Unpacking Power: From Analysis to Praxis

Power shapes who gets resources and opportunities, who participates in decisions, whose labour and knowledge are valued, and who sets the agenda. It operates through relationships, organisational cultures, social norms, institutions and the ways we understand ourselves.

Unpacking Power: From Analysis to Praxis is a seven-week facilitated online learning series for people working across humanitarian action, international and community development, human services, social change and purpose-led organisations.

Together, we will explore how power operates within ourselves, relationships, organisations and systems. Participants will apply practical frameworks to real situations from their own work and identify ways to strengthen participation, inclusion and accountability.

Each session combines conceptual learning, personal reflection, facilitated discussion, small-group activities and practical application. The seven-week format creates space to engage deeply with each framework, notice how power operates between sessions and progressively apply the learning to participants’ organisations and practice.

How this series differs from Power to Praxis workshops

Power to Praxis workshops use the Power to Praxis Reflection Cards to help participants examine a project, program, partnership or area of practice through carefully structured questions.

How the series works

Each session is facilitated through an interactive online whiteboard and includes activities, group discussions, guided reflection and individual journalling. Participants will apply the concepts to real situations from their own organisations, relationships and practice.

Participants will also receive a guidance manual to support their learning throughout the series. The manual introduces the key frameworks, provides space for reflection and journalling, and supports participants to continue applying the learning between sessions and beyond the series.

The seven-week format creates space to explore each framework in depth, notice how power operates between sessions and progressively translate learning into practice.

Unpacking Power provides a deeper foundation in power analysis. Across seven weeks, participants explore where power operates, where it comes from, how it is expressed, and how it becomes embedded in ideologies, norms, institutions and organisational cultures.

The series supports participants to build their understanding of power before bringing that analysis into decisions, relationships and organisational practice. The two offerings complement each other, while each can be undertaken independently.

What you will learn

By the end of the series, participants will be able to:

Recognise power as a central force shaping participation, inclusion and organisational practice
Analyse who controls resources, decisions, labour and agendas
Identify visible, hidden and invisible forms of power
Understand where power operates, from the personal and interpersonal to the institutional and systemic
Distinguish between power over, power to, power within, power with and power under
Examine how their own relationship with power influences their practice
Identify how ideologies, norms and institutions sustain unequal power structures
Develop practical actions for sharing power and strengthening accountability

Seven-week agenda

Week 1: Understanding and locating power

Thursday 8 October

Explore what power is, why it matters and how it shapes everyday organisational and professional practice. Participants will use four practical questions to examine who gets what, who decides what, who does what and who sets the agenda.

Week 2: Where power operates

Thursday 15 October

Examine power within ourselves, between individuals and social groups, and across organisations, institutions, political systems and economic systems. We will explore how intersectionality shapes people’s experiences of power.

Week 3: Where power comes from

Thursday 22 October

Explore the resources that create and maintain power, including money, labour, time, knowledge, information, expertise, relationships, networks and institutional legitimacy. Participants will consider whose knowledge is recognised and whose is routinely undervalued.

Week 4: The faces of power

Thursday 29 October

Learn to recognise visible, hidden and invisible power. We will examine how power shapes formal decisions, controls who participates and influences what people believe is possible.

Week 5: How power is expressed

Thursday 5 November

Explore power over, power to, power within, power with and power under. Participants will reflect on how they hold and exercise power, as well as the conditions that support solidarity, collective action and responsible practice.

Week 6: How unequal power structures survive

Thursday 12 November

Examine how power structures are sustained through ideologies, social norms, institutional arrangements and organisational cultures. Participants will trace everyday practices back to the deeper assumptions and structures they may protect.

Week 7: From power analysis to praxis

Thursday 19 November

Translate learning into action. Participants will identify practical ways to share decision-making power, make participation consequential, strengthen accountability and create conditions for power within, power to and power with.

Each participant will develop a practical action plan for a real area of their work, including one practice to stop, one to strengthen and one conversation or action to initiate.

Event details

Dates: Seven consecutive Thursdays, from 8 October to 19 November 2026
Time: 1.00 pm to 3.30 pm Melbourne time
Location: Online
Facilitator: Lana Woolf, Founder and Managing Director of Community Powered Responses

The learning develops progressively across the seven sessions, and participants are encouraged to attend the complete series.

Contact the host of Unpacking Power: From Analysis to Praxis A seven-week facilitated online learning series

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