Episode 6 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we get into "fishbowls" as a facilitation tool: what they are, when they're useful, and their limitations.
'That's a key component - you go into it expecting to listen 80% of the time.' - Ali
Show notes, links
Find "Fish bowl" on Seeds for Change's tools page. See Training For Change's tool description for an example of how to use fishbowls in practice.

See our "What is facilitation?" podcast episode page for more general facilitation resources.

Transcript
Ali: This is Resist + Renew.

Kat: A UK-based podcast about social movements.

Sami: What we're fighting for, why, and how it all happens.

Ali: The hosts of the show are:

Kat: Me Kat,

Sami: Me, Sami,

Ali: and me, Ali,

Sami: I'm recording this now baby

Ali: Shit it's a podcast.

*Laughter*

Ali: So welcome back to the toolbox as part of the Resist and Renew podcast. This is where we geek out and look at what might be in your facilitator's toolbox, looking at different tools, what they're good for, why you might use them, and what their limitations are.

Kat: And this week, we're going to be looking at the fishbowl. And I'm going to start us off by explaining a bit about what the fishbowl is. And so fishbowl is when you want to have a conversation between a few people when you've got a larger group, and you would set up the room with two circles, a large circle where most people would sit and then a smaller circle in the middle. And this allows for a few people to be having a conversation while everybody else is able to observe and sometimes interact with that conversation. So there are two main kinds of fishbowl that I want to talk to us about. One is an open fishbowl and the other is a closed fishbowl. So the closed fishbowl is when the seats in the middle circle stay the same. So you have the same people having a conversation for the duration. And it's not possible for anybody else to join that conversation, which means everybody else on the outside is just in the listening and observer role.

Kat: Then you can also have an open fishbowl where you have one seat in the middle that is there that people can use on the outside circle to join the inside circle. And that allows for different people to move in and out of the conversation for the duration, which can make it much more interactive, and then that a closed fishbowl but which one you want depends a little bit on what you're trying to do with the conversation.

Ali: Sweet. I guess the only other thing to add is that you can have like choices on how those people move in and out. Sometimes it's like an empty seat, which is a bit then it puts the onus on like the people in the middle to decide who's gonna leave. And sometimes you tap the person on the shoulder who you want to kick out of the middle circle which requires a bit more guts, but I like it because you get to like get rid of someone who's spoken a lot.

Sami: Like going right into the conflict.

Kat: Who taps out? Someone from the outside circle goes in and says I want you to leave?

Ali: Yeah. I like bold, bold,

Sami: Beef, beef. So, example of fishbowl in practice. So in 2016 am in a few people organised an event called “Building effective solidarity”, which was bringing together a lot of people that do things that could broadly return solidarity work from a lot of different kind of environments, with the aim being like bringing together different people from different backgrounds and se...