Masterclasses | 3 September
On 3 September, the NECE Festival offers a variety of masterclasses to deep dive into different topics. Toolkits will be provided and new competencies will be trained to strengthen civic educators in their skills and effectiveness. The participation requires pre-registration. The link will be shared with subscribed participants shortly before the festival.
Hope-based communication
*Pre-registration required
What if we focused our energy on the progressive social changes we want to see right now, instead of just reacting to threats and crises? Grounded in brain science and psychology, hope-based communication offers a simple strategy for spreading empathy and connection, just as effectively as authoritarian populists spread fear, hate and division.
This 2-hour Masterclass in hope-based communication will offer new perspectives on social change work, based on insights from neuroscience, cognitive linguistics, behavioural science and psychology. As well as covering the 5 core hope-based shifts, we will have a particular focus on how to use brain science and basic re-framing techniques in civic education.
The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. Kristin and Thomas will guide participants in how to apply the hope-based methodology to their work. Their session will challenge educators to clearly articulate the changes they want to see in society and make a persuasive moral case for that change in order to address current challenges in their context.
Key components
- Introduction to hope-based communications
- Applying the five shifts for narrative change
- Practical reframing exercises for values-driven messaging
Unlocking citizen power: The three principles of participatory organisations
*Pre-registration required
Jon Alexander’s concept of the Citizen Story is making waves across the world, with his book Citizens listed as one of McKinsey’s Top Recommended Reads in its Summer Reading List, and selected by the World Economic Forum for its CEO Book Club. In this workshop, Jon will introduce the framework of the Three Principles of Participatory Organisations – Purpose, Platform, and Prototype – as a practical toolkit to support civic organisations and leaders to step fully into the Citizen Story, and involve people in the work of your organisation. You’ll come away equipped with a powerful set of idea generation questions, as well as case studies from effective civic campaigns from around the world, ready to work WITH people, not just FOR them.
Imagination activism
*Pre-registration required
We exist in a time when we are being bombarded with dystopian visions, and the future feels increasingly dark and predetermined by a small number of people in power. Imagination is a superpower, available to anyone, at any time, but in times like these, it’s a capacity that is under threat. What does it mean to cultivate a relationship with our hope, and bold visions of the future in these times? What is it we need to compost in order to get there? When the future feels obscured by uncertainty, confusion, and despair, how do we cultivate longing for possible worlds most aligned with our values and visions?
Join Phoebe Tickell, scientist, systems thinker, and founder of Moral Imaginations, for a 90-minute immersive workshop exploring the power of imagination as a tool for transformation and as a practice to help us cultivate active hope for the future. In this online session, we will strengthen our connection to our moral imaginations, and engage in collective visioning exercises to stretch our perception of what is possible. You will learn about what it means to be an Imagination Activist, and how to use tools and practices to grow this into a way of being in your everyday life.
Imagination Activism is a radical and rigorous approach that shifts us from reaction to creation—moving beyond fighting the old to actively bringing the new into being. It recognises imagination as a sphere of activism, and what we dare to imagine helps us orient ourselves to different hopes, different desires, and new possibilities, for our own lives and the lives of the wider communities we are part of too. Traditional activism often fights the old, whereas Imagination Activism creates the space for the new.
Through guided practices, participants will reconnect with a sense of the possible, and stretch the muscles of their ‘moral imagination,’ to cultivate visions of the future that can power our efforts to build this future in the present.
