Our Team
We currently have four co-operative members based in various locations across the UK. Between us (plus a little train travel) we cover the length and breadth of this island, from south west England to north east Scotland. We are experienced facilitators, trainers, and mediators, and are skilled in organisational development and working with conflict, with over a century of experience in this work between us that we draw on when we work with you.
We work with a variety of approaches including Community Development, community organising, civic mediation, Training for Change’s Direct Education, Freirian experiential and participative learning, Popular Education, Reflect Action, the Work that Reconnects, and World Work/Process Work. We also use a range of methods and tools including Appreciative Enquiry, consensus, Crowd Wise, Open Space, Theatre of the Oppressed, World Café, and more.
We have designed, facilitated and trained in a wide-range of subjects and contexts, between us working in the campaigning, Community Development, health and social care and peacebuilding sectors, and on issues as diverse as disarmament, economics, the environment, safeguarding and social justice.
Here are a few words about each of us that may touch on some of our ‘added value’:
Gill is an experienced facilitator, trainer and manager who has worked in the co-operative, voluntary and public sectors. Having always been interested in growing organisational capability and sustainability, Gill has developed a broad range of skills that improve governance and effectiveness, encourage diversity, and develop consensus. She aims to build confidence and resilience, and challenge self-limiting attitudes and behaviour through individual and team coaching, training, facilitation and conflict resolution.
“I joined Rhizome to collaborate and develop my skills in a co-op of diverse and talented people who have the vision, skills and commitment to work together with a broad range of activists and organisations. I like work that effectively supports radical change to achieve social justice and makes it possible for people to enjoy working well together.”
Joel is a facilitator and social theorist and social scientist. Between 2020 and 2024, Joel worked on WorkFREE, a major international development project, where he piloted a ‘Relational Needs-Based’ approach to community organising. His facilitation approach integrates several needs-based frameworks that support groups to make sense of their situation in order to identify and pursue the right goals.
“Effective facilitation calls for the reintegration of logical mind with intuitive heart; planning and presence. For me, the Rhizome team embodies this reintegration and gives me the support and freedom to learn and grow as a facilitator so I can help other teams with their reintegration.
Maria has been working in voluntary and community settings since 1992. Having spent some time being a full time students’ union and then trade union activist, she became involved in demos around Reclaim the Streets and anti-globalisation actions such as the G8. Meanwhile she developed a career in information, advice, training and policy work.
She has done much of her work in community settings, in activist groups, and with local community centres. The issues she faced everyday around involvement, empowerment and voice, as well as the difficulties of enabling people to get involved in activities led her to complete an MA in Political Activism and New Social Movements. Experiences abroad and working in communities here in the UK have led her to adopt reflect-action approaches to working in groups.
“As I have become better known in the sector, I have been asked to become more and more ‘mainstream’ in my approach. Rhizome gives me an opportunity to use my skills in a way that is more meaningful in terms of social change.”
Perry has been a facilitator for some thirty years – and a member of Rhizome for about half of them. He has trained and practiced in methods that include: Future Search Conferences, Open Space, Appreciative Inquiry and Convergent Facilitation. He has led the development of a range of new approaches to deliberation. These include: Democs conversation kits (available here under a different name – Playdecide); CrowdWise; the Assembly of Humans and More Than Humans and currently the Win-Win Workout. Previously, he has worked for: the civil service, including the Treasury; the John Lewis Partnership; and the New Economics Foundation, a London-based think-tank, where he ran a programme on democracy.“
My fellow coop members possess a great deal of wisdom. I often feel that while I might be adding a spoonful, I’m receiving a bucketful.”
Matthew, Rhizome’s founder, sadly passed away in 2023. Matthew was an inspirational activist-trainer and facilitator who worked within the social and environmental movement for over 20 years. He worked on many of the major grassroots campaigns that have taken place here in the UK over that time. As well as Rhizome, Matthew co-founded a number of co-operatives including Seeds for Change Oxford, and worked a capacity builder, both paid and voluntary, with Greenpeace and People & Planet. As a consultant he helped several large NGOs better connect with their grassroots. Somewhere along the way he became passionate about consensus.
“I’ve seen community groups, co-ops and campaigning NGOs reinvent the wheel more times than I care to remember. Rhizome is one way of making that process obsolete, or at least a little quicker, so that groups and organisations can concentrate on the change they seek to make.
For me, Rhizome is an attempt to bring it all together – a high quality resource to support the passionate people out there making change, right livelihood for the Rhizome facilitators, and enough time left over to get down to the allotment”