The Three Gatherings method has been developed from Alastair Somerville’s experience of successfully designing and facilitating workshops for community engagement, codesign, civic assembly deliberation and hopeful future ideation and innovation in the UK and EU.
The core idea is that being present together is how we find new foundations and begin to rebuild trust and agency.
Why Three Gatherings?
Three Gatherings for three reasons:
- To gather for the first time and listen to what regrets and hopes we felt in the past.
- To spend time learning and deliberating about what matters in the present.
- To imagine and plan actions to create hopeful futures we long to be in.
The Light across Three Gatherings
We use the idea of light in Three Gatherings to communicate the purpose and meaning of each part of the process.
The Fire
We start with a gathering to meet each other for the first time. This first encounter will include conversations about the past and will raise up regrets and questions about broken promises. This is essential to the whole process: we need to understand why people do not feel trust and how polarised they feel.
This is why we need to offer a time and a place that feels welcome and feels safe because some of the conversations may be hard and anxiety-inducing. This is where professional facilitation is strongly required.
The format follows participatory design and codesign methods from Alastair’s accessibility work, coupled with techniques from active listening and conflict facilitation work.
The Candle
The second gathering is about sharing, learning and deliberating. People need to understand what is happening and what is true. There is a need for organisation staff to provide information and explanantions to people. Deliberation and imagination depend on this time establishing a shared knowledge of what has been done and could be done.
This uses a structured engagement format developed by Alastair for civic assemblies in UK and EU.
The Torch
Finally, the Torch and guiding people into hopeful futures that they long to have a role in. People need to imagine futures in terms of how they feel and what they loolk like. This establishes their sense of having a role in a project that matters and in which they matter.
This uses tools and methods developed by the Design Council as adapted and facilitated by Alastair in community and innovation workshops in UK and EU.
Rebuilding Trust and Hope
The Three Gatherings method is based on many workshops facilitated by Alastair. It is a sequence of workshops that can rebuild trust and hope because it deliberately starts in negative emotions, like regret and resentment, works through sharing knowledge and experience to end in actions founded in hope and joy.
It is this emotional and informational narrative structure that builds succesful action. People need to be recognised and feel respected. People need to feel they matter and are committing to doing things that matter.
Professional facilitation through the process
All of this process is ricky. Rebuilding connections, trust and hope is hard work that needs commitment from many people.
Alastair Somerville is an experienced faciltiator and workshop designer. The Three Gatherings method brings together tools and exercises that have been proven in past workshops. Alastair beings professional skills and experience to help you through a difficult time.