We are taking a leap this year - offering a series of Community Cafes with an overarching topic for the full year.

Over the next year we are inviting you to join us on a very special journey. Using the seven World Cafe design principles as our guide, the 2024 monthly Community World Cafes will explore how these design principles not only form the ground for the World Cafe format but how they can be fruitfully applied to our lives and work more generally, as well.

If you are a host of World Cafe or other participatory practice, this will be an invaluable opportunity to assimilate the World Cafe design principles at a deep level. And there will also be real value for anyone who wants to see how applying the World Cafe principles can enhance every aspect of your life.

 "I’ve found these principles to be powerful in ways I’d not expected when the World Cafe was born.  They’ve been core not only to my own professional practice but, as importantly, to my own life in these challenging times.”

~ Juanita Brown PhD.
Co-Founder, The World Cafe

MONTHLY THEMES

January’s Community Cafe, “Deepening Our Practice” started us off with an exploration of the overall theme for the year, looking at how we each see our “practice” - whether that be a hosting practice, or simply the things in our lives that are important enough that we want to practice them.

In February, we begin applying the first design principle (“Clarify the Context”) in a Community Cafe that helps identify and understand the complexity of elements that lie behind what is more obvious and impact every situation. Clarifying the Context helps us find a more nuanced and accurate approach to the solutions we seek - in our work and all areas of our lives.

The March Community Cafe is focused on the importance of design principle #2: Creating a Hospital Space. Explore what makes a hospitable space: where and for whom.

In April we Explore Questions That Matter, design principle #3, which is at the heart of World Cafe and all conversations that matter. 

The theme for May's Community Cafe is Encourage Everyone's Contribution, the 4th World Cafe design principle, where we find out for ourselves the value of diversity and why everyone's voice matters.

June's theme is design principle #5: Connect Diverse Perspectives, where we will explore together what it is to not only access but utilize the power of diversity.

In July our theme is the 6th design principle: Listen Together for Patterns. What is the structure that connects and brings our personal insights and perspectives together into a collective understanding? 

August will be a month off for family vacations and summer activities.

In September, we resume with a "Learning Cafe" in connection with our annual World Cafe Hosting Fundamentals Learning Program. The format will be accompanied by a "meta-commentary" that shows the purpose behind each part of the World Cafe format.

October's Community Cafe returns to design principle #7: Share Collective Discoveries, where we will experience the art of harvesting. 

In November we will review the year's experiences by looking at the seven World Cafe design principles as a set. What is revealed by using them all together, as differentiated from employing one or two of them? Be sure to join us for this culminating Community Cafe.

Finally, we will take December off for holiday festivities and ponder our direction for 2025.