My attempt at drawing out our two-day workshop :) What happens when you give a room full of community planners markers, pens, and walls full of paper? Total magic!
Every year around this time, the CCP Mentors (see my earlier blog post about what that means) get together for our wrap-up session, to talk about our mentoring experiences in the previous year. A couple of meetings ago, we went "you know, if we're trying to pass skills on to other communities, it would be really nice to have some support in our own skill-building..." and, since the lovely AANDC folks who work in the CCP program are so awesome (thanks Colette!), they hooked us up with TWO FULL DAYS of training at this years' wrap-up!
On day one we had my dear friend and famed facilitator Aftab Erfan (check out this article that we co-wrote) teach our group a bit about Deep Democracy, a facilitation methodology that was honed in post-apartheid South Africa to help people work together, despite legitimate grievances and trauma. There is a lot of applicability of this method to First Nations, who also have unequal footing in many decision-making groups, as well as the lasting intergenerational trauma from too many things to list here.
I would do total injustice to the depth of this style of facilitation to try and describe any more here, but if you are interested please do some more digging of your own. Suffice it to say that the day was enriching, challenging (in the right way) and ended with each of us mentors, in pairs, saying as many lovely things as we could about our partner. How wonderful would the world be if we did that all the time!
Every year around this time, the CCP Mentors (see my earlier blog post about what that means) get together for our wrap-up session, to talk about our mentoring experiences in the previous year. A couple of meetings ago, we went "you know, if we're trying to pass skills on to other communities, it would be really nice to have some support in our own skill-building..." and, since the lovely AANDC folks who work in the CCP program are so awesome (thanks Colette!), they hooked us up with TWO FULL DAYS of training at this years' wrap-up!
On day one we had my dear friend and famed facilitator Aftab Erfan (check out this article that we co-wrote) teach our group a bit about Deep Democracy, a facilitation methodology that was honed in post-apartheid South Africa to help people work together, despite legitimate grievances and trauma. There is a lot of applicability of this method to First Nations, who also have unequal footing in many decision-making groups, as well as the lasting intergenerational trauma from too many things to list here.
I would do total injustice to the depth of this style of facilitation to try and describe any more here, but if you are interested please do some more digging of your own. Suffice it to say that the day was enriching, challenging (in the right way) and ended with each of us mentors, in pairs, saying as many lovely things as we could about our partner. How wonderful would the world be if we did that all the time!
Notes from the Deep Democracy training
On day two we had Rosanna von Sacken take us through the basics of using visual tools to enhance meetings. We learned everything from what kind of paper (4' rolls of 20lb bond) and markers (Neulands for big paper) to use, to how to design our own templates to use in meetings. Take a look at some of my notebook pages from this session - makes sense that it would be easier to describe what we learned in pictures than in words!
Here are some graphic recording resources for those interested in diving deeper into this topic:
- Afab's Graphic Recording Portfolio
- Rosanna's Graphic Recording Portfolio
- The Centre for Graphic Facilitation
- International Forum of Visual Practitioners
- The Change Handbook: Visual Recording and Graphic Facilitation
- Image Think
Do you use graphics in your own note-taking or the way you do meetings? I would love to hear your tips!
-JH
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