How do we design dialogues?
With 35 participants, July’s DwD explored the patterns for design for dialogue events, for clients, organizations, and communities. We explored the patterns and elements of effective group processes expressed in both theory and our experience, with guidance from emerging process design tools.
- What patterns and modes of engagement enable committed participation and reflective inquiry?
- How might deepening our awareness of the essential elements found in our best methods foster successful group outcomes?
- How might these patterns differ between arenas, whether creative organizational workshops or in civic dialogues?
Based on a workshop taught in the OCADU Strategic Foresight and Innovation program, Peter Jones shared a foundation for workshop design patterns for group dialogues in any setting. Working with the Group Pattern Language Project as a source of structure and tools the session addressed:
- What patterns for dialogue structuring might best enable our own, everyday group work situations?
- How do we select and adapt best-fitting practices and methods to create mindful, evocative learning communities for creative inquiry?
- How can we learn from these patterns to co-create new methods or group structuring approaches?
The ultimate goal of the workshop was to co-create better workshop designs and deepen competency through collaborating with peers, using the resource of the pattern model and toolkit. Participants offered 5 of their problems or upcoming opportunities in their current practice, including an urban youth summer camp, a 24-hour intensive retreat, a community engagement series with underserved immigrants, a new UofT course program and an international workshop in Lisbon.
Participants co-created new workshop plans with the patterns and shared ideas, exercising the pattern language for meaningful workshop design problems.
The group pattern cards can be downloaded and ordered from GroupworksDeck.org.
Creating a kit for learning and teaching Waymaking.
Designing a youth summer camp program.
Designing a sustainable cities retreat workshop.
Designing community engagement for an underserved neighborhood.
The Hosts
Peter Jones and Chris Lee guide this session on group design patterns. Peter is co-founder of Design with Dialogue and associate professor at OCAD University, in the Strategic Foresight and Innovation MDes program. Peter runs the innovation research firm Redesign and has been engaging groups of all sizes and shapes since the mid-1990’s. He is author of the early handbook of facilitation process, Team Design (1998), We Tried to Warn You (2008), and the recent Rosenfeld title Design for Care: Innovating Healthcare Experience. His work can be found at designdialogues.com
Chris Lee is a Toronto based facilitator and process designer. He runs Potluck Projects, actively using concepts and participatory methodologies from the Art of Hosting, Asset Based Community Development, and Person-Centred Planning to support groups in achieving collective outcomes that are greater than the sum of its parts. He also works with the YSI Collaborative, a network and community of practice that accelerates and amplifies the conditions for youth-led organizing and engagement in Ontario.