Invitation to participate:
A residential workshop will be held in April 2024, prior to the international Restorative Practice conference in Canberra, November 2024.
This workshop is an opportunity for practitioners to share stories and experiences, enable practitioners to explore the issues facing Australia at this time, and discuss how restorative practices can make a difference.
The agenda will be co-created at the start of the first day. Each person is offered a timeslot of about 45-90mins to host a conversation that is important to them and to share their experiences. Some of the insights from this workshop can be taken to the International RP conference in Canberra.
Costs
- To facilitate practitioners attending the workshop, the NED Foundation will underwrite the workshop, therefore charging a nominal full fee of $250, and offering subsidies where applicable.
Registration
- Registrations are open here.
- A participant’s workshop kit has been adapted from our standard SDN workshops, and will be included as an attachment with the registration acknowledgement email.
Time and place
- Dates: Wednesday 10th to Sunday 14th April 2024.
- Venue: Silver Wattle Quaker Centre, Bungendore NSW
- Arrival time: 6pm for dinner, 10 April
- Departure time: Following lunch, 14 April
For further enquiries contact either:
- David Purnell on 0466 643 536, davidpurnell68@gmail.com
- Michael Maher on 0427 510 372, admin@ned.org.au
The workshop follows the structure developed by NED Foundation known as SDN Workshops.
About SDN Workshops
The aim of an SDN workshop is to provide an atmosphere of optimism and renewal for people looking to create a better world. The workshop offers an experience of community, safety, acceptance, sharing, reflection and renewal. It is a lived-in experience, an exploration of ideas at people's learning edges, with opportunities for personal and collective challenge.
Ned Iceton, one of the founders of SDN, said of SDN workshops:
The focus of SDN workshops is the balance between the personal, the group's 'family spirit’, and the wider ‘all-of- society’. SDN has established a culture of effective support and a core of experienced members – wherein lies the true wealth of our network. We create a culture of support and fairness, honesty and insight.
SDN workshops may challenge views about ourselves and the world. This is because SDN is not just a feel-good experience – it strives to be real and relevant, on a personal and social level, for those engaging actively in the issues of our times. Beyond this, the SDN culture is one of mutual appreciation and energising group wholeness.
Content is not the main point. It’s about how we can form an emotionally powerful support community over a short period of days. My observation of this process in workshops held since 1975 always confirms my faith in the constructive potential in humanity.
Michael Maher, a long-term SDN member, describes the workshop:
The point of an SDN workshop is not why people come and what their agenda is, but what they discover about themselves and others, behind the defences. It is about discovering the human in each participant. The structure is designed to bring forth that human element - why we encourage emotion rather than see it as a lack of control. We seek relationship with the real person behind the facade, which is what most participants discover, often to their amazement, by the end of the workshop.