The first volume in a four-part series codifying Weinberg's workshop methodology, published on leanpub in 2016. This volume addresses how to begin an experiential learning event — the opening contracts, the establishment of psychological safety, the framing that allows participants to learn from experience rather than just from instruction.
Weinberg had been running experiential workshops for decades through weinberg-and-weinberg and aye-conference, and this series represents his most systematic effort to make that methodology transmissible. The books are addressed to facilitators and workshop designers who want to create conditions for genuine learning rather than performance of learning.
The satir-change-model informs the pedagogical design throughout. Learning requires disruption of existing mental models — participants must pass through the chaos of the foreign element before they can integrate new understanding. A workshop that never creates productive discomfort is one where no real learning is possible.
The series as a whole documents a tradition of practice that Weinberg developed partly through collaboration with virginia-satir and the Process Community, and partly through his own decades of experimentation. Volume 1 establishes the foundations that the subsequent volumes build on: experiential-learning-vol2-inventing-2014, experiential-learning-vol3-simulation-2015, and experiential-learning-vol4-exercises-2017.