The ninth Marine CoLAB workshop aims to finalise the vision, mission and objectives, as well as the timeline and workplan for 2016, discuss the governance structure and identify activities in 2016 and beyond. The day begins with an update from current Marine CoLAB projects and ends with the group consulting on the Chagos and Game on! projects.

Facilitated and documented by Vali Lalioti.

Agenda: Marine CoLAB March 2016

More photos on Flickr

The day started with introduction and setting the context from Louisa and a few quick updates from projects.The participants were keen to finalise the mission, timeline and workplan for 2016, which were further developed between the workshops, and update each other about ongoing projects. The mission, vision and communication document, as proposed by Mirella von Lindenfels, was broadly agreed on. For the timeline the participants created a visual diagram of the year populated with activities, milestones and meetings. These were first defined for the themes We Think and We Test, lead by Aniol Esteban. The group tackled the themes We Share and We Learn during the Action Learning session, lead by Giles Bristow. In the session on How we Plan, the group looked at the possible governance structure for Marine CoLAB and identified the activities needed in this work stream. By the end of the morning the timeline and workplan were finalised and agreed upon. The final agreed work plan is here.

The afternoon was dedicated to consultation sessions. The first session was lead by Sophie Maxwell on the Chagos project from ZSL. She presented the project and two core questions for the group to work on. The session ended with a discussion on how to evaluate impact for the Chagos project and Marine CoLAB's Game On project, which share some hypotheses and methodologies. Interconnections between these two projects were explored. The second consultation was on the MPA and coastal communities project, with an update from Sandy Luk, who led the session. The group discussed the project, including planning a half-day workshop and next steps.

Sophie Maxwell asked the participants what was the “recipe” that so successfully brought this group together. Below are some of the reflections from the group:

“The long term commitment by the Calouste-Gulbenkian Foundation, allowed us to build trust, by giving us the time to get to know each other and come together as equals. It is like two pandas meeting in a zoo.” “We were not presented with an initial agenda, but were allowed to spend a lot of time to get to know each other. This was thanks to the foundation providing a stable infrastructure, including venue, funding for our time and facilitation.” “We were freed up from organisational responsibility and brought together also as individuals not feeling that we always had to represent our brands. FoAM’s facilitation was very important.” “Our personalities meshed well together and there was room for laughter, room for fun and that created trust.” “This is an optimistic group with ambition and drive to make anything possible.” “The excellent facilitators and the diversity of organisations was important. There was respect for each others skills and ambition to do more together than our parts.” “The open space allowed us to explore what we wanted to know and what we wanted to do, so and we were not pushed for results.”

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some workshop_notes