Appreciative Inquiry
Much community organizing starts with identifying problems and goes from there in search of causes and strategies to address those causes. Appreciative inquiry inverts this and starts by inviting community members to identify what’s working, what they like – even love – about where they live, work, or go to school. (Whatever is the arena for action.) It then seeks to build upon those strengths, values, attractions, and resources to further enhance community/work/school life. This can be a powerful tool for generating ideas as well as a sense of ownership of the process, and strengthening a collective sense of agency.
► FACILITATION TIPS:
- This can work well with groups of children, teens, adults, and mixed-age groups.
- This can work well in multilingual and/or multi-cultural settings.
- Discussion questions can be answered by participants drawing pictures, using or enhancing geographic maps, making or responding to charrettes. (Charrettes are a process of collaborative design and/or planning – often using maps, 3-D blocks, etc. to help people talk about and visually show their ideas.) This can create more fun and more specific ideas and outcomes than what might be possible only through conversation.
- Unlike some other techniques this is more likely to build group energy than deplete it.