Workshop: Final resolution – building a strong narrative

The last day of the congress was dedicated to an attempt to work out all the conclusions from the previous days and to draft a kind of declaration. The idea was for this document to be more like a short speech that delegates could use when they wanted to address the theme of the conference and convince a potential audience of the value of independent living and their generation's struggle to achieve it. For this purpose we invited the experienced speaker coach Katerina Biliouri, who conducted this very interesting three-hour workshop. Through examples, she showed first what are the public speaking skills needed in order to pitch our ideas and how to make sure that we can persuade and fascinate our audience. She suggested, for example, to know where we are addressing each time, to focus on a key idea, to be authentic, honest and easy to understand, to present logical arguments but at the same time to target emotions. Then the delegates were divided into four groups who worked on four texts and presented them in front of everyone. It was very interesting to see the different approaches of the groups, each of which focused on different points – some on personal stories, some on a vivid description of the situation, some on the urge for subversion, some on a call to action. But even more interesting was the fact that the delegates did not want to vote at the end on which of the four speeches they preferred, thus removing any suspicion of competition between them. Perhaps this sense of solidarity, care and community was the greatest gain of both the workshop and the whole congress!