Creative and inclusive facilitation for workshops, meetings, away days and residentials.
Face to face quality time together is precious for any group. You might develop new ideas, decide a strategy, learn new skills. You will also get to know each other better and develop your group’s culture and understanding of how you work best together. It’s worth investing in making your meeting the best it can be – a well designed workshop, away-day or residential can create powerful ripples of lasting change.
I offer creative and inclusive workshop design and facilitation to help you make your meeting effective, enjoyable and empowering.
I aim to facilitate warm and safe group experiences to help a group surface underlying truths, unlock collective intelligence and design the best possible solutions, together. When people feel included and safe to be themselves, it helps to soften judgments of each other, appreciate differences and cultivate trust.
Who I work with
I work as a facilitator with a huge variety of groups and organisations, including international campaigning NGOs, charities, public sector bodies, schools and small local community groups. My workshop design and facilitation style is particularly suitable for those who:
- Support the leadership of those with lived experience of the issues they work on. You work alongside communities, not doing things to them.
- Aim to nurture more equal and healthy relationships in their organisation. My facilitation style aims to disrupt the usual taken-for-granted power hierarchies, making space for disagreement and for marginalised voices to be heard
- Are keen to use creative methods and increase participation in decision making
How I work
If you need a facilitator and think I may be a good fit, please contact me to explore how I might work with you in more detail. You can also read some more general information about how I work here
Please see here for some more practical details about working with me. If you are interested in what I offer, please contact me for an initial discussion.
Testimonials
Shilpa’s facilitation is spacious, gentle, kind, and challenging. She led my organisation through a whistle-stop tour of participation and pedagogy, and simultaneously eased and smoothed our communication patterns. The subtle new ways we learnt to be with each other through that session played a significant part in enabling our subsequent shift to a flat management structure. Her session with us last year really helped me, and us, understand and appreciate each other better. I don’t think our transition to flat would have been anything like as easy without it. – Elena Blackmore, Public Interest Research Company, Wales
“Shilpa co-facilitated our large global meeting, which brought together 100 network members from many places including Indonesia, the DRC, Cameroon, South and North America, China and Europe. She encouraged the small agenda team to involve folks more at the margins of our network in guiding the event. She also helped lead a playful intervention which helped raise consciousness about inclusion and better communication for non-native English speakers within our group. In both instances, these well facilitated interventions established foundational practices that we’ve tried to take forward into our ongoing work. – Matt Daggett, Global Campaign Leader at Greenpeace International
“Hearing from other women of colour helped me feel stronger about fighting racism, sexism and homophobia in my life. You held the space really well and I enjoyed the role-play games though I thought it would be scary. The other women’s stories were inspiring – you all helped me to see hope. Thank you – Feedback from participant in a Tackling Every day Racism and Sexism workshop in London