This was the second National Permaculture Day to be called and was one of a number of events in the Eastern Suburbs. National Permaculture Day is an annual event at the start of May, a day when permaculture homes and centres across the country open to the public. Permaculture is a design system for sustainable living that can be applied in densely-packed urban areas, like Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, as much as it can be in rural areas and on farms.

Transition Sydney's Peter Driscoll leads a permaculture workshop using the energy efficiency house model.

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New type of public open space

The Permaculture Interpretive Garden (PIG) is a component of the retrofitted Randwick Community Centre, the buildings and grounds of which have been refurbished for energy and water efficiency, including a grid-connected wind turbine and photvoltaic panels. The retrofit demonstrates simple design modifications and technologies that are commercially available. Having them accessible in a public place, and having guided tours and interpretive signage (designed by Rob Alsop who illustrated Rosemary Morrow’s book, Earth Users Guide to Permaculture) provides visitors with take-home ideas that they can implement. The Randwick Sustainability Education Hub encompasses the retrofitted building and grounds plus Randwick City Council’s Living Smart, Native Haven, Early Childhood Environmental Education and Sustainable Gardening courses, all free events that are held there.

The PIG itself is a new type of public open space that combined the functions of a public park and serves at the same time as an educational facility for council courses and as an activity centre for local community organisations whose focus is sustainability, food initiatives and community development. The Hub serves as a Sydney Food Connect City Cousin, where subscribers to the community-supported-agriculture scheme collect their weekly boxes of seasonal, affordable organic food.

Even though there remains work to be completed in the PIG, such as installing tables and benches, roofing the pergolas, establishing the orchard and building the balcony/courtyard demonstration, there was plenty on the day to inspire visitors. Transition Sydney’s Peter Driscoll provided an introductory workshop on permaculture design, Solarch’s Terry Bail, an architect specialising in solar design who designed the community centre energy retrofit, took visitors for a tour of his work and Russ Grayson, who was on the Waterwise Trail steering committee for the project and is affiliated with the Australian City Farms & Community Gardens Network to advocate the value of such enterprises, led a tour of the PIG and grounds. The Spots, presumably named for the cafe strip nearby, offered a harmonious accapella of environmental songs.

Announcing outreach

A significant event at National Permaculture Day was council sustainability educator, Fiona Campbell, announcing the Hub’s outreach program. This will see community organisations hold monthly events on a Sunday afternoons. Led by well known sustainability education planner and trainer, Graham Collier, a group of graduates from the council courses and others have been meeting over the past couple months to develop a program of activities based at the Hub. Significantly, some of those graduates were involved in the planning and management of the day, all part of Fiona’s idea to develop the ability of Eastern Suburbs people to skill-up to make things happen for themselves.

This was an auspicious day for the Sustainability Education Hub and just seeing all of those people milling around the raised planters in the PIG, clustered in tour groups inspecting the energy and water efficiency retrofit of the centre and engaged in convivial chatter around the food and coffee provided by council demonstrated that there exists a keen community interest in these sustainability initiatives. Thanks go to those who attended, to the Hub outreach volunteers, to Randwick Council and, especially, to National Permaculture Day for making it happen here under the blue skies and on the sandy soils of the urban east.

See photos: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150263696374175.379931.46128279174

Participants agreed that the aim of the program would be spread the adoption of sustainability behaviour by developing the capacity of communities to engage in sustainability actions. Part of this would be to optimise the use of the energy and water education trails and the Permaculture Interpretive Garden at the Sustainability Hub and to use the Hub as a base. The idea of making the Hub a ‘third place’ where people can come each month and where community organisations can self-organise events was well received (third place is a term used to describe places that are easy of access and cheap to visit and where people can gather to socialise and to hatch good ideas. The concept of third place is based on time spent at a place, with the ‘first place’ being the household and the ‘second place’ the workplace).

Other ideas were to use the Hub as a base for the Living Smarties, the graduates of Randwick Council’s Living Smart course, for training facilitators and for ‘recharge’ activities for both Living Smarties and others working in collaborative change for sustainability in the Eastern Suburbs.

Participants who attended last year’s community leaders’ course at the Sustainability Hub spoke highly of the event and were in favour of a re-run. The course, which Fiona organised, was led by the professional facilitation consultants, Unfolding Futures. It introduced participants to group facilitation and direction-setting techniques and ideas.

Graeme described the outreach program as making use of the pebble-in-water effect, an analogy to the act of throwing a pebble thrown into a pond and watching the ripples expand outward as surges of energy. In the same way, the influence of participants in the outreach program would ripple out into society.

According to Greame, the outreach program would be best implemenrted as two complementary prongs—the delivery of activities such as events, resources, site tours and more—and a capacity building prong that built the knowledge and skills of participants. Peer-to-peer education would make a large part of this, with participants teaching others the skills they possess as part of a ‘sustainability skilling up’ process.

Through a content identification, sorting and calendaring process, a timeline was mapped out. This will form the focus of a meeting in a couple weeks.

MAYBE IT’S TRUE… maybe Sydney’s city east is set to bloom with melons and mizuna , tomatoes and tamarillo, banana and beetroot…well, it might if some who just graduated from Randwick City Council’s Living Smart and Sustainable Gardening courses have their way.

The popular Sustainable Gardening course is now in its fifth year. It brings a strong focus on food production although growing native plants and exotics are covered. A new addition, introduced because of participant demand, is the balcony and container garden session. This is relevant because more than half of eastern suburbs residents live in apartments or in other medium density dwellings. During the course, participants get their hands dirty planting and making compost in the training garden and identifying plants edible, native and exotic… it’s basic botany for productive gardens.

Mayor of Randwick, Cr John Procopiadis, hands out certificates to participants on completion of the courses.

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Randwick Council’s Sustainability Education Officer, Fiona Campbell, started and taught the course (and, believe it or not, the author of this piece even led sections in it). Now, she has stepped back to an oversight role and the course is more-than-ably led by Steve Batley and Emma Daniell. Steve, who operates a small landscape design and construction business, Sydney Organic Gardens, is a qualified landscape architect and permaculture designer. Emma is a trained horticulturist and landscape designer who also plays a leading role in the nearby Randwick Community Organic Garden.

Living Smart on trial

The Living Smart course that Fiona organised and leads is presently being run on a trial basis as a pilot, so that what started as a course originating with people at Murdock University’s school of behavioural psychology can be localised to NSW, the Sydney region in particular.

The course is aimed at people considering making lifestyle changes towards sustainable living, those on the verge of making changes and those who have already made changes. At 20 hours over four Saturdays, or as offered on weekday evenings, Living Smart addresses personal and household change as well as encouraging participants to act outside of the household, in their local communities. It encompasses topics of energy, water, food and native plant gardens, food systems and food choices, personal physical and psychological health and diet, safe cleaning, safe beauty (personal care and beauty products as well as the DIY approach to these), local biodiversity and its values, energy and resource efficient home renovation and design ideas and acting in the community. A strong theme of goal setting for making the move to sustainable living runs through the course and is visited every meeting.

At the final session, representatives of city east community organisations talk about what they do so that course participants can link with them if they are interested. Groups usually include BikeEast, Thoughtful Foods and Rhubarb food co-ops, TransitionSydney, Permaculture Sydney East, Malabar Headland group, Food Connect Sydney, Sydney Organic Buyers Randwick, Sydney Food Fairness Alliance and Randwick Community Organic Garden, among others.

At the end of the Living Smart and sustainable Gardening courses, participants receive a certificate of completion form the mayor of Randwick and the courses conclude with tasty food supplied by O-Organics.

The final session of Living Smart, prior to giving out certificates and enjoying tasty organic food, is to hear from representatives of local community groups so that course participants can learn what they do and why they do it and to fillow-up after the course.

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While Fiona leads sessions and oversees Living Smart, the course introduces a range of guest trainers so that participants are exposed to current thin king in different fields. This includes Peter Driscoll, who takes th personal halth and diet session and Terry Bail, an architect specialising in solar design and renovation. Starting in a learning trainee role with the course just concluded is Suzie Hunter, soon to graduate from UNSW in energy systems (photovoltaics) who, through her studies and work, has become somewhat knowledgeable in photovoltaic systems. Suzie brings the energy, enthusiasm and vitality of youth to the training team.

Goal setting provides a gentle nudge

The courses are based upon sound educational theory, with the contemporary ideas of US corporate and community sustainability thinker, Bob Doppelt, having particular influence.

The Living Smart course’s goal setting is designed to provide that gentle nudge that can willingly push people considering making changes towards sustainable living in their lives and households into action. At each meeting, personal goals are revisited, accomplishments recognised and advice given by the group to assist the overcoming of barriers.

One of the final activities sees participants working in small groups to identify what they accomplished during the course, what they plan to do in future and those things they had difficulty with and the barriers that remain. These are clustered on the wall.

Things that participants accomplished during the Living Smart course through the goal setting that forms part of the course.

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Future training for the community

The Sustainable Gardening course is now established, however the Living Smart will continue to evolve through its pilot phase. A manual, provided to participants in weekly installments to fit into their supplied recycled plastic ring binder, is also under development and, like the course itself, will evolve with each evaluation of the course.

While the work of Bob Doppelt and other sustainability education thinkers informs the structure and content of the course, its philosophy is that of continual improvement, itself an influence of organisational systems thinker, Peter Senge, and personal and organisational effectiveness thinker, Stephen Covey, among others.

To make this happen, Philip Booth, a professional evaluator whose introduction to community education came decades ago with Permaculture Sydney, provides the necessary analysis of the course that identifies learnings and areas for improvement. Phillip sits in on sessions and conducts follow-up focus groups and interviews to make his evaluations.

A number of Sydney region local governments now offer workshops in elements of sustainable living, however few, if any, offer anything as sustained and inclusive as the Living Smart course.

The final classroom session of the Living Smart course was led by health expert, Peter Driscoll. Peter is active with TransitionSydney and leads the 'Healthy You' session that focuses on lifestyle, personal health and diet. Participants caring for themselves is promoted through Living Smart as the basis of making changes in lifestyle and in the household, and in activity within the community.

Mayor of Randwick, Cr John Procopiadis, stands at centre of participants in Randwick City Councils' Living Smart and Sustainable Gardening courses after the hand out of certificates of completion. Five on the left of front row are guests from Rhubarb Food Co-op, Sydney Organic Buyers Group Randwick and TransitionSydney.

After ceremonies ended, Fiona distributes locally made chocolates to trainers and organisers of the Living Smart and Sustainable Gardening courses. (from left)... Philip Booth, who is evaluating the courses; photovoltaic systems expert and trainer-in-training, Suzie Hunter; courses organiser and council Sustainability Education Officer, Fiona Campbell; Sustainable Gardening course trainer, horticulturist and community gardener, Emma Daniell; Sustainable Gardening course trainer, landscape architect, permaculture designer and horticulturist, Steve Batley.

Sustainability educator, Fiona Campbell, explains the phases behind a person's readiness for change.

STING is the creation of people associated with TransitionSydney, TransitionMarrickville and Transition Darlinghurst Surry Hills. The aim is to stimulate and cultivate a community of practice among those involved in transition initiatives so as to improve their skills and effectiveness. This would be similar to the community of practice that has developed around the Sydney Facilitators’ Network in which some of those at the STING event participate. The idea is that transition groups become learning organisations, evaluating what they do to derive learnings and adding new ideas and skills.

The STING initiative is coordinated by TransitionSydney within its role as a transition hub offering support and assistance to other transition initiatives.

This first STING event took place on 14 October at the Blues Point Community Centre in North Sydney.

Assessing readiness for change

The event was led by Fiona Campbell, a Sydney sustainability educator working with local government, and was based on the work of US community and business sustainability educator and author, Bob Doppelt.

Doppelt is executive director of Resource Innovations, a sustainability research and technical assistance program, and of the Climate Leadership Initiative of the Institute for a Sustainable Environment at the University of Oregon. His most recent book is The Power of Sustainable Thinking, released by Earthscan publishing in 2008.

Behavioural change now the focus

Encouraging behavioural change among participants in workshops and courses is now the focus for sustainability educators, especially those in local government and others working with the corporate sector. How to do this has, until recently, not been a topic of conversation. Now, however, educators are paying attention to models for  attitudinal, thinking and behavioural change developed in other fields of knowledge in the past, and that are being repurposed for sustainabilty education by leading thinkers. Bob Doppelt is one of these.

Doppelt has taken the behavioural change model developed by health psychology practitioner, James Prochaska, and substantially adapted it for sustainability education.  Prochaska developed the Transtheoretical Model for identifying and targeting people based on their readiness for change.

Prochaska’s model of personal change

Prochaska’s model of how people move through stages in change over time was developed for use in the health field, however sustainability educators have found it applicable to understanding how individuals move through change related to sustainability behaviour.

The model can be summarised as six stages:

• precontemplative — there is no intention to take action to change attitudes and behaviours in the immediate future
• contemplative — people intend to make changes in the near future
• preparation — there is intention to start making attitudinal and behavioural changes within weeks
• action —change is starting or has recently started and remains at an early stage
• maintenance — change is ongoing and those making the change grapple with the challenge of keeping it going
• termination — changes are now established and built into the individual’s life.

Understanding readiness improves delivery

The purpose of understanding the models of personal change and of learning where people attending a program, workshop or course are on the continuum of change is to tailor messages and programs for specific demographics so as to increase their effectiveness. If transition initiatives are to become effective, a better understanding of the way in which people move into change is needed.

Prochaska’s ideas have some currency among sustainability educators, though it is uncommon to find his or Doppelt’s approach among those active with community organisations. Fiona uses Doppelt’s ideas in her sustainability education work.

An understanding of people’s readiness for change — the phase of change they presently occupy — avoids falling into the trap of making glib and dismissive responses such as ‘preaching to the converted’ and of using tactics such as inducing feelings of personal guilt, as has been favoured by the environment movement. Doppelt offers a more sophisticated understanding and response.

The 5Ds

Based on his work in sustainability education, Doppelt further developed and adapted Prochaska’s ideas and asks what triggers personal behavioural change in regard to sustainability thinking, and what pathways people follow through change of that type. To facilitate comprehension, he has developed the 5D model.

The first D — Disinterest

In this stage, there is no intention to change attitudes or behaviours towards sustainable living and no interest in doing so.

Characteristics of people in the disinterest phase include:

• a personal attitude opposed to change
• little awareness of global and other challenges
• denial that their behaviour contributes to the problem
• the attitude that personal efforts are inconsequential
• a lack of hope in the future
• a lack of belief that they can contribute to change.

The second D — Deliberation

The attitude prevalent here is that people might change.

It is characterised by:

• a start to acknowledging the challenges we face
• a start to seriously considering a change to personal thinking and behaviour
• a start to gathering information that could lead to change
• a personal struggle to understand
• overestimating the disadvantages of change.

The third D — Design

Here, the individual is preparing to make changes.

Characteristics include:

• the benefits of becoming a sustainability thinker are believed to overcome the costs of doing so
• the design of a plan for adopting new thinking and behaviours in the near future
• the making of a few small changes
• incomplete but ongoing resolution of ambivalence towards the effectiveness of and desire to make behavioural and attitudinal changes
• the continuation of an oscillating attitude that is not likely to be resolved until the benefits are seen to more fully outweigh the disadvantages.

The fourth D — Doing

This is the phase in which changes have been made and are continuing:

• action is being takes to modify behaviour
• a great deal of commitment is required to persevere with personal change
• making changes puts the individual under scrutiny
• the benefits of change are seen to be worth the effort.

The fifth D — Defending

Changes have been made, and this phase focuses on maintaining them. It is equivalent to Prochaska’s ‘maintaining’ classification.

Characteristics include:

• making changes and sticking with them over the long term
• the defence of personal behavioural changes in the face of resistance from others
• the need to continually overcome obstacles and recover from setbacks
• repeated attempts to change.

Achieving success

The key to success in working with people is to understand their readiness for change. In a workshop or sustainability course, an understanding of this can be gained by asking strategic questions of individuals or of the group. Education packages can then be adapted according to the phases of change occupied by individuals.

According to Fiona, most of the participants in her Living Smart course are in the ‘deliberation’, ‘design’ and ‘doing’ phases, although she has had some in the ‘defending’ stage.

The presence of people in this phase could be seen as preaching to the converted, however that would be to misinterpret it. Certainly, they are ‘converted’ and practicing sustainability thinking and behaviours. However there presence is, in part, to learn more and to update their knowledge, giving their participation a ‘further education’ function.

Building a tension for behavioural change and emphasising the benefits of change early on, when working with groups and individuals, is done in parallel with dealing with any downside of making changes as they progress.

Occupying multiple stages

A little thought will soon disclose that people can occupy more than one stage of change at the same time.

Three examples:

• a woman who occupied the doing and defending stages of sustainable living in most aspects of her life was at the disinterest stage when it came to private car use; this was not based on ignorance of the environmental and carbon emission challenges that private vehicle use entails, but was dictated by the need to travel expediently between home and work and to maintain her schedule around her young child
• another was a climate change skeptic who believed that climate change exists but that there is no human agency in perpetuating or worsening it; yet, she wanted to live sustainably by adopting new personal practices; she simultaneously occupied the disinterest stage in regard to climate change and the design stage in regard to sustainability thinking
• another was an influential person in the environment movement who drove a large, four wheel drive vehicle around the city, suggesting the occupation of the disinterest, doing and defending stages at the same time.

What this discloses is that it is normal for individuals to live with contradiction, that people can hold contradictory attitudes and indulge in contradictory behaviours — towards sustainable living in these cases — at the same time. Sustainability educators would do well to see paradox as normal.

An understanding of value

Understanding how people change is a basic and necessary tool for any social change agent.

Basing approaches to education and influence on the understandings developed by Bob Doppelt is something that separates the informed sustainability educator from those in other social movements that focus on political change alone.

Read more on sustainability education:

• ORID technique
• ideas diffusion.

David Holmgren

IT WAS A BUSY FEW DAYS in Sydney for David Holmgren and his son, Oliver. First came David’s appearance at Randwick City Council’s annual Ecoliving Fair, followed next day with a full-day workshop and an appearance that evening at a TransitionSydney Cafe Conversation.

Many readers of this blog will know that David is a co-originator of the permaculture design system, which he and Bill Mollison unleashed on the world in 1978 through the pages of Permaculture One. David focused his efforts over successive years on the development of his Hepburn property, Melliodora, and marked his return to public prominence with the publication of Permaculture-Principles and Pathways Beyond Sustainability.

The writer of this report hosts Conversation With Authors, which is a regular event at the Ecoliving Fair, the intention of which is to introduce the authors and their ideas to the public and for the public to engage with the authors in conversation. It provided the opportunity for David to discuss his new book, Future Scenarios, however the discussion ranged far and wide around the general topic of sustainability.

Appearing with David was:

• Dr Mark Diesendorf from the Institute for Environmental Studies at UNSW; Mark has written the recently-released book, Climate Action
• Rosemary Morrow, the noted permaculture educator who lives in Katoomba, in the Blue Mountains, who recently produced A Good Home Forever and who  brought her unique variety of down-to-earth practical wisdom
• and Victorian permaculture designer and co-author of the Permaculture Diary and Permaculture Calendar, David Arnold.

Authors at the Ecoliving Fair, from left: David Holmgren; Rosemary Morrow; David Arnold; Russ Grayson (program host).

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Educating the educators

The one-day workshop attracted participants from councils, community organisations and others

Monday dawned much less windy than Sunday and, by 9am, a total of 35 people had gathered at Randwick Community Centre for a day-long workshop based on David’s Future Scenarios.

The day was organised by Randwick City Council’s Sustaining The City team through Council’s Sustainability Education Officer, Fiona Campbell. Attending were local government sustainability and environmental education staff, sustainability educators from community organisations, a leading, local climate change advocate associated with the local Green Church and a number of individuals engaged in sustainability education activities including consultants, two architects, two members of TransitionSydney, an engineer and small businesspeople.

The material was found challenging, but feedback on the day and over successive days indicates that it opened new avenues of thinking.

The day’s tasty food was supplied by no-waste caterers, O-Organics, with fruit from Sydney Food Connect.

Transition at the cafe

The day event complete, it was time to head over to Glebe for the TransitionSydney Cafe Conversation with David and Oliver.

Held at the Fair Trade Cafe, this was another of TransitionSydney’s successful Cafe Conversations which were set up so that local people involved in sustainability, permaculture and transition activities have the opportunity to meet innovators from out of town as well as those from the city. The Cafe Conversations are essentially networking events in which attendees have the opportunity to meet each other and to talk informally with innovators. Previous innovators appearing at TransitionSydney Cafe conversations include:

• Dick Copeman, education coordinator at Brisbane’s Northey Street City Farm
• Michael Shuman, US, economist and attorney, employee of the US Business Alliance for Local Living Economies, local economics advocate and author of the Smallmart Revolution
• Robert Pekin, coordinator of Brisbane’s Food Connect CSA (community supported agriculture).

Cafe Conversations are not presentations of the guest’s ideas, rather, they are informal events providing a chance to get to know the innovators. Consequently, David and Oliver spoke about how they became involved in permaculture and sustainability initiatives and, following this, attendees had the change to engage them in conversation.

It was good to get to know Oliver, who assisted David at the workshop with administrative matters. He is deliberately seeking the experiences that will inform his role in life and has a keen interest in photography, with which he and the writer of this report had more than a few conversations. No way will Oliver be overshadowed by his father’s reputation as the leading thinker in the permaculture design system.

New rational for permaculture design

David Arnold (left) discuuses his work with Conversations With Authors host, Russ Grayson, at the Randwick Ecoliving Fair.

David seems to be repositioning the permaculture design system as an applied response to the challenging global trends of peak oil and climate change, a response to be implemented at the community scale.

Into that mix, Rosemary Morrow threw the declining fresh water reserve on which food production and so much else depends. At the Conversation With Authors, Rosemary challenged David, saying that she thinks that water will be of equal importance to progressively declining and higher priced oil in the near future.

David’s approach to permaculture may represent a shift in the way it is focused because it takes the design system beyond many of its popular manifestations and applies it to developing local solutions to the major challenges. Were this to be further developed, it could provide a filter on relevant technologies, practices and ideas to emphasise those of greater social value while not ignoring individual and household initiatives in sustainable living.

His goal is what he describes as an ‘earth steward’ society, which may be eventually reached through the current trend towards a ‘green technology’ society. These concepts are explored in his book, Future Scenarios.

Tiring they might have been for those organising them, these two days with David and Oliver were inspiring for those in attendance.

Read a review of Future Scenarios.

Dick was the focus of the September 2009 TransitionSydney Cafe Conversation at the E-Lounge in Glebe Point Road. There, in the upstairs room, people from Sydney’s sustainability, transitions and permaculture networks took the opportunity to learn of Dick’s involvement with the city farm and to talk with him about making accredited permaculture training (APT)  — the certificate level courses designed for schools and as workplace training — availability in the city.

Dick Copeman

From city farm to sustainability hub

In its decade and a half of existence, Northey Street City Farm, with its 2.5ha on the banks of Breakfast Creek (27° 26′ 30″ South, 153° 2′ 30″ East), has gone from modest community garden to Brisbane’s major sustainability hub. Although it sources some funding from grants, the city farm crew have achieved a level of self-funding through setting up small social enterprises such as the:

• weekly organic farmers’ market that attracts more than 1000 on Sunday mornings
• commercial nursery — Edible Landscapes
• training for government workplace programs
• training in permaculture introductory and design courses and in accredited permaculture training
• workshops and events.

Time for accredited training in Sydney

Nationally accredited training in the permaculture design system has been developed by a self-managing team within Permaculture International to structure permaculture so that people can develop livelihoods from it.  The courses, depending on the level of certificate desired, are long and quite demanding, calling for considerable time to be spent gaining experience.

Dick has been involved in APT from its start. Now, he thinks it is time that APT was offered in Sydney and, following the TransitionSydney Cafe Conversation, that is likely to happen. There, Dick met a number of people already studying for the qualifications needed to teach APT. It is they who would form the first batch of trainers.

The lack of a training venue in Sydney, such as Brisbane has with Northey Street City Farm or Melbourne with CERES, was discussed. The nearest Sydney has come to this was the Permaculture Epicentre in Enmore in the 1980s (in the building presently occupied by Alfalfa House Food Co-op) and the attempt by a coterie of permaculture people in the 1990s to start a CERES mini-replication at Manly. That bogged down in gaining access to land.

The possibility of establishing a decentralised training facility, made up of a number of sites, was discussed and opinion was that it could be made to work.

Unsung hero

Dick is one of those unsung heroes of sustainability, those who go about getting things done yet who do not promote themselves and their work as do some prominent in permaculture.

The day after the Cafe Conversation, Dick continued his journey to Melbourne. After that, it’s back to Brisbane and the familiar food forest on the banks of Breakfast Creek, where the shade of tall mango trees provides shelter form the torrid heat of a Brisbane summer and where work will soon start on floodproofing the city farm’s building.

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TransitionSydney Cafe Conversations are networking events to introduce people in Sydney’s sustainability networks to local and visiting innovators.

Watch for future TransitionSydney Cafe Conversations.

Sound familiar? We’ve all been to unfocused, time wasting meetings like this. But — it doesn’t have to be this way.

ORID – a better way

The ORID (Objective, Reflective, Interpretive, Decisional) method is a form of a structured conversation led by a facilitator.

The method was developed by the Institute for Cultural Affairs as a means to analyse facts and feelings, to ask about implications and to make decisions intelligently. It is a means of escaping the morass of maniacal meetings.

When done by a facilitator with some experience in the use of the method, participants are often unaware that they are taking part in a structured conversation. It is as if someone has sat down with the group and started an informal discussion.
Essentially a tool for making decisions, ORID can be used by:

• sustainability educators, to engage an audience in deliberation or to recap what was covered in a previous meeting or class
• community organisations, businesses, government and by just about any group seeking a decision
• by educators to explore decisions in class
• in one-to-one conversations to clarify a path of action for an individual; this provides ORID a potential role in personal problem solving, counseling and community work
• journalists, who might use ORID to structure in-depth and investigatory interviews although more conventional reporters might see it as delving into problem solving rather than conventional reporting of facts and reactions.

A structured process

A meeting that employs ORID is the antithesis of the rambling, unfocused structure we are all too used to. ORID creates a dynamic forward movement towards a point of decision.

Here’s how to use it…

First, the meeting agrees to make use of ORID and to abide by the process. It appoints a facilitator with experience in using the method. The meeting agrees that the facilitator can call the meeting back to order when participants take the discussion into time wasting asides.

The facilitator takes the group through a series of questions which lead to a decision-making stage. For each of the questions, a scribe writes the main points on a blackboard.

The strategic questions

O — Objective questions

The O questions identify objective facts relevant to the topic. The key question is: what do we know about this?

If it is an event or occurrence that is he subject of the ORID, then the group recalls the event and distills facts from it.

The facilitator will have to be alert to pull people back from discussing what they think about the topic and their feelings about it at this stage — that comes next. All we want now are the facts. Beware of comments starting with ‘I think… ‘, ‘I feel… ‘’It’s my opinion… ‘.

What we want are statement starting with terms like ‘I saw… ‘, ‘I heard… ‘, ‘I know… ‘, ‘There is evidence for… ‘, ‘It’s on the record that… ‘. These are documented but not analysed.

R — Reflective questions

The R questions are about how people feel about the topic. They are about subjective perceptions. The key question is: how do we feel about this?

Feelings might be positive or apprehensive and might be emotional.

The R questions allow participants to express their gut feelings although these might have no objective facts to support them. Nonetheless, they are part of a comprehensive assessment of the topic in question and should not be ignored. Fears and concerns may come to the surface during this phase.

The phase is one of identifying feelings and not of analysing them.

I — Interpretive questions

These questions have to do with meaning. The key question of the interpretive stage is this: what does it mean for me/you/the organisation etc?

Basing discussion on information derived during the objective and reflective questioning, the discussion allows the topic to be put into perspective and for the potential impacts of the topic on the individual or organisation to be explored.

Interpretive questions might include ‘What if…?’ questions as well as ‘What would it mean… ?’, ‘What would that do… ?’ and so on.

This is the analyitical phase.

D — Decisional questions

Based on information coming from the three previous stages of questioning, this is the stage at which a decision is produced. The key question at the decisional stage is: What are we going to do?

The facilitator might set set scene for this critical question by recapping the findings of the previous three stages.

The focus of discussion in the decisional stage focuses on the future. What would be the best course of action? What would be achievable, positive outcomes? What is realistic given the limitation of our resources?

A few needs

In all four sages, the phrasing of the questions and statements by the facilitator are critical to the maintenance of focused discussion.

It is important to set aside sufficient, uninterrupted time for the ORID process. Rushed conversations and frequent interruptions cut off important discussion and are distracting. There is no fixed time over which to run an ORID process. It can be made comparatively short providing there is enough time to adequately cover all of the questions.

Facilitators and educators planning to make use of the ORID technique are advised to practice it with people they know before launching into an important decision making process.