Coming Up! Creative Facilitation Training Sessions

April 3 & 4 - Register Now

If you have done Creative Facilitation, then Level Up & come along to Keep Your Meetings Alive

February 21 & 22 - Register Now

Interested in an in-house course? Contact Margaret Foulkes and Viv McWaters margaret@liminalbydesign.com.au

targeted training is essential

Welcome to Liminal by Design Training!

We offer training packages as well as customised training on:

  • Deliberative democracy

  • Facilitation in-person and online

  • Community engagement

  • Community development

Training packages range from half-day to multi-day intensives. We can come to you, or organise a suitable off-site venue.

In this community engagement training Chad
was a subject matter expert highlighted by the styles of delivery”

“In this training Chad was knowledgeable, informative, helpful, well prepared to answer questions with valuable stories to share”

“In this training Chad was fantastic, full of wisdom, encouragement and creative ideas

We have specialist knowledge and expertise in delivering training in the public health, community engagement and local government sectors. We invite participation and offer engaging sessions that ensure your staff and stakeholders are equipped with skills needed in these demanding and changing times.

Recent custom training includes community engagement training designed and delivered for Glenelg Shire Council staff, executive and councillors on Council’s community engagement framework.

For training on deliberative democracy, we partner with recognised leaders in deliberative processes, strategic engagement and facilitation experts Desley Renton and Annie Bolitho.

To find out more about our training packages, or to tailor you own customised training, please contact us today.


Deliberation by Design

Open to public

Join Chad Foulkes for this training hosted annually by the Planning Institute of Australia. 2023 dates to be confirmed.

To deliberate is not just to ‘talk about problems’. To deliberate means to weigh carefully both the consequences of various options for action and the view of others. Chad brings to this course knowledge and experience in deliberation within government and specifically on land-use planning matters.

The course covers a real-life example of Deliberation by Design in action. For a strategic land use planning matters that has subsequently been adopted.


Leadership for Systems Change

In-house training

Why this course?

In response to a noticeable need, Chad Foulkes and Geoff Brown have designed this course to help leaders to work with the complexity that surrounds them.

In this immersive course, you will improve your performance and confidence as a leader. You will learn how to develop emergent strategies and take action in real situations where the path forward is unclear. Each session will equip you with practical tools and processes that can be applied to your work the next day.

About this course

This participatory and interactive course is designed to help you improve your performance as a leader of teams and organisations. Our focus on the inner-game of leadership will help you build new habits of mind and learn what’s needed to respond effectively to the complex challenges you face in your work. Through dialogue, activity and play you will develop awareness and capacity to more clearly see what’s going on in yourself and the systems in which you lead.

You will learn how to take action and make progress in real situations where the path forward is unclear. This course weaves together selected theories, tools and the practices that our team of consultants have been using with leaders in the government and private sectors for over 20 years. The course uses an action-learning approach to help you apply tools and practices to the live challenges that you choose to bring into the course.

Liminal by Design consultants Geoff and Chad have helped many leadership teams to address the underlying causes of complex social and environmental problems. They share their learnings and tools to help you get a better handle on complexity, make better decisions and grow as a leader.

This course brings together years of applied theory and practice from fields as diverse as: Participatory Leadership; Psychology; Neuroscience; Improvisational Theatre; Systems Thinking & Complexity Science; Deliberative Democracy Practices.

Praise for Leadership for systems change

"Enormous value with some of these tools and the well thought out process and execution”

“I have learned to look after myself by building a habit of pausing”

“I have become a more curious and courageous leader”

"I have learned to look after myself by building a habit of pausing”

“As a leader, I have let-go of the need to have all the answers.”

“In difficult situations I now ask myself, ‘Who do I need to be?’”

“I now embrace the learning that comes from failure”

In this six session course you will:

- Tackle gnarly problems and make progress on a real-life work challenge that you bring to the course

- Re-imagine leadership and cultivate new habits-of-mind

- Learn to notice more and make better sense of our situation

- Work with stories to evaluate system-change initiatives and make better decisions

- Apply a core set of principles and practices to make your system-change efforts more adaptive and resilient

- More effectively use a range of digital platforms for collaboration and technologies that you can apply in your work right away!