Workshop outline template
Who is it for?
Researchers and partners planning a workshop
Overview:
Many participatory research activities involve workshops. The CAFADA project used group workshops at lots of different stages and across different sites. Our workshops took place with groups of children and young people and groups of women. Workshops took place both face to face and online. Some of these workshops focused on research design – for example workshops to review and re-design tools to measure women’s and children and young people’s sense of safety and wellbeing within the research project. Other workshops focused on data collection or data analysis and influencing – such as when children, young people and women used research findings to inform a national review of domestic abuse funding. All our workshops were undertaken in partnership with a NGO partner – usually a local specialist service who took on a role for engaging and supporting the participants. Ensuring that local partners were properly supported and resourced for their time is important – recognising the critical role they play in participatory research and ensuring they feel valued.
Key strenghts:
Developing a structured workshop plan can be a helpful way of refining plans, reconsidering participant needs and workshop aims. Undertaking development or review of workshop plans with a partner can be a good basis for partnership work and allow the plans to be informed by someone who knows participants well. Having plans in place can ensure facilitators feel confident and relaxed on the day of a workshop.
Key challenges:
Workshops often need to deviate from plans due to changes in participants’ needs, interests, resources or timescales. It can be hard to predict how long things will take and focusing too much on strict time-scales can close down space for important discussion or new ideas. Being able to respond to needs or interests that emerge within the group is an important aspect of facilitation and something that may need to be discussed in the planning stages (e.g., deciding which sections would you be prepared to drop?).