August 2020 #TalkingClimate Workshop Trainer’s Guide Introduction The purpose of this guide is to provide people who want to deliver the #TalkingClimate workshop with what is needed to do so. The guide contains: - a description of the workshop; - details of what you’ll need to deliver the workshop; - suggestions for recruiting people; - facilitation tips (for delivery online and in-person); - a detailed script. This guide is a pilot version and we are keen to hear your feedback about what is most useful in the guide and what could be improved. We will be asking for your feedback on this at the end of the project. This project is being delivered by Climate Outreach and EIT Climate-KIC. We wish you all the best with your workshop. Enjoy it and we look forward to hearing about your experience and receiving your feedback! 1 Workshop overview The purpose of the #TalkingClimate workshop is to provide practical advice and support to help anyone and everyone - whoever or wherever they are - have constructive, interesting and compelling conversations about climate change. It should be able to be delivered to a wide range of audiences - colleagues, friends, people in your neighbourhood or community, or an online network of people interested in sustainability issues for example. We have designed the workshop to be a minimum of two hours long, excluding arrival and settling in time, for between 7 and 12 participants. It can be delivered to smaller numbers of people if Covid-19 limits the size of gatherings where you are. If you are a confident facilitator you could deliver the workshop for a larger group, although we’d suggest not more than 25 people, and only then if that is safe from a health perspective of course. You may want to make the workshop 2.5 hours long in order to account for arrival and settling in, and to give yourself a bit of flex time, in case things take longer than you think. The workshop can be delivered online or in-person, indoors or outdoors, depending on your context and preference. Preparing for the workshop You’ll need to decide on a date, time and location for your workshop(s), allowing enough time for recruitment and preparation beforehand. Below is a list of equipment you may need, depending on how and where you choose to deliver your workshop: - Workshop script - Flipchart paper and pens and / or slide-deck presentation - Evaluation form (online version or paper) - Computer and projector - Refreshments 2 If you are delivering your workshop online we would recommend that you find someone to take responsibility for the technical side of the facilitation and to keep an eye on the chat box, as it can be hard to facilitate and keep an eye on the tech and the chat box all at the same time. You may want to create a slide-deck for your workshop or some handwritten visual aids, on flipchart paper for example. We would highly recommend having the questions for the exercises written somewhere where participants can see them during the exercises - this might be on a large sheet of paper, a powerpoint slide or in the chat box (in which case you’ll need to have them somewhere where you can easily drop them into the chat box at the right moment). If it works better for your situation, you are welcome to deliver the workshop in a different language. You will find that the ‘REAL TALK’ mnemonic (described in the workshop script below) probably won’t work in a different language, but you may find a different mnemonic that does, or you can deliver the workshop without needing to use any mnemonic. Please make sure you take evaluation forms or use the online version of the evaluation form that we will send you, in order to gather feedback from participants at the end of your workshop. This feedback will be used to help improve the overall effectiveness of the workshop. Recruitment You might already have a group of people in mind to deliver the workshop for, in which case you won’t need promotional materials, but if you’re aiming to recruit people to your workshop here is some sample text you could use: Everyone’s Talking Climate: How to have effective and compelling conversations about climate change in your daily life This workshop is designed to equip you with tools, techniques and understanding to bring conversations about climate change into your daily life, in ways that resonate with people’s values and inspire transformation. In smaller text at the bottom you could include some brief information about the project: 3 The workshop is part of the international #TalkingClimate project, being delivered by Climate Outreach and EIT Climate-KIC. The project provides support and training for a global network of participants to deliver #TalkingClimate workshops that train people to have effective and compelling conversations about climate change. Background information Priority reading and watching: - #TalkingClimate Handbook co-published by Climate Outreach and EIT Climate-KIC Further reading and watching: - How to have a climate change conversation, Webinar 1 and Webinar 2 #TalkingClimate - Talking Climate by Adam Corner and Jamie Clarke - Don’t Even Think About It by George Marshall - Active Hope: How to face the mess we’re in without going crazy by Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone - Nonviolent communication by Marshall Rosenberg - The Power of Vulnerability TED Talk by Brene Brown - The Common Cause Handbook by Common Cause Foundation Facilitation tips Here’s some tips for facilitating a workshop. Use the ones that feel helpful to you. Some are relevant to both in-person and online facilitation and some are relevant to either / or. In advance: - Prepare what you are going to say but avoid reading from a script. It can be helpful to prepare some bullet points or prompts for yourself in advance or to highlight key information in the script, so that you can easily come back to where you were if you lose your way or forget the next point. - Practice saying what you want to say for each section out loud and adapt it to your own style of speaking or expressing yourself, until it feels natural. 4 On the day: - It can be nerve wracking for participants to arrive at a workshop and so try to make the space as welcoming and as comfortable as you can. - Try to have everything set up in the way you want it before people start arriving, so that you can be available to welcome people as they arrive, or have someone to help you by welcoming people as they arrive. - You could get people involved as they arrive e.g. if you’re still setting up, you could involve people in helping you to set up, or you could have an activity they do when they arrive such as responding to a question on the wall or chalked onto the floor, so that people start to engage and learn a little about each other as they arrive. - At the beginning of the workshop introduce: - Sharing airtime - ask people to pay attention to how much they are speaking and to try to balance speaking and listening, and to hold back if they have spoken a lot so they can hear from people who have not spoken. - Hand signals - one that we’ve found helpful is ‘jazz hands’, whereby people shake their hands like a jazz dancer when something someone says resonates with them. This can be really nice for building a sense of connection between participants. - Explain that you’re going to be strict on time and keep things moving as there’s lots to cover. - For the workshop exercises, have the questions written up on a flipchart paper for participants to refer back to during their conversations. If you’re doing the workshop online, we would recommend putting the questions and the instructions for the whole exercise in the chat box because, as soon as participants are in their break-out rooms, they won’t be able to ask you questions if they get stuck or can’t remember what the questions were. - Occasionally we refer to ‘popcorn style feedback’ in the workshop script below, which means inviting people to feedback randomly in no particular order and without everyone having to feedback - you simply take a few reflections from the audience randomly from those who offer them. If you’re doing this on Zoom, there are a number of ways people could signal they want to feedback, such as using one of the virtual hand signals or simply putting their hand up (this is easy if you’re a small group and you can see everyone clearly on the screen), or asking people to write ‘hand’ in the chat box when they want to speak, or they could feed back using the chat box. 5 - - - - - Keep things moving. Don’t be afraid to move things on even if it feels like an exercise could go on longer. Explain that you can see there’s lots more to discuss on this but we need to move on because we’ll run out of time and there’s a lot more to cover. If people are asking a lot of questions or have a lot of points to make and you need to round it up, you can say ‘one last question / point’ or ‘any more really burning questions / points before we move on?’ Keep an eye on the time. Timings may vary depending on the number of participants in your workshop. For larger groups, exercises tend to take longer. If you run over time with one exercise, you may need to shorten another. Be prepared to be flexible. Try to finish on time (this may be more important in some cultures than others!) and to finish cleanly i.e. don’t allow things to drag on. If there’s a question you don’t know how to answer, it is okay to say so. You could ask other participants what they think or refer people to the Climate Outreach #TalkingClimate Handbook or website for more information and resources. It’s okay to feel nervous! Be yourself, be humble, and be kind to yourself if you feel like you could have done bits of it better. Tips for hosting a workshop online If you are hosting your workshop online, we recommend that you use Zoom. As the workshop involves two person and small group discussions, you will need a paid-for account so you can create breakout rooms. We are exploring creating a paid-for Zoom account and will discuss this more with you in the training webinar. Basic tips for hosting a meeting or workshop online: ● Practice and familiarise yourself with the technology in advance. ● Start 15 minutes early to ensure everything is working okay before you allow people into the workshop. ● Recruit a tech support person who can help you with this side of things during the workshop (e.g. getting people into break out groups, keeping an eye on the chat etc), so that you can focus on facilitation. ● Welcome people as they arrive, have a few lines you can say on repeat whilst people are arriving so that there isn’t ‘dead air’, such as ‘welcome, we’re just waiting for everyone to 6 arrive, we’ll be starting in a few minutes’... ‘it’s great to see so many people here, we’re just waiting for a few more people to arrive’... ‘it’s great to see people from so many different places joining us’ etc. ● Familiarise participants with the tech and how you will use it at the beginning of the meeting, so that everyone knows how it will work e.g. ○ Mute / unmute (as the host you should be able to mute everyone if you need to) ○ Camera off / on ○ Chat box and how you’ll use it e.g. if you have any questions please write them in the chat box ○ How to make a point or ask a question e.g. how to use ‘virtual’ hand signals ○ Break out groups ● Invite participants to introduce themselves one by one or in the chat box. ● Sometimes on zoom you end up with a parallel conversation in chat. This is fine, just remember to store it before you end the meeting. You will find that there is now extensive information available online on how to host virtual meetings, training and workshops. Here are some suggested resources: ● If you’re using Zoom and you haven’t used it to deliver a meeting or workshop before, you’ll find comprehensive help in the Zoom help centre and, in particular, in the section on Meetings and Webinars. ● Blueprints for Change, an ‘open library of advocacy how-to’s put together by campaign innovators in order to help progressive organizers and groups’, have produced this detailed guide with lots of useful information about facilitating meetings online (far more than you’ll need for this workshop!), including links to further sites and resources. ● This brief guide on ‘Making Online Meetings & Trainings Interactive’ from the Sierra Club offers useful tips and information. Responding to Covid-19 It’s your responsibility to ensure that you inform yourself about the Covid-19 safety guidelines and legislation where you are and that you conform to these and any other relevant health and safety guidelines or legislation. This may mean, for example, that you need to limit the number of people who attend your workshop or carry out your workshop outside or online. 7 The health and wellbeing of participants and researchers should take priority over any project of this nature and no-one should feel pressured to run or participate in a gathering that may put them at risk. We recommend that you also follow World Health Organisation guidelines for running meetings, which include: ● Develop a preparedness plan before a meeting, including asking whether or not the event should take place ● Prepare supplies - tissues, hand sanitiser, masks ● Monitor where Covid is circulating, advise participants that they cannot attend with any symptoms ● Gather contact details and state they will be shared with public health authorities if anyone becomes ill ● Have a response plan in case anyone becomes ill ● Provide information about the risks during a meeting ● Encourage - hand-washing, good hygiene behaviours, provide contact details of a health hotline number, ● Retain name and contact details for at least a month and inform everyone if anyone gets ill. We are also asking that you ask participants to sign a disclaimer accepting that they face a level of risk in participating in the group; that they accept we are doing what is possible to minimise the risks; and they don’t hold us responsible for that risk. We will share a text for that disclaimer with you. Workshop script The workshop script is based closely on the principles in the #TalkingClimate handbook, co-published by Climate Outreach and EIT Climate-KIC in December 2019. We highly recommend that you read the handbook before running the workshop, as it will help you to gain a deeper understanding of the workshop content. 8 Some key principles to think about: The #TalkingClimate workshop is based around a series of exercises. We suggest that you concentrate on making the exercises work as well as possible, and drawing out the key information and building the conversation in your workshop from there. This is because your participants want to feel like geniuses - if they come up with the principles of good conversations themselves through the exercises and then you explain how the research backs it up, they will remember that much better than if you just tell them the principles. At the end of each exercise there is the opportunity to take a few reflections from the room. When feeding back their reflections: ● summarise and repeat back what you hear ● make it dynamic by asking questions like ‘does anyone else find that?’ (people can use ‘jazz hands’ to agree - see facilitator notes above). ● aim to draw out the key points from what people say and, in particular, the key ideas in the script, as this will back up what you say when you then deliver the script (before you move from the exercise into the script, you could say something like ‘well it’s funny you should say all that because that’s exactly what Climate Outreach’s research has found’ and then launch into the script - as we said, this makes the audience feel like genius’s!). In this process, you are a facilitator, not a teacher - we find that workshops function best if you never talk for more than 15 minutes at a time. You will probably find it easier if you practice, and think about what you will say beforehand. The script is there for you to use. But also do it in a way that works for you: are you a researcher who wants to read all the material in detail beforehand? Do you need it all written down, or do you prefer a more freewheeling style? Do you want someone keeping time for you? We have provided timings for all the exercises in the script. You can vary it a bit, but don’t lose track of time - that’s an important part of running a workshop! You may want to adjust the 9 timings for the different exercises according to the number of people - with less people you’re likely to have more time for each exercise, whereas with more people there’ll be less time. This workshop is, in the end, about good conversation. So try to relax and enjoy it. It doesn’t have to be perfect, and we are looking forward to getting the feedback from you and your participants. 10
