How We Do It

In the work of transforming our world, we must transform ourselves.

Six Elements of thriving movement culture

Wildfire’s methodology was developed through years of letting the work teach us through praxis. We’ve found patterns that hold groups back, and an approach to assist organizations in shifting the culture they practice. We design custom programs from scratch to serve the needs of grassroots groups, using experiential, directly-democratic, participant-centered pedagogy.

Wildfire has cultivated six elements that inform our methodology.

To read more about them – and the lineages we draw on that inform them – click here.

1. Thriving Groups

Enter into generative conflict. Balance purpose and belonging. Navigate rank. Practice direct feedback and accountability. Balance joining and differentiating. Build group containers that hold risk. Navigate mainstreams and margins. Learn More

2. Compelling Visions of Freedom

Find a North Star. Deepen collective vision. Enage in visionary political education. Assess strategies, impacts, and interpersonal dynamics. Learn More

3. Building Power Across Difference

Re-negotiate mainstreams and margins. Hold complexity, fierceness, and compassion. Deepen solidarity through political education. Learn More

4. Study and Practice

Historically ground the work. Deepen analysis of power. Concretize vision. Draw on strategic wisdom. Integrate political education. Learn More

5. Transformative Strategies & the skills to strategize

Face and transcend self-limiting beliefs. Create a culture of assessment. Identify the impact you’re best suited to make. Build strategies to make that impact. Develop the skills that the work requires. Learn More

6. Cultivate Spirit & faith

Develop and incorporate ritual. Increase capacity to sit in contradiction. Cultivate capacity to surrender. Keep the real big picture in mind. Draw on untapped resources and sources of resilience. Feel visions of freedom. Practice Gratitude. Increase a sense of interdependence. Learn More

What is Special About Wildfire

Wildfire is an intervention on the dominant culture of activism in our society. We make this intervention with a team of facilitators who have the legitimacy, cultural competency, and stake to holistically engage across many movement sectors and challenge norms that activists take for granted. We believe that culture – collective practices that express collective values – sits underneath and shapes the structure, work, and impact of organizations.

Whole Group Centered

There are many training organizations that host workshops for individuals. That model can train people in skills or new perspectives, but they often go back to organizations that are not able to integrate the skills or sustain the change. This may lead to burnout and lost potential. We work with whole groups both as a core strategy for movement-wide culture shift, and also because its how to make the change stick. We insist that our Partners have full participation at all levels of leadership, for a cohesive impact.

Multi-Sectoral

Wildfire has praxis integrated into our DNA – our facilitators are always in the field, working in Black Liberation, Racial & Economic Justice, Immigrant Rights, Ecological & Climate Justice, Housing, and GLBTQI rights. We are students of the groups and sectors we serve, and therefore get to blend learning from the leading edge of frontline grassroots groups across these sectors. We believe movements need to break past issue silos to build strategies of deep alignment and cohesive platforms, which is why we internally have a cadre model where our facilitators are themselves practitioners in these different arenas.

Practice-Oriented Accompaniment

Many workshops can create a feeling of breakthrough and catharsis in the training room, but that’s the easy part. Real change happens in the “mundane” day-to-day, which is why Wildfire focuses on daily practice, which can only be tracked and supported through long-term accompaniment. That’s why our Partner programs follow the course of a year, rather than just a weekend.

Shifting Culture Through Conflict

We’ve learned through practice that culture shift requires focusing on where the spoken and unspoken tension is – eliciting conflict to work through it in a generative way. For example, the barriers to good strategy are often not a lack of a planning rubric, but the micro-disalignment that manifests in practices that can be invisible to a group because it’s the water they swim in. Without dealing with self-marginalizing group tendencies, a group can’t grow. Without dealing intentionally with issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality, they’ll never have enough unity to overcome external challenges. Many groups try to shift their structure, but without a culture to support that shift, the old patterns to persist. To win, we will need to shift the way we organize, the way we behave.

Experiential Methodology

Our pedagogy elicits the group’s own wisdom and direction – there are many trainings where experts communicate their expertise, but this style often does not bring about transformation or retention. We work experientially so that groups can sustain their growth without needing Wildfire, creating self-replicating patterns of behavior that can spread throughout our movements as a whole. The life of the group itself becomes the material of our facilitation, which is why all of our programs are custom-built to suit specific needs. We apply a range of tools through a refined methodology, rather than a cookie-cutter curriculum.

Holistic Integration

Much progressive training infrastructure either sits in the realm of depoliticized skill building (i.e. without context), or conversely, focuses on political education and a liberatory politic that isn’t connected to building the capacity needed to carry it out. Wildfire is a holistic integration that blends these approaches – organizing, healing/empowerment, strategy, education – underpinned by deep emotional work that focuses on recovering individual and collective agency. We do this by surfacing the dynamics that live under the surface in an organization.

“Since joining the Climate movement I have been a participant in many training programs but I have never walked away so empowered like I have with the Wildfire project. Their ability to be flexible and adjust their program according to how the group works was definitely something I admired about these facilitators. They come with so much knowledge and experience but they entered our spaces first with openness, heart and humility. I felt safe and comfortable to step into vulnerability. We achieved clearer goals, a plan for longevity and so much hope for the future ahead. And we had so much fun!”

– Jacynta L Fa’amau, Council of Elders, Pacific Climate Warriors

Wildfire’s Track Record

People directly trained

Organizations served

Multi-Day workshops/retreats

Cross-Movement Fellowships

multi-sectoral national convenings

The groups we’ve trained have gotten progressive candidates elected, escalated bold actions at the United Nations Climate Negotiations, shut down police precincts, saved homeowners from eviction, extracted millions of dollars from slumlords for low-income tenants, won ballot measures to re-enfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters, sued the federal government over climate change, won $15/hr minimum wage in Minnesota, forced universities to divest money from fossil fuels and put it back in communities, defended the rights of Muslims and Jews, and organized thousands of people into power-building organizations. We don’t claim responsibility for all of that. But we know we’ve helped individuals become better leaders, supported groups to meet their potential, and built relationships across geographies, identities, and issues that have manifested themselves in real action and tangible victories. The groups we serve are changing the world. We’re so grateful to accompany and learn from them.