Countercultures of Care Programme, for facilitators

a practice community for group facilitators and those who work within collective structures

Building on last year’s Facilitating Change workshop series, based on feedback from the participants, I’ve decide to run a space which is focused not only on knowledge-transfer, but also on mutual support. Between 2020-2025 I worked within aequa Workshops Collective, and experienced firsthand the power of regularly sharing knowledge, skills, learnings, and just having a place to ask “What is the most ethical course of action?” in a group of trusted peers. Now that this experience has ended, I thought it could be useful to bring the benefits of that arrangement into a programme in which many of the amazing facilitators I know (and maybe some I don’t-yet-know) can share the same.

This will be a space to practice economies of mutuality and interdependence, rather than scarcity and singularity. Starting in March, will meet once a month through December, with a break in August.

Online, with option for a couple in-person meetups for those in Berlin.

Subscribe at joycast.substack.com for updates

What is Countercultures of Care?

We believe in caring for each other as a form of cultural rebellion. We believe in the need to foster a counterculture of care — a politics larger than any siloed issue, one that can challenge dehumanization and the erasure of atrocity while allowing us to hold on to each other and our humanity amid distasters daily and acute. - Kelly Hayes & Mariame Kaba, Let This Radicalize You

The goal of the the Countercultures of Care series is to assemble a small and committed cohort of facilitators, would-be facilitators and those who work in collective contexts — all of whom want to deepen and sharpen their facilitation knowledge and skills in service of collective liberation.

I’m a firm believer that one (of many) ways we can weave care into our collective spaces is through power-critical, trauma-responsive and deeply embodied facilitation practices.

Together, we will practice sharing vulnerably, daydreaming, trying things out, failing-with-an-audience, and caring fiercely for ourselves and each other — essential but oft-forgotten steps on the way to doing the damn thing. And rather than just solo-talking to a coach or reading our way through another self-help book or online course, we get to talk to other people along the way.

By having this process happen in and through a facilitated, conversation- and creativity-based space, participants not only get the benefit of verbal processing and naming things out loud, but also have conversation partners who are facing related challenges, get real-time feedback and support for their ideas and challenges, get inspired to dream a bit bigger or wilder or weirder, and even find co-conspirators for activating the things they are dreaming of and longing for.

While I have an outline of the themes I think we might cover over these months (see below), I also want to let the programme emerge from the needs of the participants – to sprout from what is present in our collective body, from the challenges we are facing in our contexts. So, as will all the best (in my opinion) facilitation — we’ll go in with a strong plan, and look forward to adapting it as we go.

Though this ten-month programme, we create a temporary community of care, practicing what interdependence can look like when we are moving towards what we are longing for — personally and collectively.

Together, we aim to disrupt the overculture of domination and violence by building countercultures of care that start with those in our proximities.

Questions we’ll explore

Using participatory methods, we will explore some of these questions together:

• What is a counterculture of care? Why is it necessary to think of this in our roles as facilitators?
• What is facilitation, to me? What capacities and skillsets are we interested in developing together as a group throughout this programme?
• What are my personal ethics and intentions in my facilitation praxis? What do I really care about, and why?
• What are my personal strengths, based on my own lived experiences, wisdom, knowledge, learnings and skills I already have? Are there further skills/learnings I might want to explore to help me show up in my values for the moment we find ourselves in?
• What is the role of design in facilitation, and how can I design learning / collaboration / participatory spaces that run counter to the systems of domination we are fighting against?
• What can I do when harm happens in groups I am facilitating, or in moments of great rupture?
• What's a possible plan for regenerative, long-term engagement in this praxis? With whom do I need to connect to support me and keep me accountable in this journey?
• And more…

This may be for you if…

• You are often in the position of negotiating needs between different people — whether in your organization, your family or your friend group
• You have experience or interest in using group facilitation as a liberatory practice
• You work with/in collective structures, or want to do more of that
• You believe that we are the ones we have been waiting for, knowing that we have to cultivate strong communities with ethics rooted in care if we want to shed both topple and replace the current violent systems we find ourselves within

What you can expect:

• A series rooted in a shared vision of a world where everyone can thrive, recognizing that we are all affected differently by the systems we live within, and bringing that knowledge and experience to the table.
• Consent-based, trauma-informed, inclusion-oriented space that invites you to arrive as your whole damn self, just as you are.
• Mix of many different activity types for different body/mind and learning types. For example: personal reflections; paired, small group and larger-group conversations; creative and art practices; embodiment/somatics/movement practices; daydreaming; creative writing.
• Exploring squishy heartfelt places such as outlining our “why” (ethics/intentions), alongside moving through to the very practical and material skills, including working with real-life case studies from the group as well dedicated practice rounds to try out new skills.
• Chance to bring your personal case studies / challenges to a group of peer support folks to help work though the tough stuff we often deal with as facilitators, especially in facilitating “diverse” groups. (And yes, we will unpack that word!)
• Tending to tensions, harms and tough-lessons in our group together as and when they arise, giving us the chance to put our ethics and learnings into practice in real-time!
• Conversations with a community of peers, rather than a 1:1 with a coach or therapist. There is a track record of very sweet and supportive people signing up for my workshops! Maybe you are one of them? :)
• Honestly, I think I can promise you some fun and sweet times

Session dates

Usually on the fourth Thursday evening of each month. All the sessions with no detail under the theme will be determined by a group process! Weee!

19:00-21:00 CET (18:00-20:00 UK, 1-3:00pm U.S. Eastern, 10:00am-12:00pm U.S. Pacific)

Based on the needs of the group, specific sessions might cover, for example:

• Power-critical facilitation basics
• Knowledge and power: exploring ways to “gesture towards decolonial futures” in our approaches to learning design and facilitation
• Trauma-responsive facilitation and the role of embodiment and somatics
• Facilitating and designing spaces for group collaboration / participation
• Meaning-making in facilitation, and the power of outliers
• Making decisions in groups, whether by consensus or other methods
• Facilitated peer-support sessions for specific challenging case studies from the group
• Embodied practice-and-feedback sessions, using both imagined scenarios and real-life examples from the group.

Pricing

Money, resources, access and identity are all such personal and (sometimes) emotional topics.

I offer my services on a sliding scale. What does that mean? (Hint: it is NOT about offering my labor at a discount or for-sale price!)

Read more about my commitment to sliding scale here.

The price-points for this programme are as follows:

• Full price: 95€ per 2-hour session (380€ total)
• Financial need price: 70€ per 2-hour session (280€ total)
• Supporting others price: 150€ per 2-hour session (600€ total)

These can be paid up a lump-sum before we start, or in monthly instalments.

If you can pay on the higher end of the scale, you can help fund the course for those who can’t — a beautiful chance to practice cross-class solidarity before we even begin!

As an independent facilitator, these prices go directly into covering my personal costs of living (rent, food, medicines, insurances, etc.), so that hopefully I can continue to offer these kinds of workshops directly to my communities in a sustainable way.

About your facilitator

Hi, I'm Sarj. I'm a seasoned facilitator and community care organizer based in Berlin.

Learn more about my lineage and commitments here, where you can also learn about the life and work experience that prepared me to hold this space (together with the participants, of course).

I will be supported by one assistant/trainee facilitator who can help me hold the space for a group of 20.

Recommended Reading

In addition to years of experience, here are just a few of the books, zines, courses and other materials that have shaped my facilitation praxis, and which will inform this programme.

I’m excited to learn form the resources that others bring into the space as well!

Questions?

Feel free to write me here.