A Restorative Virtual Gathering for Front-Line Professionals

70+ participants from across Ontario

16 hrs of engagement

2 months of planning leading up to the event

100 page report filled with participants ideas and insights.

This internal staff gathering is a critically important event to connect front line family court support workers for brainstorming, learning, connecting, unwinding and debriefing. The daily work of these court support workers is emotionally taxing, so we collaborated closely with the client to co-design a virtual gathering that we broke up into four half-day sessions over two weeks (2 one week, and the other 2 the following week). It was planned this way to avoid Zoom fatigue and to foster connection and wellness for participants. We gathered in Zoom and used Stormz as our digital flipchart space.

Striking a good balance between having informative presentations and learning sessions, and opportunities for networking, connecting and sharing amongst participants. There was a lot of content to cover, and our past experience with the client and knowledge of the important (and difficult) work that participants do daily, made us aware that creating open space for sharing, dialogue and connection was key.

We planned an agenda full of variety. Every presentation was done in a different style and presenters were selected based on the participant’s requests and interests.

Since the participants deal with a lot of stress in their daily work, we facilitated small interspersed self-care activities throughout the gathering.

For example, before taking breaks we invited participants to do a five minute seated yoga stretch with soft background music.

Every day included a number of thoughtful exercises done in breakout rooms which allowed for participants to deepen their relationships and share their knowledge and experience with their colleagues (as would normally happen in an in-person event). We ensured that the breakout rooms remained consistent for two days in a row so that participants could get to know a cohort more deeply and form strong connections rather than meeting new peers in every breakout activity.

We were able to foster an engaging, restorative virtual gathering for a dedicated group of front-line professionals. We expect future events to have a hybrid element and will be happy to advise and support this client to create an impactful and engaging event.