Notes from the Co-creation of CSAW, the Climate and Sustainability Action Week at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland and online.

Map by Think N'Link, Agathe Loret

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During the co-creation of the CSAW Pilot, FoAM conducted a series of training and mentoring sessions for the EPFL co-creation team. The purpose of these sessions is to learn some basics of participatory design and hosting/facilitation, as well as respond to specific questions and challenges.

SEP 2020 - FEB 2021

• Engaging co-creators with CSAW and each other, including Appreciative Inquiry
• Framing what matters and articulating core questions for a participatory event
• A few relevant futuring techniques:
  • Mapping Critical Uncertainties before deciding on a theme
  • Identifying what is Known, Presumed and Unknown about a topic of interest
  • Applying Causal Layered Analysis to mapping a problem space
  • Exploring possible consequences, impacts and implications in a Futures Wheel
• Articulating a Collective Purpose (template)
• The Conundrums of Decision Making and Open Space Principles for co-creation meetings
• Stakeholder Mapping
• Event flow and experience design for participatory events
  • Flow exercise for the CSAW Pilot
• Gathering Online during a pandemic
• Session descriptions:
  • Examples of Running Sheets for facilitators
  • Mockup of a Session Handout for participants
• A possible Handout structure
• A few basic principles for Hosting in a hurry
• Staying focused and energised while facilitating, including opening and closing rituals, briefings, debriefs, and quick breathing exercises
• Visualising the process and outcomes
  • DIY Graphic Harvesting training
  • Different Approaches to Project Mapping
• Collecting feedback for the next Adaptive Action Cycle
• Deeper and broader exploration of the problem space, including Horizon Scanning, CLA, STEEP analysis, mapping antagonists and counterforces

Other topics discussed during mentoring sessions

• Designing, facilitating and coordinating co-creation sessions
• Clarifying the purpose, core questions and theme for the event
• Connecting the purpose, the theme and the formats of the event
• How to avoid Solutionism and move towards systemic interventions (including methods from complexity, systems thinking, permaculture, cooperative games, etc.)
• COVID planning and working with contingencies
• Feedback on the detailed event flow, programme, session and atmosphere design
• Selecting participants and forming teams
• Balancing learning and doing, theory and practice
• Possible outcomes and deliverables (including engaging a graphic recorder to produce a compelling visual output)
• Care packages and gifts for participants and speakers that reflect the theme and purpose of the event
• Challenges of co-ordination of heterogeneous groups and moderation of (online) plenary discussions
• Check-in and Check-out practices, including pre-performance rituals from music and performing arts
• Team facilitation over multiple days, juggling diversity of feedback and consistency of support
• Engaging public presentation formats e.g. Pecha Kucha, Open Lab, Fuckup Nights, Role Playing / Prehearsals, etc.
• Ongoing debriefing and feedback after co-creation and review meetings
• The importance of clear and concise summaries / overviews at the beginning and end (of sessions, days, workshops), as reminders of what happened and what's about to happen. Synthesis as 'braiding' of the divergent threads and activities, a leitmotif and assurance that what the participants are doing is contributing to a collective purpose.
• Engaging with (the role of) a disruptive participant
• Differences between group facilitation and team coaching
• The benefits and drawbacks of time pressure, finding time in seemingly full schedules, ad-hoc flow adaptation.
• The art of giving instructions
• Flow, rhythm and content of a closing session
• Regenerative exercises for groups with dwindling energy
• The challenges of changing group dynamics (e.g. closed and public sessions, feedback sessions with external guests, etc).
• After the event: decompression, debrief, individual and collective feedback, integrating insights
• The importance of collective celebration
• Hosting training

Related

Our approach to mentoring in CSAW is based on FoAM's experience with:

• Process facilitation, in which we combine different participatory techniques to guide discussions and co-creation towards effective collaboration and long term thinking.
• The Lab approach, which creates space for groups to investigate complex real world challenges and to collaboratively develop a range of experiments through iterative action research.
• Futuring techniques that explore problems and solutions from the vantage point of multiple futures, encouraging the participants to imagine and prototype how things could develop otherwise.