Conscious
Facilitation Series
Do you regularly facilitate meetings, whether at work, home, or a grassroots project? Are you interested in being part of an intentional learning community with others seeking to develop a more liberatory facilitation practice? Join us for Conscious Facilitation!
Each session in this four-part series, facilitated by varun khattar sharma with Steven Tatum, includes a 90-minute interactive workshop introducing a framework and tool, a 60-minute group coaching session, and an optional co-working space with the opportunity to receive 1:1 coaching.
Each session is being offered both in Hamden and Hartford.
During this series we will cover:
- Purpose – How do you define and articulate why you’re meeting?
- Presence – How do you invite meeting participants to show up fully?
- Decisions – How do you guide groups towards making choices?
- Dissent – How do you create opportunities for divergent thinking?
No previous training or pre-work is required. However, please note that this is not an introduction to foundational facilitation skills. The series will focus on in-person meeting facilitation, as opposed to training and/or virtual facilitation.
Space is limited, so please register in advance and cancel if you can no longer attend. You are welcome, but not required to sign up for all four sessions. There is a learning arc you can follow, but each session is designed as a standalone experience.
Dates and Details
@ FABRIC in Hamden, CT
Hamden series is now full!
Whitneyville Cultural Commons
- Wednesday, April 30 – Purpose
- Wednesday, June 18 – Presence
- Thursday, September 18 – Decisions
- Thursday, October 30 – Dissent
Fabric includes multiple other offerings throughout these days.
Learn more about Fabric
@ 30 Ash in Hartford, CT
30 Ashley Street
- Friday, May 9 – Purpose
- Friday, June 13 – Presence
- Friday, September 12 – Decisions
- Friday, November 14 – Dissent
Times are the same for both locations:
| 11am – 12:30pm | Workshop |
| 12:30 – 1:30pm | Lunch |
| 1:30 – 2:30pm | Group Coaching |
| 2:30 – 3:30pm | Co-working and 1:1 peer support (Optional)* |
*In Hartford, one on one coaching is available on a first come, first serve basis for people who attend Group Coaching. In Hamden, you can register for 1-1 coaching via the Fabric registration form.
A note about COVID-19 Safety:
For the health and well-being of participants, high-quality masks (i.e. N95 or KN95) are required while attending all Conscious Facilitation sessions unless eating or drinking. Extra masks will be provided. In Hartford, a HEPA air purifier will be in use in the meeting space and windows will be open for ventilation, weather permitting. Please do not attend if you are experiencing any flu or COVID-19 symptoms or if you have had a recent COVID-19 exposure.
About the Facilitators
varun khattar sharma
varun (they/elle) is a Punjabi Queer facilitator, teacher, learner, writer, curator, consultant, cultural worker, uncle, and auntie living on the occupied land known as Hartford, Connecticut. As a partner with Co-Creating Effective & Inclusive Organizations and Beyond Diversity 101, they enjoy guiding individuals and groups on the lifelong journey of healing and transformation, with a combination of love and rigor.
As Co-Op Navigator Fellow with the Cooperative Fund of the Northeast, they currently serve as lead organizer of Cooperate Connecticut, an emerging membership-based network growing our local co-op, workplace democracy, and solidarity economy movement. They are also a co-founder and director of the People’s Saturday School, a grassroots political education collective.
They previously worked as a college access program manager, high school social science teacher, youth organizer, and diversity, equity, and inclusion practitioner. In 2020, they co-founded the Connecticut UndocuFund, a project that redistributed over a quarter of a million dollars to working class immigrant households impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
varun has studied with Lift Economy, Sociocracy for All, the Center for Economic Democracy, the Highlander Center, the Anti-Oppression Resource & Training Alliance, the New York Collective of Radical Educators, the Midwest Academy, the Xicanx Institute for Teaching and Organizing, and the UConn Women’s Center, among others.
Steven Tatum
Steven (he/him) has dedicated his professional life to facilitating learning. In the decade he spent as a high school English teacher, he was motivated by the beauty and challenge of reading and writing with his students and engaging colleagues in professional development and labor organizing. Since burnout symptoms prompted a difficult decision to leave the classroom in 2023, Steven has stayed engaged in the public school system by serving as a member of the Hartford Board of Education. Steven is also a member of The People’s Saturday School, which aims to cultivate more intentional relationships, organizations, and social movements through its educational and cultural programming.
Steven earned a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy and a Master of Arts in Teaching Literature from Bard College, where he was also trained in collaborative pedagogy as a peer writing tutor. He moved from his home state of Vermont to Hartford, Connecticut, which he has called home since 2018. Steven appreciates spending time outside in every season. He is a writer, partner, housemate, brother, son, friend, bassoonist, listener, kayaker, moon lover, and tea drinker. Perhaps above all, he is fascinated by the power of stories to shape and reshape the ways we live in the world.