ask in a check-out.

Check-in:

Consider asking questions that will bring the people into the present and help them process any high or lows on their minds. Most people don’t get enough attention to process these in their life, so to provide that space will help the group bond.

Consider using questions that bring out the positive and difficulties in people’s lives:

Plus:

Minus:

When a group is starting out in its first months, you may want to ask check-in questions like these in the full group. When the members of the group know one another better, these check in questions can be shared in breakout groups of 3-4 to do longer check-ins without taking up more overall time.

Ask the group if members need to know where everyone is at, or whether the group just needs time to arrive, to get into the present. If the former, then do the check in with the entire group. If the latter, then use breakout groups.

Check-out:

Focus the questions on helping people close the meeting and go back out into their lives.

Consider using one or a mix of following questions:

Icebreaker Suggestions

An icebreaker is a game that is literally used ‘to break the ice’. They can take any form, but the idea is that they all help to give each other a fuller, more rounded view of the people you’re working with. .

Curiosity Questions

Games

In a virtual setting it’s very difficult to do the many kinds of physical games that are possible when people are physically together, but thinking about moving to releasing physical tensions is important for virtual meetings, and when you can combine them with something silly, they can be lighthearted and fun.

Bingo

Someone is selected to start off as the bingo caller. They think of something they’ve done recently like ‘eaten too much sugar’ (it’s got to be true of them). They ask the team - ‘Has anyone eaten too much sugar recently? ’ to raise a hand in the zoom REACT selection (bottom bar) if it’s true of them too. Notice who hasn’t raised their hand and select one of them to be the next bingo caller. If everyone lifts up their hands, then the bingo caller has another turn.

The bingo caller can ask for broad categories:

Two Truths and One Lie

Everyone writes 3 statements in the chat, two of them are true and one of them is a lie. Someone keeps a tally and everyone gets to vote on which is the lie. People then reveal in turn what is the lie.

Name - Place - Animal - Thing

Someone starts and chooses the name of a river (they say e.g.Thames), the same person then allocates Place or Animal or Thing to everyone else in the team. They then must come up with a list of whatever they were allotted (Places or Animals or Things ) that begin with the letters T H A M E S. show they’ve completed with the Hand Up REACTION on screen. The person who selected the name decides when everyone has finished whether it is the first or last Hand Up that is the winner. They then ask the Winner for the name of a e.g flower. The winner then allocates Place or Animal or Thing to everyone else in the team with the letters of that flower. And so the game continues.

Designing Your Own Virtual Ice Breaker

Consider these factors before choosing your virtual ice breaker:

A Note on Group Size and Bonding

Group size makes a difference to bonding and building trust. Breaking into small groups is useful for people to get to know one another in more depth. Once a group has 8 people, then consider splitting it into breakout groups for some activities. This is important for people who find large groups difficult (9 is a large group for some people); sma;er groups can help people build confidence in speaking.

Dividing people into smaller groups regularly will help people to get to know each other faster, especially if the breakout groups are randomly assigned, creating different groups each time. As the group continues to meet you can vary the size of the breakout groups and make them bigger, although bigger than 5 will take up time and be more difficult for people to relate to and learn from each other.

2. Group Support

Tips on How to Give and Receive Feedback

Being able to give and to receive feedback is important when working with others, when building relationships based on trust and honesty, and for being able to make progress – without feedback, people may be held back from reaching their full potential. Feedback, however, is not an easy thing to give and the awareness we could be upsetting someone often holds us back from sharing our ideas or feelings; it is also not an easy thing to receive – it can be hard not to take something someone has stated about you or your work personally. It is, therefore, important to focus on how we can give feedback in a constructive and compassionate way and how we can receive feedback without becoming offended. One way to start is by viewing feedback as a means of developing, of building resilience and of connecting with others.

Imagine that feedback is like having something stuck between your teeth. If no one tells you it’s there, you might spend the day wandering around and interacting with people with a piece of spinach announcing itself each time you speak. Many people may have seen it, but everyone has felt awkward enough not to say anything. Most people would rather somebody told them about the spinach. Feedback is like that. It can be difficult to say, but when shared with the right intention and the desire to help, it can be incredibly useful.

The following suggestions are designed to help facilitate the development of honest and open conversation, and the establishment of short feedback loops.

Giving Feedback

Here are some tips on how to give feedback:

Receiving Feedback

Here are some tips on how to receive feedback:

2. Group Support

A Quick Guide to Holding Effective Meetings

Running meetings that keep to time, enable constructive discussion and give everyone an opportunity to have their voices heard is a difficult thing to achieve, particularly if these meetings are being held on Zoom (or any other video conferencing platform). More often than not, people talk over each other (making it impossible to hear what is being said), and meetings drag on chaotically, leaving those present tired and frustrated.

Using a set structure and hand signals to communicate, however, can resolve such communication issues and can create harmonious, inclusive and even enjoyable meetings. As can using Zoom’s breakout room capacity (if you are holding meetings online) as it enables people go off into smaller groups where they can discuss an issue in depth, before sharing their ideas with the larger group.

To have constructive, harmonious and enjoyable meetings that keep to time, it is advisable to use the following components:

It is also important for each person participating to trust the facilitator and to use the hand signals responsibly (please see the ‘note to participants’ section at the end of this document for more information).

The rest of this document will explain what is meant by the components listed above (the content has been adapted from Extinction Rebellion’s various People’s Assembly manuals), and is divided into the following sections for ease of reference:

Facilitators

Every meeting should have a lead facilitator, who is responsible for ensuring that the meeting runs to time and that those present are able to share their ideas without chaos breaking loose. The facilitator does not need to remain the same across consecutive meetings. Indeed, it is more effective if this responsibility is shared out and people take it in turns to take on this role each meeting.

The facilitator’s role is to look out for the hand signals, prioritising them appropriately, and to ensure inclusivity – no one person should dominate. If one person is speaking for a long time, the facilitator can request that the person rounds up, using the appropriate hand signal, or if one person repeatedly wishes to make a point, the facilitator can prioritise those requesting to speak who have not yet spoken. At the start of the meeting, the lead facilitator should request that people put themselves on mute and only unmute when they are speaking – this prevents any background noise interference and also ensures that the meeting is not interrupted with people’s exclamations or comments.

Inclusion

The facilitator should moderate participation to ensure that everyone is able to speak, should they want to. The facilitator can engage participants by inviting people to speak and by, conversely, asking people not to speak. If people have not spoken, invite them to engage with a topic by asking for their opinion. If someone has occupied a lot of the airtime, explain that you would like to ensure everyone who would like to speak is able to and/or that you are conscious of the time. Rounds can also be used: after someone has shared an idea or proposal, each person in the group can be invited to share their response and comment in turn. As can timers, so that people contribute for a set amount of time, and the round up signal is used to inform them when that time is up. These approaches can ensure that the meeting stays inclusive and can prevent some voices from dominating.

The facilitator should also be sensitive to people’s needs. Give people the opportunity to share whether or not they have specific disabilities, inviting people to do it privately should they wish to). So many disabilities are invisible, so you should never assume that people do not have them.

Using breakout rooms can help maintain inclusion as it gives people a chance to talk in smaller groups, which is particularly useful for those who are shy. If breakout groups are used, then each room needs a facilitator, who will ensure that the discussion keeps to time and that everyone is able to participate, as in the main meeting room.

Pace

The facilitator should be aware of the pace and the fact that many people will not speak English as a first language. Ask anyone speaking too quickly to repeat what they are saying or slow down, and build in time for quiet reflection. Having one minute’s silence every 20 minutes, for example, allows people to rest their minds and reflect on or process what they have heard. As can having a short 10-20 second pause after every speaker.

However, it is also the facilitator’s role to ensure that what needs to be discussed in the meeting is discussed. Suggest that times be allocated to each agenda item, and have the group prioritise items, so that the pace of the meeting is relaxed and not too rushed, with some items possibly moved to the following meeting or to be settled by email or other means outside of the meeting.

The facilitator should also be aware that people may need concentration breaks. If it feels like concentration is dipping, give people a chance to take a break, to look away from the screen, to dance together to some music, or to play a game. This can help re-energise the group.

Building Trust

Facilitators can build trust into their meetings by giving people space to check-in and check-out at the beginning and end of a meeting. These are not only great ways of entering and closing the space, they are also ways of including everybody, and giving people the chance to learn more about each other. For ideas on types of check-in, see Getting to Know One Another.

It can also be a good idea to read out a regenerative culture reminder, or some kind of statement to capture how the group present can work together, after people have checked-in, but before going through the agenda. If needed, use the example below.

A Reminder: We are transitioning to a regenerative culture. It is a culture of respect and listening, in which people arrive on time to commitments. And deal with conflicts when they arise, using short feedback loops to talk about disagreements and issues without blaming and shaming. It is a culture in which we cultivate healthy boundaries by slowing down our yeses and returning tasks when we are unable to follow through. It is a culture in which we look after ourselves and others, understanding that it is natural to make mistakes: they are a key part of the learning process and provide opportunities for growth and development. It is a healthy resilient culture built on care and support. We are all crew.

Minute-Taker / Note-Takers

The lead note-taker is responsible for keeping the minutes and recording what is being said in the main meeting. Again, unless this role is part of someone’s job description, it is good to rotate who is the note-taker, so that everyone can have an experience of fully participating in the meeting.

If breakout rooms are used, then each group should appoint a note-taker, who will record the group’s discussion and share the key findings back with the main group when the breakout rooms are closed.

Hand Signals

Point (or ‘I would like to speak’):

When someone in the group wants to say something, they should point their index finger up and wait for the facilitator to let them have their turn in speaking. It is vital that people do not talk over anyone else and wait for their turn. If someone, who has not yet said anything, puts their finger up to speak, whilst others have spoken a lot, then the facilitator should give that person priority over the 'stack' (the queue or order of speakers based on the order they raised their finger to speak).

Direct Point:

If someone has directly relevant information to what is being said, then they can make the 'direct point' hand signal and the facilitator will let them provide that information immediately after the person speaking has finished. Think of the direct point hand signal as being like brackets, which are used to add critical information that a speaker is not aware of e.g. “the meeting has now been changed to Wednesday”. The direct point signal is not an excuse to jump the queue just to make a point. It is important that people do not abuse this signal as otherwise it can make all present lose trust in the process.

Wavy Hands (I Agree):

The 'wavy hands' signal of approval is used to show agreement or support for something someone has said. It instantly indicates how much consensus there is towards something and can highlight how popular an idea is. If everybody erupts into a forest of waving hands during a breakout session, for example, the note taker can see that this is one of the more popular points made and it will become one of the key bullet points fed back to the main meeting room.

Clarification:

If someone says something that is unclear, people can hold their hand in a ‘C’ shape as the 'clarification' signal. The facilitator will then pause the discussion giving the person who made the signal the opportunity to ask a question to clear up any confusion. This signal should be given priority above all others as it means that someone does not understand something and it may thus inhibit their ability to engage in the discussion.

Technical point:

If someone has information that is immediately relevant to the running of the meeting, they make a 'technical point' signal by making a ‘T’ shape with their hands. This is only to be used for concerns external to the discussion that need to be addressed immediately e.g. “We only have ten minutes of this meeting left” or “I am the note taker and I need the loo so can someone else take over?” The facilitator should stop the discussion to address the technical point.

Round Up:

Facilitators need to ensure that no one speaks for more than necessary (two minutes is a suggested maximum amount of time as it encourages people to be concise). If someone has been speaking for two minutes (or whatever the set amount of time is), the facilitator makes the ‘round up’ hand signal by repeatedly making a circular motion with their hands (as if they are tracing a ball). This must be done sensitively, but firmly as it ensures that no one person dominates the meeting.

Speak up:

If someone is speaking too quietly or they cannot be heard, others can ask them to raise their voice by raising and lowering their hands with palms open and facing up.

Break Out Rooms

To brainstorm ideas or discuss a subject in depth, use the breakout room feature on Zoom, as it will give people space to discuss their ideas in smaller groups. Please note, breakout rooms can only be created by the person who is logged in as the host (though the host can transfer hosting to another person, if desired).

Whoever is the host must look at the control panel at the bottom of the screen for the button stating Breakout Rooms.

The host should divide the number of participants in total by the number of people wanted in each group, and Zoom will automatically assign people to rooms. Once they have done this, they can look at the lists to check that all rooms have the right number of people.

If certain people need to work together, the host can manually assign people to rooms.

The host can also set the options, such as timings, for the breakout rooms (see the example outline below), and can communicate with all the breakout rooms by using the broadcast button to send messages about timing or other important points to consider.

For each breakout room to run effectively, it will need a facilitator and a note-taker. The note-taker should be responsible for feeding the key ideas back to the rest of the group. If there are several breakout groups then consider having a limited number of ideas to feedback to ensure the meeting keeps to time e.g. each group might be asked to choose three key ideas for their note-taker to feedback.

Note to Participants

You are each responsible for creating a considerate space in which everyone is able to participate. It is, therefore, important to reflect on your own involvement in the meeting.

To create a constructive, harmonious and engaging meeting environment, consider the following points:

2. Group Support

Building Healthy & Empowered Teams

Introduction

This workshop and guide were developed because “there's no such thing as a structureless group”, as explained by Jo Freeman in her text, The Tyranny of Structureless. Often people think that when there is no explicit power structure or hierarchy, that everyone is equal. However, this is not the case. There are always implicit power dynamics at play. The vast majority of people have grown up in hierarchical societies from family, to family, to workplaces, there’s someone in charge and someone who has to listen to them. These are explicit hierarchies. But there are also implicit hierarchies, such as the cool kids at school who call the shots and get the back seat of the bus. Those kids don’t have any official titles that give them that power, they have it because others want to be seen and liked by them. This is one example, but implicit power can mean an advantage for one person over another due to their sex, age, race, class, abilities, etc. These injustices are present in society and will be present in our team unless we do something about it. By proactively deciding how we organise, we can reflect our values and leave behind ways of working that reproduce the injustices in society.

Building teams is an important part of community building because just as you want a good culture in the community, it grows from the people who are organising and how they relate to each other. When we build a team, the culture we create sets the tone for the community project that grows from it. Do you want the culture to be one where everyone turns to you and is lost without you? Or one where people are willing to step up and use their own judgement, especially when you need to take a break from the project?

Trust is essential to working as a team. By having a clear structure of how you organise, you can be clear about what to expect from each other and where your boundaries lie. This will enable you to build trust which is essential for a healthy, productive team and in order to create an experimental culture. See more on Building a Culture of Trust & Support.

Most importantly, teams stick together when the going gets tough because people don’t want to bail on their friends. Generally, people join community projects and activist groups because they are interested in the activities or they want to change their community or world. However, people stay for friendship. These means teams in volunteer contexts should make room for getting to know each other and having a laugh outside of a meeting context. Cups of tea at each other’s house, potluck dinners, pints in the beer garden, or just spending part of the meeting chatting is an important part of being a team and should not be underestimated.

What is a team?

A team is a group of people who are dependent on each other in order to achieve a shared purpose. Creating a team is important because otherwise you’re a random bunch of people pulling in different directions and prone to distrust. A team has a sense of unity in achieving their shared purpose and they collaborate and support each other

We recommend a team is a maximum of 6 - 8 people. Why not more than 8 people? Because as you can see in this picture, the number of connections you have to maintain dramatically increases after 6 - 8 people. 6 - 8 is manageable. After 8 your team can create subteams, e.g., one person working on the newsletter, then it expands to 2 and then maybe 3.

zzz.jpg

When the team becomes more than 8 people, you may want to start thinking about creating off-shoot teams, as shown in the diagram below.

zzzz.jpg zzzzz.jpg Image reference: Act, Build, Change

What makes a good team?

There are 5 key elements that make up a good team:

Feeling safe (Trust)
This is by far the most important. It determines how easily members can take risks, make mistakes and ask for help without fear of retribution from the rest of the team.

Dependability
Effective teams are ones where members can rely on each other to deliver work when agreed.

Structure & Clarity
How are decisions made? Who is doing which role? Do I know exactly how our work is structured?

Meaning
Is the work personally meaningful to people in the team?

Impact
Do people feel like their contribution is having a significant impact on the overall purpose of the team or organisation?

Here are some questions you can ask yourself as a team:

  1. Can we, as a team, take a risk without feeling insecure or embarrassed?
  2. Can we count on each other to deliver high-quality results on time?
  3. Are our goals, roles, and execution plans clear?
  4. Are we working on something that is personally meaningful to each of us?
  5. Do we fundamentally believe that the work that we’re doing matters?

Volunteer team structures

Team structure matters more than the amount of free-time people have to give:

The difference is 4 hours/volunteer/month vs 40 hours! 10x difference. Also, people who receive more training are more committed time-wise.

What do we want to do?

Shared Purpose

What is a shared purpose and why do we need one?

Teams need a purpose that engages their commitment and orients them in a shared direction. They need something that gives them meaning and to work towards! The purpose needs to be shared because it needs to be something that each person buys into — that’s why it can be really useful to create the purpose together.

Teams should have 3 elements in a shared purpose:

  1. Clear: What exactly are we trying to achieve?
  2. Challenging: A challenge can be motivating and can encourage dreaming big.
  3. Consequential: Where does it fit into the bigger picture? A shared purpose in a volunteer team should tie back to how it fits into the overall purpose of the organisation or the wider group you’re working with.

How to create a shared purpose

What do we want to achieve? What does the world look like when your team has finished their work? This should be written like the outcome you want to see, e.g., complete the sentence… ‘If our team fulfilled its purpose, there would be…’ or ‘We imagine a world where…’. For example, if your team If the Aylesbury ‘Reclaiming your Local Council’ team fulfilled its purpose, there would be participatory democracy at the local council level, independent of party politics. A useful facilitation tool for helping a team to create a shared purpose is pyramiding.

  1. Solo reflection: Everyone writes down their understanding of the team’s purpose - 5 mins
  2. Pair share: Share your statement with another person & combine - 15 mins
  3. Pair the pairs: Each pair shares and combines their statement with another pair - 15 mins
  4. Each group shares with the whole group - 10 mins
  5. Create one statement that captures the all key points - 15 mins

If one statement cannot be reached within the meeting time. You can ask one person to take the final statement from each of the groups and then present it to the team at the next meeting. The team can then decide whether this reflects their shared purpose and adjust it as necessary.

Projects

What projects do we need to reach to achieve our purpose?

Now let’s consider what we need to do to achieve our purpose: what milestones do we want to set? Projects & milestones are important to set out as it provides valuable evidence of when a team is making progress towards their purpose. When projects are completed and milestones achieved, teams should celebrate each other for making meaningful progress! Celebrating others and recognising achievement is an important part of building a healthy culture of trust & support.

First, we’re going to do some divergent thinking. That means thinking about all the possible things we could do or goals we could set. Then we’ll narrow it down with some convergent thinking.

Divergent Thinking - 12 mins

  1. Solo brainstorm all goals on post-its - 7 mins
  2. Write down the opposite of a goal you’d want to set - 5 mins
  3. Then try switch that opposite-goal to something positive, a goal you would want to set - 5 mins

Convergent Thinking

  1. Map them on scale of winnable (achievable) and worthwhile (impactful)
  2. Consider whether it’s better that some happen before others (maybe number the order they need to happen in)
  3. Consider which ones would be the most enjoyable to do, that suit your interests best
  4. On the basis of either of the previous criteria, prioritise which one you’re team will work towards first

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Then take those one or two milestones you want to work towards. Brainstorm how you would achieve them- what steps and activities need to be taken in order to achieve that milestone. If you discover that one isn’t so feasible, then you can pick another milestone.

Roles

Why do we need roles?

We need roles because it’s really useful to:

What roles do we need?

So you’ve talked about the milestones your team needs to achieve and some activities to get there. Now let’s group those activities into roles. Roles should be based on outcomes you want to achieve, e.g., finding a venue for a fundraiser.

There may be some roles that will need to be done on an ongoing and relevant to the team generally (e.g., newsletter writer). And there may be other roles that will be project based (finding a venue for the fundraiser).

  1. Brainstorm all the tasks or activities that need to be done to achieve your milestones or in a project.
  2. Group the tasks you think make sense together.
  3. Discuss any disagreements.
  4. Decide on the wording of the roles… (more on decision making later).

Nominating people to roles

This is an alternative to a more formal process outlined here. Given the activities we’ve outlined, what roles do people see for themselves? What interests align with the activities we’ve prioritised? Do a ‘go-around’ which is where everyone in the team gets a chance to speak.

This may not be the most speedy way to decide roles, but it’s important to get to know each other. You can either let people speak freely or time each other so that everyone has 3 minutes each, for example.

Each person states...

It’s perfectly fine to share roles if that suits best. You can withdraw your consent and make changes to these at any time, so go with something that’s good enough to try and make changes later. This allows you to make decisions and move forwards and change things when you have more info based on your experience.

The Dark Side of Roles

Roles can tend to emphasise an individualistic perspective, which undermines team effort. They can lead to team mates focusing on their role (I’m just doing what's in my mandate), above achieving the purpose of the team. Individual roles become more salient because they're written down. This could be counteracted by consenting to group agreements which emphasise the team’s cultural values.

More important than roles are projects. Projects within a team can be a group of 2 - 4 people working on a specific task or towards a specific goal. Project teams are small enough that roles are not as important and people can keep track of who’s doing what within the team. Projects like this can feel more collaborative than the idea of roles.

Roles can be good for clarity of who is doing what and structure of teams. This clarity means psychological safety!

How do we want to work together?

This section is about helping your team figure out how you want to communicate, make decisions, and give feedback and set boundaries.

Decision Making

Why should we decide how to make decisions?

A mutually agreed decision making process creates clarity and clarity can prevent some types of conflict. People need to know that proposals and ideas they bring forward are going to be handled in a fair & democratic way. This encourages people to bring more ideas and take risks when they are confident the group will respect an agreed decision-making process. (They feel their ideas will be assessed on its merits rather than them having to fight for space to be heard in the group). And so a clear decision making process can help to create psychological safety amongst team members. Also, having a say in how the team functions is empowering - it models the democracy we want to see.

Group vs Role Decisions

Group decisions are great to get input from everyone. But they can take a long time so we suggest you only do them when necessary. Most decisions should be made by someone in a role. If a decision is recurring delegate it to a role by adding it to an existing one or creating a new role.

People can still input into a decision if the role holder uses the advice process. This is where you ask advice from those most affected by the decision and/or those with expertise (including lived experience). The role holder doesn’t have to follow the advice, they consider it and weigh it against all considerations.

Who should make decisions when?

One guideline of how often to use each process can be seen below:

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Individuals: If a decision has a smaller impact or can be corrected easily, that is an indicator that an individual could make it alone. An example of this would be writing a single social media post for a shared page (as each individual social media post isn’t that important).

Group: For more important and irreversible decisions, that is a time to seek consent from the group rather than deciding individually. An example of this might be moving office. Moving office would have quite a large impact and is largely irreversible so it’s best to seek consent from the group before deciding this yourself!

Individuals deciding for groups: If the group cannot reach consent, then it is best the group delegates and trusts one person to make the decision, who has the responsibility to consult the relevant people and gather advice before doing so. For example, when the group cannot decide who goes to meet the local councillor, you could pick one person who takes all of the considerations (what is the meeting about, who has knowledge in that area) into account and accept whatever decision they make.

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Teams can decide what decisions they’re happy for team members to make themselves, and what ones they want to make as a group.

Group Decision Making Processes

There are many ways to make decisions and many different types of decisions. Here are some different decision making processes:

There are many more decision making processes. The Decider app helps you determine what decision method suits the decision you’re trying to make. All of these methods have pros and cons which you can see if you click on the buttons at the bottom of the Decider app homepage. Next, we will describe consent based decision making in more detail, since it’s the process we recommend.

A key thing about consent is that it can be withdrawn at any time. You would then bring a new proposal and bring it to the weekly meeting.

3 Levels of agreement:

  1. Support: Enthusiastic to lukewarm support
  2. Support with concerns: Would like to share some concerns but OK with proposal going ahead
  3. Objection: Veto the proposal going ahead until the proposal is changed

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Objections:

Whatever decision making process you decide to use in your team, it’s important that you DO decide on one. Not having a clear decision making process can lead to stagnation. Consent allows you to try things and change them when they don’t work - this keeps us experimenting.

Sample Decision Making Agreements

  1. We want to make decisions in a way that is inclusive and effective.
  2. We use group decision making when it’s important to do so, not by default.
  3. If a decision is recurring, we delegate it to someone in a role unless it’s important that that decision is made by the team.
  4. We use consent based decision making for group decisions. We recognise that consent can be withdrawn at any time (and the person withdrawing consent is encouraged to bring a new proposal).
  5. We pass a proposal when it’s safe enough to try, not perfect.
  6. Someone making a decision seeks the advice of those affected by the decision beforehand. They take the advice into consideration, but do not have to follow it.
  7. If a decision creates greater workload, the decision is made by the person who would take on that workload.

How to decide how to decide?

You can use the most inclusive decision making method to make the decision to use a different method. For example, the team could use formal consensus to agree on the decision making agreements (which could include consent based decision making which would be used from then on).

Group Agreements

Why do we need group agreements?

Group agreements are about understanding each other’s values around working, how you’d like to work together as a team and agreeing on things you can hold each other to. Group agreements are about understanding each other’s values around working, how you’d like to work together as a team and agreeing on things you can hold each other to. This is extremely important in building a healthy culture of psychological safety within teams, as now each person knows what other people in the team cares about. Psychological safety and trust are some of the most important things in determining the effectiveness in a team.

There are many different types of group agreements we’re going to talk about here, e.g., ones around decision making to guidelines for meetings and giving feedback.

You don’t have to decide all group agreements within the same meeting. They can be spaced out, but it’s better to do them sooner rather than later because group agreements help set up the culture and help you keep each other to account. You can also copy the sample group agreement we have here and then change them as the need arises.

Brainstorming Your Agreements

Now let’s make some group agreements and agree to them! Use the pyradming process described above to ask the team…

  1. Try to make them practical.
  2. Take for example "it's alright to disagree" - how would this work practically? You could add "... by challenging what a person says, not talking the person themselves."
  3. Another example is Confidentiality. This is also quite vague and you will need to discuss what people understand by it and what level of confidentiality they expect from the group.
    • Solo: reflect on the question and write out your ideas for agreements
    • Pairs: people get into pairs and combine any similar proposed agreements
    • Round: As a group, each person shares what’s important to them and not to repeat any that have already been mentioned (Arrange them into clusters of post-its on the wall if possible)
  4. This should be captured in a place everyone can see.

Consenting to Your Agreements

After you’ve captured each of the agreements somewhere everyone can see, you’re ready to use consent based decision making! Here are a series of steps… Remember they don’t have to be perfect, you can change and update them at any time.

It’s important to explain the process to your team before diving in and to be strict with keeping them to questions during the question round. Otherwise, some people will start reacting when they may not fully understand the proposal which causes a lot of confusion. When new people join the team, they are asked to read the group agreements and consent to them.

Feedback

How to give feedback?
It’s important to have a way of addressing issues if something isn’t working. We encourage you to be open and honest about when something isn’t working for you by giving feedback. Honesty is essential for building trust, and trust is essential for healthy teams.

Feedback is a really important part of organising as a volunteer team where no one person is in charge. It will help the team work better or help you participate more fully, or both, so we can think of it like a gift to the team. The purpose of feedback is to help each other reach their full potential and also to help us as a group to move towards our shared purpose. It’s important to note that you should give positive feedback when things are working well. This helps build trust within the team and lets people know they are appreciated. It makes it so much easier to give other feedback later on so it is not just a tool when things are going wrong!

What to give feedback on?
Feedback can be useful when you feel a difference between how things currently are and a better way in which things could be.

Feedback can be about small things that your team mates might do that piss you off, little things you appreciate or major things about the direction of the team’s work. We want to encourage a culture of valuing each other, raising concerns and being honest, so we can work together as best we can.

Example: I want to chat about people arriving late for meetings. I make an effort to arrive on time for commitments and I feel disappointed & let-down when people arrive late. It means we get less done overall and this work is something I really care about and is close to my heart. My request is that people arrive a few minutes early for a meeting so we can start on time and even have a social chat beforehand!

When to give feedback?
We suggest that feedback is welcome at any meeting. If the feedback is primarily relevant to one person, we suggest you share it with them outside of the meeting. If it’s relevant to the whole group, the weekly meeting is the most appropriate place to share it.

Giving feedback to a team/in a meeting:
The person describes their feedback and if they have an idea on how to resolve it, they write it down as a proposal or they share it with their teammates ahead of the meeting. (Remember not all work has to happen in the meeting, the more that can happen outside of it, the better.) If the person with the feedback doesn’t know how to resolve it, the team could try to work it out together in the meeting, or a small group could work on it outside the meeting and make a proposal for the following week.

Framework for giving feedback to an individual:

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Tips for giving feedback:

Tips for receiving feedback:

Resources for reading more about feedback: Tips on How to Give and Receive Feedback

Use the Consenting to Your Agreements process above to help your team decide what’s important to them about giving feedback. Here are some sample agreements that include giving feedback, meetings and general ways of working.

Sample Group Agreements for Meetings & General Ways of Working

How to help your team along

Leadership

What do you think of when you think of a leader? Who do you imagine? Usually we think of leaders as someone, usually a man, a CEO type figure, who has a vision and tells people what to do and lead s the team to victory. This is one style of leadership - a style that will probably not be that helpful if you want a team that can manage itself, a team where anyone can step up when they see the need for something to be done - a collaborative team.

There are many different styles of leadership, such as visionary, mentoring, facilitation and thought leadership. We’re going to focus on facilitation leadership because it is the most appropriate approach when creating an empowered team. Facilitation leadership is helping the team achieve their purpose and ensuring everyone can contribute so the team can harness its collective wisdom.

Different styles of leadership may be useful for different aspects of a team. For example, someone may have an idea for a specific action that they take the lead on organising in a more traditional way. But generally, we recommend facilitative leadership for helping the team achieve it’s shared purpose.

There are many different types of facilitation as there are different types of leadership, for example, some facilitators just prefer to be the referee and help the team stick to the agreed process. However, facilitation can also be more than keeping track of the order in which people have their hand up! Facilitators can set the tone of a meeting and so influence the culture.

The purpose of facilitation is to help the group move towards their shared purpose. A facilitator is there to ensure that everyone in the group has equal opportunities to bring their individual gifts to the table, which in turn makes the whole group better off. Good facilitation helps us harness the collective wisdom of the entire group, by making sure that everyone participates fully & equitably in the group environment.

Facilitative Leadership Skills

Here are some key skills for facilitative leaders that spell CARES:

C: Celebrate people's contributions and achievements!

A: Aligned with the purpose

R: Encouraging taking action points/responsibility

E: Creating an environment in which everyone can contribute fully

S: Synthesising what’s being said & making requests explicit. Sometimes people don’t

Rotate the facilitator and the leader

People learn by doing and so there’s no better way to become a good facilitator than trying it out. Encourage your teammates to give it a go and let them find their own way even if it’s not how you would do it. Check out the feedback section to learn more about how to ask if people want feedback and then give good feedback.

Facilitative leadership can be done separate from facilitating a meeting. People often assume there can only be one leader, however, teams can be leaderful. That means anyone can step up when they see the need for leadership. Explicitly changing the leader can also be really useful. Being a leader can be tiring, so just as geese flying in a V rotate the leader, empowered teams should too.

Facilitation Leadership Resources

Facilitation as a Leadership Style

Facilitation is a Leadership Skill

The Art of Facilitative Leadership

General Facilitation Resources Meeting structure A Quick Guide to Holding Effective Meetings

Facilitation Tools

Here are some different ways of running a meeting that can help your teammates contribute to the fullest. Some processes can draw people out and make the task a lot more fun.

Process Tools

Tools: (e.g., double diamond, need lots of different methods for different things )

Building a Culture of Trust & Support

A study by Google found that building psychological safety is really important for effective and healthy teams. What is psychological safety? It’s the shared belief that teammates have that they can throw out ideas without fear of judgement, they can take interpersonal risks and know they will not be rejected or embarrassed for speaking up, it’s a feeling of being comfortable enough to be yourself - your full self. So although the context of a professional working environment such as Google, is quite different from that of community organising, this sounds like a feeling we want to create in our teams. One of the researchers on the project said ‘If only one person or a small group spoke all the time, the collective intelligence declined.’’ (more here).

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Here are the key aspects of building psychological safety according to Google’s study. Just remember: CACCOW

C: Celebration - Recognise people and their efforts. Make your teammates feel valued and make the work fun.

A: Autonomy: Allow people to do work as they see fit. Generally, if someone is doing the work, e.g., designing and printing the flyer, they should be the one who gets to have decision making power over it.

C: Caring: Don’t just meet for work, invest in personal relationships!

C: Clarity: How do we decide and do we know who’s doing what? The sections on decision making and group agreements are really relevant here.

O: Openness: Share information broadly and honestly. Transparency is a really important aspect of building trust.

W: Wholeness - Encourage people to bring their full selves and role model this through vulnerability. People generally don’t open up unless you open up to them, so be brave and share a personal story.

Resources on Building Psychological Safety

Relevant Reading

2. Group Support

How to deal with conflict in your groups

Every group and relationship experiences conflict, regardless of whether we are trying to bring about a revolution or play dominoes on the street. It’s simply part of being human, it’s also a particular feature of living in a world which is more mobile. Humans used to live in largely homogeneous groups, whereas today many different world-views and cultures are present in our communities.

So, it’s no surprise that so many of us struggle to collaborate with each other and then have difficulties finding a healthy way through conflict. Conflict is bound to happen while we unlearn old habits and develop new skills and awareness to work cooperatively and challenge oppression.

This guide is aimed at people and groups working for social change who want to develop an understanding of conflict and how to deal with it. There are sections on what conflict is, the benefits of addressing it, and tools to work through conflict and maintain healthy and effective social change groups.

What is conflict?

Conflict often be signalling:

Conflicts are often painful, distressing, frustrating and destructive. Our personal, social and historical experiences of it are usually negative and traumatic. And so, we want to find a better way of navigating tension, conflict and disagreement because how we respond to it shapes whether conflict will tear us apart, or change, evolve and strengthen us.

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5 Stages of Conflict:

1 - Discomfort
A little niggle that tells you a conflict might be brewing.

2 - Incident
A minor clue that acts as evidence of the growing conflict.

3 - Misunderstanding
The situation has escalated to a degree that one or both parties have developed false assumptions about the other.

4 - Tension
The clues here are much more obvious. This could be an argument, an emotional outburst, or out-of-character behaviour.

5 - Crisis
Breaking point for the relationship. By this stage all communication will focus on the conflict.

Why deal with it?

Conflict isn’t a problem - it’s an opportunity

Conflict can help us grow - in ourselves, in our relationships with others and in how we work together, in our groups and systems, and in getting clearer on the purpose that we share. We see a lot of conflict as offering an opportunity to evolve and build our collective power.

Understanding our conflicts and working through them can be a deeply empowering process for everyone involved. It can be hugely energising to find a way to connect with people you have a conflict with, and find a way through the conflict that everyone can live with instead of pretending it’s not there. Imagine you’re part of a group where people communicate honestly with each other, where everyone knows their own feelings, where there is a sincere desire to understand differences between people in the group, and to find solutions that are genuinely satisfactory for everyone.

Groups with a healthy approach to conflict will be better prepared to go the long haul together, and are better able to effectively bring about social change. Clear communication and trust for each other enable groups to make better decisions which takes into account more points of view. It also saves the time and energy that is sometimes spent on avoiding conflict.

Methods of Handling Conflict

Good communication

In this section, we’ll explore what we can do to minimise conflict with others and deal with it effectively before it escalates. We will be looking at tools and skills to improve communication that will help to de-escalate a conflict.

Empathy Circles

An Empathy Circle is a structured dialogue process based on mutual active listening. The process increases constructive dialogue and mutual understanding by ensuring that each person feels fully heard to their satisfaction.

Process:

  1. The first person selects who they will speak to
  2. They speak about whatever comes up for them for a set time (3-5mins)
  3. The listener reflects back what they are hearing until the speaker feels heard and understood to their satisfaction
  4. Then it is the listeners turn to select who they will speak to and for that new listener to reflect back what they are hearing
  5. Everyone helps hold the circle process by monitoring and sticking to the steps.

Nonviolent Communication

Nonviolent Communication can help process tensions in a way that supports honesty with care and creates conditions for connection and better collaboration.

A simple way to do this is to:

  1. State the issue you observe
  2. Highlight how it made you feel
  3. Say what you need to be able to work well
  4. Make a request of the other person

Here is a good resource to learn more about how to do this: Guide to 4 part NVC Process (PDF)

Active Listening

Active listening is about suspending our own thought processes and making a conscious effort to understand another person’s perspective.

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Try this exercise for practice:

Practice in threes. You’ll need two people to practice this. Each take a role - speaker, listener or observer.

  1. The speaker speaks for about 2 minutes on a topic of their choice, the more controversial the better!
  2. The listener actively listens and then summarises the key ideas and any emotions they observed, as succinctly as possible (1 minute).
  3. The observer also actively listens and gives constructive feedback to the listener on their summary and anything they missed.
  4. The speaker then has a chance to say how it felt and to comment on the listening.
  5. Keep switching roles until everyone has had a chance to try each role.
Practical Steps

Creating Group Agreements

Creating Conflict Group Agreements will help to figure out how the group will handle conflicts and tensions when they inevitably arise.

These could include:

Conflict Mapping

Use this tool when your group wants to get a clearer picture of the issues that are underlying the conflict situation. It helps your group to map out the underlying needs and fears of each person involved in the conflict and to find common ground. It’s a structured way of moving forward in a conflict that is much easier to facilitate than an open discussion.

This tool could be facilitated by someone in your group, including someone directly involved in the conflict (as long as they feel able to stay neutral when encouraging others contributions), by a neutral friend or external facilitator.

Materials: a large piece of paper e.g. flip chart or a roll of wallpaper and some marker pens.

Step 1: What’s the issue?

In the middle of the paper write down what the issue is. Aim for neutral and unemotional language and try to keep it an open-ended statement.

Step 2: Who’s involved?

Decide who the people involved in the conflict are and draw lines on the paper so that each of them has a segment of the paper. (E.g. if the conflict seems to be between two members of the household, then give each of these people a segment of the paper). Also give one segment to the other members of the coop together, provided they have substantially the same needs in this situation.

Step 3: What do they need? What do they fear?

Ask each person in turn what their wants, needs and fears are. Discourage others from interrupting. Write the wants, needs and fears down on their segment of the paper.

Try asking questions like: “Your solution to the problem is to do... What needs of yours will this meet?” to help people get to these underlying interests and needs. The list of needs will be more helpful if the words or phrases are specific, so words like “respect” or “understanding”.

Fears are concerns, anxieties or worries that someone has that are relevant to the problem e.g. being judged or criticised, fear of failure, doing the wrong thing, loss of face.

Step 4: Reading the map

Invite everyone to look at the map and consider others’ wants, needs and fears that they hadn’t taken into account before. Mapping the needs helps us to see what it’s like to be in another person's shoes. C ommon ground -The map may also show where the common ground is within the group with some values and needs showing up in each segment. The map can also help start a conversation to build new areas of common ground, for example where one person has mentioned a need that others have not mentioned during the mapping, but can also share,

Step 5: Looking for new solutions

You’ve created the map and seen everyone’s needs, now comes the creative part, looking for solutions that meet those needs. After the more analytical mapping phase you might want to play a game or move to a new room or change seats before you start this step. Use an ideastorm to collect ideas. This is a quickfire creative thinking activity designed to gather as many ideas as possible. It also allows people to spark off each other in an uncritical environment.

How to run the exercise:

  1. Give people a few minutes to reflect on their own. Ask them to think of potential solutions that would meet everyone’s needs.
  2. Ask people to say their ideas for solutions that will meet everyone’s needs. Let them know that all ideas are welcome, however silly they may seem.
  3. Write all the ideas on a large sheet of paper (flipchart, wallpaper etc).
  4. Remind people that this isn’t the space for critiquing the ideas – you’re just gathering them now, and assessing them will happen later.
  5. If the group runs out of steam, rephrase what you’re looking for and give them a chance to come up with more ideas – there’s often a second wind, so don’t be afraid to ride out the silence.

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Step 6: Choosing the most suitable option

When you have some possible solutions, bring the ideastorm to a close. Help the group find the best solution. It may already be clear that one solution fits the bill.

If not, see if it helps to rate each of the solutions using this scale: 1. very useful; 2. lacking some elements; 3. not practicable.

Other questions to explore might be: Is it feasible? Is it enough to solve the problem? Does it satisfy everyone’s needs adequately? Is it fair? Do you think you can live with it? Sometimes if the problem seems huge, you might not be able to find a solution for the whole thing, but you can solve parts of it. It doesn’t fix it, but it helps make it more manageable.

Step 7: Implementing the plan

It can be easy to come to a decision and then forget to work out how you will make it happen. Questions to ask include: What has to be done? Who will do what? When will each task be completed? Maybe timetable a review to check that it’s all happening.

2. Group Support

Holding Emotional Spaces

It is important to welcome emotions in your group. Reaching out to people in your communities and focusing energy on connecting with them is difficult work and requires ongoing attention, so it is important to create space and time to share how you are feeling with others. Not only can this help you connect with yourself, it can also help you avoid burnout.

In your groups, consider creating opportunities for deep check-ins, so that you can support one another and overcome any hurdles you might be facing. Deep check-ins function as emotional spaces, in which everyone is able to share what they are feeling, what they are struggling with, and what brings them joy. When we can express ourselves openly, without shame, it enables us to fully process and reflect on our emotions. This is not therapy. Instead, it is a tool we can use to help build networks of mutual caring. If we make space for our own emotions and those of others, we can create a culture of support and model the society we wish to live in.

Emotional spaces are so important because we are not generally encouraged to express our emotions in our daily lives in a healthy way. We all feel, but we aren’t able to let those feelings out and we aren’t taught how to seek help for them. We are not raised to be comfortable with emotion. We see powerful feelings as shameful or even dangerous things. It is not socially acceptable, for example, to cry in public; unless we perceive that the person crying has a ‘good reason’ to cry we may consider them weak or unstable; even if we are sympathetic, our instinct is to shut it down, through fussing and fixing or even through force.

Can you remember being a child and your caregiver becoming angry because you were expressing sadness or frustration? Indeed, much of the advice around childhood tantrums – an ordinary stage of human development – centres around how parents/carers can best snuff them out. Very little, if any, is said about the right of the child to have their emotions, and to express the strength of their feelings in a non-violent way. When parents/carers respond to tantrums or crying or whining in an angry, adversarial way, the child learns that their feelings are not welcome. They do not learn how to deal with their feelings, only that they should distance themselves from them. Children may subsequently come to fear their emotions, to ignore them and/or to bury them. These childhood wounds carry through to adulthood and have big repercussions both for our health and wellbeing, and for our relationships with others.

You can’t selectively numb emotions, they are all natural. Pain and grief come from the same place as joy and pleasure, so when we suppress the ‘negative’ emotions in an effort to protect ourselves, we also tamper our ability to share happiness and to be at peace. And how can we possibly hope to form meaningful connections if we are so busy protecting ourselves? Intimacy cannot be achieved without vulnerability; it is only when we stop feeling shame about our natural feelings that we are able to allow ourselves to be vulnerable to others.

Your ability to hold an effective emotional space will depend on your group’s trust for one another, how far you have set the foundation of mutual respect and fellowship.

Resources

Try to find a quiet, comfortable space where people can talk without being overheard. It may be a good idea to have a timer so that you can ensure everyone has the same amount of time to speak. Tissues as well will be useful – we are welcoming people’s feelings and there might be tears! Tea, coffee and biscuits are good resources too.

Be sure to allow time for decompression after the sharing, and a space where the group can reconvene in a casual way after an intensive shared experience. It may also be a good idea, especially if you have a big group, to have a gathering time 10-15 minutes before the ‘starting in earnest’ time, to give people opportunity to arrive at a leisurely pace and get into the right headspace beforehand.

If it feels right, and you have the time, a period of group meditation, or just listening to calming music together, doing some yoga or stretching can be an effective exercise in mental alignment. This will depend on the preferences of the group, and their level of comfort with each other.

Remember, as with any meeting, to consider the time of day and the venue to ensure it is accessible to everyone. Incorporating technology (Zoom conferencing etc.) may be a useful way to include those who cannot necessarily be there in person.

Roles

Facilitator

The facilitators role is to ‘hold the space’ and guide the session: introduce the deep check-in, kick it off and support participants where needed. You are not in charge, you are managing the space not the people in it.

The facilitator always takes a turn in the group – you are part of the group. It can be useful to take your turn first as sometimes you can model being open about your feelings, and this helps the rest of the group.

When it’s someone’s turn to speak, the others generally don’t say anything. However, on rare occasions some gentle words of encouragement from the facilitator may be useful (e.g. “it’s OK to cry”). Though be aware that if a lot of people offer such verbal support, it can ‘take over’ the person’s turn.

Before deep check-in, ensure that you have practised facilitating group spaces and are comfortable with the responsibility of holding a safe emotional space. It can help to have a co-facilitator, whose job is to provide reassurance to you, handle timings, and generally help with making the group work well.

Buddies

For some groups, it might work well to create a buddy system. This sort of system works effectively if people are sitting close together and allows each person in the group to have someone offering them additional emotional support if it is needed - if, for example, they become upset, their buddy can offer them tissue or a hand to hold / an arm around the shoulder. If this approach is being taken, it can be discussed at the beginning during the facilitator’s introductory talk. Please note, it is important to ensure people have the opportunity to express whether or not they are comfortable with physical contact.

Conflict resolution point person

It is important to decide on a clear process to resolve conflicts, which is agreed upon by the group. The facilitator or co-facilitator can handle conflicts, or you may prefer another member of the group be there for conflict resolution responsibilities. It may be that someone who has experience with non-violent communication or de-escalation is well suited to this role.

Meeting structure

You will want to keep things open, but a loose structure will help to enable sharing.

This is an example meeting based on 8 people with 90 minutes active time

  1. Check in: Each person says something about how they are feeling right now, or something they are grateful for, or similar. You can be creative. This should be quite short, say 30 seconds per person.

~5 minutes total

  1. Talk: The facilitator gives a talk about emotional debriefing and how the meeting will work. (See the suggested talk notes below.)

~10 minutes

  1. Timed Turns: Each person in the group gets a chance to talk for an equal amount of time. The facilitator is timing them. In our example there are 70 minutes available for this part. For 8 people this gives about 7 minutes each, if we assume about 1 minute to switch between people.

You might want to include a stretch/toilet break halfway through this section so people aren’t sitting and listening continuously for a long period of time.

  1. Checkout: It’s good to end on a positive note here. One way is for each person to say something that they liked about being in the group. If some have talked about difficult things in their turns it can be useful to have a go-round at the end of the group where each person in turn talks briefly [one sentence] about something good that they've noticed in their life, or in the world, even if it’s a small thing.

~30 seconds per person.

~5 minutes total.

Total: 84 minutes.

Facilitator’s talk

Here is where you introduce a topic or question that is relevant to all the people in the group. You may have talked about this beforehand. It is also where you introduce the process and purpose.

Here is an example (please note, this is one way to run an emotional debrief session – there are many other ways to do it):

Reaching out to others in our communities can be difficult, tiring and emotional work. And that is OK. We are taking steps to work and connect with others, and in so doing are stepping out of our comfort zones and making ourselves vulnerable. This can not only trigger emotional pain from our past that has not been resolved, it can also leave us open to pain in the encounters we might have, or in our reflections on the state of society.

It is important to acknowledge these emotions and start to process them, so that they don’t impact your well-being and/or your community work. Example feelings might be fear or guilt, or feeling like people don’t like you, or you don’t like others…

Whatever they are, it is important to address them and push past the desire to ignore how we are feeling. Most of us have been conditioned to hide the full depth of our feelings, but here we are aiming to create a space where we can show them and support each other.

Being listened to with loving attention helps people to release painful emotions:

The undivided, loving attention of other human beings is a valuable resource. It can allow deep healing to occur. This kind of attention tends not to happen in normal conversations or discussions because a lot of our attention can be taken up with looking for a space to start talking. When a clear space is organised for each person to speak everyone can relax a bit. The person speaking knows they have time to explore and express what’s in their mind. Whilst the listeners know that they don’t have to fight for the space to speak or think about what they want to say next – they can relax and pay full attention to the person who’s turn it is to talk.

This provides an enormous boost to the level of attention each person gets from the group.

We will each have a turn to speak without interruption from others. In your turn, you can talk about whatever you need to, without judgement from anyone. This frees up your mind to do the work you need to do. It’s important that we all allow space for the person talking to feel their full feelings – we don’t need to stop that happening.

Our job as listeners is to direct 100% of our care and attention onto the person whose turn it is to talk. Emotional release is welcome and encouraged, for example, crying, laughing, sweating, trembling, expressing indignation, yawning, and other things. Don’t interrupt someone else’s turn to talk about your own thoughts.

It’s good to show that you care about them, but if you are not careful how you express that you can end up intruding into that person’s space. It has become all about you! Just smiling and keeping your loving attention on them is mostly all that is needed.

We will divide up the remaining time between the people present, leaving some time for a check out. In general, we encourage people to take the whole of their allotted time, even if they can’t think of what to say. The silence may feel uncomfortable for everyone, but it’s useful to sit with this discomfort. (One reason why humanity is in crisis is because a lot of the important things we need to do are on the other side of some discomfort, and we find it hard to stay with that discomfort.)

This text can (and should!) be adapted.

Group agreements

It’s important to have group agreements to make the participants feel safe and ensure everything runs smoothly. You can decide together what is important to you to enable openness. Introduce the agreements to the group during your talk, explain their purpose and request agreement from each participant. This is a chance, as well, to pre-empt any conflicts.

[Example talk:]

These agreements can help to make the group feel safer:

  1. Confidentiality: what someone says in their turn in the group should not be repeated to anyone else, not even the person who said it, unless they give permission. It’s easy to give specific or general permission, for example “you can ask me about this afterwards”, or “Do we all agree that we can talk about what was said today in this group amongst ourselves?”.
  2. Treat people with kindness and respect. We all struggle and make mistakes. Give each person the space to speak what’s in their mind, as it sits in their mind. We all need the space to say exactly what’s in our minds as this allows us to review our thoughts, and perhaps change our minds. Confidentiality helps to create this space.
  3. People might talk about other people in their turn. Don’t believe anything that anyone says about another person. Even though we are creating the space for people to express what's in their minds, it’s good to avoid criticizing other people in your turn to talk as this tends to make the group feel less safe for everyone. Instead it is good to try to identify and talk about your own difficulties. Use ‘I’ statements to avoid this.

Can I get a temperature check from everyone please, that we agree to these;

[End of talk]

It may also be an idea to go over the hand signals, if anyone is unfamiliar with them. You can talk through any disagreements here, time allowing.

Things to consider

This kind of group works best with around four to eight people. It can work with fewer, but it may become less useful with more than eight. If there are more than eight people present then it may be best to divide into two groups if there is someone else who is willing to facilitate.

When dividing up the time for turns, if you have six people and 30 minutes, then giving five minutes each will overrun as there is often significant ‘turnaround time’ between each person. About one minute of turnaround time is usually enough, so 30 minutes between six people gives about four minutes each.

Make sure you budget time for checkouts. These are for everyone to ‘sum up’ what they have gained from the session or something they are grateful for from the session.

If people don’t have anything else to say they could be gently prompted to tell their life story – how they got from being born to this point in time. It's a challenge to do this in a short amount of time, but often an interesting challenge. You can tell your life story many times and each time it’s different. This has proven to be a great format for increasing connection and understanding within a group of people.

We are aiming to create a special, safe space in these emotional debrief groups. Often after deep check-ins, people feel more deeply connected to people in the group, that’s good and is part of the purpose of the group. However, if you meet someone for the first time in a group like this then you may make the mistake of thinking that how you see them in the group is how they will be outside the group. This is unrealistic and can lead to disappointment. It’s important to temper our experience with the understanding that our wider culture does not support this kind of radical vulnerability, and that it can and will be emotionally draining, so a deep check-in does not mean deep bonds beyond the check-in. Be patient with one another.

This is about ‘holding space’ for emotions; for love, reflection, tears, laughter, processing, overcoming, ruminating and whatever else we need to sort through. It’s not about dumping our problems on others, it’s about being able to empty that emotional rucksack that’s been full for so long, it’s about letting others support us as we do the same for them.

“In every community, there is work to be done.
In every nation, there are wounds to heal.
In every heart, there is the power to do it.”
-- Marianne Williamson

2. Group Support

Reflecting on and Tending Grief

Within the ancient tradition of Yoga, it is taught that humans carry trauma buried under deep layers at our heart centre. This corroborates with the western tradition of wholeheartedness, in which we are tasked to investigate, and ultimately begin to remove the layers of protection around our heart, in order to allow ourselves the freedom to feel all joys and all sorrows.

The sorrows are hard to bear. Humans may be unequipped to tend to the grief that comes from brokenheartedness in early childhood experiences. Instead, the untended grief becomes grievance. Grievance may surface over and over again, triggered in all manner of situations, by all manner of people. This could be seen as the heart's way of asking for attention, asking for deep attention, in order to heal the original heartbreak.

Willingness to be Vulnerable

Whether welcomed or not, we all are vulnerable, as is every living organism in the known universe. An intrinsic characteristic of aliveness is vulnerability. There are ideal conditions for life to thrive, then there are hostile conditions in which life must adapt or meet its demise. The cellular programming which instructs a living thing to live is what enables the magic of adaptation, survival, and ultimately evolution. To fully connect with others and ourselves, we must be willing to be vulnerable.

Trauma

The human experience begins in trauma: the trauma of birth. This unremembered trauma remains in the body of a full grown adult as perhaps the inability to draw breath easily, a compression in the bones of the skull, or irregularity in the pelvis. Assisted births over the centuries have decreased mortality rates in both babies and mothers (forceps, ventouse, episiotomy, cesarean section). However in the normalisation of assisted births (cesarean section rate 44% in Latin American countries), mothers have lost the knowledge and confidence in their bodies to birth with ease and without fear. The preparation for birth may instead be cloaked in fear, with negative and traumatic birth stories shared more readily than positive or pleasurable birth stories. The cortisol levels (stress hormone) in mothers sets the levels for their unborn baby. Which means, in very real terms, that trauma begins in-utero. The unborn baby experiences her mother's emotions and is already adapting. Trauma is not only something which we experience early on, but it is something which can be created through difficult experiences throughout life. We carry this trauma with us and it impacts our interactions with others and ourselves. To address and overcome such trauma, we must investigate it and be willing to be vulnerable.

Crying

Weeping and wailing are wonderfully efficient ways of processing and moving trauma out of the body. However, some human cultures are more welcoming of weeping and wailing than others. The rejection of crying begins at infancy, when babies are shushed. Babies have well developed modes of communication, cues for hunger, for discomfort, for fear, and when a responsive adult looks carefully for these cues, the baby is understood and a relationship of communication develops. There are times when a baby must cry. The crying may be the most efficient way to urgently communicate hunger, a wet nappy, fear, a fever, pain, and also to process trauma. When adults receive the crying communication as failing to do their part as responsive carers, they may shush the infant, and do all they can to stop the cries (pacifiers, feeding, playing, distracting) when in fact sometimes the crying is absolutely necessary, and the infant needs to be held and feel safe as they cry out their trauma.

Men are particularly susceptible to being raised to believe that crying is an unacceptable behaviour. The trauma, when not released through weeping and wailing, looks for another avenue of expression. A common substitute is the expression of anger. Imagine a relationship between a man and a woman, into which both adults bring with them their individual traumas. The man gets angry about something trivial, at which the woman begins to cry, seeing the tears as unacceptable the man gets angrier at what he sees to be an overreaction, and the woman cries even more. And so they become stuck in a cycle of past trauma brought into the present, neither one understanding the other.

If they were able to process their traumas together they might find out that both of them came from families in which father was often angry, and mother would often cry. Unable as children to understand the family scenes they witnessed, they learned the behaviours, and the roles played out by their parents. The woman grew up to be terrified of angry outbursts, suppressing her own, and identifying with her mother. The man grew up to believe that men don’t cry, and that crying is an irrational response in any given situation, and that anger was an acceptable male character trait, identifying with his father.

Connecting with our Grief

Grief can become deeply and securely buried for very good reasons. There may be no safe space available to tend to our grief, so it is repressed, as connecting to it could be too difficult to bear. The other side of grief is love, they are two sides of the same coin. We grieve because we love. We grieve when that which we love has gone. We grieve for an imagined future that will never come to pass. We grieve for the death of ancestors we have never met. We grieve for future generations that may not have life. We grieve for the taking of innocence. We grieve for missed opportunities. The deeper we go into compassion and empathy, the deeper we grieve. Grieving expands our capacity to feel, the capacity of our hearts to connect, because it expands our capacity to love.

How to Grieve

There are innumerable ways to grieve. If you have experienced the death of a loved one, you will know that the grieving never ends, it changes, and becomes part of who we are in our daily lives. We don’t move on from grief, it moves forward with us into the rest of our lives. Grief can be described by giving names akin to seas and oceans: deep and dark, hits in waves, pulling under, crashing and smashing against the rocks. Thinking of oceans now, the power, the wildness, also the beauty, biodiversity, and unexplored depths, this could be a helpful metaphor of grief, for many more reasons than the darkness and fear. Grief is also what fertilises hope, nourishing new life. There are no rules, there is no manual, no correct or incorrect way to grieve. However, there is a way to feel safe enough to let grief surface. Connecting with other people who want to share or explore their grief can help. Finding a grief counsellor, or a co-counselling group can help. Or finding ways to make a record of your emotions: journaling, audio or video recordings of yourself. Sometimes knowing it’s there, but being unable to connect to the grief, will be the difficulty. A strong and trusted support network is vital when working through grief, however you do it, make sure you are not alone.

Moving Forward alongside Grief

Perhaps grief becomes a companion, and a friend. Perhaps the grief in our life lets us see a deeper level of existence and connection in the everyday. Perhaps grief lets us savour the sweetness, tenderness, and frailty of life. Perhaps grief is the acknowledgement of the inconvenient truth: that all life has an end, and within its decay, nourishes the next generation. Perhaps grief gives us strength to live bravely. Perhaps grief is a window to knowing our purpose. Perhaps grief gives meaning to why we are alive.

2. Group Support

Listening Circles: Supporting Grief Online

The challenges of our current times are revealing an uncomfortable and ever-present companion much more clearly among us: Grief. It is in the air, shimmering in the socially-distanced spaces between us.

We have come into connection with Grief through our daily lived experiences during the Covid-19 crisis. The slower pace of life, which has given us time to reflect, has been coupled with:

For generations, Grief has been deeply othered by the death-phobic culture most of us have grown up within and as a consequence people have not been able to engage with Grief or process what it is they are feeling. In the absence of Grief what appears instead is grievance; something to be “gotten through”, “gotten over”, “gotten on the other side of”. Grief asks of us, requires us to give of ourselves, whilst grievance whispers in our ears that we deserve better than we’re getting. For us to connect with our Grief, it is vital for us to slow down and to cultivate a sense of welcome and gratitude for the ways that life is living itself through us.

For the moment, however, we are driven to online connections. Though a shadowy substitute for the comfort of solid physical presence, it is for now all many of us have access to.

How to hold online spaces which allow people to process Grief can bring up many thoughts and feelings: fear of the unknown, thoughts that there might be a “right way” or a “wrong way” to share or respond when Grief appears. This document has drawn on the experience and wisdom of many to offer suggestions on how to support those who are stepping forward to hold spaces in which people can address Grief and be heard.

Prepare to Welcome

Recognise that you have stopped travelling the regular, beaten path and have turned off into the overgrown thickets that are rarely visited. You are lighting a fire to welcome in all of the beings, seen and unseen, who bring themselves into the space you will host. The quality of the welcome you create before the call begins is the quality of welcome that will be experienced by those who join. Create a space filled with the quality of beauty you would want for your most beloved ancestors to come to, that they might hear the call.

Check-in

Weave the Basket of Empathy for Grief to Show Up

  1. What truths are proving too hard to talk about with those around you?
  2. What sort of anxieties are arising in people?
  3. Who have been the rocks in people’s lives – where are they now and what arises when you think of them?

Keep an Eye on the Time

Closing the Call with Care

Deep Gratitude

To all those stepping up to hold these support calls in your community, we give a deep bow of gratitude and respect.

What Next?

Before you hold a Grief listening circle, we recommend that you consider some or all of the following, to deepen your practice and self-holding:

Supporting Information Around Trauma

It is important to have an awareness of how trauma can affect people. The conditions for psychological trauma are rife at the moment, so underlying traumatic events may break through much more easily. Many have lost access to their normal support networks, resources etc.

One person expressing anger/rage may trigger another person’s trauma history of being raged at. A person triggered into primal screams of pain/anguish may trigger other people’s early experiences of terror by, for example, witnessing domestic abuse as a powerless child.

Here is a chart about the stages of hyper-arousal in the nervous system that happen when one is in trauma and the dangers associated with it.

Please make sure you have lists of national helplines that you can put in the chat, and any other XR Grief/ Sharing circle offerings, including:

2. Group Support

Making a Strong Working Group

Aim: to make life easier and less stressful for coordinators. For working groups to grow and do more.

This is a live document. There is no right way of doing things, but we should share what has worked. This note has an element of idealism - in practice we must adapt. Integration WGs are here to listen to you and help you make a strong working group, any questions about this page message @dbrenig or xr.welcome.bristol@protonmail.com

  1. Split up the tasks Tension: People turn up to the working group, but don’t contribute much. Working group doesn’t grow in size.

Try: Split up your working group’s tasks into a small number of work areas. See rough example for Media & Messaging.

Each work area has a mandate and can be run as a mini-working group if necessary. Someone is responsible for each work area and they hold the mandate. This person can be considered a mini-coordinator if the work requires a team.

Working group members are assigned to, or lean towards, a work area. This gives them freedom and responsibility to deliver. Mini-working groups enable the whole working group to grow as mini-coordinators can share out more tasks.

  1. Have a focus Tension: Communities WG Coords have previously said their mandate felt so broad that it was overwhelming. Making it hard to perform in any area, so people left as they felt in-effective.

Try: If you are under resourced pick a single work area and stick to it until it is strong. When more people join you can open up new work areas. For example Communities could focus purely on Movement of Movements until more people join.

  1. Growing a rebel in your working group Tension: Eager new rebels join a working group meeting, but they leave because they are overwhelmed or can’t work out how to contribute.

Try: Look after, hold onto and grow rebels using the pathway below. Create roles within your working group and encourage rebels to take on roles once ready. Roles cement a rebel into a working group, and gives them the power to deliver without seeking your confirmation. It is important to ask rebels to step up and take on a role. This is a hook. Note: a working group may hold roles that don’t fit this pathway, e.g. a pool of stewards.

  1. Rotate coordination Tension: The coordinator has been in place a long time and no-one else appears capable of replacing them. Power is more entrenched, and it limits the knowledge & personal growth of rebels

Try: Ideally a coordinator will do minimal WG tasks, instead focusing on empowering rebels to take on roles, fulfill mandates and check they are not burning out. If roles are filled, the time requirements on the coordinator will reduce.

The coordinator should educate and encourage rebels to become the next coordinator, to replace themselves. Playing down the ‘high and mighty’ impression of coordinating. Ideally the coordination role would slowly rotate amongst those willing. A working group with many ex-coordinators is very strong, as overall knowledge is high and rebels feel confident to deliver.

  1. Recruitment Consider two types of eager rebels: Some rebels want to be told what to do. They respond well to specific role descriptions/adverts Some rebels want to explore before finding their place. These rebels respond to exciting invitations to join a working group

Ways to recruit (contact Integration for help, xr.bristol.welcome@protonmail.com)

Use the XR Volunteer website to advertise specific roles, and also post a general advert for your working group.

Call out for specific team members at events and rebel meetings e.g. “We need 3 more people to help organise wellbeing for upcoming actions and you’ll love it because...”

Work with M&M to issue adverts for your working group on social media

New rebels may visit XR Bristol’s webpage on working groups to find out more and then email the coordinators to get involved.

Integration host weekly ‘Getting More Involved’ sessions to identify what new rebels are interested in, and pass on their phone number to relevant coordinators.

Please respond to everyone who said they want to help - if they emailed in, or if you wrote down their phone number. Not getting back de-motivates an eager rebel.

  1. Wellbeing & communication Hold socials to bond together. Rebels who care for each other, work for each other. Avoid burnout by accepting that your working group cannot do everything. Keep tabs on how many responsibilities each rebel holds, avoid overburdening someone. Have a wellbeing advocate

Rebels have previously left Working Groups because Signal/Mattermost chats are overwhelming.

The traffic light system helps. Every message should start with one of the following:

⛔ Red stop sign means ‘Stop and read right now! Action required’

🔶 Orange diamond means ‘This is important to note, but not an emergency. A response would be helpful when possible (if relevant)’

💚 Green heart means ‘not that important’. This is general chatter or for responses. This gives rebels permission to not read everything. But highlights must see items.

  1. Facilitating working group meetings Build the agenda before a working group meeting and avoid getting distracted A trained facilitator should facilitate the working group meeting. Attend a facilitation training course, to gain brilliant skills at running effective meetings Record Action Points each week and follow them up in the next meeting

Mandated roles allow most working group activity to happen without a specific action point (e.g. I didn’t tell the integration WG that I was going to write this document, it was within my mandate, so I just did it). Instead each work area or rebel should share updates each week, so everyone knows what everyone else is doing. This also encourages ownership (pride) for mini-coordinators over their work.

Have food at working group meetings

Get to know other coordinators and chat to them, everyone is lovely lovely lovely :D

  1. Mentoring chat with coord before first meeting explaining what we're working on and hearing what they're interested in end of first meeting match them up with an old hand who is doing something close to their interests.

Swap contacts mentor contacts with them post first meeting to talk them through tech and onboard them into their subgroup if that's a thing, newbie can contact mentor with questions, mentor tries to check in now and again and invite them to WG meetings for the first few weeks (or set up a Buddy programme :D)

3. Engaging Communities

Engaging communities involves putting energy into understanding who is in your area, what their needs might be, and how you and local networks could support them. It is the act of reaching out to people, be they similar or different, of building connections and of creating trust.

3. Engaging Communities

Overview

Why do we need to focus on engaging Communities like this?

Building stronger social ties with our neighbours and local communities is in and of itself a transformative process. It enables us to create new and long-lasting connections with people who live in our community, to collectively create a support network of caring and compassionate neighbours, who look after each other, and to develop a sense of belonging, which can overcome the social isolation that runs through much of modern society. Making connections with others can also create a foundation from which we can work together to push for systemic change and to create a society that considers the needs of everyone. The way we organise and relate to our communities in this time of crisis could help to shift us towards a genuinely democratic society full of autonomous, empowered, resilient and supportive neighbourhoods and communities.

3. Engaging Communities

Mapping Out Your Community

Before we engage in community work, it can be really useful to think about our relationships and connections with others, be they neighbours, members of the local community, friends and family, or any others whose needs we are aware of. By ‘mapping’ these relationships and connections on paper, we can visually place ourselves in the wider community ecosystem and identify where we would like to focus our attention and who we would like to reach out to.

Map Out Your Relationships

Draw a map of yourself and your relationship to others. Place yourself in the middle of the page and draw lines out to others, be these people, communities, organisations or groups. The length of the line should represent your closeness or distance to those you identify.

This map can include both those that you are emotionally close to/far from and those you are physically close to/far from.

Once you have completed your map, consider the following questions:

Consider People’s Needs

This activity encourages us to think about who we need to be looking out for and what needs they might have. This activity can be difficult – thinking about those who are vulnerable and who need support can have an emotional impact. If you feel this is the case for you, then take some time out to think about what it is that is impacting you or reach out and talk to someone.

When completing the following questions, stay broad; you don’t just need to think about the people in your local community, you can think about people nationally or globally. Sometimes it helps to expand our vision outwards as we may not be aware of everything that is going on in our local communities.

Map Out Your Community

Now focus on your local community, using your ideas generated by the questions above and your knowledge of the area in which you live.

Draw a map of your community, using the following questions to guide you:

3. Engaging Communities

Engaging Diverse Communities

SOLIDARITY GUIDELINES

Solidarity is a collaboration where both parties are working towards shared liberation, based on mutual respect and understanding of the challenge.

Solidarity is an ongoing process and an essential quality for any activist to be developing.

This guide is not definitive. It is simply a collection of best practices and there are plenty of others out there. There are ongoing groups that are continuing to explore and deepen understanding of these areas, from workshops to discussion and action groups.

See this list of resources for readings, videos, listening and learning.

Ask yourself why you want to do a solidarity action.

Is it because you truly understand their struggle as equal to your own? Or because you just want them to support your issues. Good solidarity comes without expecting credit or reward. Good solidarity empowers everybody, but especially those who need that solidarity more.

This guide is split into two: first we talk about qualities needed for good solidarity, next we talk about practical guidelines for how to implement these qualities in acts of solidarity.

QUALITIES OF GOOD SOLIDARITY

1. Humility

This is not about feeling better about ourselves. It’s about compassion. You should offer your services as an act of love towards different communities. You should come from a place of humility rather than acting as a saviour.

Think about where the action fits into the timeline of their campaign - rather than your own. Solidarity may involve not using any personal branding, and sometimes may not even be public. Think about whether your solidarity action accidentally drowns out the work of groups you’re trying to act in solidarity.

Solidarity is a personal practice too. Good solidarity can only happen in authentic human connection.

Be prepared to make mistakes, say something insensitive, or use your power inappropriately...that’s ok, because you are trying authentically, reflecting and learning as you go along. Remember it’s never too late to say sorry, build bonds of trust and be better. Feeling uncomfortable is part of the process, it is in this space that you grow.

2. Willingness to learn and change

Get rid of preconceived ideas of how this is going to work, and instead try to listen and learn. What you shouldn’t do is presume to know what a group does, what it is about, how it organises, who it mobilises and what it wants. Nor should you presume to understand what the issue they work on is about. Understanding your own privilege before going into a meeting with a justice group will help to understand the cultural differences and ways of working. Be aware that we all carry expectations and judgements held from the past that we project onto others.

You are going to get things wrong, and that’s ok, notice a tendency to get defensive and fight it. Check your unconscious bias, and remember how infuriating it can be to be on the receiving end of this kind of bias. Here are some useful resources to tackle it.

Understand white saviorism and be guarded against it. But guilt is not helpful. We have to not worry too much about being called white saviours as long as we are doing this right. This is because white solidarity is important and necessary. Solidarity between the environmental movement and other movements is necessary for us all to succeed.

3. Active (not Passive)

Understanding issues is important, but bridge towards building personal relationships with people involved in the struggle, not just the organisers of each group, but every participant. Find out what actions they are taking, what little ways you can support (going to actions, platforming the issues, fundraising, ongoing dialogue, authentic friendship)

4. Collective Liberation

We are mutually librating each other in our common struggles as we seek to collaborate and work alongside one another. By showing solidarity with another group, you are helping their cause but also yours in turn.

5. Long term relationship and community building

Our work is to aid others in their development and that takes a while to establish. To build trusting networks of connections is a long term commitment that requires grassroots community building and strong interpersonal relationships.

6. Based on personal relationships

Not just organisational connection between the ‘leaders’ and a transactional arrangement; fostering empathy, compassion and a sense of service to others in a personal and organisational level are important to open up trust and loyalty.

TEN PRACTICAL GUIDELINES

For more information, check out this document made by XR Youth on what good solidarity involves.

Some further pointers

3. Engaging Communities

How to Deal with Conflict when Engaging with Strangers

Use this guide to understand both what you can do to avoid situations of conflict arising and what to do should conflict arise. This guide uses information and ideas from Marshall Rosenberg's Nonviolent Communication (NVC) approach.

What is NVC?

NVC (also called ‘Compassionate Communication’ or ‘Collaborative Communication’) has been described as a language of compassion and a tool for positive social change. It is taught as a process of interpersonal communication designed to improve compassionate connection to others.

“NVC is based on a fundamental principle: underlying all human actions are needs that people are seeking to meet, and understanding and acknowledging these needs can create a shared basis for connection, cooperation, and more globally – peace.” These universal human needs are never in conflict; rather, conflict arises when the strategies for meeting those needs clash.

The goal of NVC is not to get what we want, but to make a human connection that will result in everyone getting their needs met. “Understanding each other at the level of our needs creates such connection because, at this deeper human level, the similarities between us outweigh the differences, giving rise to greater compassion. When we focus on needs, without interpreting or conveying criticism, blame, or demands, our deeper creativity flourishes, and solutions arise that were previously blocked from our awareness. At this depth, conflicts and misunderstandings can be resolved with greater ease.

Learning NVC is a process similar to learning a new language or skill: step-by-step learning coupled with ample time for practice leads to growing mastery. While it takes time to develop fluency, any knowledge of a new language makes it more likely that communication can take place.

The language of NVC includes two parts: honestly expressing ourselves to others, and empathically hearing others.” Both are expressed through four components, which this guide will explore: observations, feelings, needs, and requests.

What you can do to avoid situations of conflict arising

Expressing Feelings

To build trusting relationships in our communities, we can start by expressing feelings. NVC instructor Daren De Witt explains the powerful impact this can have: ‘expressing our feelings can have a profound effect on others, enabling them to see us in a more human way. Expressing our feelings to others and reflecting back their feelings fosters empathy, understanding and trust.’

Developing a feelings vocabulary

The more precisely we can identify and express feelings, the more effective our communication can be. It can be helpful to choose from the lists of words below and practice using them to express your feelings and help others to express theirs. You can gradually add to these lists and extend your feelings vocabulary.

Basic Feelings Vocabulary

When are needs aren't being met:

Restless, reluctant, aroused, helpless, embrassed, regretful, lonely, withdrawn, bored, tired, cold, numb, indifferent, low, uncomfortable, uneasy, unsure, confused, surprised, baffled, overwhelmed, concerned, anxious, nervous, worried, scared, frightening, terrified, fustrated, irrated, impatient, annoyed, angry, resentful, disgusted, furious, disappointment, unhappy, upset, hurt, sad, miserable, despairing, greif, pain.

When are needs are being met:

Cheerful, happy, buoyant, joyful, overjoyed, thrilled, blissful, ecstatic, pleased, appreciative, grateful, thankful, proud, delighted, glad, comfortable, secure, calm, content, at ease, peaceful, relaxed, astonished, fascinated, amazed, curious, hopeful, optimistic, enthusiastic, overwhelmed, inspired, hopeful, confident, excited, sensitive, loving, warm, touched.

Generally speaking, our culture places considerably less value on the expression of feelings than on the expression of ideas. Consequently, there is often confusion around the accurate expression of our feelings. Some of the commonest mistakes are:

Activity 1: Identifying Feelings

In each of the following statements, do you regard the speaker to be expressing his or her feelings? If not, please edit the sentence until it does.

  1. ‘I feel dismissed when no one at work responds to my suggestions’.
  2. ‘It feels completely incomprehensible how you can do such a thing.’
  3. ‘I’d be furious too if that had happened to me.’
  4. ‘You’re wearing me out.’
  5. ‘I feel independent, now that I have my own car and paycheck.’
  6. ‘I feel I am being unkind to others.’
  7. ‘I feel you’re annoying me on purpose.’

Please see the end of the guide for sample responses.

Expressing Needs

“When we’re in conflict with others, we often feel angry, and we criticise and blame them and ourselves. This often results in others feeling angry too. As a result, we are less likely to get what we want. A more effective approach is to pause, take a deep breath and work out what our need is, and then communicate it. The other person will better understand where we are coming from, and we are more likely to get our need met or have a constructive discussion about it.”

Feelings are clues as to what our needs or others’ needs might be. For example, a person might feel irritated and distressed if their need for respect is not being met. Pleasant feelings are clear signals that our needs are being met; painful feelings indicate unmet needs. Being able to recognise feelings will help us to uncover needs.

Some Needs We All Share

PLAY MEANING LOVE COMMUNITY SUBSISTENCE
Engagement Purpose Care Belonging Food
Fun Contribution Nurture Connection Water
Freshness Awareness Affection Support Light
Spontaneity Beauty Closeness Friendship Air
Stimulation Mystery Intimacy Contact Space
Rhythm Wholeness Touch Inclusion Warmth
Variety Adventure Sexual Expression Participation Movement
Comfort Challenge Solidarity Rest
Ease Creativity Loyalty Health
Relaxation Growth Help Hygiene
Learning
Achievement
Completion
CLARITY AUTONOMY PROTECTION EMPATHY EQUITY
Knowledge Independence Containment Understanding Equality
Awareness Freedom Safety Sympathy Fairness
To understand Choice Security Acceptance Sharing
Reassurance Control Peace Acknowledgement Cooperation
Simplicity Power Recognition Collaboration
Order Authenticity To be valued Honesty
Accuracy Integrity Consideration Movement
Competence Respect Openness
Efficiency Trust Keep to agreements
Skill Celebration Reliability
Mourning Consistency
Justice
Tolerance
Balance
Harmony
Unity

Different Ways of Saying Needs:
I need… Do you need…?
I would like... Would you like some…?
I value… Do you value…?
I want… Does...matter to you?
I love… I’m wondering if you might be wanting some…?
It’s important for me to have… Is it important for you to have…?
I would be really grateful to have some… Would you be grateful for some…?
I really enjoy… I’m guessing that you’re longing for…?
I long for… Are you hoping for some…?
I’m hoping for some… Is this all about...for you?
I could really do with some… Is this issue to do with...for you?
...is fun for me Would some...make a big difference for you right now?
...matters to me
Some...would mean/do a lot for me
Some...would be really helpful to me
Activity 2: What is my need here?

Consider the question, ‘What might my need be if I had the following thought in my head during a meeting?’ Have a go at translating each statement into a possible feeling and need.

  1. “She’s irresponsible. We all agreed to let someone know if we weren’t going to show up.”
  2. “Everyone else here knows more NVC than I do.”
  3. “He always takes more time than everyone else.”
  4. “People needing therapy ought to get professional help. We can’t handle that level of dysfunctionality here!”
  5. “This is boring.”
  6. “There should be a rule against using offensive sexist language in a group like this.”
  7. “There he goes again...someone should just shut him up!”
  8. “This group of people is so cold and rigid.”

Please see the end of the guide for sample responses.

Activity: Exploring Feelings and Needs
Reflective Listening

To connect with the feelings and needs behind any message, it helps to listen with empathy. Reflective listening shows you understand what another person is saying and meaning. It especially involves paraphrasing in your own words and using their ‘key words’ when they carry emotional charge. This kind of empathic listening can also have a profoundly clarifying effect. As psychologist Carl Rogers put it: ‘When I have been listened to and when I have been heard, I am able to re-perceive my world in a new way and to go on. It is astonishing how elements that seem insoluble become soluble when someone listens, how confusions that seem irremediable turn into relatively clear flowing streams when one is heard.’

Philosopher Eugene Gendlin describes the steps involved in reflective listening:

Listening Empathically

A key ingredient of empathy is presence; this distinguishes empathy from mental or intellectual understanding or sympathy. ‘When we are thinking about people’s words and listening to how they connect to our theories, we are looking at people - we are not with them.’ Empathic listening is being “fully present to what the other person is feeling and needing, and not losing that through a fog of diagnosis and interpretation”. The listener needs to focus their awareness - and keep it focused - on the other person. This requires a degree of inner stillness in the listener, so that their focus does not switch to themselves whilst they are empathising. This is a matter of being so focused on the feelings of the speaker that our own reactions, preconceived judgements, analysis or interpretations do not intrude.

Rosenberg describes the following analogy to explain the nature of the focus that empathy requires: ‘Recall a time when you had a pain in your body, perhaps a headache or a toothache, and you became totally engrossed in a book. What happened to the pain? You no longer felt it. You didn’t suppress it; rather the focus of your attention was so fully on what you were reading that you were not aware of the pain. In empathy our attention is so fully focused on the feelings and needs of the other person at that moment that we are not aware of our thoughts about the person.’

‘The presence that empathy requires is not easy to maintain... Instead of offering empathy, we tend instead to give advice or reassurance and to explain our own position or feeling, [or believe we have to ‘fix’ situations and make others feel better]. Empathy, on the other hand, requires us to focus full attention on the other person's message. We give to others the time and space they need to express themselves fully and to feel understood. There is a Buddhist saying that aptly describes this ability: “don't just do something, stand there.”’

There are some common behaviours that prevent us from being sufficiently present to connect empathically with others. The following are examples:

‘While we may choose at times to sympathise with others by feeling their feelings, it’s helpful to be aware that during the moment we are offering sympathy, we are not empathising.’

Deep Empathic Listening for Feelings and Needs

In situations of conflict, people can react with intensity, and their words do not reflect their feelings and needs. You can use the components of NVC to tune in to the feelings and needs of others, ‘in contrast to either (1) blaming yourself by taking the message personally, or 2) blaming and judging them.’ Rosenberg describes how empathic listening can help us to uncover what is truly alive in another person:

“In NVC, no matter what words others may use to express themselves, we simply listen for their observations, feelings, needs and requests...If I'm using NVC, I never, never, never hear what someone thinks about me. Never hear what someone thinks about you, you'll live longer. You'll enjoy life more. Hear the truth. The truth is that when somebody's telling you what's wrong with you, the truth is they have a need. Isn't getting met. Hear that they are in pain. Don't hear the analysis.”

Here is an example of Rosenberg putting empathic listening into practice to uncover the needs underneath what people say:

“I was working in a refugee camp in a country not very pleased with the United States. There were about 170 people assembled, and when my interpreter announced that I was an American citizen, one of them jumped up and screamed at me, “Murderer”!

Another one jumped up and shouted: “Child killer!”

Another: “Assassin!”

I was glad I knew NVC that day. It enabled me to see the beauty behind their messages, to see what was alive in them.

We do that in NVC by hearing feelings and needs behind any message. So I said to the first gentleman, “Are you feeling angry because your need for support isn't getting met by my country?”

Now, that required me to try to sense what he was feeling and needing. I could have been wrong. But even if we are wrong, when a person trusts that we’re sincerely… trying to connect with their feelings and needs in that moment, that shows the other person that no matter how they communicate with us, we care about what's alive in them. When a person trusts that, we're well on our way to making a connection in which everybody's needs can get met.

It didn't happen right away because this man was in a lot of pain. And it happened that I guessed right, because he said: “You're #!@&%! right!” adding: “We don't have sewage systems. We don't have housing. Why are you sending your weapons?”

I said: “So, sir, if I'm hearing you again, you're saying that it's very painful when you need things like sewage systems and housing - and when weapons are sent instead, it's very painful.”

He said “You're #!@&%! right! Do you know what it's like to live under these conditions for 28 years?”

“So, sir, you're saying that it's very painful, and you need some understanding for the conditions that you're living under.” So I heard what was alive in the guy, not that he thought I was a murderer. When he trusted that I sincerely cared about what he was feeling and needing, he could start to hear me.

Then I said, “Look, I'm frustrated right now because I came a long way to be here. I want to offer something and I'm worried now that because you've got me labeled as an American, you aren’t going to listen to me.”

He said, “What do you want to say to us?” So he could hear me then. But I had to see behind the human being behind the names he was calling me.”

Once we have heard the feelings and needs of the person we are communicating with, they are much more able to listen to what we have to say.

Activity 3: Empathy Exercises

You can use the following scenarios to practice empathic listening and expressing empathy.

  1. Someone at work says to you: “I couldn't sleep until 3 a.m. last night, thinking about our presentation today. So this morning I figured I'd better drink lots of coffee to keep me awake and alert… but now my head is killing me! Why do I always get hit with headaches when something important needs to be done?!”
  1. At a meeting, while you are in the middle of a sentence, someone turns to you suddenly and says, ‘don't you ever let someone else have a chance to talk?’ Respond to this person with empathy by:

Please see the end of the guide for sample responses.

  1. Recall an experience you had of ‘listening to someone with your whole being.’

  2. What are some conditions either internal (inside yourself) or external that support your ability to be empathic? What are conditions that work against it?

Observing Without Evaluating

The NVC process typically begins with neutral observation. ‘Observations are what we see or hear that we identify as the stimulus to our reactions. Our aim is to describe what we are reacting to concretely, specifically and neutrally, much as a video camera might capture the moment. This helps create a shared reality with the other person. The observation gives the context for our expression of feelings and needs, and may not even be needed if both people are clear about the context.

The key to making an observation is to separate our own judgments, evaluations or interpretations from our description of what happened. For example, if we say: “You’re rude,” the other person may disagree, while if we say: “When I saw you walk in and I didn’t hear you say hello to me,” the other person is more likely to recognise the moment that is described.’ Evaluations can be received as a judgement or attack, and can provoke a reaction, resistance and counter-attack from the other person.

NVC trainer Dian Killian suggests we can mostly easily make neutral observations ‘in conversations...by recapping what someone has said, without emotional input. That means not attaching any “story” to your response... Comments that begin in the first person, i.e. “I hear you say…” work better than “You just said…” For example:

Person 1: “We have to do something about the illegal immigrant problem, because they’re taking away our jobs, and people like you don’t care.”

Person 2: ”I’m hearing you say that you’re worried about your job security and that other people in this country are ignoring that concern.”

Re-capping what we have heard ‘slows the pace of conversation, and forces both sides to reflect and clarify. It does require practice; Killian point outs: “It’s a muscle to develop, because what we usually do when we’re disturbed by something is start disagreeing right away.”’ It can also be instinctive to respond with judgements and diagnosis. Rosenberg gave an example of some teachers he worked with who were having a conflict with their administrator. He asked them: “What does he do that you don’t like?” They initially responded by saying: “he has a big mouth”, “he talks too much”, and “he thinks he’s the only one with any intelligence.” After some prompting, they described specific behaviours that did not meet their need for efficiency: during staff meetings, regardless of the agenda, the administrator would relate it to one of his war experiences or childhood experiences. As a result, their meetings lasted much longer than scheduled. This is a clear observation without any evaluations mixed in. Here are some more examples:

Evaluation Observation
“You are so rude!” “When you tell me to get lost…”
“You’re selfish!” “I asked if someone could help me and you carried on with the task you were doing.”
“This place is a pigsty!” “There are clothes and toys covering most of the floor.”
“When I hear you yelling at Dad…” “When I hear you and Dad talk like that…”

Making clear, non-judgemental observations can:

Activity 4: Observation or Evaluation?

For the following statements, do you regard the speaker to be making an observation free of evaluation? If not, please give an example of an evaluation-free statement that matches the situation.

  1. “They are destroying the environment.”
  2. “One of the best ways to learn NVC is simply to practice, practice, practice.”
  3. “You lied to me about your grades.”
  4. “You are arguing with me for the fourth time this week.”
  5. “You drove the car without first getting my permission.”

Please see the end of the guide for sample responses.

Making Requests of Others

‘The fourth component of NVC involves making a request to others. We are asking them to do something to satisfy a need of ours. Our requests are strategies through which we might get our needs met. Needs are universal. The strategy through which we are asking to get our needs met is specific - we are asking to get our need met by a specific person, in a specific way, often at a specific time.

In ordinary communication we often confuse the level of ‘needs’ with the level of ‘requests’. We don’t mention our need but ask for the strategy as if it were a need, e.g. ‘I need you to turn off your radio.’ (Our actual need here is for peace and quiet.) Confusing the need with the request can contribute to conflict. Separating our need from the request helps us to be determined about getting our need met, and flexible about the way in which that need is met. This in turn gives the person we are in conflict with the opportunity to be flexible - to meet our needs in a way that will also meet any needs they have’. A useful and clarifying rule to return to is: hold tight to the needs, and loose to the strategies.

For example, imagine you are in a room with another person who is feeling too hot, but you are feeling cold. The other person wants to open the window to let in a cool breeze, but opening the window is a strategy that does not meet both your needs. Instead, you could put on a jumper, and the other person could put on some lighter clothes. By flexibly exploring other strategies with a focus on needs, everyone’s needs can get met.

Our requests are more likely to be met with a ‘yes’ if they:

There are three types of request we can make of others:

Activity 5: Making Requests - Incorporating All Four Components Into NVC

Imagine situations where someone utters the following statements. In each case, translate the statement using all four components of NVC, paying special attention that the request is positive, concrete, and immediately doable.

  1. “Your dog just made a mess on my lawn.” (Translate to: “When I see your dog…[observation] I feel... [feeling], because I need [need], and would you be willing to…[request]?”)
  2. “Yelling obscenities isn't going to get you what you want.”
  3. “By putting your money in mutual funds, you're just supporting guns and tobacco and sweatshops and all the things we’re trying to change in this world.”
  4. “This soup is much too calorific.”
  5. “At this company, we require teamwork. If that's not a priority for you, you'd better be looking for another job.”
  6. “But you told me two weeks ago that it would be fine if I were to take a long weekend this month.”

Please see the end of the guide for sample responses.

What to do should conflict arise

Should conflict arise, connecting with peoples’ feelings and empathically reflecting back to them what they are saying is an effective starting point. Studies done in labour management negotiations indicate that the time needed to settle disputes can be considerably shortened if one simple rule is followed: each participant must paraphrase what the previous speaker has said before saying anything in rebuttal.

Once you have heard the feelings and needs of those involved in the conflict, you can use the steps below to communicate your needs and explore strategies to meet them, as well as the needs of others.

1. Connect with your intention - to create an empathic connection with yourself and the other person, so all your needs may be met!

2. Express Yourself Using the Four Ingredients of NVC:

Observation: “When I see / hear…”

Feeling: “I feel…”

Need: “Because I need / would like…”

Request: “Would you be willing to…”

3. Hear their (imagined) difficult response:

4a. Connect empathically with them. Try:

Reflective Listening - mirror back what you are hearing them say.

4b. Connect empathically with them. Try: i. Connecting with the needs underneath what they are saying:

"Are you needing…?”

ii. Connecting with their feelings, if their feelings seem strong:

“I’m sensing you’re feeling…?”

(N. B. You may need to do any of these things two or three times until you have connected fully to their needs and they sense that they have been heard.)

5. Put all their needs and your needs on the table:

“I want you to get your needs met for…

...AND…

I also have a need for… (your original need(s) that you expressed with the four ingredients in part ‘2’ above).”

6. Look for solutions / strategies:

“Do you have any suggestions for how we could resolve this so you get … (your need/s)... and I can get… (my need/s)? OR “How about if we…?”

Suggested practice: NVC Journaling

To support your NVC learning and practice, you can journal the incidents that happen each day.

Sample Responses for Reviewing the Activities

Activity 1: Identifying Feelings

Please note - these are not examples of NVC, but only of the feeling component.

  1. ‘I feel anxious when no one at work responds to my suggestions.’
  2. ‘I feel very puzzled about how you can do such a thing.’
  3. ‘I feel concerned that this happened to you. I would have been furious if it had been me.’
  4. ‘I feel exhausted.’
  5. ‘I feel pleased and proud to have my own car and paycheck.’
  6. ‘I feel regret in how I am behaving toward them.’
  7. ‘I feel upset because I think you are annoying me on purpose.’
Activity 2: What is my need here?
  1. Example translation into an observation, feeling and need: ‘When I hear that none of us got a call from her, I feel discouraged because I want to be able to count on us carrying through with agreements we make together.” Universal needs: reliability, trust, integrity.
  2. Universal needs: competence, acceptance, respect
  3. Universal needs: mutuality, consideration, efficiency
  4. Universal needs: safety, integrity, competence
  5. Universal needs: stimulation, purpose, challenge
  6. Universal needs: respect, community, support
  7. Universal needs: consideration, connection, stimulation
  8. Universal needs: inclusion, warmth, community
Activity 3: Empathy Exercises
  1. “It's probably because you have a lot of tension when you are anticipating something important. Or maybe it's a combination of stress, lack of sleep, and the caffeine that's causing your headache.”
  2. “I really feel for you. it's the worst thing to have a horrible headache when you are about to do an important presentation!”
  3. “Why don't you take this ice pack and lie down for about 10 minutes?”
  4. “Are you frustrated because he would really like to be feeling energetic, healthy, and clear-headed for this presentation?”
  1. “Are you referring to my going ‘Oh no, oh no, oh no’ when Peter pointed to the map?”
  2. “Are you feeling irritated because you want everyone to be heard?”
  3. “Would you like for us to go around and hear from everyone before I speak again?”
Activity 4: Observation or Evaluation?

Please note - these are not examples of NVC, but only of the observation component.

  1. “They have clear-cut over 90% of this territory, and are still continuing.”
  2. “All the people in my practice group say that one of the best ways to learn NVC is simply to practice, practice, practice.”
  3. “I heard you say you passed all your courses but this report card shows two F’s.”
  4. “This is the fourth time I'm this week that you stated you disagree with something I'm saying.”
  5. If both parties (e.g. parent and teenager in a family) are in clear agreement regarding what constitutes ‘first getting permission’ then I would consider the speaking to be making an observation free of evaluation.
Activity 5: Making Requests - Incorporating All Four Components Into NVC
  1. “When I see your dog leaving turds on the lawn, I feel upset. We have kids who play here and I want the yard to be a safe, clean space for them. Would you be willing to use this plastic bag to remove the turds?
  2. “When I hear you addressing me like that, I feel agitated because I need cooperation and a peaceful resolution of our differences. Are you willing to tell me what you are feeling and needing right now instead of what you think I am?”
  3. “When I hear you have put your money in mutual funds, I feel dejected because I'd like to see us put our resources into what we value, rather than to support guns, tobacco and sweatshops. Would you be willing to tell me what you were feeling when you hear me say this?”
  4. “I am worried about the calories in this soup because I really need to take care of my health. Would you be willing to give me a bowl of noodles instead?”
  5. “When I read this report you wrote, I feel troubled, because I value teamwork and I need some reassurance that we are on the same page. Would you be willing to make an appointment so we can discuss how we each see the priorities for this job?”
3. Engaging Communities

Door-to-door Listening

Why Door-to-door Listening?

Door-to-door listening can be an incredibly powerful community-building tool that enables you to meet members of your local community and better understand the issues that matter to them. The process of knocking on people’s doors and simply listening to what they have to say is both humbling and empowering, and if done with care and consideration, it can foster strong links across a local area, helping to initiate a local movement and/or help an existing one gain momentum.

What Do I Need to Consider?

Throughout the door-to-door listening process it is important to remember that you are approaching people’s homes and that people may not be able to talk or may not want to. If someone does not feel like they have time to engage with you, then listen to them and respect their wishes – their home is their private space, and they are entitled to feel safe and free from hassle.

It is also important to try to avoid making assumptions: avoid judging someone on their race, gender, religion or age, and/or what their house looks like or the area in which they live. Everyone is different, knock on someone’s door with an open mind and with a willingness to connect and learn.

With door-to-door listening it is vital not to have an agenda, do not knock on the door with content that you want to peddle through as this will prevent you from being able to actively listen. Listen, genuinely listen, and let the person whose home who have knocked on guide the interaction. Do not try to equate their experiences with yours or interrupt with questions. Questions you might have will be related to your perspective and they will work to interrupt someone’s flow or make the conversation change direction.

Step by Step Guide

  1. Knock on the door. Take a step back once you have knocked so that people can open the door without feeling like their space is being invaded.
  2. If a child answers the door, do not introduce yourself, ask to speak with an adult.
  3. Introduce yourself slowly and clearly, making eye contact and avoiding making fast movements. Think about your body language – having your arms by your side and visible will make people feel more relaxed than if you have your arms crossed or your hands in your pockets. The aim is to make people feel at ease.
  4. Explain who you are, why you are there and outline whether or not you are representing a community movement or organisation – it is important to be transparent. If you are knocking to understand issues that matter to people, on behalf of a local charity, for example, you could state “Hello, my name is _______. I am here on behalf of ________ and I am knocking on doors in to better understand the issues that matter to people and their families in the local area.”
  5. It is important to give people the option of whether or not to engage, so follow this short introduction with a question, such as “do you have some time to talk to me about the issues that matter to you?” If people do not want to engage, move on. This is their home and you are a visitor.
  6. If people want to engage with you, then actively listen to what they have to say, keeping in mind your body language throughout the process. Let them guide the interaction. Do not interrupt, argue with them or outline your opinions. If you need to take notes, then explain why you would like to and check that this is ok with those you are listening to. Ideally, however, do so after the process as this will ensure you are fully present when you are listening.
  7. Be engaged. You may wish to highlight that you have heard what they have said by nodding along or making small sounds of agreement.
  8. If someone asks you questions, engage with them, but try to ensure that you avoid stressing your opinions if it may make people feel uncomfortable about expressing theirs. If a natural point arrives at which you can ask a question, prioritise asking probing questions that seek to understand their perspective better. Do not ask prying questions about personal information – people are entitled to privacy and such questions can alienate.
  9. Thank the person for their time and for sharing their views and feelings.
  10. If you feel there has been positive engagement and a genuine connection, then before you depart you may wish to give the person more information about your organisation or any local events happening. However, if there is no right time to do so, then leave this step out.

Top Tips:

3. Engaging Communities

Practical Steps To Community Engagement During Lockdown

This guide offers ideas on how to both reach out to community members during lockdown, and on how to connect with others who are socially organising during lockdown, such as your local Covid Mutual Aid Group or other community organisations. We recommend working to build trust with those you reach out to above all else and being an active listener (see this active listening guide for further information).

Whilst you might wish to discuss the Trust the People community democracy project and to promote grassroots democracy, timing these discussions is very important – if they are done too soon, people might feel that you are trying to push an agenda, and you might subsequently alienate them.

Reaching Out to Members of Your Community

Where Do Community Members Interact?

The first question to ask is: where do community members interact? Here are some ideas about where you can reach members of your community:

Be sure to reach out to those who may traditionally be forgotten about - the more vulnerable and isolated cohorts of your community. Focus on identifying ‘less visible’ demographics and on what the points of contact might be e.g. homeless charities, ‘Refugee’s welcome’, Youth Workers, etc. Ask those actively engaged in these organisations for input on how to engage with the communities they are involved in.

Practical Means of Reaching Out

Once you know where the people you want to reach are, consider the ways to reach out to them. Here are some suggestions:

When you are reaching out initially, make an effort to build trust and connections. Spend time getting to know people in your community.

Reaching Out to Organisations in Your Community

When communicating with other groups, especially groups who have been doing really fantastic work such as Mutual Aid, it’s important to make sure we are communicating effectively, but that we enter these spaces in a spirit of service and humility. Listen to those you encounter and work to build trust before you begin discussing community democracy.

Making Contact
Useful Resources
3. Engaging Communities

Resources for Reaching Out to Others in Your Community

Deep Hanging Out

The point of this guide is to frame an attitude to engaging different communities, impart confidence and share important skills, but this is not a roadmap. This work needs to be authentically connected to the people who undertake it. There are no cheats or shortcuts. To do it well will mean honestly interrogating your assumptions and overcoming fears. Sit with yourself and ask, given my interests, what could I do in my area? Am I comfortable with longer deeper chats? Is door-knocking more my thing?

It’s important not to spend too much time debating the strengths and weaknesses of an approach. None of us are experts, get out there, start trying things!

What is Deep Hanging-Out?

Originally a tool in Anthropology developed by Clifford Geertz, meaning to “immerse oneself in a cultural, group or social experience on an informal level”. We’re repurposing the idea.

Why does it matter that we do it?

Deep Hanging-out helps us form a deeper understanding of an area. It helps us to break down assumptions that we hold consciously or unconsciously. It also makes us a more closely connected member of a community, a vital thing for people to trust you.

Importantly, no community is a blank slate needing to be filled with any one understanding of community and/or democracy. Places are filled with formal and informal relationships between individuals, groups and organisations. Understanding these will help determine the role you might be able to play and how to support a community’s democratic culture without needing to reinvent the wheel. Consider the permaculture principle of causing the least change for greatest effect.

Who should we be hanging out with?

Usual suspects: us

Look for people who have been constructing a new system of operation for a while. Civil society, social enterprise, volunteer networks. See this list for national organisations who may have local chapters. Find out what their area of work is, what problem are they trying to solve?

Try to connect with members of these organisations in person. They will be able to explain a thorough picture of the other similar institutions in the area and save you a lot of time.

Excluded people who share our values

These are people who are open to ideas of pro-democracy and pro-community but aren’t otherwise engaged. Find out what the barriers are for these people becoming more involved?

People who don’t share our values

These are people who are excluded and don’t share your values. Why have they been excluded? What are the differences between their worldview and yours? What common ground do you share?

How do we do it?

You can think of the possibilities for Deep Hanging-out in two ways: (1) joining conversations (2) starting conversations.

1. Joining conversations

Before inviting people to meet you, go to where people are. Where in the community are people already interacting with each other? Think of places like cafés, the post office, schools, faith centres or the barber shop. Break out of your comfort zone and go to these places. Listen, observe and make friends.

Listening is a skill in itself, rarely cultivated in mainstream society. Practicing listening means really hearing what people are saying and rejecting the instinct to assume. Active listening is a practice to help us do this.

Active listening means overcoming the urge to judge, analyse, diagnose, question what someone else is saying whilst they’re speaking. It means, instead of thinking about your response, pay close attention and be present to what someone is saying. Reflecting back the essence of what you’re hearing to the person speaking proves you’re listening and helps build trust.

Real learning, authentic relating and actual understanding of others requires space for slower conversations. These are spaces where people have the time to build real relationships and are more likely to share their interests, anxieties and ambitions.

Don’t rush your attempt to learn about your community and any person within it.

2. Starting conversations

The community assembly is a fast-paced, transformative way to learn about a communities’ needs, but there are other slower forms of conversation that need to be had too. These other spaces are not ‘focus groups’ to inform your community building project, but part of the community building itself. All of these conversations will involve mutual learning, but they will also build trust.

Part of the feminisation of politics is creating spaces for discussions that are not competitive or ego-driven. In practice this could mean bringing in the arts, food and friendliness to a conversation. This might be a community feast, a games club or a conversation cafe.

These spaces need to be co-created by the new attendees who visit them. Ask them to edit the invitation (flyer, poster etc) in terms that would appeal to them more. Invite them to host their own gathering or join you in hosting one.

Many of those excluded from community conversations are people unable to attend events in the daytime or unlikely to visit public places. One way to try to reach these people is going door-to-door knocking. If done well, this method of engagement also allows for longer, more intimate conversations. See here for guidance on listening on the doorstep.

Who isn’t here?

Always ask who is not yet in your field of vision. Are there people you are unconsciously ignoring or afraid of?

Some examples
3. Engaging Communities

Games to Connect

Taken from Science of People article

What is an Icebreaker?

An icebreaker is an activity, event, or game that is designed to break down social barriers, make others feel more comfortable, and facilitate social interaction. Icebreakers are usually performed at the beginning of a meeting or team session and involve a group of people.

From conferences to team retreats, one thing learned is that an icebreaker truly can make or break an event. Here’s the science on this:

The results were clear. The teams that did the icebreaker before the scavenger hunt got the most selfies, had the shortest completion times, and reported liking each other more in the post-event survey. This is incredible! A couple of foot stomps, a few claps, and a cliché cheer improved performance, time, AND likability.

What Are Good Icebreaker Questions?

Icebreaker questions are a fun, easy way to get to know people and lighten the mood. They are similar to icebreaker activities but usually do not require much or any preparation at all. Here are some great icebreaker questions you can ask!

10 Icebreaker Questions to Get to Know People
  1. What is your proudest accomplishment?
  2. If you could write a book, what would it be about?
  3. What is the happiest moment in your life? What made it so special?
  4. What is the scariest thing you’ve ever done for fun?
  5. What is the best gift you’ve ever given/received?
  6. What is your dream job?
  7. What is something you were known for in college/high school?
  8. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
  9. Where is one place you’d love to travel to?
  10. What does your ideal day look like?
10 Fun Icebreaker Questions
  1. What is your spirit animal?
  2. Who would win in a fight: a horse-sized duck or 100 duck-sized horses?
  3. If you were a color, what would it be?
  4. What superpower would you choose to have? Why?
  5. What was your favorite television show as a kid?
  6. If you had a time machine, what time period would you travel to?
  7. If you could only eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?
  8. If you had one wish, what would you wish for?
  9. If you were stranded on an island, what 3 things would you bring with you?
  10. What song best describes you?

Virtual Meeting Icebreakers

Not all meetings nowadays are in-person. Some are virtual. These fun icebreakers can be performed anytime, anywhere, no matter the distance!

Show and Tell

This is one of my favorite virtual icebreakers. Why? Because it reveals what your teammates really value! Here’s how to perform this icebreaker:

  1. Ask your remote team members to grab a nearby item (or even send a personal picture through group chat!). This item should be unique to them.
  2. Share! Take turns sharing your item and the story or personal meeting behind it.

For example, I recently shared in my weekly team meeting a small personal item: a llama doll I received from one of my friends! It was a great way to show to my remote team how I value small gifts from friends, and an easy icebreaker, too! Win-win!

Meet the Pet (or child, or partner, or plant)

This icebreaker idea is super simple, and who doesn’t like pets? It’s best performed for remote teams that are newer and/or as a first-day icebreaker. Here’s how:

  1. Have your remote team grab their pets or show a picture of them.
  2. Start the introductions! You can start off with the basics (name, age, where you got him/her), but make sure to throw in one personal/fun story you had with your pet.

Pro tip: If your teammate does not have a pet, ask them to describe their ideal pet. Or meet each other’s kids. Or meet each other’s plants. Feeling funky? Ask them what their spirit animal is!

Partner Lunch

Want a fun way to make a meeting more… dare I say… delicious? Enter: the Partner Lunch. This icebreaker requires a bit of prep work with your team, and it’ll be better if you’re in similar time zones.

  1. Schedule a time where you and your team can video call and eat a meal together.
  2. Find a partner. Randomly assign partners in your team to talk one-on-one for 10-20 minutes before your group call.
  3. Talk! Now’s a great time for the partners to get to know each other over lunch. You can even have a list of deep questions to help facilitate discussion.
Rotating Questions

In small groups, you can use great questions to get people to open up.

  1. Gather a list of icebreaker questions from earlier in the article, or check out my favourite 57 conversation starters you can use.
  2. Have everyone take turns answering questions. If they don’t like a question, they can choose another to answer!
Quiz Time

One of the funnest icebreaker activities is to take quizzes and compare the results with your team! Here at Science of People, we absolutely LOVE quizzes. We’ve got a ton of quizzes backed with science to help you and your team understand each other:

4. Community Assemblies

Community Assemblies are a structured and democratic way for a group of people to share ideas and feelings, discuss problems and generate solutions collectively. Assemblies are organised in such a way as to ensure that no one person dominates, and that all voices are heard and valued equally. They promote active listening, inclusivity and trust.

4. Community Assemblies

Overview

Why use community assemblies?

Assemblies build community by enabling communication and collaboration across cultural, economic and political divides. Their inclusive and structured nature creates a safe space in which people can share their perspectives and ideas. This not only enables people to better understand others and their needs, it also creates a fertile space for problem solving and collective decision making.

As democratic processes, assemblies also help promote and build democracy. Their structure, which values all voices equally and champions collective decision making, gives those who participate a direct experience of a functional and inclusive democracy. They offer a clear and hopeful alternative to the established way of doing things and the hierarchical, dominant and exclusive cultures that permeate our politics, workplaces and social lives. When used effectively, they can help communities develop as self-organising, self-directing and self-managing bodies, which make decisions democratically and work for the advancement of the collective.

People’s assemblies are also incredibly powerful tools for personal empowerment and bonding with others. Being actively listened to is a transformative experience and helps people realise that their words and ideas matter, whilst meeting with strangers and sharing feelings helps to build trust and to establish genuine emotional connections.

4. Community Assemblies

Community Assembly Manual

How to Organise and Run Assemblies in Your Community

‘Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it’ - Goethe

The past year has shown us that waiting for top-down democratic change is not enough, we need to proactively build the system we want to see, a system based on grassroots, community-level democracy: a politics for and by the people. But to do this, we need to create spaces in which we can share ideas, listen to each other and grow together. This is where people’s assemblies come in.

First and foremost, people’s assemblies are democratic exercises that allow people to share thoughts and feelings, discuss problems and generate solutions in a highly structured way. The structure facilitates participation and inclusion, and gives people a voice – everyone is listened to and everybody listens. People’s assemblies thus work to build trust, community and connection, whilst facilitating participatory and deliberative democracy.

This manual outlines the various steps that you can take to run a people’s assembly in your local community. It has been created by people in XR’s Future Democracy Hub, however, it is not their work alone. This manual collates best practice from the people throughout history and from all over the globe, who have used People's Assemblies to come together and achieve great things.

Background on People’s Assemblies

People's assemblies are 'self selected' meaning that anyone can choose to take part. They are not to be confused with citizens’ assemblies, which are composed of people randomly selected from the population by the process of sortition to make sure they are representative of society (for CAs, key characteristics such as gender, age, ethnicity, education level and geography are taken into consideration). Citizens’ assembly members are selected to make a decision on a specific topic, before making a decision they would learn about critical thinking and hear balanced information from experts and stakeholders. They would then spend time deliberating in small facilitated groups, similar to the break-out groups used in People’s Assemblies.

People’s assemblies have been used throughout history and all over the world as a means to enable people to come together and achieve real social change, and shape a society for the good of all:

The Three Pillars

A people’s assembly differs from debate where one person is 'right' and the other is 'wrong', and from the typical discussion or conversation where people have a tendency to dominate with questions and interjections. People’s assemblies create a space in which each participant is respected and listened to without judgement, whilst sharing from the heart, and in which each participant listens to the ideas of others.The three key elements of people’s assemblies (often referred to as ‘the three pillars’), which support this supportive and empathetic interaction are radical inclusivity, active listening and trust.

Radical Inclusivity

Effective assemblies achieve radical inclusivity, where the emphasis on all being heard and valued equally means no voices dominate and the collective wisdom of the assembly is harnessed. People can participate safely and openly without fear of judgement or ridicule. At its heart, radical inclusivity is a practical step, which enables the widening of a movement by providing agency to all who participate.

Radical Inclusivity, therefore, also means being aware of potential barriers to engagement and working those affected to enable their participation. It is important to think about disabled access, sign language, whisper interpretation for those for whom English isn’t their first language, and other possible means by which barriers can be removed. When planning for and holding an assembly, ask if there are any barriers to engagement that need to be identified and then work together to find ways to remove them.

“Diversity in opinion will pay you back in the long run socially… if we don’t fix this problem to start with we are simply going to replicate existing power structures.” Eleanor Saitta, hacker and designer.

Active Listening

Active listening is focusing on hearing someone all the way through before developing your responses, and overcoming the urge to start mapping out your response in your mind whilst someone is still talking. Assemblies are not an arena for intellectual jousting or point scoring; they are spaces which recognise that no one person or group holds all the answers, and that it is through the wisdom of the crowds that we gain powerful intelligence about the issues being discussed. Active listening is also vital as it enhances our capacity to empathise: When we fully listen to others, we gain more of an understanding of people, their views and their concerns.

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” Aristotle

Trust

Once the system and process for people’s assemblies has been agreed on, it is essential that all participants trust the process, trust the facilitators and trust the various working groups involved. It is essential that the facilitators and assembly team enable this trust through sticking to the agreed process and ensuring that everyone follows the facilitators. It is not meant to be a perfect system and can only be effective if people trust that those involved have come together in humility, to work towards decisions and actions that are best for all.

“I see the 15M assemblies and neighbourhood organising in retrospective and I'm amazed how it could work and most importantly all the trust that it meant.” Carolina, a founder of 15M and www.takethesquare.net

A Note on Capacity

Everything in this manual requires a time and energy commitment. Evaluate your resources and choose the paths and practices that work for you, and that can be maintained in the longer term. Many great community endeavours fail due to a disparity between the time and energy resources available over time, and the ambition of the activities initiated – you need to be able to maintain the activities, after they have been initiated, and following through with any commitments made. It is helpful if all of the roles are backed up by at least one other person, so that people can take breaks as and when they are needed. Create a model that works for your own resources and needs, and evaluate it regularly to check that it is still maintainable.

To learn more about sustainable community development, take a look at Nurture Development’s information on Asset Based Community Development.

Creating a Team

‘I can’t change the world on my own, it’ll take at least three of us’ - Bill Mollison.

You may start with a tiny group of interested folk who want to bring a deeper sense of democracy and connection to their community, or you may have a whole room full of people ready to take on roles. The working groups listed here are suggestions for getting started and form the basic team for bringing a community together in assembly. You may have three people covering the whole thing or a large team making up each group. The important thing is to select your approach based on the capacity of those involved, whilst creating and maintaining a pathway for bringing new people into the project.

Team Working Groups
Connecting with the Community

Before you attempt to bring a community together in Assembly you need to actually familiarise yourself with that community. Who makes up the community in question? Where are they? Who are the obvious future participants? Who are the less obvious ones? Which communities are hidden to you? Where are the community connections that already exist happening? Are those connections deliberate or organic/cultural? Who are the influencers, or the stakeholders, or the ‘Elders’ within this community?

This initial engagement is a vital part of the process of creating community assemblies, and shouldn’t be rushed or overlooked. It’s also important to remember that whilst we are connecting with the community we need to connect with ourselves as well. We need to ask ourselves what assumptions we carry about the community we are trying to reach. What fears or blocks might we carry that may be consciously or unconsciously acting on our ability to effectively connect and listen? We must challenge our own blind spots and prejudices at every opportunity, and continue to do so throughout the process.

It is also vital to develop active listening skills, so that when you are engaging with others in your community, you are taking time to understand them, their needs and their wants, rather than trying to push your own agenda. Properly listening to someone lays the foundations for empathy, understanding and trust, and creates the opportunity to learn from others.

To help you better connect with your community, take a look at the following modules in the Community Transformer Program:

To help boost your ability to connect with those in your community, consider the following:

Much of the promotion section below can also be integrated as part of the Connecting with Your Community phase even if you do not have an upcoming assembly to promote.

Preparing to Hold an Assembly

Assembling

So, you’ve hung out within the community. You’ve met with people on their own turf and on their own terms. You’ve identified different demographics within the community and how to effectively deliver information about the assembly to them. Now, you need to create a space to bring everyone together in a well facilitated conversation. In short, you need to assemble. There are several ways to do this, but we recommend doing so using a people’s assembly (though other methods you may want to consider are Open Space Technology or Goldfish Bowl). Although this manual focuses on the people’s assembly process, almost all of the information around framing, promoting and organising an assembly is applicable to any other appropriate model.

Framing, Scope and Process

The exact framing, scope and process for the assembly needs to be agreed upon before any promotional work can occur. The destination and legitimacy of the results of the assembly should be discussed and decided upon prior to convening the assembly, and it is important that all assembly participants are made aware of this information before the assembly begins.

An Assembly for Sharing and Community Building

If, for example, you are planning to host an assembly designed to bring community members together to discuss issues that are important to them in the spirit of creating community bonds and finding common ground, then the framing, scope and process are as follows:

An Assembly for Discussing a Specific Topic and Generating Ideas

If you are convening an assembly which focuses on specific issues and where what is discussed will be shared beyond the local community with an external body, such as a council, then the scope would be broader. Say, for example, a local sustainability group advertises an open assembly on their facebook page and social media channels to discuss how the local council can act after declaring a Climate and Ecological Emergency, then the framing, scope and process would be as follows:

An Assembly for Making Decisions and Proposals

Assemblies can also be convened to ask for the opinions of members of a group and to make decisions. Say, for example, a local group calls an assembly to discuss whether they join with a larger group for a day of action or create their own one locally, and they advertise it to all members through every channel of communication, then the framing, scope and process are as follows:

What to Discuss

Bringing people together around a common cause is more likely to generate enthusiasm and engagement than initiatives centred around issues identified as a priority by the local authority, or abstract debates to identify shared values and visions. Find out what people care about or want to change in their local community, and use that as a starting point for discussion.

You may have gathered a good sense of this through your community engagement practices, or you may want to hold your first assembly as an invitation to the community to hear people’s concerns and priorities.

Simple online digital democracy tools like Your Priorities can be used to allow people to choose or suggest subjects for assemblies, as well as to continue community discussion and to help priortise ideas. Whenever you use digital tools you must always consider inclusivity issues around the digital divide and make steps to ensure those in the community not able to access information digitally are still able to take part in those conversations.

An assembly agenda could include:

Proposals
Decision Making

When a temperature check is used to decide between two or more options and there is no clear decision then the assembly will need to decide how to proceed. It may be a case of taking an actual counted vote, or returning the options to the breakout groups to find a solution that can accommodate the points raised or the differing wishes.

Promotion

The more actively engaged you are with your local community, the more engagement you will create. That said all promotion and engagement activities require time and energy. The following suggested means of promotion are, therefore, ordered in terms of capacity, so that you can try methods that fit in with your schedule.

Low Capacity

Medium Capacity

High Capacity

Remember, you will create a far more genuine connection to the local community by going to them than by expecting them to come to you.

Assembly Planning

This is a framework for organising an open public assembly. This is essentially a ‘best practice’ scenario and many assemblies will be created without this level of input or forward planning. Assemblies can often be convened as part of a talk, larger event, or meetings, in which case you can pick through the planning process detailed here and see which elements apply, or jump straight in using the ‘Quick Start Guide’.

Choose the venue

In-depth Plan with Timings

One Month To Go:

Two Weeks to Go:

One Week to Go:

One Day to Go:

One Hour to Go:

During the Assembly:

After the Assembly:

People’s Assemblies - a Quick Start guide!

This is the basic framework for creating and running a People’s Assembly. This ‘Quick Start Guide’ is essentially all you need to run an assembly. If you are running an assembly it is suggested that you read through the entire manual first, but if you are in an emergency democracy situation, you can just jump straight in here!

If you would like the process broken down into more detail, please use a script. We have versions for both online assemblies and in-person assemblies.

Hand Signals

Assemblies maintain inclusivity and ensure all voices are heard equally by using hand signals to facilitate the discussion. Using hand signals helps people to take it in turns to speak, and allows others to finish what they are saying without being spoken over or interrupted, as so often happens in daily conversation.

Point (or ‘I would like to speak’):
When someone in the group wants to say something, they should point their index finger up and wait for the facilitator to let them have their turn in speaking. It is vital that people do not talk over anyone else and wait for their turn. If someone, who has not yet said anything, puts their finger up to speak, whilst others have spoken a lot, then the facilitator should give that person priority over the 'stack' (the queue or order of speakers based on the order they raised their finger to speak).

Online consideration: If people do not have their video turned on, they can type STACK in the chat or use the raised hand in the participants’ panel, or say ‘stack’ for their name to be stacked.

Wavy Hands (I Agree):
The 'wavy hands' signal of approval is used to show agreement or support for something someone has said. It instantly indicates how much consensus there is towards something and can highlight how popular an idea is. If everybody erupts into a forest of waving hands during a breakout session, for example, the note taker can see that this is one of the more popular points made and it will become one of the key bullet points fed back to the main meeting room.

Online consideration: If people do not have their video turned on, they can use the ‘clapping hands’ icon under ‘more’ in the participants’ panel, or write ‘AGREE’ in the chat.

Clarification:
If someone says something that is unclear, people can hold their hand in a ‘C’ shape as the 'clarification' signal. The facilitator will then pause the discussion giving the person who made the signal the opportunity to ask a question to clear up any confusion. This signal should be given priority above all others as it means that someone does not understand something and it may thus inhibit their ability to engage in the discussion.

Online consideration: If people do not have their video turned on, they can write ‘Clarification’ in the chat, or unmute and say ‘Clarification and their name’.

Direct Point:
If someone has directly relevant information to what is being said, then they can make the 'direct point' hand signal and the facilitator will let them provide that information immediately after the person speaking has finished. Think of the direct point hand signal as being like brackets, which are used to add critical information that a speaker is not aware of e.g. “the action has now been changed to Wednesday”. The direct point signal is not an excuse to jump the queue just to make a point. It is important that people do not abuse this signal as otherwise it can make all present lose trust in the process.

Online consideration: If people do not have their video turned on, they can write Direct Point or DP in the chat, or unmute and say ‘Direct Point’ and their name.

Technical point:
If someone has information that is immediately relevant to the running of the meeting, they make a 'technical point' signal by making a ‘T’ shape with their hands. This is only to be used for concerns external to the discussion that need to be addressed immediately e.g. “We only have ten minutes left” or “I am the note taker and I need the loo so can someone else take over?” The facilitator should stop the discussion to address the technical point.

Online consideration: If people do not have their video turned on, they can write Technical Point or TP in the chat, or unmute and say ‘Technical Point’ and their name.

Round Up:
Facilitators need to ensure that no one speaks for more than necessary (two minutes is a suggested maximum amount of time as it encourages people to be concise). If someone has been speaking for two minutes (or whatever the set amount of time is), the facilitator makes the ‘round up’ hand signal by repeatedly making a circular motion with their hands (as if they a tracing a ball). This must be done sensitively, but firmly as it ensures that no one person dominates the meeting.

Online consideration: If people do not have their video turned on, they can use the ‘time’ icon under ‘more’ in the participants panel.

Speak up:
If someone is speaking too quietly or they cannot be heard, others can ask them to raise their voice by raising and lowering their hands with palms open and facing up.

Online consideration: If people do not have their video turned on, they can write ‘Speak Up’ in the chat, or unmute and say ‘speak up’ or use the ‘thumbs up’ icon in the participants panel. If using this second option you will need to explain to the whole assembly what the thumbs up icon means so they know to increase their volume if speaking.

Temperature check:
Jiggle the fingers on the palms of both hands at a level that corresponds with feelings. If hands are pointed upwards and jiggled, this suggests support. If they are held horizontally, this suggests people are ambivalent, and if they are pointed downwards, then this suggests that people do not support something. A temperature check can be used to quickly check the feelings of the group.

Roles

Each assembly needs:

Each breakout group needs:

Structure

There are three main phases of people’s assembly, these are the input phase, the deliberation phase and the integration/feedback phase.

Input Phase

Introduction

“We value all voices equally in the assembly, as the aim is to hear the wisdom of the crowd gathered here and not to have the assembly dominated by individual voices or groups. We recognise that confident speakers are not always right and that those who are not confident speakers will often have the most useful ideas or opinions to put into the discussion. This is why we value all voices equally and we ask you to do the same. We do not tolerate any calling out, abuse or shaming and should conflicts arise in this way, there are conflict resolution tools you can use to resolve them. We welcome all people but not all behaviours.”

Input

The Topic

Testify

Deliberation Phase

Main Deliberation

Breakout Groups

Integration Phase

Feeding Back

Finishing Up

What Next?

After holding a community assembly, it is really important to think about what next? What will be done with the ideas and information discussed? This takes you to community organising. To learn about different ways to organise as a community, about the different tools in existence and about what others around the world have done, check out the Community Organising module.

4. Community Assemblies

Rebels’ User Guide For Zoom

New Zoom account on a computer/laptop:

New Zoom account on a tablet or phone (individual rebels)

Join Zoom meeting with link:

The person or group who is ‘hosting’ the meeting has sent you an invitation with a link that looks similar to this: https://zoom.us/j/173621927 You just have to click on that link and it should start Zoom and take you to the meeting.

Join Zoom link with a Meeting ID:

Depending on how you log in to Zoom, you may be asked for a Meeting ID if the invitation link doesn’t take you straight to the meeting. In this case, the Meeting ID is the number at the end of the invitation link. So if you have been given https://zoom.us/j/173621927 then the meeting ID is 173-621-927.

💡 TIP: If you do not have a very good connection and the sound is breaking up, turning off your video may help.

Guidance and tips for participation:

Using Meeting Controls

Larger zoom meetings might make use of Meeting Controls to ask yes or no questions or for participants to raise their hands digitally (rather than using a finger as in our normal meetings).

To access the Meeting Controls, you will first have to go to the Participants view. Below the list of participants’ names, you will see the controls shown below, which are fairly self-explanatory. Please note that not all meeting facilitators are aware of these controls and they may not be monitoring them, so don’t use them unless directed to by the facilitator.

We wish you happy Zooming!!

This guidance will be continuously updated as rebels give us feedback on it. Please send your questions and ideas to suzanne.savage@protonmail.com

Privacy and Zoom

Please note Zoom is in no way affiliated with Extinction Rebellion and has relatively weak privacy and security protections in place.

When you sign up you are providing your personal data to a 3rd party which may use your information for marketing purposes or hand over information to the government when pressured.

Extinction Rebellion hosts its own more secure systems for Online Meetings with an Open Source solution using Jitsi. This is hosted using 100% renewable energy on a secure server hosted in Switzerland, unlike Zooms setup. If the information being shared is secret or you are uncomfortable handing over your information to a 3rd party please consider using XR’s installation of this here/ Zoom’s platform should be considered insecure.

For support using this system please contact tech@rebellion.earth

4. Community Assemblies

Online Community Assembly

Important Things to Consider

Before you attempt to facilitate a People’s Assembly, please make sure you have at least attended one! But remember: it’s not rocket science. Give it a go! You’ll be great!

This script is just a starting point. As you do more, you’ll figure out your own way of saying what’s here. Don’t feel that this is the only way in which a People’s Assembly can be facilitated, although this method is based on many years of experience in PA’s by people from all over the World.

Other things to note:

Logistical Advice for Hosting Assemblies Online

For an online PA, it can be good to have 3 facilitators: 2 Assembly Facilitators, one of whom might also be the Assembly Note-taker. It is also helpful to have a Technical Facilitator, someone who manages the breakout rooms and muting people, but it isn't necessary and it isn't difficult.

BEFORE THE MEETING, SET ZOOM UP:
  1. Participants video: Start meetings with participant video on. Participants can change this during the meeting.

Mute participants upon entry Automatically mute all participants when they join the meeting. The host controls whether participants can unmute themselves.

  1. Chat: Allow meeting participants to send a message visible to all participants.

  2. Auto saving chats: If you wish to capture the chat, maybe as a way to get people to leave their emails for follow up etc, you can automatically save all in-meeting chats so that hosts do not need to manually save the text of the chat after the meeting starts.

  3. Co-host: Allow the host to add co-hosts. Co-hosts have the same in-meeting controls as the host. A technical facilitator managing breakout rooms will need to make the other facilitator co-hosts.

  4. Nonverbal feedback: Participants in a meeting can provide nonverbal feedback and express opinions by clicking on icons in the Participants panel.

  5. Breakout room: Allows the host to split meeting participants into separate, smaller rooms. For information on how to set them up, check the breakout room - technical advice section of the script below.

  6. Share screen: In the host controls, click the arrow next to Share Screen and click Advanced Sharing Options. Under “Who can share”; choose “Only Host.” If needed, this can be changed back to allowing others to screen share

Input Phase

FACILITATOR 1: Introduction

Welcome everyone and run through the use of the tech:

Facilitators introduce themselves, perhaps say a little of your background and experience with PA’s and Community Organising or Projects - Brief but inspiring!

Explain that People’s Assemblies have three ‘phases’:

Input Phase

During the input phase, we explain the process and structure of the assembly, we introduce the hand signals, and frame the focus of the assembly, as well as what will happen with the outcomes from the assembly.

(If you are having more input here than just presenting the topic for discussion, such as speakers, video etc you will explain that here too)

Deliberation Phase

During the Deliberation (discussion) phase, you will be placed in small groups for [insert chosen length of deliberation phase] minutes and discuss the question/topic of this assembly.

Integration Phase

At the end of the Deliberation phase, the groups will come back into the full assembly and feedback what was generated in their small discussion group.

Facilitator 2: Hand Signals

(Demonstrate the hand signals used in assembly to allow people to use them during the introduction and input phase of the assembly.)

We use hand signals to facilitate a discussion in which all voices get heard, no one dominates and we don’t speak over each other. We will outline the hand signals you will need to take part today. Don’t worry if you can’t remember them as they will be repeated later in the session.

(Hand signals rely on visuals, so be sure to explain possible on line alternatives to some of the hand signals, in case if anyone present doesn’t have a video, or has to turn their video off due to poor connection.)

HAND SIGNALS

(As you verbally outline the hand signals, physically show them to ensure people fully understand them).

FACILITATOR 1: Introduce the concept of a People’s Assembly

What is a People’s Assembly?

A people’s assembly is a structured way for a group of people to discuss issues, generate ideas and/or make decisions collectively in a manner in which all voices are heard and valued equally and no one person, or group, is able to dominate the process.

People's assemblies are 'self selected' meaning that anyone can choose to take part. They are not to be confused with Citizens Assemblies which are randomly selected from the population by the process of Sortition, to make sure it is representative in terms of key characteristics such as gender, age, ethnicity, education level and geography. Citizens’ Assembly members would learn about critical thinking before they hear balanced information from experts and stakeholders. They would then spend time deliberating in small facilitated groups, similar to the break-out groups we’re going to use in this People’s Assembly.

People’s Assemblies have been used throughout history and all over the world as a means to enable people to come together and achieve real social change:

In Ancient Athens, for example, a people’s assembly known as the ekklesia, which was open to all male citizens regardless of class, was where major decisions such as going to war, military strategy and the election of public officials were made.

More recently, in Rojava, Kurdistan, people’s assemblies have been at the centre of a democratic revolution. Decisions are made by the community, and the role of the elected representatives is simply to carry out these decisions. The community itself is the seat of power.

In Spain, the Spanish municipalist movement, known as the Indignados or 15-M movement, used PAs to discuss and protest against the government’s austerity policies. At the movement’s peak, 80 assemblies were being held each week alone in Madrid.

In 2014 the Y’en a Marre movement in Senegal helped oust the incumbent and corrupt President by mobilising the youth vote using people’s assemblies and hip-hop.

Closer to home there are the examples of Frome, Torridge and others, all of which are councils that have been reclaimed to some degree by residents in local elections. When councils are run by residents we see decisions get made that prioritise the needs of that community. To give a couple of brief examples, Frome has a Library of Things. This came from a small start up grant of £9000, which enabled over 300 things such as power tools, musical instruments, to be gathered for the whole community to borrow for a small fee. They also repurposed derelict buildings, solar panels sprung up everywhere, a local NHS initiative to prescribe volunteering plus the councils investment in civic and volunteer groups, this led to a 22% reduction in A&E attendances.

Inclusivity Statement:

Before we start a People’s Assembly, we like to read out this inclusivity statement:

“We value all voices equally in the assembly, as the aim is to hear the wisdom of the crowd gathered here and not to have the assembly dominated by individual voices or groups. We recognise that confident speakers are not always right and that those who are not confident speakers will often have the most useful ideas or opinions to put into the discussion. This is why we value all voices equally and we ask you to do the same. We do not tolerate any calling out, abuse or shaming. We welcome all people but not all behaviours.”

We want to hear your voice, if you want to speak, no matter what. Whatever age you are, wherever you are from and whatever you do.

The whole process will take about an hour and a half*, and we’d love you to stay for the whole of that, but feel free to go or come as you like or need.

(If you have the time, it’s good to do a TESTIFY at this point. It’ll add about 15-30 minutes to the overall length of the PA, but gets people talking about why they are at the PA before the main section of the assembly…)

Testify

Before we get into the section of the People’s Assembly where you will all be able to talk through our specific issue in a facilitated way, we first like to give anyone who would like an opportunity to talk about what has brought them here today.

QUESTION: What has brought you here today?

FACILITATOR 2: The Three Pillars

A people’s assembly differs from debate where one person is 'right' and the other is 'wrong' and from the typical discussion or conversation where people have a tendency to dominate with questions and interjections. The assembly allows each participant to be held with respect and full attention - and no judgement - whilst sharing from the heart and for each participant to get a turn.

It's ok not to actively share too. Witnessing the sharing of others' feelings and experiences is as important as expressing one's own.

In an assembly, the focus is on personal feelings and experiences. Each speaker is encouraged to say 'I' - rather than 'we' or 'they' whilst sharing with others.

This can be encapsulated within the three pillars, which are:

THREE PILLARS:

(Radical Inclusivity also means being aware of potential barriers to engagement and working with those affected to enable participation. Think about disabled access, sign language, whisper interpretation for those for whom English isn’t their first language and other possible means by which those barriers can be removed. Ask at the start of an assembly if there are any barriers to engagement that people need to identify and then request that the group work together to find ways to remove them.)

FACILITATOR 1: Framing the Topic - What is the aim of THIS people’s assembly?

BACKGROUND

Frame your assembly here:

QUESTION(S)

State your question or topic for discussion clearly here, and if possible write it up in the exact wording you use somewhere that will remain visible to all participants throughout the assembly.

Always ask for any clarifications at this point, and be open to working to reword the question/topic if needed You can ask for a ‘temperature check’ here to make sure the assembly agrees with the proposed wording.

A good question is worded in accessible language, not too long, and is broad enough to allow for free discussion, but not so broad that a structured conversation around it is difficult. Likewise a very specific question won’t generate a very diverse response.

For example, if you would like to engage people around the topic of buying local produce, you might ask:

‘Should we start a Food Hub?

This question is very narrow, and really requires a yes or no, so it is unlikely to generate a lot of great ideas.

‘How can we improve access to local produce?’

This question is broader, still focused on local access, gives scope for creativity. ‘What can we do to reduce food miles? - Too broad, this could encompass all manner of different approaches and likely to lead to the conversation jumping from local to regional to national issues.

Deliberation Phase

Breakout Room Technical Advice

Breakout Rooms

Create Rooms

Divide the number of participants in total by the number of people you want in the group, and ZOOM will automatically assign people to group rooms. Once you have done this, look at the lists to check that all rooms have the right number of people.

Options

FACILITATOR 2: How does a People’s Assembly work?

You will discuss the PA question in breakout groups of 8-10, then feedback to the entire assembly.

Each group needs a facilitator and a note taker:

For an online assembly you can share a live ‘Harvest Doc’ for each breakout room’s note taker to use. This keeps all the notes in one place and allows participants to look back at the notes from discussions in the other groups. You can make your own Harvest Doc or copy the Template here into a live doc (such as a Google Doc) to be shared and edited.

Use the hand signals to communicate in your groups and to ensure radical inclusivity. (recap hand signals here)

10 minutes before the end of your allocated time, the note-taker should summarise the group’s notes, then use temperature checks to identify the points that have the most support or acceptance.

The group should then work together to reach agreement on the main points to feed back to the Assembly.

Decide how you want the feedback to happen. For larger assemblies ensure each group has fewer points to feed back verbally.

Then decide what you will do with this feedback. Will the main assembly note taker make note of the most popular points? Or will the note takers from each breakout group give written points to the assembly Facilitator/Notetaker?

Ask for clarifications on the process and then restate the questions being discussed.]

Technical Facilitator under MANAGE PARTICIPANTS unmutes everyone (in preparation for break out rooms, so those getting to grips with zoom don't need to spend time looking for the unmute button).

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! (send into break-out groups)

Discussion (25 mins or whatever your allocated time is)

Use BREAKOUT ROOMS > BROADCAST to give timings and other instructions to the groups.

After 25 minutes, warn groups that they need to round up: they have 10 minutes for…

When you click CLOSE GROUPS the default is that they will have 1 minute and then be automatically returned to the main group. You can change this in BREAKOUT ROOM settings.

Integration/Output Phase

FACILITATOR 1: Ending

Appendix 1 - Dealing with Difficult Interactions

A collection of thoughts and ideas on how to approach difficult interactions and behaviours:

4. Community Assemblies

In Person Community People's Assembly

Important Things to Consider

Before you attempt to facilitate a People’s Assembly, please make sure you have at least attended one! But remember: it’s not rocket science. Give it a go! You’ll be great!

This script is just a starting point. As you do more, you’ll figure out your own way of saying what’s here. Don’t feel that this is the only way in which a People’s Assembly can be facilitated, although this method is based on many years of experience in PA’s by people from all over the World.

Other things to note:

Input Phase

FACILITATOR 1: Introduction

Facilitators introduce themselves, perhaps say a little of your background and experience with PA’s and Community Organising or Projects - Brief but inspiring! If you want to bring people into the space, perhaps do a short visioning exercise, inviting people to imagine something or think about what brought them to the space.

Input Phase

During the input phase, we explain the process and structure of the assembly, we introduce the hand signals, and frame the focus of the assembly, as well as what will happen with the outcomes from the assembly.

(If you are having more input here than just presenting the topic for discussion, such as speakers, video etc you will explain that here too)

Deliberation Phase

During the Deliberation (discussion) phase, you will be placed in small groups for [insert chosen length of deliberation phase] minutes and discuss the question/topic of this assembly.

Integration Phase

At the end of the Deliberation phase, the groups will come back into the full assembly and feedback what was generated in their small discussion group.

Facilitator 2: Hand Signals

(Demonstrate the hand signals used in assembly to allow people to use them during the introduction and input phase of the assembly.)

We use hand signals to facilitate a discussion in which all voices get heard, no one dominates and we don’t speak over each other. We will outline the hand signals you will need to take part today. Don’t worry if you can’t remember them as they will be repeated later in the session.

HAND SIGNALS

(As you verbally outline the hand signals, physically show them to ensure people fully understand them).

FACILITATOR 1: Introduce the concept of a People’s Assembly

What is a People’s Assembly?

A people’s assembly is a structured way for a group of people to discuss issues, generate ideas and/or make decisions collectively in a manner in which all voices are heard and valued equally and no one person, or group, is able to dominate the process.

People's assemblies are 'self selected' meaning that anyone can choose to take part. They are not to be confused with Citizens Assemblies which are randomly selected from the population by the process of Sortition, to make sure it is representative in terms of key characteristics such as gender, age, ethnicity, education level and geography. Citizens’ Assembly members would learn about critical thinking before they hear balanced information from experts and stakeholders. They would then spend time deliberating in small facilitated groups, similar to the break-out groups we’re going to use in this People’s Assembly.

People’s Assemblies have been used throughout history and all over the world as a means to enable people to come together and achieve real social change:

Inclusivity Statement:

Before we start a People’s Assembly, we like to read out this inclusivity statement:

“We value all voices equally in the assembly, as the aim is to hear the wisdom of the crowd gathered here and not to have the assembly dominated by individual voices or groups. We recognise that confident speakers are not always right and that those who are not confident speakers will often have the most useful ideas or opinions to put into the discussion. This is why we value all voices equally and we ask you to do the same. We do not tolerate any calling out, abuse or shaming. We welcome all people but not all behaviours.”

We want to hear your voice, if you want to speak, no matter what. Whatever age you are, wherever you are from and whatever you do.

The whole process will take about an hour and a half*, and we’d love you to stay for the whole of that, but feel free to go or come as you like or need.

(If you have the time, it’s good to do a TESTIFY at this point. It’ll add about 15-30 minutes to the overall length of the PA, but gets people talking about why they are at the PA before the main section of the assembly…)

Testify

Before we get into the section of the People’s Assembly where you will all be able to talk through our specific issue in a facilitated way, we first like to give anyone who would like an opportunity to talk about what has brought them here today.

QUESTION: What has brought you here today?

FACILITATOR 2: The Three Pillars

A people’s assembly differs from debate where one person is 'right' and the other is 'wrong' and from the typical discussion or conversation where people have a tendency to dominate with questions and interjections. The assembly allows each participant to be held with respect and full attention - and no judgement - whilst sharing from the heart and for each participant to get a turn.

It's ok not to actively share too. Witnessing the sharing of others' feelings and experiences is as important as expressing one's own.

In an assembly, the focus is on personal feelings and experiences. Each speaker is encouraged to say 'I' - rather than 'we' or 'they' whilst sharing with others.

This can be encapsulated within the three pillars, which are:

THREE PILLARS:

  1. Effective assemblies achieve radical inclusivity, where the emphasis on all being heard and valued equally means no voices are dominating and the collective wisdom of the assembly can be reached. People can participate safely and openly, without fear of judgement or ridicule.
  2. For those who often speak up in situations like this, think WAIT...Why Am I Talking - try to say only what is needed.

(Radical Inclusivity also means being aware of potential barriers to engagement and working with those affected to enable participation. Think about disabled access, sign language, whisper interpretation for those for whom English isn’t their first language and other possible means by which those barriers can be removed. Ask at the start of an assembly if there are any barriers to engagement that people need to identify and then request that the group work together to find ways to remove them.)

FACILITATOR 1: Framing the Topic - What is the aim of THIS people’s assembly?

BACKGROUND

Frame your assembly here:

QUESTION(S)

State your question or topic for discussion clearly here, and if possible write it up in the exact wording you use somewhere that will remain visible to all participants throughout the assembly.

Always ask for any clarifications at this point, and be open to working to reword the question/topic if needed You can ask for a ‘temperature check’ here to make sure the assembly agrees with the proposed wording.

A good question is worded in accessible language, not too long, and is broad enough to allow for free discussion, but not so broad that a structured conversation around it is difficult. Likewise a very specific question won’t generate a very diverse response.

For example, if you would like to engage people around the topic of buying local produce, you might ask:

This question is very narrow, and really requires a yes or no, so it is unlikely to generate a lot of great ideas.

This question is broader, still focused on local access, gives scope for creativity. ‘What can we do to reduce food miles? - Too broad, this could encompass all manner of different approaches and likely to lead to the conversation jumping from local to regional to national issues.

Deliberation Phase

FACILITATOR 2: How does a People’s Assembly work?

You will discuss the PA question in breakout groups of 8-10, then feedback to the entire assembly.

Each group needs a facilitator and a note taker:

Use the hand signals to communicate in your groups and to ensure radical inclusivity. (recap hand signals here)

10 minutes before the end of your allocated time, the note-taker should summarise the group’s notes, then use temperature checks to identify the points that have the most support or acceptance.

The group should then work together to reach agreement on the main points to feed back to the Assembly.

Decide how you want the feedback to happen. For larger assemblies ensure each group has fewer points to feed back verbally.

*Then decide what you will do with this feedback. Will the main assembly note taker make note of the most popular points? Or will the note takers from each breakout group give written points to the assembly Facilitator/Notetaker?_

Potential integration structures - select the most appropriate:

Ask for clarifications on the process and then restate the questions being discussed.

GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Discussion (25 mins or whatever your allocated time is)

After 25 minutes, warn groups that they need to round up: they have 10 minutes for…

Integration/Output Phase

FACILITATOR 1: Ending

Appendix 1 - Dealing with Difficult Interactions

A collection of thoughts and ideas on how to approach difficult interactions and behaviours:

4. Community Assemblies

Reflecting on Your Community Assembly

You’ve had your first community assembly, well done! You’re beginning an extraordinary journey with others in your community, finding ways to ensure all voices are heard and using the wisdom of the crowd to make decisions collectively.

With any luck you will have identified your next step(s), even if this is just to hold another assembly soon! Before you focus on the next steps, however, it is useful to put aside time for personal reflection and for a group debrief to reflect on how things went: What did you learn? What went well? What could be improved for next time?

Engaging in such reflective processes will allow you to gauge the needs and the feelings of your communities and brainstorm solutions to challenges going forward.

Personal Reflection

It is often useful to reflect as an individual before coming together to debrief with others. Creating time for personal reflection will help you unpick your experiences and perceptions, so that you can share these with the group. Sometimes, if we go straight into a group debrief, we don’t have time to get to the bottom of our own feelings and views.

A good framework for this individual reflection is to consider:

These questions, though simple, can help you consider all aspects of your assembly and organise what you have learnt or can learn from. They don’t need to be answered in any particular order, but for ease of reference we will go through them in the order listed:

Who?

This question is about who participated. Firstly, think about who contributed at the assembly: Was there anyone who felt left out or who seemed unable to actively join in? It’s important to understand those who were present, to identify who is the most enthusiastic, and who may need extra support.

Ask yourself the following questions:

Secondly, focus on who came to your assembly. Was there anyone or were there any groups missing?

This is also an important consideration in terms of diversity. We are trying to reach everyone, build strong and resilient communities that serve the needs of everyone, especially those who are most vulnerable and marginalised under the current system. If these minorities are missing from assemblies, then that’s a problem.

Consider who you intended to reach, who you might like to reach in future and how you could go about this more effectively. From these ideas you can analyse your channels, think if anything might need to be changed.

Ask yourself the following questions:

When?

This question refers to the timing of your assembly, both in a practical sense – the time of day it was, the day of the week, any time-sensitive responses required – and in terms of where you and your group are in your journey.

Firstly, focus on the practical sense of when and think the impact that the timing had on attendance. If, for instance, the assembly was held late one evening, it might have excluded parents of young children. Equally, if it was held during the day, if it was held during the day on a weekday, it may have been inaccessible to people who are working.

Ask yourself the following questions:

Secondly, it is worth considering if there is anything time sensitive. Did you establish any next steps in the assembly which are urgent and need careful attention?

If relevant, ask yourself:

Finally, think about your group and where you are in your journey. It is useful to think about the group relationships and foundations. For example, did everyone in the group have the necessary level of trust with one another? Is there anything that needs to be accomplished first?

It is vital that you spend time building strong connections before you think about mobilising to make change. This is not to say it’s a linear, one-follows-the-other requirement but that they are intrinsically linked and demand equal attention. A team that trusts each other will work together more effectively, and will be able to overcome any challenges that appear in a constructive and collaborative way.

Where?

This question can address both the location of your assembly and can help you identify where the most work is needed.

Firstly, consider the location of your assembly and think about accessibility and suitability of the location.

Ask yourself the following questions:

Secondly, consider where the work and energy might come from to help the community assembly process get to where it needs to or to where it can.

Ask yourself the following questions:

What?

This question is simply about what happened. Hopefully you have kept notes, or maybe even have a recording of your assembly. If you have the notes, re-read them, if you have a video, watch it. Replay the event and really ruminate on how it went.

Ask yourself the following questions:

Why?

This question seeks to measure your success by thinking about why you decided to have the community assembly in the first place.

Perhaps you had a specific goal in mind that you wanted an outcome for, or maybe your intention was simply for every member of your community who attended to leave feeling heard and understood. Consider what your goal was, establish if it has been met and then you can consider what steps may have contributed to your relative success or failure.

Ask yourself the following questions:

Group Reflection and Debrief

Once you’ve had time to think on your own, turn to your group to get other people’s perspectives on the assembly and debrief together. Be sure to share your personal reflections with the group and to listen to everyone else’s feedback. The principle of a community assembly is that every participant has a chance to make their voice heard, every voice is valued and that people make decisions together, so make every effort to ensure that even the reflection and debrief process embodies this.

You can ask a lot of the same questions, using the who, where, when, what, why structure. Below are some extra questions and ideas you might also want to explore.

  1. Goals:

    • What were your goals for the assembly?
    • Were they achieved?

  2. Logistics:

    • Were there any problems encountered along the way?

  3. Problem solving:

    • How would you/did you go about solving these problems?

  4. Funding:

    • Are there monetary considerations that need to be addressed?

  5. Risk management:

    • Were there any setbacks beyond your control? (i.e. sickness, internal conflicts)
    • What impact did they have?
    • Are there any steps that could be taken to mitigate these in future?

  6. Training:

    • Do you feel those facilitating had adequate training for their positions?
    • Were participants sufficiently prepared for the process of deliberative democracy?

  7. Expectations:

    • Was everything made clear from the outset?
    • Or did people end up disappointed?
    • What might be needed to establish more clarity?

  8. Information channels

    • Was all necessary information readily available?

  9. Successes

    • Celebrate your triumphs! What went well?
    • What can you congratulate yourself and each other for?

  10. Best practice

    • How can you replicate these successes in the future?
    • What are your standards for behaviour and interactions?

  11. Registration

    • How effective was your registration process?

  12. Tech

    • Are there any technical considerations?
    • Who is best placed to deal with these?

  13. Idea generation

    • Have a brainstorm, what would everyone like to see at future assemblies?

  14. Inclusion

    • Did everyone feel sufficiently included?
    • Who would you like to see at future assemblies?

  15. Branding

    • Does everyone feel represented?
    • Or is the message and culture antithetical to the beliefs of some involved?

  16. Communication channels

    • Were you able to reach everyone in a timely manner?

  17. Deliverables

    • A deliverable is something that is produced as a result of a project. So, in terms of your community assembly this could be a report, a document, a survey or any other ‘building block’ of your overall plan for your community.
      • Do you have any deliverables that you need to create?
      • Are there any deliverables you would like to aim towards?

  18. Content coordination

    • Was the process of planning and sharing the content convenient and effective?

  19. Setup

    • Was the assembly itself well organised?
    • Was everything available that you needed?
    • Did everyone involved in setup and planning have adequate support?

  20. Time management

    • Did you have enough time? If no, why not?

  21. Infrastructure *Any other considerations – what you needed but didn’t have. You may wish to discuss accessibility concerns, for disabled people, young children or older people who may be less comfortable using technology.

    • Was everyone able to access the space?
    • What can be done in the future to boost accessibility?

  22. Agenda

    • Was everyone made aware of the intentions of the assembly in advance?
    • Was the agenda clear and accessible?
    • Were there any scheduling issues?

  23. Interactions

    • How far did you succeed in creating a space to foster useful and beneficial connections?

  24. Critical thinking

    • What did you learn?
    • How could you better further the group’s knowledge and ensure well-informed decisions are being taken?

  25. Workshops

    • Did you make use of any talks and training in the run up to your assembly?
    • Are there any you missed which could have been useful?

  26. Engagement

    • How was everyone engaging with the questions/content?
    • What could be done to encourage more meaningful discussions?

  27. Individual experiences

    • Are there any disparities in people’s experiences of the assembly?
    • It’s useful to reflect on different demographics here.

  28. Emotional engagement

    • Did people feel emotionally engaged?
    • Did the messaging resonate?
    • What narratives were identified during sharing?

  29. Continuing education

    • Are there useful development opportunities, roles and responsibilities for those interested?

  30. Social media

    • Did you post about the assembly on social media?
    • What could be done to encourage more online engagement?

  31. Recreational offerings

    • Is there a need for more fun, connection activities to facilitate more successful assemblies in future?

  32. Messaging and Communication

    • What channels are being used to maintain contact with everyone involved?

  33. Event layout

    • How was your meeting space set up?

  34. ROI

    • Return on investment – did the amount of time and effort you invested into getting this assembly together translate into a favourable result?
    • Is the workload being shared fairly?

  35. Attendee interactions

    • How did everyone get on together?
    • Were there any conflicts?

This is by no means an exhaustive list and you can decide in your own group how extensive your reflection is. The important thing is that you do think back on what has been accomplished and establish a culture of ongoing introspection and reflection, and you proactively engage with your findings to improve future community assemblies.

5. Community Organising

Community organising is about finding ways to put your ideas into action. It is about learning from the work of other community organisers, learning about the tools that exist to help empower communities to take action, and learning about how to create lasting change, be this in the form of a food cooperative, a skill sharing platform or by getting involved with your local council.

5. Community Organising

Overview

Why community organising?

Community organising is what enables communities to put their ideas into action; it will enable you to shape your local community, and perhaps even the greater society, so that it responds to the needs and desires of the people. It is a way of organising and acting effectively, so that you have a say in how money is spent, can make the most of any grants available, and can even hold politicians to account. Organising effectively as a community and creating lasting change is incredibly empowering – it enables people to find and use their agency, to draw on their courage, and to understand that their views and voices matter.

If we can come together to organise COVID-19 mutual aid projects, why not food, land and housing cooperatives? The climate crisis is real and our communities have to learn to adapt to a world in flux. That will only happen if we learn to work together. This is the moment to do exactly that.

5. Community Organising

A Vision for a New Democracy in The UK

Here’s a vision for what could emerge from our decentralised community democracy building projects across the UK. But first, some quick bits on vision, its uses and abuses:

“When activists mistake heaven for some goal at which they must arrive, rather than an idea to navigate Earth by, they burn themselves out, or they set up a totalitarian utopia in which others are burned in the flames. Don’t mistake a lightbulb for the moon, and don’t believe that the moon is useless unless we land on it.” ~ Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

“Vision without action is useless. But action without vision does not know where to go or why to go there”

“More than that, vision, when widely shared and firmly kept in sight, brings into being new systems” ~ Donella Meadows

“Perfection is a stick with which to beat the possible. ” ~ Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark

Building our web

By connecting all of our different communities who are using local assemblies, we will be able to coordinate, communicate and engage in mutually beneficial collective decision making.

“In the long term, a system of dual power would transform into what we call communalism or democratic confederalism: an allied network of interdependent communes or regions that work together in a directly democratic way.

On the local level, the neighbourhood assembly makes the decisions and decides the course of action. On a bigger level, these organisations band together in what is called a confederation: a body of recallable delegates with imperative mandates, directly accountable to their communities.

This body would allow communes to exchange resources, support each other, and make democratic decisions. Without this kind of networking, collaboration, and interdependence across borders, local movements are just that: local, isolated, and doomed to fail, again and again. But through international confederation, we can pose a real threat to global capitalism and the ruling class” - Symbiosis Research Collective (article)

“What, then, is confederalism? It is above all a network of administrative councils whose members or delegates are elected from popular face-to-face democratic assemblies, in the various villages, towns, and even neighborhoods of large cities. The members of these confederal councils are strictly mandated, recallable, and responsible to the assemblies that choose them for the purpose of coordinating and administering the policies formulated by the assemblies themselves. Their function is thus a purely administrative and practical one, not a policymaking one like the function of representatives in republican systems of government.” - Murray Bookchin, The Next Revolution: direct democracy and the promise of popular assemblies

This is how we could build our power without needing to be cookie-cutter copies of one another.

Connecting Neighbourhood Assemblies

How could assemblies connect? They would need a standard criteria for legitimacy, elected delegates and could connect over specific shared issues. E.g.:

Criteria for legitimacy:

Delegates:

Different types of assemblies for different issues:

Higher level councils

Higher level councils (district, county, etc.) could be reformed so that all councillors are delegates from “lower level” neighbourhood assemblies. This would allow them to coordinate and collaborate on matters that affect the whole region. They would make efforts to give as much power, resources and decision making to the bottom layer (the neighbourhood assemblies) as possible. See the image to the right explaining the Rojava model.

Dual Power and local authorities

Dual Power is the idea that parallel systems of government and power are crucial for catalysing system change: without an alternative, we cannot withdraw our participation in the existing system.

“A revolutionary transfer of authority to popular organs of radical democracy requires the preexistence of such participatory institutions, not a naive faith that they will be conjured into being out of a general strike, mass retraction of public support, or insurrectionary upheaval.” - John Michael Colon et. al. Community, Democracy and Mutual Aid (essay)

It is an open question whether our new democratic structure would best exist separate from the existing council system (the “dual power” method), or as a new way of managing it. Here are some scenarios for how local assemblies could interact with the local council:

As higher and higher levels of the council system are “reclaimed” by a popular democratic movement, this movement will gain influence, support from the people. This influence could be used to demand that power, decision-making and resources are devolved from the state to the locality: a re-localisation of politics and democracy.

Creativity

One of our biggest threats is fulfilling the mainstream perception of more democracy as more boring, deadening meetings. If we want to build a democratic revolution we will have to draw on all of our resources of creativity, play and joy.

“Revolutionary moments are carnivals in which the individual life celebrates its unification with a regenerated society,” wrote Situationist Raoul Vaneigem. The question, then, is not so much how to create the world as how to keep alive that moment of creation, how to realize that Coyote world in which creation never ends and people participate in the power of being creators, a world whose hopefulness lies in its unfinishedness, its openness to improvisation and participation.” - Rebecca Solnit, Hope in the Dark.

“Every one of us who has experienced a meeting, or a seminar, or a conference, or a class which was exciting, enabling, or even transformatory knows exactly what real democracy feels like. It feels like the moment when the meeting is as thrilling as a good party; or conversely, when the party seems as potentially meaningful and significant as a good meeting. Perhaps it feels like the moment when the distinction between a party and a meeting seems harder to sustain, or at least unimportant.” - Jeremy Gilbert Common Ground: Democracy and Collectivity in an Age of Individualism

We need a structure that allows maximum creativity and play, just the bare minimum to ensure accountability, inclusion, efficiency...

“...political and social institutions should be judged at least partly in terms of their creativity, which is to say in terms of the extent to which they facilitate the expression of that creative potential which is implicit in any set of social relations. How far do schools enable collaborations between students and teachers to develop new and innovative forms of learning and knowledge? How far do clinics enable patients and doctors to find innovative ways of improving public health? How far do broadcasters and other cultural institutions enable genuinely new ways of thinking and feeling to emerge?
These would be the criteria for judging political institutions according to this logic: as opposed to the neoliberal managerialist demand that such institutions be judged in terms of their ability to meet a predetermined set of ‘targets’, or the conservative communitarian demand that they enable given communities merely to remain exactly what they already are, these democratic criteria would ask how far they enable any given collectivity to explore its own potential.”
- Jeremy Gilbert Common Ground: Democracy and Collectivity in an Age of Individualism

5. Community Organising

Intro to Flatpack Democracy or How to Reclaim Your Council

Intro

Around the UK, something beautiful is happening: a radically new way of doing local politics is emerging. Communities are reclaiming their councils from the deadlock of party politics and using them to implement the projects and policies that they want to see. They do this by running as independent councillors who seek only to represent the views and wishes of the community, and to put them into effect through the council.

What’s more, this is really not hard to do: usually very few people vote in council elections making them readily winnable for independents, with as little as a few months of local campaigning - and most councils don’t even have enough people to stand for there to be elections at all!

Around 20 towns have realised this and are now fully run by groups of independents working together; at least another 100 are part of the way there. Inspiring examples include Frome, Buckfastleigh, Newham, Dagenham, and Portishead. In Bideford, who have reclaimed their council with the Torridge Common Ground project, it takes only 200 votes to get into the council!

Your town could be next! Use the resources in this document to learn all you need to attempt an independent councillors campaign.

Resources

Before you begin engaging with the following content, we recommend having a notebook or journal to note down your ideas and reflections. Whilst many of the activities are independent, it is also worth discussing the content and your responses with others, when possible.

1. Learning from Others (Flatpack Democracy Stories & Case Studies)

Get inspired by these pioneers from around the country.

Could your hometown be next? Of course! Well then, it’s time to get organising...

2. Resources for Running your Own Council Campaign

First Steps

Some More Info

1. How do you scrutinise your council to tell whether it is worth launching an independent (flatpack democracy) campaign?

The view of the flatpack democracy community is that if councillors don't commit to represent the will of the entire community they are not good enough.

About the independents that already claim to represent the will of the people, you can use the following question to assess them: are they running successful participatory/consultation processes? By successful, we mean that they have been able to reach the whole community. This is the only way to know the will of the local community - otherwise they are merely "representing" the people and it puts them in the same category as the good party councillors.

The only way for councillors to do it right is by knowing the will of the community, full stop. If they haven't implemented processes to find it out or are not up for implementing them then there are enough reasons for launching an independent campaign. Even if you have great councillors, are they using genuinely inclusive democracy to enact the will of the local people? Probably not! If you already have good independent councillors, you may offer well-facilitated community assemblies to bring them into closer contact with their constituents and XR’s demands in new ways. These are the discussions you need to have in deciding whether to engage, and if so, to what extent?

The most important thing is that councillors are truly representative and prioritise participation and deliberation, responding to the will of their communities through democratic sessions. This is only true for a tiny minority of councillors - and we are hoping to change that.

You may actually find that your main town does not have an election, but outlying villages or nearby communities do (they happen at different times all over the country).

Even if you don’t win, running as independents can catalyse councils to get their act together.

2. This sounds great, but what can I do if my council doesn’t have elections?
3. The defining features of Flatpack Democracy are:

Enlarging briefly on each of these:

A group of individuals working together

Preferably with as wide a range of ages, skills & experiences; gender and backgrounds. They may be members of political parties, but this is part of their experience, not what defines them or their decisions. An ethos setting out how they work together

All the groups that are really making a difference have some form of ‘Ways of Working’. These include things like listening, empathy, a willingness to change position etc. They tend to cover both the culture of the group and the limits to what they will and will not accept.

A focus on local needs and action

The underlying ethos is that the council should facilitate action and ideas coming from the community…. Their job is to say ‘yes’ not ‘no’ and to develop ‘our council’ not ‘the council’. The aim is to create a council which is one body amongst many in a community, with a flat hierarchy and recognition of the value of all roles and inputs.

Informality and accessibility

Ruthless removal of layers of formality and rules is a core element. Nothing should survive from the past unless there is a clear and good reason for it to do so. Anyone and everyone should feel welcomed and valued.

Participatory methodologies

At the core of decision making must be genuine participatory engagements whereby the political literacy of the community is constantly developed and they are enabled to take back control.

Representative decision making

A key skill of Flatpackery is recognising when a group of well informed people needs to make a decision. The whole community does not need, or want to be, involved in every decision.

Flatpackery is not:

5. Community Organising

More Resourses

5. Community Organising

Community Organising for the Corona Crisis

How to start cooperatives and mutual aid projects

Please share widely.

Short link for this doc.

In times of crisis, communities can come together to support one another. This is a list of practical ideas and resources to help you do that by forming cooperatives and mutual aid projects.

If you’d like support in doing this work, join our regular zoom meetings:

C19 Community Response and Mutual Aid: Reflect, Learn and Support

Regular meetings to share our experiences, ideas and questions on how we are supporting and organising in our wider communities in this time of crisis. This session is open to anyone involved in corona mutual aid work. They are run by facilitators from the Here Comes Everyone local democracy alliance.

Public health reminder: “Prioritise safety: Community care is about preventing the spread of Covid-19 and providing support for the most vulnerable. Before engaging in a mutual aid project, please familiarise yourself with Queercare’s guidelines on how to support others without spreading the infection. Those who are self isolating can get involved in online or phone based organising.” (lovingly copied from https://covidmutualaid.org/ )

Communications

The first step to getting organised as a community is setting up communication channels. This could be a Facebook, Whatsapp or Telegram group.

A COVID-19 Mutual Aid group may already exist in your area (UK list here, USA here). Advice here on setting one up yourself. Advice on setting up online meetings here.

A good place to get started is the Community Organising Unofficial Guide here. Take the lead - become a street champion!

You might distribute mutual aid leaflets (template here) or notes locally. They could include a written URL link to a weekly community zoom meeting. This meeting can be used to connect the community, listen to one another’s needs, and establish how you might organise to support one another. Facilitation is a simple but powerful way to have these meetings in a way that is inclusive, efficient and democratic; where certain views don’t dominate and everyone gets a turn to speak.

Find out if there are existing cooperatives in your area, reach out and get involved. Some more information, inspiration and support can be found here.

Food cooperatives

Shopping coops. Many in self-isolation are unable to do their own shopping. Communities need to systematically find out who needs their shopping done, when, and who’s going to do it. A shared spreadsheet might help you organise.

Food waste coops. Head round to food businesses in your area and ask staff if they are throwing food away. In a time of empty shelves, this is especially unacceptable. Request that you can save this food. Find a way to redistribute the food so that it will get eaten - take it home yourself, cook a big meal and share it round if there’s lots; offer it to a homeless shelter.

Food banks and food sharing coops. Not everybody can afford to stockpile food and household goods; many people will be facing empty shelves at home. We can support one another through this.

We can share food directly:

Or via food banks:

Or digitally, using foodsharing apps like OLIO (corona guidelines on main page) and TooGoodToGo.

Community kitchens. Cooking and delivering meals for the community.

Community Gardening and Veg Planting. We’re feeling the strain on our food system - what better time to get outside and plant some veg? If you’d like to plant veg on your land, why not shout out to your community to help? Or tell your community that you’d love to get outside and planting, and would be happy to come round and help in somebody else’s garden?

You could reach out to your council and request they provide more land for community food growing. Many self-isolated elderly people will have allotments that they now cannot tend. It’s worth asking around to find out who this is, and offering to maintain their veg patch - perhaps in return for some sweet summer carrots!

Seed Swaps are as simple as exchanging seeds so that everyone gets a good spread of different vegetables to grow!

Funding

Crowdfunding allows communities to come together to fund projects, and to invite donations from all around the world.

Exercise and Health

Prescription collecting. People in self-isolation can’t access the medications they need, and the community can support by purchasing and delivering it to them. You can ask in your mutual aid leaflets, whatsapp or facebook groups if anybody needs help with this. You can also go directly to your nearest pharmacy and ask if there are any prescriptions that need delivering to self-isolated people.

Exercise meetups. Self-isolation doesn’t mean you need to be immobile. It’s a great chance to get fit! Get outside for a run or bike ride. You could do this together (keeping a safe distance). If you want to stay inside, you could do a zoom call.

Group Meditation. It’s important that we’re staying calm, grounded and present in these trying times. Why not set up a daily meditation call and practice together? Someone in the group might have confidence and/or experience to run a meditation; otherwise you could listen to a guided session together. It might be nice to share how you’re feeling as the session closes.

Resource sharing cooperatives

Sharing coops. Members of the community post when they have either a need or resource. And that could be books, DVDs, tools, bikes, electronics… whatever it is, communities can get much better at sharing. Particularly helpful when the shops are closed!

Skill sharing. Many of us have skills to offer - foreign languages, playing instruments, knitting, yoga, meditation… whatever it is, we can come together to teach one another how to do enjoyable and beautiful things. In a time of self-isolation, you might do this via zoom calls.

Book clubs / reading groups and community education projects. You could set up a weekly online call to share views, learnings and feelings about a particular book or article!

Online platforms. Freecycle, craigslist, gumtree, and facebook marketplace are all great websites for rapid local resource sharing.

Free shops. Leave items outside on a table with a “Free - Take Me!” sign. Be sure to disinfect items beforehand!

Home manufacturing. Why not try upcycling your trash into useful items? Or perhaps someone in your community has a 3D printer. When someone needs a basic item - a bottle opener, a keyring, a child’s toy - why not print it?

Energy cooperatives.

Volunteering

Homeless charities. The homeless are particularly vulnerable in times of pandemic and food crisis. The best way to help them is to volunteer and support existing homeless charities. Google ‘homeless shelters in my area’ or go via national charities such as Crisis.

Volunteering with the NHS. The NHS is approaching breaking point. Volunteer here.

Money and Labour

Timebanking Schemes /Local exchange trading systems are systems for community exchange and/or volunteering. Timebanking measures trades with hours, LETS are more flexible. Neighbours do things like lawnmowing, shopping, rideshare, babysitting, decorating. You could learn/teach skills like cooking, languages or playing a musical instrument. You can set one up with a simple shared spreadsheet.

Free online platforms like this can be requested here.

Some more advice here.

Income and Local Businesses. Are there are any cooperative business plans that would respond to the needs of your community in this time? This is a perfect time to come together to start a worker’s coop.

Business networks. We are facing recession which means a shortage of money & jobs. If a group can still make and consume useful stuff, they don’t need money but can do multilateral exchange (barter). Free business barter platforms from http://opencredit.network

Starting a local currency provides another way to detach local trade from the global financial system. More info here.

Housing Cooperatives.

More at the Mutual Aid Economy section of the CoronavirusTechHandbook

Emotional Support and Social Connection

Active Listening and Authentic Relating. Set up a regular (daily?) zoom call for your community to check-in with their thoughts, feelings, ideas and emotions. One person speaks at a time; everyone gets as long as they like without anyone else commenting, interrupting or replying. Everyone else listens. Once you’ve been around everyone, you can do another round or transition to general discussion.

Outdoor walks and gatherings. We can still come together at a safe distance outside. Why not organise a walk through your local park or nature area, to get everyone outside together? In order to talk, you could gather in a wide-spaced circle, and do a go-around (each person takes their turn to speak) of how everyone is doing in this unusual.

Land and Regeneration

Volunteer at your nearest ecovillage or community farm. https://www.diggersanddreamers.org.uk

Planting trees, flowers and seeds. Our lands are in desperate need of regeneration. We can come together to

Cleaning up. Why not get together to clean your local parks, forests, fields of litter and trash?

Working with your Council

Contact your council to ask what they are doing to support local mutual aid efforts. If you know about local mutual aid projects, tell your council what’s happening so they can consider supporting it. Councils have resources (like money!) that can be mobilised to support communities through this crisis - check out the example of Newmarket, UK, here.

Local procurement. Pressuring your council to supporting local businesses and cooperatives in place of multinational corporations. Known as the ‘Preston model’.

FixMyStreet.com. Sends hyper-local problems and issues directly to your council.

Mapping those in need. See methods here.

Participation and consultation. You might suggest/request that your council consult their communities on their needs via zoom meetings. It’s also a chance to push for online community engagement and participation tools. This might involve digital voting, polling, surveys, deliberation around council decisions. Decidim.org is an example platform.

Community Democracy

Corona Mutual Aid groups are popping up all over the country. Many are governed in a hierarchical and exclusive way. They are not seeking to actively empower, engage and listen to every single member of the community who gets involved. It doesn’t have to be this way! We can transform these groups - and our communities by bringing facilitated meetings, regenerative culture practices (such as check-ins and active listening), decentralised organising (working groups, roles), digital working (zoom calls) and democratic sessions (people’s assemblies).

Networking with other cooperatives

Midcounties, the largest regional co-operative in the UK, has a new community strategy in place with 20 regional community groups providing support and bringing colleagues and members together to identify relevant opportunities in their communities, and collectively taking action to make a difference.

So far 9,000 colleague-volunteering hours have been completed and over 1,000 young people have engaged in activities ranging from Fairtrade workshops to learning about employability skills. Members, colleagues and customers have donated over 24,000 products to local food banks, providing meals for over 450 families. Some 40 members are currently involved in supporting regional community projects, ranging from input on local Steering Groups to community events.

Arts, Culture and Entertainment

Community publications. You could launch a community newspaper / gazette / magazine, which anyone can contribute to. A great way to share, stay connected and entertained for people in self-isolation. This could have a specific focus, for example by bringing together everyone in the area who writes prose and poetry into a community literary publication. Get creative!

Zoom choirs. Part-time jazz and blues singer Suzanne Noble has formed a Facebook group for musicians whose gigs have been cancelled, and Corona Concerts gained more than 500 members in its first day.

Participatory art.

Digital

Coronatechhandbook.com is an incredible, internationally crowdsourced bank of resources.

Nextdoor is an app purpose built for communities.

Digital skill sharing. Perhaps someone in your community needs help setting up a website, marketplace, or even just a social media account? If you have the skills, you can help!

Direct Action

Rent strikes. Article about rent strikes

Adapting your actions to public health in crises.

Campaigning at the National Level.

Universal Basic Income campaigns have been launched to support financially vulnerable businesses and individuals in these times of crisis.

Mutual Aid Training. OrganizingTogether is a development collective of technical experts in organizational management. We have created a living library of mutual aid. You can also request your own space to train your staff, volunteers, and members just email charla.burnett@otconsultancy.org

Living Library of Mutual Aid

5. Community Organising

Online Learning Resources for Community Organising

There are countless amazing organisations doing community organising work, providing imaginative ideas and invaluable resources on how to start community organising.

This is just a snapshot of some you may find useful, but do talk to your regional Gardener too, who will have some local knowledge of supportive organisations. Please bear in mind that this list is not comprehensive and is not regularly updated. It is just a starting point for ideas and assistance :)

Act, Build, Change

The Alternative UK

Beautiful Trouble

Blueprints for Change

The Change Agency

The Commons: Social Change Library

Community Organisers.org.uk

Get Fully Funded

Global Freedom Movement

Self-Organising Systems Open Learning Series

Transition Network

Please note: If you have any questions about organising alongside umbrella, support organisations in your community, drop a line to XRGardeners@gmail.com

5. Community Organising

Useful Community Organisations and Initiatives

Use this resource library to learn about the different kinds of community centred organisations and initiatives which are active in the UK. Many of the organisations listed here are available to reach out to for assistance, expertise or inspiration.

Business

Different business organisations that can assist you with social enterprises or businesses with a community focus.

Energy

Different community led initiatives concerning energy and renewable energy.

Finance & Funding

Different kinds of finance initiatives and funding sources available for community projects.

Food

Different community led initiatives for growing food, sharing food and distributing food.

Housing

Different support networks for community housing projects and for advice on starting your own.

Networks

Different community led networks operating around the UK that you can become a part of.

Below are examples of Transition towns:
1. Brixton Transition Town Transition Town Brixton is a community interest company with six directors – a limited liability company with a definite mission to benefit the community. We have an evolving strategy, committed to supporting the projects generated by the energy and vision of our active members. 2. Transition Kentish Town Part of a movement of communities coming together to reimagine and rebuild our world, focused around these simple core principles: Our Environment / Sustainability / Community / Food Waste / Energy / Growing