I’ve been invited to head up a team delivering a debate stream (I’ll explain in a minute) at the Church of Scotland’s National Youth Assembly in September.
The debates have in the past followed a fairly traditional model where people would be given written information prior to the event, someone would present more information on the topic at the event and then participants would ask questions, discuss and decide what they think.
This year there will be four debate themes; The Media, Healthy Relationships, Sustainable Living and Future Church. I’m involved with The Media one. Each theme will have four sessions lasting 2 hours each to explore one aspect of their topic with around 60 young adults.
So, we’ve decided to take an adversarial approach setting our sessions up as discussions around the opposites like control v democracy. We’re also going to concentrate mostly on ‘new media’. Should be fun.
We’ve decided to use a wiki to both provide information beforehand and to post what we come up with during the event. More on that nearer the time.