Work Play Think Do - Popular Education Workshops

CATALYST POPULAR EDUCATION WORKSHOPS

Writing the Word, Writing the World
Sundays - 11:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m. - March 13, March 27, April 10
Writing is a joy and a grief, a gift and a curse and more. And what it is for you depends a great deal on the context in which you are writing as well as with whom you are writing. The context for this writing group/workshop is struggles for social, environmental, economic and political justice. Whether you are writing poetry, fiction, a dissertation, letters, grant proposals or project reports, you are welcome to join in this popular education writing community. The sessions are open, though limited to 15 participants. Each session will include structured exercises, individual writing time and collective sharing and discussion time. (NOTE: Though only three sessions are scheduled at this time this is an ongoing series and additional dates will be added once the series is underway.)

Facilitated by chris cavanagh
Location: Bathurst & Bloor
Cost is Pay What You Can
(read about the Catalyst Centre fee here)
For more information or to reserve
your spot e-mail courses@catalystcentre.ca
or call the Catalyst Centre at 416-516-9546

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Open-Art-House: A Popular Education Art Workshop
Saturdays – 1:00 – 4:00 - March 19, April 2
‘Zines, art trading cards, mail art, collective murals, community mapping, journal art, books of all kinds and more. These are open space sessions to practice and play with art. Each session will include a variety of options including opportunity to talk about using art in popular education and community development contexts.

Facilitated by J'net Cavanagh & chris cavanagh
Location: Bathurst & Bloor
Cost is Pay What You Can
(read about the Catalyst Centre fee here)
For more information or to reserve
your spot e-mail courses@catalystcentre.ca
or call the Catalyst Centre at 416-516-9546

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Do You See What I Mean?
Friday, March 18 – 9:30 – 4:30
Popular education is a democratic practice of education rooted in social and economic justice struggle. It is philosophy, politics, pedagogy and a diverse and abundant set of tools and techniques. This workshop focuses on using visual techniques – drawing, community mapping, murals, ‘zines and more. We will discuss which techniques are best suited for sharing experience of resistance and oppression, for analyzing power, and collectively learning in the context of community organizing for social and economic justice.

Facilitated by chris cavanagh
Location: Bathurst & Bloor
Cost is Pay What You Can
(read about the Catalyst Centre fee here)
For more information or to reserve
your spot e-mail courses@catalystcentre.ca
or call the Catalyst Centre at 416-516-9546

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Comeuppance – Storytelling & Tricksters: Speaking Truth to Power
Friday, April 8 - 9:30 – 4:30
Storytelling, as one of the oldest forms of learning, is an essential means of passing on the lessons of the past. But some traditions are ever in danger of being lost and forgotten. One such set of stories - found in all cultures - is that of the Trickster Tale. Thieves, fools, clowns, jesters, crazy holy men, clever wise girls, tricky animals of all kinds are each and every one a teacher. Trickster wisdom is an ancient and powerful stream of thinking and doing that holds within it important and largely forgotten means of resisting oppression, avoiding disastrous thinking as well as finding the road to compassion, connection and growth. This workshop will explore this trickster wisdom, practice trickster pedagogy. We will discuss and share stories as a form of popular education in struggles for social, political and economic justice.

Facilitated by chris cavanagh
Location: Bathurst & Bloor
Cost is Pay What You Can
(read about the Catalyst Centre fee here)
For more information or to reserve
your spot e-mail courses@catalystcentre.ca
or call the Catalyst Centre at 416-516-9546

DEMOCRATIC FACILITATION BY DESIGN Friday Feb. 4 and Friday Feb. 25

This popular workshop has been expanded to give you TWO FULL DAYS. Together we will explore some of the principles and practices of good workshop design and facilitation.

While it’s tempting to think that many group problems can be solved through better facilitation, many are better dealt with through effective meeting design. Design is way to ensure that group processes are just, inclusive and effective and facilitation is learning to follow a design with flexibility and imagination.

Through participatory activities you will learn new tools for design and facilitation, share issues and experiences - and have fun in the process!

The added bonus of the two day format is that you will work on designing an activity or event from your own real life experience and benefit from the insight and feedback from other participants and the facilitators.

Facilitators: chris cavanagh and Deborah Konecny

Fee: recommended $300 for the two days or Pay What You Can.

Location:

East York East Toronto Family Resources

947 Queen Street East, Toronto, Ontario M4M 1J9

phone: 416-686-3390 ext. 9985

fax: 416-686-8282

website: www.eyetfrp.ca

Please register online or phone 416-516-9546 .

Catalytic Conversations - fall 2010

The Catalyst Centre is pleased to be offering a series of Catalytic Conversations that hope to give all of us using popular education in our community work and lives a place to learn with each other and a chance to make some new connections.

Catalyst is spending some time looking at how we can be working with youth in new and creative ways. It makes sense that we extend the focus of our work to the conversations we are having with you.

We hope you find our choices interesting and decide to join us for some conversation.

All you need to do is read the article (or watch the video) and show up ready to share, listen and learn. (The titles below are links. Just click them!)

September 27

Read what youth have to say about the change they would like to see “in our own way…On our own terms.” The Laidlaw foundation did a series of working papers on social inclusion and this one looks at what youth with disabilities have to say about social inclusion.

For this conversation we are reading the article below:

Thumbs Up! Inclusion, Rights and Equality as Experienced by Youth with Disabilities
(Click on the link above and then scroll down the webpage to find this article.)

October 25

So is it true? Are youth completely shirking their responsibilities when it comes to civic engagement? Or are we failing to notice the work?

For this conversation we are reading the article below:

What do you mean I can’t have a say? Young Canadians and their Government

If you are interested take a look at this short video clip:

Youth Engagement and Democracy

November 29

Looking at how youth make a real impact on the Chicago Art scene through the creation of a teen museum by youth for youth.

For this conversation we are reading the article below:

Revolutionizing the making of a museum: Putting teens in charge

If you are interested take a look at these short video clips:

Aboriginal Youth HIV Awareness

eXposed Photovoice Project

All conversations are held in the Peace Lounge on the 7th floor of OISE at 252 Bloor St. W. Hope to see you there!

If you need more information please contact Deborah at deborah@catalystcentre.ca

School of Activism: Two Summer Workshops

Thursday August 26 and Friday August 27

Location: Family Services Toronto - 355 Church St., Toronto (just south of Carlton - closest subway: College at Yonge)

Facilitators: chris cavanagh & Deborah Konecny

Make good use of the slower pace of summer programming and lighter network schedules to build your skills for the coming year.

Take part in two-days of intensive training to hone your planning and facilitation skills. You can Register for either or both.

The recommended fee for each workshop is $150 or Pay What You Can (and you can read about our fee policy below - we're serious about the PWYC - we accept all offers - assuming that enough is collectively offered to make the workshop viable).

TO REGISTER: Please e-mail us courses@catalystcentre.ca or phone 416-516-9546 and tell us your name, e-mail, phone number and what you would like to pay.

Thursday, August 26, - 9:30-4:30

DEMOCRATIC FACILITATION BY DESIGN

This popular day-long workshop will explore some of the principles and practices of good workshop design and facilitation. While it’s tempting to think that many group problems can be solved through better facilitation, many are better dealt with first through effective meeting design. Design is way to ensure that group processes are just, inclusive and effective while facilitation is learning to follow a design with flexibility and imagination. Through participatory activities you will learn new tools for design and facilitation, share issues and experiences - and have fun in the process!

Friday, August 27, 2010 - 9:30-4:30

Not Just a Bag ‘o Tricks – SMORGASBORD

popular education tools, techniques and thoughts

The popular educator Myles Horton said that education should percolate, not drip down. Popular education is a democratic practice of education rooted in social and economic justice struggle and intended to make social change. “Pop-ed” is sometimes thought of as simply a “bag of tricks” that promote conversation and reflection in a more “fun” way than conventional means – it’s not seen as being serious and purposeful. However, popular education (both the tools and the theory) is a radical means of analyzing power, oppression and resistance and collectively learning and acting in the context of community organizing.

From timelines, to energizers, to image theatre, to a political weather report, we will explore (and try out) a range of these tools and discuss how they can be used in different contexts. We will also talk a bit about facilitation and design and how they interact. Please come prepared to participate, to share your ideas, to listen and, hopefully, to have some fun.

OUR COURSES FEE POLICY - a different kind of economics

At the Catalyst Centre we strive to make all of our events affordable and accessible to everyone. Our fees reflect our costs and when we have grants to support our work, we can offer even more support to the community. However, the Catalyst Centre is currently supported only through our workshops and facilitation work.

All workshops are based on an optimum of 20 participants.

Our workshops are all offered with a recommended fee and include the option of Pay What You Can (PWYC). And we strongly recommend that as many people and organizations as possible pay the recommended fee which, of course, supports those individuals, organizations and communities who cannot afford the recommended fee. And, of course, anyone is welcome to pay more than the recommended if they wish. However, we sincerely hope that people will take seriously the spirit of “pay what you can” and honour their means whether this is limited or not.

PLEASE NOTE: each workshop must meet its revenue target in order to proceed and each workshop will be confirmed in advance based on registrations received or promised. (Any revenue in excess of targets will go towards other events.) If workshop registration does not meet a minimum revenue target, it will be canceled. However, a facilitator/presenter always has the option to confirm and proceed with an event regardless of low revenue by waving some or all of their fee.

Image courtesy of Eric Drooker

Resource: Mural making

Mural making can be a vital tool in an activist’s toolkit. Murals have the great advantage for doing group work of being LARGE – lots of space to cover and, therefore, much labour that can be shared. There are many types of mural work that can be used for popular education, protest, street theatre and more. Collective murals are also good opportunities to practice both individual and collective work. This document provides guidelines for facilitators in using Contour Guided Murals, Grid Murals, Earthblankets, Moveable Murals, Banners, and Bankelsang/Cantastoria, for facilitating dialog and critical thinking.

Resource: Precarious Employment Popular Education Curriculum

This popular education manual for workshops on precarious employment contains a dozen basic activities plus a handful more in the appendices. You can use some of the activities as workshops unto themselves (e.g. jobology, precarious work wheel) or use them in combination to support workshops of between three and six hours. Produced for the Immigrants and Precarious Employment Project, which:

examines the opportunities and challenges faced by immigrants in the new, knowledge-based economy. We interviewed 300 workers from Latin Am

erican and the Caribbean who arrived in the GTA between 1990 and 2004. In our research, we asked:

• How are newcomers affected by broader trends towards precarious employment?
• What strategies do they implement on the job and as families in order to meet these challenges?
• What patterns of contact (or lack of contact) with social institutions and community organizations mediate immigrants’ early settlement process?

Public Outreach and Education

Our Public Outreach Project is designed to draw on the research project findings to generate and distribute knowledge of immigrant employment trajectories and early settlement strategies beyond academia. Our two main products will be:

• A policy report based on our findings
• A popular education manual on immigrants and precarious work for frontline workers at immigrant service agencies (Produced with the consulting support of The Catalyst Centre).

There are two files: The complete manual at 168 pages (3MB) and the 30-page Participant Kit (700K - and which you will find in the complete manual as Appendix A.

Resource: Ending Poverty Popular Education Curriculum

You can find this curriculum on-line and freely available on the Income Security Advocacy Centre's (ISAC) website. The 120-manual is available as one not-so-large PDF (980K) and as separate MSWord files. The curriculum supports a basic three-hour workshop that ISAC and Campaign 2000 are delivering across Ontario (in 7 different communities). The objective of this workshop is to involve low income people in a critical dialogue about poverty and a process to support the voices of low-income people on what will end poverty. The curriculum contains over a dozen popular education activity descriptions as well as detailed model workshop designs for the basic three-hour version as well as one and two hour versions and one day-long version. This curriculum was developed in partnership with Dana Milne of ISAC, chris cavanagh of The Catalyst Centre and Jacquie Maund of Campaign 2000. If you find this curriculum useful in any way please contact chris cavanagh to share your experiences.