Art of Hosting and Harvesting Conversations that Matter

What becomes possible when we trust in the practice of being human?

January 12-14th, 2027, in the NCC Riverhouse, Ottawa

Register

Join us for a three-day, hands-on facilitation training for people who bring others together: to run a meeting, lead a team, host a community gathering, or work on complex problems too big for any one person or organization to solve alone. You'll learn practical ways to design and host conversations where people actually think together. You'll experience them, learn about them and leave ready to use them in your own contexts.

Being human together is a practice. It's built through deep listening, navigating tension openly, and working through uncertainty to find a way forward together. Like any skill, it gets stronger with practice. Come practice with us.

Our calling question for these three days is:

What becomes possible when we trust in the practice of being human?

At Bridge Building Group, we love asking our clients, What is this moment? So we asked it of ourselves. A lot of what used to take a room full of people can now be done in seconds. AI can summarize a meeting, draft a strategy, and produce a page of ideas before lunch. We use these tools too, and they have their uses. But they've also made it clearer what they can't do. They can't notice what isn't being said. They can't stay in a hard conversation long enough for something new to come out of it. And they can't do the work of a group deciding together what matters enough to act on, just to name a few.

That human part of working together is what this training is about.

Questions we’ll explore together:

  • What can only happen when people are actually in a room together, and how do we protect it?

  • What does it take to trust a group with a question none of us can answer alone?

  • How do we stay human inside systems that aren't built for it?

  • How do we use the new tools available without handing over the parts of the work that make us human?

Register Today!

January 12-14th, 2027, in the NCC Riverhouse, Ottawa

9 am to 5 pm each day · Doors open at 8:30 am for coffee and settling in

What is The Art of Hosting

The Art of Hosting is an international community of practice that has been growing for over twenty-five years. It isn't a single method. It's a way of designing and hosting conversations so that groups can think well, decide well, and act together, drawing on participatory methods and on the presence of the person holding the room. Harvesting is the other half of the practice: making sure what a group creates gets captured, shared, and carried into what happens next.

What You’ll Gain

  • Ready-to-Use Methods. Experience participatory methods such as Circle, World Café, Open Space Technology, ProAction Café, and Collective Story Harvest, including when to use each one and when not to.

  • Design Skills. How to get clear on the real purpose of a gathering, craft a question worth answering, build a process that fits, and harvest what emerges so the work goes somewhere afterward.

  • Real-World Application. Bring a real meeting, retreat, consultation, or stuck conversation, and we'll dig into it together.

  • Presence and Practice. Practices for hosting yourself before you host others: staying present when a room gets tense, being honest about what you don't know, and learning to trust the people in the room.

  • Community. A community of people curious about the same things, that you can continue to learn with long after the three days are done.

Who Should Attend

This training is for anyone who convenes people: team leads, public servants, community organizers, educators, facilitators, people running boards or committees, and anyone who has sat through one too many meetings and suspects there's a better way.

It's especially for you if you run meetings or consultations and want them to produce something people actually own; if you work inside a large system and want ways of working together that feel more human than the system does; or if you're curious, or a bit uneasy, about what AI is changing in your work and want to get clear on what only people can do.

The Venue

We'll gather at the NCC Riverhouse. The venue is fully accessible, and we hope to spend some time outside together too, weather permitting, so come ready for a January walk or conversation in the fresh air.

Coffee, tea, lunch, and snacks are included all three days.

About the Team

FAQ

  • No. Newcomers and experienced facilitators both belong here, and the mix makes the learning richer.

  • A notebook, a pen, and warm winter clothes and boots. We'll be spending some time outside.

  • Yes. You'll be asked about dietary needs and allergies when you register, and we'll work with the venue to make sure there's good food for everyone.

  • Yes. If you'd like to bring this training to your team or community, we offer tailored workshops. Reach out to info@bridgebuilding.ca to explore what that could look like.