Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Opening a meeting

[Angie McGowan (angiem]

Rob Sandelin asked:
>OK , all you meeting veterans out there in Cohousing land, how about 
>sharing some of your  methods for opening a meeting?  I know many 
>groups start meetings with some sort of activity or opening and I need 
>some new ideas for my own group - and of course everyone can benefit.
>
>Some of the ways we have opening meetings at Sharingwood:
>Singing our names
>Assembling on a map of the US by where we were born
>group humming - vocal improvisation.
>Writing out our middle names and matching the middle name to the owner
>Sharing Appreciation's
>Sharing one sentence word goals for the community
>Pantomime our feelings at the moment

We do some of those for our mid-meeting game e.g. group humming or doing
some sort of pantomime.  You couldn't really do the middle names game or
the map of your birth game more than once, cos people would already know
the answers.

What we do at the beginning is a Show and Tell session lasting about 10
minutes, where we go round the group in turn and everyone gets to tell some
exciting, interesting or otherwise momentous thing that they've done since
the last meeting.  Also we set the meeting time for 15 minutes before the
start to give people a chance to chat to each other or be late or whatever.

Angie McGowan
Cascade Cohousing, Tasmania

_______________________________________________
Angie McGowan
Cultural Heritage Section
Parks and Wildlife Service
Tasmania Australia
Intl ph +61-02-336596
Dom ph (002) 336596