Liberating Structures
Immersion Workshop
UBC • Robson Square in Downtown, Vancouver 🇨🇦
Take your facilitation, education, and leadership practice further in two days of practical learning and connection with peers focused on ease and genuine engagement
April 15th & 16th from 8:00am to 4:30pm
If you believe that better conversations lead to better outcomes and you are ready to make that real in practice, you will feel at home here.
This Immersion is for people who:
✅ Work in schools, community initiatives, organizations, or collectives engaging with complex human and social challenges.
✅ Want to turn meetings and gatherings into spaces for genuine connection and action forward.
✅ Sense that traditional ways of leading and making decisions no longer serve the realities they face, and know there are other possibilities worth exploring.
✅ Are looking for simple, practical ways to engage diverse groups with clarity and intention.
✅ Have previous experience with Liberating Structures, or are new to them, and want to deepen their practice or begin in the most meaningful way, through live practice and learning together.
✅ Are seeking more inclusive ways to engage with important and sometimes difficult conversations.
✅ Are not interested in yet another method, but in a practical foundation for acting with intention in uncertain times.
Liberating Structures? Immersion?...
Liberating Structures are a set of simple, practical ways to structure conversations and group work so participation is widely shared, more voices are included, listening is valued, and collective intelligence is activated.
They are accessible tools that can meaningfully transform workplace meetings, classrooms, boards, trainings, assemblies, dialogue circles, collectives, and community projects.
The Immersion is an invitation to genuinely experience a different way of meeting, conversing, and making decisions.
Over two days, you will take part in a range of Liberating Structures and, through each practice, discover new insights, ideas, and possibilities for groups to collaborate with greater ease and effectiveness.
Join us in creating spaces where knowledge emerges through shared experience, where practice is grounded in presence and purpose, and where change begins with what we can already do, here and now.
Where We Will Gather
Our experience will take place at UBC Robson Square, in the heart of downtown Vancouver.
A welcoming, purpose-designed learning environment that supports focused conversations and meaningful exchange. The space is fully equipped with audiovisual technology and designed to comfortably host interactive sessions, dialogue, and experiential learning.
UBC Robson Square
Downtown Vancouver • BC 🇨🇦
Liberating Structures
Immersion Workshop
April 15th & 16th from 8:00am to 4:30pm
UBC • Robson Square in Downtown, Vancouver 🇨🇦
Your registration for the Immersion includes:
☕ Welcome Coffee & Afternoon Snack
📝 A Workbook with all LS to support your learning experience
🃏 A Deck of the Liberating Structures Design Cards for visualizing Strings
🖥️ 1-Year Access to our online learning platform with additional resources and materials
✳️ We know that this is often a personal investment, and we take care to ensure the experience is truly worth it.
Throughout the Immersion, you will:
✅ Build practical familiarity with a dozen Liberating Structures you can use right away.
✅ Understand the key micro design-elements that shape conversations and support meaningful outcomes.
✅ Explore the Principles that underpin the practice of Liberating Structures.
✅ Recognize the value of combining multiple Structures to achieve complex goals.
✅ Gain access to a wide range of additional resources and supports related to Liberating Structures.
Facilitators
CAROLINA ALMEIDA and FERNANDO MURRAY have been infusing Liberating Structures into their facilitation practice since 2015.
In 2016, they coordinated the translation of Liberating Structures into Portuguese and since 2018 started offering Liberating Structures Immersions in Canada, USA, Brazil and Portugal bringing more than 2,000 Practitioners into this global Community.
In regular contact with authors Keith McCandless and Henri Lipmanowicz, Carolina and Fernando recently published the book 'The Surprising Power of Liberating Structures' in Brazil, and are developing an online Self-Guide Course to help spread the practice globally.
Both live in Nelson, a ski-town nested in the Rocky Mountains in British Columbia, Canada, and work as Process Designers and Facilitators with clients across the globe, leading workshops in person and online.
Matthew Smith
Manager, Research Infrastructure and Operations - Advanced Research Computing at The University of British Columbia
The mentorship that we at UBC ARC received from Flow Ahead was pivotal in our journey to work more collaboratively. We used their 1:1 mentoring to co-create our team strategic planning retreat. Their deep experience with Liberating Structures, paired with the effort they put into understanding our goals, enabled us to design an event that both met our business needs and energized the team. We would not have been able to achieve this without them.
Barish Golland
Senior Learning Technology Specialist, Liberating Structures Facilitator
Carolina and Fernando deliver amazing, engaging and interactive workshops that include everyone in moving forward productively in a fun, safe and meaningful way. I am always surprised how versatile, innovative and technologically savvy they are! Definitely recommend.
Jaime Schettini
Consultant, Facilitator, and Coach
The facilitation mentorship with Fernando was essential in helping me unlock the design of a complex offsite with a large group. I felt much clearer and more confident applying new structures, especially knowing that they had tested them many times over (really, many times!).
I highly recommend it to anyone facing challenges in designing meetings and wanting to accelerate their growth as a facilitator. It feels as if Fernando and Carol are lending you, for a time, their decades of facilitation experience.
Cláudia Mendes Bento
EPE – Information Technology Division
I took part in the individual mentorship led by Carolina, and I consider it to have been an extremely enriching experience.
Leaders often focus their attention on the needs of their teams and end up placing their own needs in the background. The mentorship offers a safe and well-structured space to reflect on how we feel about the corporate environment and about our relationships with both leaders and team members, after all, we constantly move between these roles.
Using Liberating Structures to support the process, both in communication and in addressing challenges, proved to be particularly useful and effective. By the end of the cycle, I experienced tangible progress and a strong sense of well-being. I highly recommend this experience to leaders, as taking time to care for ourselves is essential to leading with greater balance, clarity, and purpose.
Maria Fernanda Arraes
Project Manager and Learning Facilitator
The 1:1 mentorship was a very valuable space for professional exchange and an excellent opportunity to reflect on my practice.
During these sessions, I was able to pause and take a closer look at the work I was already doing, refine the agendas of events I was designing, and clarify questions around some of the Liberating Structures methods. This helped me define my strings (sequences) more clearly. It felt like a continuation of the Liberating Structures Immersion I attended in Brasília, deepening my learning and strengthening my practice.
I would recommend this mentorship to any professional who is willing to commit fully to examining their work and refining it with clarity and intention.
Robin Neidorf
Strategy, operations, and ROI for communities, foundations, and organizations
Over the past 15 years, I've probably led thousands of online meetings, workshops and discussions. But the session I ran last night - the first one since I participated in Virtual Facilitation's 5-week workshop - was 100x better. I was better prepared, used the tools more fluidly and effectively, and achieved a high level of engagement like never before.
The virtual facilitation team were the very definition of "best practice" in pacing the program well, connecting the participants into a learning cohort, and fun.
Elayna Alexandra
MBA, ACC - Coach, Strategist + Facilitator
Virtual Facilitation was the best hands-on training I have participated in a very long time if not ever. Before this learning, I knew a little bit about zoom but really didn't have a strong grasp of how to make the most of online meetings.
Now I feel I can confidently facilitate even complex events, trainings, workshops or webinars!
Angus Graeme
Former President & CEO at Selkirk College
I had the opportunity to participate in a day long strategic visioning and teambuilding workshop facilitated by Ms. Almeida and Mr. Loureiro. They developed and delivered a very innovative and effective workshop for Faculty and Administration creating a shared vision, strengthening relationships and improving communication.
Susan Radojevic
Founder, KADIMA village | CEO, Stijak Corporation Ltd.
We were looking for support with interactive technology for an approach we designed to help leaders see how their thinking is shaping decisions when the climate keeps changing the rules, and Flow Ahead stood out right away.
Working with Fernando was uber easy and genuinely supportive. If I may, his blend of thoughtful insight and practical technology is exactly why I would happily recommend Flow Ahead.
Donald Kerper
Executive Coach, Certified Professional Facilitator
Flow Ahead team offered a great course. It is a "hands-on" program; no books, no manuals, no rules and regulations. Instead, you jump in and see what it can do while being guided by three professionals who do know the intricacies of each tool and platform they share with their students.
Cintia Martins
Founder, a.karta
Those who experience the power of networks recognize the gift of being able to draw on shared intelligence. It has been an honour to experience this over the past few years through learning opportunities with Fernando and Carolina, whether in immersions, mentorships, or simply by being close and witnessing the full potential of this encounter come alive.
The guidance, the clear and thoughtful feedback, and, above all, the precise and incisive provocations have always invited me to step beyond the usual paths.
That’s where I want to be. And it’s incredibly powerful to know that I’m not alone there.
DJ King
Performance Optimization and Leadership Consulting
For anyone who needs to design and/or facilitate workshops, classes, teambuilding...any virtual event, this course will provide you with the tools, skills and knowledge to do it well. I highly recommend Fernando and his team. They are generous facilitators with a wealth of knowledge.
Juliana Ordonhes
Partner at Lumo Consulting
The Virtual Facilitation Workshop was light, fun and dynamic! I was looking for a course that would help me learn tools and methods, and develop skills in online facilitation, but I got a lot more than that. In addition to techniques and practice, the reflections and group work enabled me to develop myself.
Neil Pretty
Co-Founder and CEO of Aristotle Performance
I didn’t think that meaningful dialogue and collaboration could be accomplished as well in the virtual space. To see the online space in a new way that can be more engaging and more effective when facilitated by a skilled practitioner has completely changed my view of what is possible.
Suzanne Gagnon
Management Consultant
Fernando and Carolina's events are well designed and dynamic. Active participation is supported and encouraged. Reasonable time is allocated for each activity and is respected.
I learn something new every time I participate to any given event and I have lots of fun while connecting with other international Facilitators.
Diane Walters
Waldorf Educational Mentor, Teacher Education, Evaluator for Teaching Into The Future!
Virtual facilitation with Carolina and Fernando goes beyond the commonplace and into the realm of true community development. The tools of facilitation I learned from participating in several of their workshops are tools I have utilized for my consulting practice with great clarity and success. Their approach is top-notch.
Bronwyn Murray
HR Coordinator at Kootenay Boundary Division of Family Practice
Carolina and Fernando have a compendium of tools paired with fun and engaging delivery. The majority of our team has taken their workshop, which has advanced and improved our meetings and events tremendously in this virtual world. Highly recommend!
Viviane Gonçalves Calaça
Marketing Director at The Coca-Cola Company
In an ever changing world unlearn old ways of working to open room for new formats is extremely important. <br>But I also believe that the learning process needs to be fresh, inviting and fun, and that’s why I enjoyed being part of these sessions led by Carolina and Fernando.
Liberating Structures
Liberating Structures were developed by Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
