Facilitation & Organizing
Anti-oppression facilitation is a core organizing skill. We train facilitators in order to build our collective capacity to facilitate movement work. Come grow with us!
What is facilitation?
Facilitation is the creation and guidance of a space, structure, or process that allows people to collectively struggle, learn, create, heal, make decisions, move towards a goal, and build power. The word facilitation itself comes from the French word ‘facile,’ which means ‘to make easy’. As facilitators, we are creating ease and possibility when we offer ways to enter a conversation or campaign, to sit in generative conflict and struggle within a group, or ask questions that create motion and help people get unstuck.
Facilitators ’hold space,’ meaning we create a container for others to fill. Facilitation does not prevent spontaneity or opportunities to challenge the structure of the facilitation itself - it only helps to direct, organize, or hold mirrors to what is organically occurring. Facilitation is grounded in the process of the group. Facilitators are not there to resolve contradictions, fix trauma, or deposit information - rather, we offer spaces to surface and experientially move through concepts, build trust, struggle through challenges, and pull out new, embodied learning that we can apply to action moving forward.
Workshops & Skills Shares
✔ Facilitation for Organizers (April 16/17 in CA & June TBD in NYC)
✔ Dialogue Facilitation
✔ Cross-Power Facilitation Teams
✔ Power & Risk
✔ Facilitating Reflection and Summation for Direct Action
✔ Growing My Personal Anti-Oppression Facilitation Practice
✔ Facilitating Racial Affinity Groups
✔ Defensiveness, Deflection, and Accountable Spaces
Coming Soon
✔ Design Processes for Social Change
✔ How to Introduce & Use Frameworks
✔ Building Community of Practice Principles
✔ Facilitation for Youth Organizers
More about the Both/And Facilitation & Organizing Program
-
Anyone who has been part of a group or organization has experienced gaps between stated values and actions. Facilitation is praxis: it is the vehicle for how we connect our theory and practice. Anti-oppression facilitation engages in how we create spaces where we can practice shared values, sit in collective struggle, and move to and through action. How will we collectively ensure that everyone’s voice is heard? How does the group prioritize the voices and experiences of marginalized people? How will the group work through conflict? How will the group create room to honor experiences of violence? How will we collectively center our relationships while also getting things done? How will we engage in collective action? After collective action, how will the group reflect on what happened in order to continuously improve?
Facilitation is a core organizing skill. We are facilitating when we run a meeting, design a campaign, convene a conversation, or create space for grief. Facilitation is not a professionalized, expert skill - we are all facilitating group processes all of the time. Facilitation is both an art and a science. And yet, despite how crucial facilitation is for organizing and power building, it is a craft that is rarely focused on or practiced. As a craft, it is something everyone can access and hone with practice and intention.
-
As facilitators, we are grounded in the Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Friere. Like Friere, we believe the role of educators and facilitators is not to be neutral, but to challenge a group to examine power structures, reflect on their role within them, and move to action. We believe that conflict is generative, and action and reflection cannot be independent from one another.
We use a methodology called the experiential learning cycle, which emphasizes learners as the experts of their experiences, embodied learning, and the co-creation of knowledge. We have revamped the models by David Kolb and Bernice McCarthy to be grounded in anti-oppression principles and our approach. As we grow in our practice, our pedagogy continues to shift.
With gratitude to our facilitation mentors Ryland White & Mary Kay Sigda.
-
Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Paulo Friere
The Art of Effective Facilitation, Lisa Landreman
Participatory Workshops, Robert Chambers
Teaching to Transgress, bell hooks
Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators, Mariame Kaba & Shira Hassan
Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation & Mediation, adrienne maree brown
Strategic Question Posing, Fran Peavy
Insight and Action, Tova Green & Peter Woodrow
-
Access resources on facilitation + organizing a la carte or join our patreon (coming soon)!
Meeting Checklist for Organizers
Everyday Anti-Oppression Facilitation Workbook
Facilitating Community of Practice Agreements
Defining Comrade Relationships in Collectives
Movements are born of critical connections rather than critical mass.
— Grace Lee Boggs
