Dynamic Facilitation

Please join us.

    

After the experience of Helene, it seems more important than ever that we use powerful facilitation tools and new structures to find ways to come together in our communities and across the country so we can deal with the challenges of our times in a way that brings us together, instead of pulling us apart.

Wouldn't it be great ... ... if we could create community spaces where we spark a new type of conversation into being that brings us together ...

 

• To face today's biggest problems and co-create shared perspectives on what principles we want applied, and the best strategy going forward?

• To give leaders tools to help our elected officials, corporations, philanthropies, NGO's and others work in partnership with citizens?

• To restructure our sub-systems like Healthcare, Education, Taxes, etc. toward serving the Public Interest (vs. Special Interests)?

 

Tools that can help us do that:

 

Dynamic Facilitation (DF): A facilitation approach designed by Jim Rough to uncover group wisdom by processes that result in deep, meaningful, and uncontentious conversations. 

The process builds consensus on difficult topics that have previously divided groups. (For more info: https://www.wisedemocracy.org/). The experiential format offers opportunities for significant personal growth and group growth as well.  

 

What People are saying about Dynamic Facilitation

“… Dynamic Facilitation Seminar teaches the most fluid, powerful form of consensus process I know, which also happens to be key to the Wisdom Council, the most powerful democratic innovation I know.” Tom Atlee, author of The Tao of Democracy and Empowering Public Wisdom.

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“Any organization with big impossible problems – these are the best topics for Dynamic Facilitation.” Alex Nairn, former British Government Employee, Department of Education (See YouTube for more details:)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy9c64UB2xM

             

 

Citizen Wisdom Councils:

A practical application of Dynamic Facilitation (DF) with a proven track record in addressing challenging problems. It has been used successfully for over a decade in communities in Austria to address difficult problems like immigration and how to repurpose an old concentration camp.

 

Ordinary citizens, chosen at random, use DF to address a particular community issue for local government councils to consider and implement. They then present their ideas to the community through community wide listening sessions. In two Austrian states, Saltzburg and Vorarlberg, these councils were so successful at addressing challenging issues that Citizen Wisdom Councils were written into their state constitutions. (The picture below shows The Civic Council (“Bürgerrat”) in Austria on: “How do we deal best with the influx of refugees” – Credit: Martin Rausch)

 

History of Citizen Councils

They have been a powerful force around the world that has helped revitalize democracies. There have been hundreds of Civic Assemblies around the world. They are becoming an increasingly popular way of revitalizing democratic deliberation and bringing the voice of the people back into the popular narrative on critical issues. The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) identified 733 assemblies from 1979 to 2023.