I'm not sure whether yesterday's post came over a bit negative. I certainly don't want to give the impression participative methods are easy but at the same time I want to encourage their use. These posts are meant to draw attention to a variety of methods and to offer some sense of how I view them at present. My message is experiment, recognise your limitations and that you will improve over time. Share leadership and work with more experienced people if and when you can.
In many ways World Cafe is a more flexible and straightforward participative method. Broadly people sit in small groups, discuss a topic which might be the same for each table or vary from table to table. From time to time people move around, leaving one person behind to introduce new people to what has been discussed so far.
The method is very flexible and there are a variety of ways of varying it and using it. This is the method we used at the Participation in Church conference a couple of weeks ago.
The main difficulty with this approach (apart from the usual one of actually being participative) is resources. Ideally you need to accommodate everyone in a single large hall around small round tables, room for 4 at each table is ideal. You also need paper table cloths and various flowers, sweets, toys, information sheets to encourage the right sort of atmosphere. One advantage of working with churches is that there is no shortage of large halls. The ubiquitous trestle tables are a bit of a problem but I am told the method can work quite well with them. Round tables optimise distance and so help with hearing and of course look better.
For more information, there is a website about World Cafe and a book The World Cafe by Juanita Brown and others.
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