FACILITATION
Laura specializes in emergent group facilitation focused on bringing people together over a common purpose to ultimately create change. She has helped to create coalitions and cross-sector strategies focused on food justice and has been working within the food system for over a decade. Laura also enjoys teaching facilitation and developing curriculum and best practices for groups to bring communities together themselves.
While effective meetings and gatherings can be supportive to or even catalyze communities and networks, there is much more to the care and feeding of these interconnected spheres. Laura works to support the human element in her work and style, looking to build and forge deep relationships along the way.
In her practice, Laura uses a mash up of Liberating Structures, Appreciative Inquiry, emergent and complexity theories, and participatory design models to facilitate and hold space.
We enjoyed working with Laura Titzer, and I was personally very happy to see how responsive she and her partner were in adjusting the meeting program when required. We covered a lot of material, and I am convinced that the participants left the meeting feeling re-energized and excited about the steps moving forward with structuring our group and strengthening our area farmers markets. - Jess Sappington, Kitsap Community and Agricultural Alliance.
The training was well done and engaging. - training attendee
Laura's training was rich and informative, and her approach helped our group to both get grounded in, and think at a higher level about, their work. Laura's deep level of knowledge and experience was an asset for our team. - training attendee
Laura came to our County in 2016 to lead a Growing Connections workshop. At the time we had a loose network of people from food related organizations. The timing was great as she got us to see a common vision for our community food system. I also appreciate the level of detail that she took when deciding how to set up the room, as well as the follow up materials such a action plans, etc, being sent out to the whole workshop . Lastly, her process involved coming back at the end of the growing season, and seeing what worked well over the course of time. I think that follow up was the impetus for much of the work we are now doing collectively. I can say for certain that we are using some of the foundational action planning materials to directly infom a regional needs assessment and planning project, and for that we are grateful for all Laura has done for us. - Joseph Astorino