How to facilitate in a place that isn’t ‘yours’

Power is everywhere but is unevenly distributed. Individual power is drawn from our body, institutional position, history, language, knowledge, resources and cultural capital.

Holding space is an attempt to negotiate/navigate some of these structures to provide an environment where a group of people can encounter each other more easily and feel able to express and develop ideas, share thoughts, listen and respond honestly, learn, grow, and challenge assumptions. It is an approach often used by Producers seeking to connect people in new ways.

It is complicated trying to do this in a place that doesn’t ‘belong’ to you which will often be the case while working on an international project.

Here are ten questions that we learned to ask ourselves during Creative Producers International.

  1. Why are we there; who has invited us and why? Should we be there?
  2. What are the organisational values that normally govern our work and do we need to adapt these to be here?  Does changing our values feel okay?
  3. How will we learn about the place we are going e.g. can we learn some of the language, is there etiquette we need to follow in specific scenarios, what time do people work/eat lunch/need to be home?
  4. Who can we work with who lives and works and who is understood to be ‘of’ that place e.g. who can find good locations, co-facilitate sessions, find the right people to get involved?
  5. What are we asking of people that we are taking with us and have we made that clear to them e.g. who are they representing, what have they got to offer, who will they be meeting and what should they be aware of, who are the local stakeholders?
  6. How can we gently adjust the power structures to create a more neutral space e.g. is there flexible furniture, can we sit in a circle, are we able to use given names not titles, are we based in a place that is accessible?
  7. How do we encourage the group to have collective responsibility of a physical space e.g. can we play games, rearrange the furniture, make food together?
  8. How can we ensure that we have consent to lead them e.g. how can we make our role transparent, how can people feedback on how it is going, when is it ok for people to not participate?
  9. Do we need translators and, if so, how do we find really good ones that can convey tone and energy?
  10. Who do we know that has done work in this place (as an outsider) before and what can we learn from them?