Change Academy 2011 Liquid Café

1. Change Academy 2011Liquid Café

2. Preparation for the Liquid Cafe • Identify one practical challenge or burning question that will move your initiative forward (not the same you worked on this morning) - one you’d like advice on from colleagues. • Be prepared for this to change through the day’s discussions in teams; • Relevant to your team but also to the wider group or sector; • Write it on cards – provided – with your institution’s name; • Have it ready to be collected by your supporter by 3.15pm; • Start at 4pm and all will be revealed then...

3. What is a Liquid Cafe? • A form of collaborative inquiry using elements of a World Café activity and an Open Space Technology activity • Builds on the assumption that colleagues are a rich source of ideas and that collaborative working is generative of new ideas

4. How does it work? • Each team will identify the ‘burning question’ whose solution will move their change academy initiative forward • This ‘burning question’ will be relevant to other teams

5. And then……? • Each team, in turn, tells everyone else the nature of their project and their ‘burning question’ • Colleagues decide which question they want to discuss and move to that table • Each table ensures that at least one person stays behind to ‘host’ the conversation • Participants are encourages to write comments, solutions, diagrams etc on the paper table cloths which will be saved and the responses shared

6. Groundrules • The law of two feet – if you are not learning something and not contributing something – MOVE TO ANOTHER TABLE • Colleagues are allowed to be butterflies and bees – a butterfly moves from table to table listening in and moving on; a bee moves from table to table interjecting with what other tables are discussing

7. And finally…… • Five minutes before the close of the session, we’ll ask you to return to your team tables. • We’ll ask you to tell the whole group about one salient point from the advice received!