Meeting revamp!

“The children’s meeting at FWG is the heartbeat of the community”

Years ago, when we were quite new, someone asked me about the meeting. The flow of kids coming together as a circle and pumping back out into the world, coming together and pumping back out. The meeting is the heartbeat of the community, I said! Since then Sara and I have found ourselves repeating this at every information meeting, and as we describe to others what it’s like to co-run a small, living, breathing community.

Every day, at 10am, all the children, facilitators, and any interns or visitors, will gather to check-in, make plans, solve problems, make proposals and share announcements. It has helped us, over the years, to make decisions together, co-create our culture, and work out how we want to spend our time.

The meeting has at times been fun, exciting, revealing, connecting and occasionally excruciating!

At Free We Grow we are a sociocratic community. Sociocracy is a governance system for organisations that use consent-based decision making within nested groups called ‘circles’ to promote self-management and equality. The children’s circle is one of the circles, and the children, together with the facilitators, make decisions that affect them as a community. The meeting is a very rich space where we learn to tune in to how we experience things, to listen to others’ experiences, to be creative, to be pragmatic, to be dreamers, to try things out.

It is very important that our meeting works! If our heartbeat doesn’t work.. Well.. we’re kind of doomed!

And so, it was a little bit disconcerting when I arrived after 2 years away to find that the children had made some significant changes to the meeting. In fact, the children at FWG have always been able to, and acted to shift the meeting so that it better serves them. For example, eight years ago, they suggested that rather than go around and hear everyone’s plans in a circle, people can raise their hands if they have plans, helping to make the meeting a little shorter. Six years ago, the group of children decided to add an extra part of the meeting at the end called ‘nonsense time’ where all the nonsense that people want to blurt out during the meeting is saved for a bonanza at the end. Five years ago they suggested stretch-up time, so that rather than run off at the end of the meeting, everyone does a big stretch together, ready for the day. Three years ago, they merged the part of the agenda where we talk about problems, then proposals, then announcements, to simply ‘anything else’. One year ago, they made some meetings optional whilst previously everyone was expected to attend all meetings.

Each of these changes have been considered, discussed, consented to and often piloted. Some stayed, and some became obsolete.

There are several reasons why people feel that the meeting needs changing. Primarily this has related to the length of the meeting, and often this has correlated with the number of disruptions experienced. The latter has shifted with the kids, their ages, their ability to stay focused, and their need to move their bodies.

But what we have noticed is that when the meeting is held well and meets people’s needs, it gives everyone a boost of energy for the week and the day, as it leaves us with clarity on what to expect, and what to do when things aren’t working out.

So this term, the children have undertaken a review of the meeting structure. At the start of term there was a strong expressed need to have fewer or shorter meetings, or more precisely, more time to play. There was also a need to make sure that the meeting works, and a sense that less time in meetings would actually help focus. We also needed to solve the problem that if children arrive late, after 10am, then we either start the meeting late, which disrupts our morning and takes time from our afternoon, or we have the meeting without them, which isn’t helpful for community building. So we used roundspeak to circle around and hear everyone’s perspectives. What works? What doesn’t work. Once we heard this, we listened to ideas to make things better. After a few rounds, we came up with a proposal and agreed to pilot it until the end of the half term, before reviewing whether to adopt it as our new way.

This was the proposal:

• Start the meeting with a game to gather everyone and be connected before the meeting starts.

• Move the meeting from 10am to 11am. This means that we have a full hour and a half for morning activities and can engage more deeply in play or projects.

• Have an early lunch during the 11am meeting. This means that we don’t have a lunch break, this in turn means that we have a long afternoon session for play or projects, from 11:30-2:00.

• Theme our meetings so that Wednesday meetings are only for plans for the week. During this meeting we make plans for the full week. Thursday we do not have a regular meeting, but the space can be used to check in with and welcome visitors or people on half day visits, or to have snack chats, or for smaller circles like the trip committee to meet. Anyone can propose an offering for the Thursday meeting. The Friday meeting is our culture meeting where we solve problems, talk about our values and co-create our culture.

So then we piloted it! And it was great! There were so many things that we learnt during the pilot that helped us make our final decision on the last week of term. The new system is possibly one of the biggest overhauls of the meeting at FWG since we started. The changes have had a profound effect on how the week flows and our capacity to be present and attentive with what is needed.

Here is some feedback:

• The proposal to have a game at the start of the meeting didn’t actually work out. In reality, as meeting time was also our lunch time, people were busy heating their meals and getting their lunch boxes in order. And then with pots of ramen noodles all around, it was difficult to also have a game!

• The 11am start was great! It has felt like we’ve gained a lot of time during the day, and by the time we meet, they’re ready for a break - rather than meeting half an hour into the day when our bodies are still full of play. This also means that everyone is present. In reality sometimes we didn’t get the meeting started until 11:15 or 11:30.

• The long afternoon session has been fantastic as we can fully get into the flow of what we are doing and go deep. It is long enough to immerse.

The themed meetings have made life a lot easier on many fronts.

Firstly, it has been really helpful to plan the full week in advance. This allows the facilitators to prepare better and resource what to expect. It also allows the children to look forward to things and commit to them. It has reduced the amount of whimsical offerings. These are of course still possible and are accounted for in a “See Me” section of the plans, where children invite others to join them in an activity when they see them doing it rather than putting it on the schedule. Overall it has meant that we’ve had a better sense of our capacity to fully hold what is desired, and not over commit - because the full program is visible. We redesigned our board along the principles of ‘Open Space Technology’, to facilitate this.

The Thursday free meeting day has been grand. We have had some weeks with no meeting, and this has really been felt by the children in how the day stretched out in front of them. In general it seems that they did find themselves craving a moment to get together, and this happened naturally as we called lunch and people gathered. During these moments conversation flowed freely. On some days, the facilitators themselves, or by invitation from a parent, brought a topic to share during lunch. These have been valued topics of conversation which have brought us together. For example, on one Thursday the flotilla boats were on route to Gaza, and one of the parents shared some photos, a map and description of what was happening. This then led to continued curiosity and conversation as the weeks unfolded. And on other days it was clear that we needed to meet, like the day we had a half day visit from Albie and gathered around to introduce ourselves and meet him over lunch. We have also been blessed to be given home made soup every week made by Sarah (Muhammed’s mom), and we asked to move this from Fridays to Thursdays to account for our lunchtime gathering The prospect of delicious soup, presented with a list of ingredients, has gathered people together with ease and care.

The Friday meeting has been a joy! We check in, do a round on what topics people would like to bring to the community’s attention, and use roundspeak to circle around, hear everyone’s experiences, and make a proposal to improve how we operate. The fact that we go straight to these topics, rather than coming to them already talked out after sharing the day’s plans, means that people have the energy to concentrate and see the topic through. This term we tackled the issue of ‘dibsing’, we reflected on how facilitators respond to conflict in the moment and what would feel good for different kids, we improved our tidy up time arrangements, we renamed and repurposed the quiet and loud rooms and we reviewed our meeting structure. All of these changes have been made with the full buy-in of every community member. People have left the meeting feeling more energised and satisfied.

So when term finished, we had our review meeting to decide if we would continue with the new meeting system. We had consensus with a few updates.

• We would not start the meeting with a game. Rather, we would start and end the meeting with a silent simultaneous clap.

• We would move the meeting from 11 to 11:15 to enable a longer morning session and long enough afternoon session. We would gather people at 11:00 to prepare their heated lunches!

With every generation of children at Free We Grow, it’s helpful that the people involved are able to review and shape the way the community works. A teacher at Summerhill, Micheal Newman, once said, that the thing about Democratic Education is that you never get there. You’re always working on it. It is the practice of democracy, or sociocracy, which helps us build our skills, build our culture and keep learning. If ever we think we have it all sorted, then we’re missing a beat.