The Co-operative Inquiry Group Action Research (CIGAR), started as an hour long debrief session for the Bouverie CIG facilitators, facilitated by Dr Colin Riess, Director of The Bouverie Centre. The CIGAR was initially conceived as a means to collect and share information and resources from each regional CIG, in order for the Bouverie facilitators to take this knowledge and resources back to their respective CIGs. As it turned out, the detailed information was more easily absorbed by reading the summary of each CIG meeting, available to each CIG facilitator, which allowed the CIGAR to help the CIG facilitators reflect on the general themes across the state.
The continual planning, action, observation and reflection process in action research meant that the role of the CIGAR changed throughout the project. At various times it has been a space for debriefing from a difficult or exciting CIG, an opportunity for peer supervision about developing the CIGs, facilitating CIG group process and monitoring process issues by reflecting on the CIGAR’s own group process. Significant information has been gleaned from being open to possible parallels between the facilitator’s experience of the CIGAR and their CIG. For example during the 4th CIGAR meeting, some members felt they were not speaking up enough in the CIGAR meeting which lead to a realisation that they were not speaking up or not allowing themselves to have a full input into their own CIGs. The CIGAR also became a rich space for conceptual development. This became an increasingly significant function of the CIGAR, as each of the CIG facilitators attempted to make sense of the drought counsellors’ work. The different opportunities and levels for reflecting on the work helped all participants to articulate and document the work of drought counselling.
