Your keys to our global conversation
Over the past 18 months, the European Commission’s corporate Learning & Development Unit has been organising Together-Ensemble workshops primarily for staff of the EU Institutions. Devised by Julie Guégan and Obhi Chatterjee combining TV and citizen deliberation techniques, the series has been commended for both improving resilience, by providing moments of human connection during the pandemic, while also engaging the collective intelligence of participants to co-create recommendations for the topics selected. Every session allows participants to experience the potential of co-creating EU policies with citizens, supporting the objectives of the Conference on the Future of Europe.
Colleagues and speakers have told us that we have offered a space for topical conversations which have not been happening elsewhere. Now, through this series of articles, we hope to stimulate similar conversations in other organisations and communities around the world.
In this first article, we share the list of topics we have been discussing in Together-Ensemble. In future articles, for selected topics, we will share our workshop designs and, where we have the agreement of the speakers, our opening conversations which stimulated the subsequent participatory conversations in groups of four or five. We will add new topics to the list below and add a link when we publish an article about any of the sessions.
You are welcome to use these resources to run your own workshops, or to inspire workshop designs which are more appropriate for your organisation or community. Our only request is that you share the outcomes of your conversations on social media using the hashtag #TogetherEnsemble and the hashtag we recommend for each session. We look forward to learning from the outcomes of your workshops.
Speakers and partners
We are indebted to all our speakers for sharing their inspiring insights and expertise to inspire the Together-Ensemble conversations. We are also grateful to the pioneering EU policymakers who have trusted us to co-design dedicated Together-Ensemble sessions to inform their policies.
Our regular partners for Together-Ensemble within the European Commission are the EU Policymaking Hub, the Corporate Social Responsibility team, the Foresight network, the ‘Simpler, Smarter, Together’ staff engagement campaign, the Joint Research Centre’s Competence Centre on Participatory and Deliberative Democracy, as well as the Conference on the Future of Europe team.
Behind the scenes, Raquel Correia has been our course manager throughout, while she and Miruna Stamate have been our technical hosts. Klaus Ahrend is our Producer.
The Together-Ensemble session Facing the planetary emergency was part of the Democracy and Governance Practices Retreat coordinated by the Open Government Network for Europe and was open to civil society. We welcome similar future partnerships which would allow us to extend the diversity of participants beyond the staff of the EU Institutions, bodies and agencies.
Special thanks to Enrique Nicanor for his advice on how to engage audiences in a broadcast environment and to Professor Janette Hartz-Karp for guiding our use of deliberation techniques, as well as for joining our initial design workshops.
TED Circles
You will see that some of the sessions of Together-Ensemble, especially during summer 2020, were TED Circles conversations. Julie and I are both registered TED Circles hosts. We wholeheartedly recommend the series, which proposes a selection of four TED Talks each month, as well as the climate crisis-related Countdown series, together with suggested questions to discuss after watching each of them.
Our thanks to the TED Circles team and to the global community of TED Circles hosts for inspiring these conversations.
Sessions of Together-Ensemble
The list of sessions below is presented by series, working backwards from the most recent series. The topics are selected based on the research by Julie Guégan on the conditions for collaboration. We will add articles for each topic which include the workshop design and, subject to the agreement of the speakers, recordings of our opening conversations with them.
Towards global collaboration
Towards a caring culture
- Unmanageable expectations
- Addictions: The need to be cared for
- Collaboration in crises
- Sustainability at home and at work
- Creating a more sustainable world
- Respect
- Belonging
- Compassion & care
The bigger picture
- Applying systems thinking
- Facing the planetary emergency
- Holistic policymaking
- Who really controls our lives
- Trapped by plastic
Dream big for Europe
- Emmanuel Duez
- Stéphane Baillie-Gee
- David Gurteen
- David Snowden & Stephen Quest
- X from Uganda
- Denis Prieur
- Yenny Gorce & Faryda Hussein
- Cécil Schmitt
- Rohit Talwar
- Euan Semple
Life beyond the pandemic
- The future of work
- Be bright, eat right
- The potential of self-organising teams
- Tackling disinformation
- Avoiding information overload?
- Corona fatigue
- Our values
- How to avoid being overwhelmed
- Renewing our energies
TED Circles
- The power of vulnerability
- The gift and power of emotional courage
- How to overcome our biases?
- Change, collaboration & tribes
- Towards a mindset for challenging times?
- Could caring for others build our resilience?
- Could technology replace doctors?
- Stimulating a culture of innovation?
- How do (generational) stereotypes hold us back at work?
- Why is colonialism (still) romanticised?
- The unforeseen consequences of a fast-paced world
- Are we interrupting the kinky sex lives of fish?
The first series
- Navigating uncertainty together?
- No “us” without trust?
- The future of learning
- Building a sustainable economy
- Greening mobility
- Could the EU be the new global leader?
- Addressing populism
