Loomio
Mon 30 Jul 2018 10:12AM

Discuss: 2 Organisational History: Group Timeline Activity

CS Chris Setz Public Seen by 223

The purpose of this session is to share stories about our experiences and the history StART, as a way to perhaps paint a fuller picture about has been happening to the urban developments in Haringey and London, what it feels like living in this borough and city, how we got to where we are now and where we want to go from here. StART has been going on as a campaign and CLT for three years now. This reflects a lot of collective work and dedication, creating a framework that allows for participation and developing relations of trust between members. This process has also included challenging and difficult moments. We hope, through this discussion to interweave personal accounts and key dates within StART's efforts.

Break into groups and describe when and why you created/joined StART. (1) Share a moment in your life and/or in the local community's history that pushed you in this direction.
(2) After sharing our stories, each group is going to create a Few Historical Moments - one piece of paper for each key historical event that came up and a brief description of the event and year/time period. (3) We will add these to a shared timeline "StART's history" when we finish, so that we can start to see what other groups come up with, the specificities of people's stories, the time of participation and understanding of key moments in StART.

After small group discussion, add moments to the timeline. After this, we are going to do a gallery walk - everyone is invited to silently read the notes with moments that were proposed with other groups. Are there moments in common or patterns in StART's Timeline? Has this members remember moments or find out moments that were relevant and why? Have any of these moments reminded StART members of other moments that might be worth adding?

DK

dorota koziarska Mon 30 Jul 2018 10:20PM

I think this section is perfect. I edited the proposal - because I am a compulsive editor - but I think I have kept all the details - plus added a few things from myself. I propose some changes to how we conduct the session

DK

dorota koziarska Mon 30 Jul 2018 10:23PM

StART has been going on as first a campaign, then a CLT for three years now.
This has included a lot of work and dedication, challenging and difficult moments as well as sense of achievement and joy. Collectively, we have been striving to create a framework that would allow for participation and relations based on common values, desires and trust among diverse members of our local community as well as a political force to be reckoned with.

The purpose of this session is to share stories about our experiences and the history of our organisation and place them within a fuller picture of what has been happening to the urban developments in Haringey and London.
We will identify key moments in StART's history and intertwine them with personal accounts, backgrounds and reasons for joining, etc, to create a time line that got us where we currently are as a community group and will give us a better shared understanding of what does it feel like, for different people, to live in this borough and city as well as where we collectively want to go from here.
In pairs: each person in turn talks about their reasons and the specific moment in your life and/or in the local community's history that made them create/join StART while the other person takes notes.
Once they both spoke they look at the notes together and the person who spoke approves or adds to/amends the other person's notes on their story.
We go back to the circle and each read out our notes on our partners – after reading their notes each person walks to the timeline and places them on it.

We end the session in a gallery walk - everyone is invited to follow the timeline and add any comments or other events or details that come to their mind, people could chat about it and this can seamlessly lead to lunch break

Reasons for doing it in pairs and reading out all the stories in the circle:
1. everyone hears each story,
2. we have an easy way of audio recording everything in one go,
3. at the end people don't need to read each story on the timeline and can look at patterns, think of what to add, and chat.

G

Gabi Mon 30 Jul 2018 11:04PM

Hi, I really like the idea of doing it in pairs. Seems like a wonderful way of getting people to share and listen to each others stories. I'm excited for this bit myself :) Just one thing, I think that editing minor things regarding one's diction (unless it completely alters the sentence (e.g. intertwine v. interweave) a bit weird as a way of working collectively.

DK

dorota koziarska Tue 31 Jul 2018 4:19PM

sure, you are right there is no need for this edit and if you see any other examples feel free to change back - I didn't purposefully change vocabulary unless I couldn't make sense of it, must have typed this remembering the sentiment rather than copy paste as i did with any longer chunks.

CS

Chris Setz Mon 30 Jul 2018 10:28PM

So the basic outline of the timeline is already up in place when people begin? I have made a spreadsheet designed to record StART past and future events if that's of any use. Needs fleshing out a lot more but I could maybe do some of that if it's of use: https://www.dropbox.com/s/l16gvk9mq8jh8l4/StART%20Timeline.xlsx?dl=0

G

Gabi Mon 30 Jul 2018 10:49PM

I think that it might be nice to have a blank timeline to start with. If the dates on this timeline are not mentioned towards the end of the discussion, we can ask whether it would be important to include them. I think that doing this allows for reflection and discussion on the significance of things such as funding, engagement with a particular actor, etc. What do you think?

CS

Chris Setz Mon 30 Jul 2018 11:21PM

Yes it does sounds better to rely on people's 'memory map' of what has happened, especially if they all get combined in the end.