Activist Education is the ongoing skill-sharing and educating of our peers with content that is relevant & useful for collectives, campaigns or continuing along the path of creating social change.

We’ve been working with our friends and activist educators at The Change Agency for the past few years. Our practices in activist education have been largely influenced by work they’ve done with us. They also have heaps of awesome resources on their website.

The resources on this page share radical learning tools for educating activists and activist educators alike. We encourage the sharing of ideas, reflections and constructive criticism about tools we use. You can join our national Activist Education mailing list to receive updates and share your ideas with us. Or send us a workshop or resource you’ve created/found to info@asen.org.au

Our projects including designing and facilitating at our annual ASEN Summer activist training camp; supporting new educators; running skill-shares across the continent; the ASEN activist education handbook (see chapters below); and early in 2009 organising, designing and facilitating strategic planning for over 150 community climate change groups at Australia’s Climate Action Summit.

If you’re interested in ASEN running a workshop for your collective/group or want advice on running one yourself we’d love to hear from you!  Email us at info@asen.org.au

Join the ASEN Activist Education email-list: groups.yahoo.com/group/asen_activist_edu/

What is a Workshop?

Workshops are a fantastic way to support learning and skill-sharing among activists. You don’t need to be an ‘expert’ in the chosen topic to run an effective workshop. Participatory workshops draw on participants own knowledge created through their daily life. Such educational models, using names such as ‘Popular’, ‘Adult’, or ‘Radical’ education, draw on a set of alternative education principles.

There is no perfect, standard or ‘correct’ workshop outline. A workshop structure and purpose reflects the creativity of the facilitators, the needs and aspirations of participants and the context in which it’s being experienced. Be creative!

Workshop Examples and Templates

Here you’ll find a mish-mash of workshop outlines and related resources on a range of topics. Check out the “how to use” guide for these workshop resources.

Our work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Australia License. You are welcome to copy, distribute, adapt and transmit the work, under the following conditions: you attribute the work, you may not use this work for commercial purposes, and you share alike. To view a copy of this license, visit here.  For further information, contacts of facilitators to run these workshops, please email info@asen.org.au

• ASEN Training Manual

• Workshop: Building and Maintaining Collectives

• Workshop: Direct Action

• Workshop: Facilitation

• Workshop: Media and Messaging

• Workshop: Theories of Change

• Workshop: Anti-Oppression (also, check out the USA Grassroots Policy Project)

• Workshop: Campaign Strategy

Workshop Preparation Resources

• Workshop Tools

• Workshop Template

• Workshop Schedule template (from the Change Agency)

Other awesome resource sites

Training for Change – based in the USA they have heaps of awesome resources on training the trainer, anti-oppression, nonviolent  change, strategy, team building..

RANT Collective – mainly focused on nonviolent action and strategy

Training Materials: Youth Climate Leaders Training

In August 2008, ASEN, in partnership with the University of Technology Sydney Institute of Sustainable Futures and the UTS Environment Collective, hosted a two-day youth climate leaders training with over 30 students from across the university.    We designed a new and innovative training program and materials drawing on our experience, existing research on communicating climate change, and new research on the specific needs of university students. For further information contact holly@asen.org.au and please use and credit the resources yourselves!

• Full two-day workshop program. Download here.

• The Climate Leadership Journey Workbook used by participants in the workshop, accompanies the workshop outline.  Download here.

• Training evaluation form. Download/view

• ASEN and the ISF surveyed attitudes of NSW university students to climate change and interests / barriers to climate change action.  Download the report here and read a news story here.

• Climate Science Update presentation. Download/view

• Climate Solutions presentation from Dr Chris Riedy from the Institute for Sustainable Futures. Download/view

• Australian greenhouse pollution exercise: a fantastic visual and interactive exercise that breaks down where our greenhouse pollution comes from.  Download.

• Children of the Future – Storytelling exercise. A creative, reflective and beautiful exercise, developed from the work of Joanna Macy, where we explore this journey we are on, the journey of this great turning, the journey of change, of preventing runaway climate change.  Download.

• Imagining Displacement for Climate Refugees: the Ball Bearing Demonstration. Download.

• A Just Transition to a clean, renewable energy economy is urgent and possible.  Article by Geoff Evans.  Download.

• Resources for campaign strategy adapted from Moyer, Bill. The Practical Strategist. San Francisco: Social Movement Empowerment Project, 1990.  Download here.

• Starting a Youth Climate Group workshop outline.  Download.

• Negotiating 101 handout: Some helpful information to help you negotiate effectively and successfully in your university or workplace.  Download.

• Planning and promoting events workshop outline.  Download.

Further Reading about Popular Education

• Beyond Just Education

• Cooperative Learning Theory

• Freirian Facilitators

• Max Min Learning

• Philosophy of Education

• Check out this documentary and performance project on popular education, “I Want to Do This All Day: Redefining Learning and Reinventing Education.” In the spring of 2006 these cool young folks set out to investigate the living history of the “radical learning” movement, and compiled their findings in this 2hr 30min audio piece. The documentary uses interviews from 23 different learning spaces to illuminate the grassroots movement of people and communities taking power over their own education and creating learning environments based on freedom, cooperation and social change. To listen, go here