Who: Age Connects Morgannwg, a charity supporting older people in RCT, Bridgend and Merthyr Tydfil.
The brief: To design and facilitate an all-day event with all the staff and as many volunteers as possible, to review progress against the existing strategy, and start developing the next strategy that will be implemented from April 2026. This event was to be the start of internal and external engagement and conversations, to feed into the draft strategy being developed by the senior leadership team.
What I did: I planned a structure and layout for 80 participants, to reflect on their work experiences, the positives and the challenges – and start considering strategic themes in carrousel conversations. The CEO also added in some well-being information updates into the day’s programme. I designed a survey for the volunteers who couldn’t attend on the day in to feed in their thoughts. All the resources were custom templates which I designed bilingually.
What they said: The feedback on post-its from participants was overall positive at the end of the day. The CEO said: “I can’t tell you how much pressure has lifted just having you, and you being so wonderfully organised!”
My reflections: One point that came up in the post-its feedback was that a few people really did not like the “quiet giraffe” tool to bring people back together from conversations. (I put my arm up with my fingers forming a shadow puppet giraffe head – anyone who sees this stops talking and puts their arm up with a giraffe head too, and if you see anyone with their arm up as a giraffe you do the same. Silence spreads quickly and the attention comes back to the facilitator at the front.) People found it patronising and infantilising. However, it’s one of my preferred tools, because it avoids shouting over the din of conversations, or the other tool I like which involves clapping but which can cause auditory overwhelm in neurodivergent participants. I guess you can’t always please everyone! But I made some notes about how I pitch the tool, and how I explain the rationale.
Image credit: Age Connects Morgannwg