Putting your workshop together

There are three main stages in the running of an effective workshop, all of them indispensible.

  1. Preparation. You need to know what your aims are, what the issues are, where they are, whether your workshop will complement existing commitment and action from Council, what resources you can muster.
  2. Organisation; all the nuts and bolts that make your participants feel that they are part of something worthwhile. Budgets, invitations, venue, special guests, dates, program and so on.
  3. Follow-up. This stage is outside the scope of this section, but is worth mentioning here. When you are thinking of running a workshop, you need to bear in mind that it does not end when the participants go home.

Workshop guide

Click the links below to access the workshop guide. You can print them out (they are in standard A4 format) and read them, make jottings, keep them around as you gather your materials and people.

The Workshop design pages will help you get started with the first stage of the workshop, getting to grips with is scope and purpose.

The Workshop organising pages will take you through the nuts and bolts of making it happen.

Workshop resources (Tier 3)

We have put together a number of resources (hand-outs, evaluation forms, etc) that you can adapt for your own purposes, as well as some examples of what others have done. Some of the files are in Word and Publisher format. If you lack the software you need to open and edit any of these files, just open the corresponding PDF files and use them for reference.

How to engage your community

You need to know how attract and engage residents before embarking on your workshop project. We have collected some extremely useful documents to help you with this. You will find them in Tier 4. Do make the most of them.

Promotion

Some examples of print materials used for promotion. Feel free to adapt them to your own use.

Evaluation

Continuous improvement is the name of the game. Keep getting better and more people will get involved. Ask your participants what was good and what was…not so good. You can find a form here.

Three important areas of concern

Further reading (Tier 4)

Here you can find many of the materials gathered from many places — useful information about all sorts of subjects related to community workshops. If you have any questions, or would like to be better informed, you may find what you’re after here.