A NOTE FROM OUR MINNESOTA SPONSORS...

So, What ARE Facilitation Acrobatics, Anyway?

The Story

Our Minnesota host group of volunteers first met around a sticky wall in early March.   Quickly, in true Minnesota spirit, we knew that our enthusiasm was for something other than a typical “conference”, sitting in chairs, listening, nodding,etc.  So..how do you begin planning something that hasn't existed?  Aha!  use ToP methods!  Focus Question: what does an 'un-conference' featuring facilitation look like?   And so it went. 
                                                                                               
You will see the resulting 4 day design  'Raising the Big ToP theme: Facilitating Leadership in the Midst  of Diversity and Change" that emerged.  Using the 'circus' theme, there is always a 'Big ToP"...and a central 'big show'...with 'acrobatics'!   Thus...Facilitation Acrobatics jumped into center ring.

• Saturday  January 11-- Imaginative facilitation going on in 12 'tents' - each 'tent with facilitation teams who begin working in August to design "(from wikipedia)  extraordinary feats of balance, agility and (facilitation) coordination.  Each participant experiencing one topic all morning, a second topic all afternoon.   

• Sunday January 12, experience a 'pull together' of the 12 inquiries in an astonishing pull-together feat  - with two master facilitators working to 'invent' a new process to hold the wisdom, insights - what is emerging where 'participation and voice' is coming into our organizational lives. Each team spent 4 - 6 weeks determining the 'inquiry focus' of their topic...see those in the Facilitation Acrobatics detail.

Our Intentions:

Facilitation Acrobatics Rational Aims - each session will...

• Ignite innovative facilitation approaches and results

• Produce clearly expressed results for a pull-together on Sunday morning

Facilitation Acrobatics Experiential aims include:

• Excitement in the facilitation experience with this new network

• Re-invigorated hope in the possibility of generating new thinking - it can be done!