We approach every project as an opportunity for co-design, beginning each project with an initiation meeting to understand your needs, discuss stakeholders and set key milestones. We develop a bespoke plan that meets your needs, identifies opportunities for added value and aligns with your organisation’s mission.
Our principal, Colin Stokes, has delivered hundreds of training sessions, workshops, focus groups and data collection interviews. His personal warmth, creative skills and deep understanding of government and NGO sectors are your building blocks for an effective, collaborative project. Engagements may be as simple as delivering a workshop or require a coordinated mix of workshops, design, training, reporting or community engagement.
Customised workshop and training materials will engage your stakeholders while keeping discussions on track and theming outputs for review and reporting. Illustrations and graphic recording enliven your event, add meaning to your documentation and aid accessibility.
We encourage you to call us for a ‘no obligation’ chat about what you want to achieve.
Facilitation
Workshops & Events
Our workshops and events are rich and engaging, inviting your stakeholders into activities and discussions that encourage participation and achieve workshop outcomes.
We co-design every workshop with you, weaving your key information into a dynamic process where each activity builds on the last. Classic structures such as brainstorming, small groups, journey mapping and reflection are augmented by using bespoke worksheets to record and order outputs.
With decades experience leading all kinds of groups we are well placed to meet emerging challenges, help participants be heard and maintain positive momentum for your workshop or event.
Examples
Anti-Bullying Roundtable
NSW Department of Education
We helped plan and facilitate an Anti-Bullying Roundtable. This included introducing presentations, delivering key information about previous actions and facilitating discussions about needs and future actions. The work included development of small group worksheets that arranged participant responses in themes to aid reporting and build consensus on priorities.
Program Planning
We understand the work that is required to understand needs, undertake detailed planning, guide implementation, identify monitoring and evaluation opportunities and give structure to reports. Service providers are under increased pressure to deliver key documents such as a journey map, theory of change or program logic.
You will draw on our experience with service delivery, project management and consulting to government to develop documents that provide a ‘line of sight’ between program objectives, inputs, activities and outcomes. Established and tested workshop templates will be adjusted to fit your project’s goals and language.
Examples
Program Logic
Felt Facilitation Program Planning workshop series
We create templates as part of a series of workshops designed to develop, test and document your program plan. The template was designed to help providers meet the requirements of funders for comprehensive planning, delivery and evaluation of funded programs.
Training
We have experience co-designing, writing and delivering training for organisations going through change, building workforce capacity or starting a new program. Our training combines information provision with activities designed to explore the implications of new knowledge, reflecting on current practice, developing shared commitment and producing action lists to embed new practices.
We can review your current training to develop augmented activities that build engagement and encourage changed behaviour or practices.
Our commitment to transparent, collaborative parallel processes will build your team’s skills. For more direct capacity building in program design, facilitation or training delivery, talk to us about ‘train the trainer’ sessions.
Examples
Sexual Health Training for Foster Carers
NSW STI Programs Unit, NSW Health
This training was developed to increase the capacity of foster carers to engage with young people and to provide authoritative, positive sources of information about sexual health.
The training was co-designed with NSW Health and carers to encourage participants to contribute their experience, share strategies, align personal values with evidence based information and build open, honest relationships with young people.
Homelessness and Health
South Eastern Sydney Local Health District, NSW Health
This training was developed for the South Eastern Sydney Local Health District for community facing health workers to better understand and respond to homelessness. The training was co-designed and co-presented by people with lived experience of homelessness.
Felt Facilitation went on to provide 4 ‘train the trainer’ sessions to build the capacity of SESLHD to deliver the training internally.
Drawing & Design
Graphic Recording
Graphic recording is a live summary of your event or workshop, recording key ideas and moments in text and pictures. Whether produced on paper or electronically graphic recording will engage participants and capture a nuanced picture of the relationships between ideas, data and action.
The results can be used to review the workshop, reproduced in reports and used as an infographic for those unable to attend.
Examples
Aboriginal Children’s Forum
Working at Inside Policy, Colin attended the Victorian Aboriginal Children’s Forum for three years running. The graphic record was used to debrief at the end of each day and for presenters and speakers to reference. Participants enjoyed seeing the summary emerge, and suggested images and changes that would more completely capture the tone and detail of the event.
Truth Telling Symposium
Inside Policy was invited to help plan, deliver and record a symposium on truth-telling for Reconciliation Australia. Colin completed a graphic record that was used to record key contributions, debrief after sessions and test key thinking by inviting changes.
Custom-made workshop materials
We take you beyond the butcher’s paper with custom-made, large format printable worksheets that engage participants, invite high quality responses and order outputs to meet workshop objectives. Materials work alongside detailed outlines so workshops have a logical sequence and outputs readily contribute to documentation, review or reporting.
We design custom material for ourselves, other workshop facilitators and consultants looking for engaging data collection tools. Designs are compatible with online whiteboards for virtual settings.
Examples
Journey mapping
Not identified for client confidentiality
This worksheet was designed to help a group of government funded service providers to better document their programs, including generating themed responses that contributed to the subsequent delivery of a more comprehensive program logic.
Best life
Not identified for client confidentiality
This worksheet was developed a part of a suite of worksheets exploring how Aboriginal children can be supported to live a happy, healthy life. Engaging pictures motivated participants to list key influences on wellbeing that were discussed in relation to the responsibilities of government, community and family.
Illustration
Most PowerPoint presentations, reports and blog posts are limited to clip art and stock photos that often say little about the ideas at the core of the document.
Commissioning bespoke illustrations for your slide deck, training manual or report will give your material a fresh, engaging look. More importantly they will be relevant and targeted to support your message. Targeted illustrations for data collection documents, information sheets and workshop slides draw in participants and make materials more accessible.
Examples
Belmont Electorate
We were asked to produce a drawing that captured the key elements of the Belmont electorate. The image was developed for a ‘with compliments’ card to be distributed with correspondence and has subsequently been used in other publications by our client.
Information sources and influences for older Aboriginal People
Not identified for client confidentiality
This image was developed from material provided by our client and was designed to engage older Aboriginal people in yarns about how they source and navigate information. It was used to stimulate discussion and identify opportunities for engaging older Aboriginal people.
Aboriginal Partnership
Not identified for client confidentiality
This model for engagement between government and Aboriginal communities was initially drawn by an Elder as part of data collection by our client. This high quality rendition summarises key elements of the discussion and was reproduced in the final report.
Article and presentation illustrations
Erietta Sapounakis, UX Consultant
These drawings were commissioned for an in-house training presentation and article on a research methodology called “Diary Studies” for a User Experience consultancy. The article has attracted thousands of visits since first published and has been referenced in professional journals, text books, and Wikipedia.
