ESWRA Supported Dialogue
What challenges are facing social work in the world today?
How does what is happening in the world affect our work as social workers and social work researchers?
The supported dialogue spaces are an opportunity to dive deeper and explore important, perhaps even fundamental, questions that sit underneath the surface of our working lives. It can feel challenging to prioritise these conversations and they might feel risky but in a structured and facilitated space they can also be an opportunity to connect and have rich and surprising encounters with others.
Rather than focusing on outcomes or finding solutions, you are invited into an exploratory space of listening and sharing where differences and diversity of views are valued. You will come away with a deeper appreciation of your own experience and a greater understanding of your colleagues.
There will be three ninety-minute dialogue sessions during the conference, held by two expert facilitators, Jassy Denison and Katharine Yates who bring a wealth of experience in working with conflict and holding challenging conversations.
On signing up, you will be invited to identify current issues and questions that are important to you, and that you would like to explore with others. The participants in each 90min dialogue session will then collectively choose a focus from the list of suggestions made.
Last year participants said, ‘I think it's necessary to talk with each other about different difficult issues, but …it's also demanding; sometimes difficult and therefore maybe people want to solve conflicts in another way because it's not so easy to go deeper in things like we did.’
‘I brought a difficult experience to the democratic dialogue space and together with people who bought other issues we spent two hours talking, laughing and crying and came out in a much better space where I could forfeit responsibility for others’ reactions and felt heard and understood.’
Jassy and Katharine bring many years of experience working with conflict to facilitate listening, speaking, learning and understanding. Part of the Courageous Spaces Collective, we bring tools from mediation and Deep Democracy, offering tailored interventions. Central to our approach is structured, facilitated dialogue where nobody has a monopoly on the truth, diversity of views is welcomed and participants seek to stay connected amidst disagreement. Our recent work includes programmes with the University of Sussex, Coram Leap and Young Minds UK.
Jassy Denison
Jassy is an accredited workplace mediator, trainer and supervisor, supporting teams in prison, educational and faith settings to develop new responses to conflict. She is a practitioner in the tradition of Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, bringing mindfulness into dialogue and work settings, and with a particular interest in understanding our past in order to create a new future.
Over the past ten years Jassy has developed “white awareness” networks within the UK and Europe, coming together with other white people to see, understand and transform the legacy of colonialism.
Katharine Yates
Katharine is a facilitator and coach with a background in theatre, conflict awareness and group facilitation. She is a trained community mediator and Level 4 Lewis Deep Democracy practitioner. She enjoys bringing a somatic awareness into her work as well as supporting people to connect with their innate sense of play, especially when exploring more challenging issues.
Katharine has lived all over the world and is passionate about bringing people together across difference in spaces of dialogue. She is particularly interested in the role of discomfort as a teacher and learning about what it takes to stay with being uncomfortable.