Facilitator Improv is a process which allows everyone in a circle to guide the group in experiential exercises.

Its an operating system for workshops that can allow a workshop to be hosted without the host necessarily knowing too much about the material.

So for instance, someone can put on a workshop “How to manage your time efficiently” run on a facilitator improv format, which means that everyone goes into silence, until someone gets a hit on an exercise to lead the group related to managing your time. Then after that exercise is led, the group goes back into silence again, until someone else gets an intuitive hit. People can share feedback as to how well the exercises land.

It allows much greater freedom and ease in putting on workshops, for one doesn’t need to prepare so much. One can put on a workshop on “Tapping into your intuition”, “Overcoming anger”, “Improving your relationship to money” etc… by simply advertising it and having a space to hold it, and then allowing people to come to help run the workshop. Its a new model, a new paradigm of what workshops are. It doesn’t require beforehand to have the teacher, and the exercises all prepared, it instead depends on emergence from people coming.

There’s a similarity to how in Open Space Technology facilitation events, where anyone can call a group, even if they do not know anything about it, and then people coming would discuss the topic. The difference to Open Space Technology here is that anyone can call a stand alone workshop, and also that there is more of a focus on facilitating experiential exercises rather than dialogue.