Detailed Facilitators’ Agreement
Thank you for your involvement in ABC 2022. Below are the key responsibilities of the facilitator role, and the community guidelines practiced by The Architecture Lobby. By participating in this year’s session as a facilitator you agree to consider these tenets in the running of your session. Please be in touch if you have any questions or concerns about this agreement.
In advance of the session
All facilitators will communicate with their Lobby organizers as requested by those organizers and will keep the organizers abreast of the who, what, when, and how of their session.
All facilitators will submit their proposed schedule for their 2 hour workshop session to their Lobby organizers at least 2 days in advance of their session.
The session itself
Lobby organizers will introduce facilitators at the beginning of the session. After that, it is up to the facilitator to conduct the meeting and invite the participants into the session and its framework.
Besides our hope that each facilitator will start their session by acknowledging the usurped indigenous land that they are speaking from, here are protocols that we in the Lobby have come to trust, and we encourage facilitators to follow:
Discussion Meeting Guidelines
● Democracy and organizing is messy and that’s OK
● Assume good faith and positive intent
● Listen very carefully to what others are saying
● Request the use of “stack” in the chat function to call on people
● Respect the spirit of the progressive stack (marginal voices brought to the top of the stack line)
● Use “I” statements, don’t assume you’re speaking for others
● Acknowledge and respect people’s pronouns - and if you are comfortable, display your own pronouns in your zoom ‘name’
● Respect the agenda and people’s time
Zoom Etiquette + Stack
● Keep your video on and request the same of the participants; if they must step away, ask them to turn their videos off.
● Ask participants to mute their microphone when they’re not speaking
● Ask participants to respect the speakers and keep chat to ‘everyone’ to a minimum
Time Management
● Keep tabs of the time that the panel speakers are taking and ensure participants have time to contribute.
● Remember that each session should put forward the specific “learning objectives'' to be enacted; sessions are not for complaints or mere analysis. Time should be allotted for this at the end if it hasn’t been organically woven into the discussion.
Beyond the Session
● We hope that facilitators will attend more than their one session, but in any case that they will attend the final synthesis session on Saturday July 23, 4-6pm EDT. If the head facilitator cannot be there, identify a participant to report on the session and its one sentence learning objective and the discussions leading up to its formulation.
● We hope that facilitators will continue after the session in helping us compile a strategic “how to” guide for redirecting studio education and from there, encouraging a new, more empowered architectural worker.