Its conference season and one I particularly look forward to is the International Association of Facilitators conference, usually at a central location in the UK, boasting many interactive sessions over 2 days, where we get our hands on new tools and techniques – and Lego – and hang out in neighbouring restaurants. Not so this year. We will be partaking, piecemeal of equally wonderful sessions over zoom and other platforms with their amusing and frustrating foibles. Our food and coffee will be our own, but, curiously, I suspect the feel will be pretty similar. 
On Thursday 22nd October at 12.15 I’ll be running a timely session on “Facilitation in a time of systemic and collective Trauma”, using some of the trauma training I’ve had recently in tandem with 25 years of facilitation and conflict resolution and prevention. Here is what I say in the blurb.
“In this contemplative session we will explore, largely in discursive small groups, some of the facilitation challenges posed by the plethora of stresses humanity currently lives with – from Covid-19 to racism and environmental collapse. We will examine different kinds of trauma – personal, collective, intergenerational and systemic – where they come from and how they act on the body and mind. You will have space to consider and discuss with others what it means for your work and how you might address issues of trauma when they come up in events.
If you a facilitator or do facilitative work within your organisation and would like to sign up for the conference, a week-long smorgasboard of delights, go to https://bit.ly/IAFEWFacWeek20. From there you will see the whole list and can choose what to sign up for.
I am so looking forward to it – let me know if I’ll see you there!