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Future Workshops on the Blast Furnace Route -
where the Past has met the Future
This has been the motto of the Annual Meeting 2003 of moderators
and facilitators of Future Workshops. The meeting took place at Duisburg
in North Rhine Westfalia (Germany) from 10th to 12th of January 2003.
The idea of connecting the past with the future inspired the
preparing team to aks for the actual position of the Future Workshops:
Is this method, which was invented forty years ago, still relevant
in society and politics of the 21st century?
Exciting experiences:
What is it like when young collegues filled with enthusiasm
meet the elder practioners of future workshopping?
How can we strengthen the network of co-operation
between the ample and various approaches in practising
Future Workshops?
[ Goals ]
[ Success ]
[ Participants ]
The Annual Meeting 2003 took place in an industry reserve called
"Landschaftspark
Duisburg-Nord" (situated in the river Ruhr area in the county of
North Rhine Westfalia, Germany).
A century ago the developpers of industrialization had put a huge
blast furnace for steel production on these grounds.
The non-commercial
Team ZW2003
consists of six experienced Moderators for Future Workshops. They
made the invitation to the Meeting in co-operation with
fesch (Association for political education from the town
of Dortmund).
Und thirty-three
participants
came from north and south, from east and west.
Future Workshop Annual Meeting for 2003 Goals:
- Network different approaches to working
in Future Workshops
- Stimulate others' interest in one's own work
environment in Future Workshops and develop an interest
in others' work environments
- Experience working together with peers
and plan joint projects for 2003
How it all started: Open invitation to the Annual Meeting
Annual Meetings of the Future Workshops have been regularly held
since 1987, alternately organised by different teams at different
locations in Germany and Austria. The programme proposed in 2003
in Duisburg (the
"shift plan", so called because of
the special industry reserve's location)
was an open invitation and largely spontaneously organised by the participants.
The Moderation Team charged with preparing Future Workshop 2003
deliberately chose not to lay down the content in advance,
not thematically to prepare any sessions and – unlike past years –
not to plan input from experts.
In the spirit of the Future Workshop method, the concrete content of the
Annual Meeting was flexibly geared to the current needs, knowledge
and areas of experience of all the participants.
The Team provided the framework and a variety of methodological suggestions.
Has the Annual Meeting of Future Workshop been successful?
The procededure as it is described above was disputed. We've heart the
voices of those,
who wish a Annual Meeting with high level, experts' discussions about
specialized aspects of Future Workshop practice. Others gave a very positive
feedback: They said it has been perfect, just like it was. A lot of newcomers
were able to get in contact with the experienced practioners. In the meetings
held in the years before there were less participants every year. Now in 2003
we stopped the trend:
More than half of all met on an event like this for the fist time...
But who was not there, and why?
A lot of reasons can be mentioned to decare, why some of the formerly
well known and traditionally often seen collegues did not come to the meeting.
Are economic situations increasingly difficult? We are very interested to
know the reasons why you have not been here. Please give
critical and/or encorageous
feedback so that we can see clearly for the forthcoming Anual Meetings.
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