Discuss: 2 Organisational History: Group Timeline Activity

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.