Building a Better Dialogue for Better Regeneration

Based around the idea of the unequal power relationships within partnerships two workshops using Socratic dialogue to investigate the notion of what is fair were well attended by a wide range of practitioners from different regeneration partnerships. The idea of addressing this inequality by increasing the understanding of perceptions of events by participants lies behind the use of Socratic dialogue.

The first workshop was so well received that a second one ran shortly after to accommodate the over subscription to the first. During the Socratic dialogue sessions strong evidence supporting the idea that unequal power relations (actual and/or perceived) within partnerships, especially those incorporating partners from different sectors i.e. statutory, business, and VCS, having a limiting and potentially damaging effect.

It is hoped that it will be possible to pilot and develop the use of Socratic dialogue and other philosophical and systems thinking methods into a mechanism to increase the effectiveness of partnership working. The pilot will work with a regeneration partnership to develop an approach to resolving the tensions that arise from having partners with unequal power and will demonstrate the practical application of philosophy into everyday use.

Using a selected partnership this pilot will evaluate and develop the applicability of Socratic dialogue to partnerships and develop a working practice for using philosophy in an everyday working environment. The resulting working practice can then be rolled out to other partnerships which operate with unequal power relations within them.

A report of the two workshops will be available shortly.