[OSList] OST meeting 2 hours a week - X-posted OS-list and GC-list

[Thomas Herrmann via OSList]

Dear friends in Open Space /GC-list

Since a few months I facilitate a meeting every Sunday in my community as
part of a Tillsammanscafé (Together café) for people living in my community
who want to contribute to making it a better place for everyone living here.
It’s a 2-hour meeting where we start with having coffee/tea, then welcoming
and sharing some news (especially if relevant things have been happening).
Usually there are 50-100 participants sitting at long tables (due to
logistics and the short time I have chosen not to use the circle. In “real”
meetings I always use the circle). 

 

It started as we felt we need to do something to create space for new
inhabitants to meet those of us living for a long time here, so among the
participants there are asylum seekers and refugees. When meeting in large
group we translate everything to English, Arabic and Swedish – small groups
have to help each other.

 

Next step in the meeting is that I ask who has a topic they want to raise
for conversation today. Of course it’s more challenging than when we sit in
a circle so we tried different things such as keeping topics from last
meetings that anyone can put up again + invite more. We also tried to invite
people during arrival/having coffee – to put topics up. Normally we have
5-10 topics from playing the guitar, looking for internship and work,
finding housing, learning language etc etc.

 

I create spaces for people to meet in small circles to have their
conversations (45-60 minutes) then we gather again and I invite each group
to share a bit about what they did before we close the meeting.

 

We are now thinking about alternative ways to develop this and I’d love to
have more ideas. While writing one idea came to me. As we have been talking
about having meetings dedicated to a specific theme, or to cook together
during a meeting (we have access to a space with several cooking places) or
do something else together. 

I am thinking about opening space in a real way – to create an agenda (in a
real open space way using the circle!) for example for the coming 3 meetings
which would then be like break our spaces. That way it would not be so
repetitive and more time would be there for each break out/or it could also
develop to sometimes having a specific theme for one meeting


 

I would love your input, experiences, questions
.

 

Tillsammans – we can make difference

 

Thomas Herrmann

Open Space Consulting AB

 <http://www.openspaceconsulting.com/> www.openspaceconsulting.com

Ni når oss per telefon: +46 (0)709 98 97 81 eller Epost:
<mailto:thomas at openspaceconsulting.com> thomas at openspaceconsulting.com 

 

Open Space Consulting AB är ett företag med STORA ambitioner att guida
ledare, organisationer men även lokalsamhällen att nå sin fulla kraft för
att infria sina drömmar. Vi bidrar med kunskaper och praktiska verktyg för
att stödja er att finna er bästa väg.  

 

Mer information

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomasherrmannopenspaceconsult

Facebook Företagssida: https://www.facebook.com/OpenSpaceConsulting 

 

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