Perry Walker writes: This event took place at Leuphana University in the German city of Lüneburg, which lies to the south-east of Hamburg. Teaching at the university is in a mix of German and English, so I was able to run this event in English. It was part of a conference week organised by the students. 27 students took part. Many of the blogs here describe how the Win-Win Workout operates, so in this blog […]

Wind power in sparsely populated rural areas – a Win Win Workout Picture credit: Tom Podmore; source: Unsplash Perry Walker writes: This was a two-hour online event on 11th March 2026. 14 people came along. We considered both turbines and pylons. Our point of view was that of the people who live in such areas. We identified three positions that such people may hold. They appear to be in tension. Our challenge was to seek […]

Should Museums Return Objects? HOW THE EVENT CAME ABOUT In 2024, Talk Shop hosted an online event on the topic of whether museums should return objects as part of the Sheffield Festival of Debate. I was the lead researcher for the material used at that event. (Here’s a blog about the first trial that preceded it.) Tchiyiwe Chihana, who represented Opus, the Festival organisers, suggested that Talk Shop make contact with Sheffield Museums and propose […]

From What to Why – How East Marsh United Found Clarity and Confidence Through the Win-Win Workout In just one morning, East Marsh United (EMU) went from tough dilemmas to clear, shared priorities. Instead of feeling stuck between competing solutions, they uncovered the deeper aims that united them — and left with renewed purpose and confidence to act. Since 2021, the Win-Win Workout has helped people find common ground on issues as divisive as 20 […]

Perry Walker writes: This was the question that the people who came to our online event on June 11th, 2025, part of the York Festival of Ideas, wrestled with. And wrestle they really did. More of that later. To start with though, more about the issue. Marl has a population of 1,000 people in 400 households. It is struggling to stay viable. The pub has closed, the bus service has got worse, and the primary […]

Tackling Disinformation Throughout history the powerful have been able to control and distort the news for their own gain, but, in the modern digital age, has disinformation become a much more serious problem? Our Win-win workshop on May 6th 2025 explored how to tackle such disinformation. From our research we discovered three main approaches – see the bullet points below. We opened the workshop by declaring that this topic might be one where common ground […]

“We’re trying to get to a win-win and we don’t believe this is unachievable” Sir Chris Bryant, Minister of State for Media, Tourism and Creative Industries, House of Commons, 12th February 2025 In Feb 2025, we at Talk Shop sent this letter to Sir Chris’s enquiry into Big Tech’s use of others’ original material for training AI Large Language Models (LLMs): Introduction The purpose of this short notice is likely different from the other submissions […]

Introduction By the start of 2024, the Win-Win Workout (the other WWW!) was ready to tackle live issues. We secured a grant from the Andrew Wainwright Reform Trust, with a top up from THINK, The Transport and Health Integrated research NetworK at the University of Aberystwyth. We used this to run a number of events: this blog covers two of them. Both were on reducing speed limits, run with councils in York and in Worthing […]

A group of headteachers in St Albans are asking parents not to let their children have a smartphone until they are 14. According to a BBC report in May 2024 “Most of the primary school headteachers in the city say they are backing the ban, as they are worried children are exposed “to a number of negative risks” when using smartphones.” Naturally, there’s a lot of conversation in St Albans on this topic. We at […]

Perry Walker writes: If you’ve been to any of our Win Win Workouts, or watched our video, you’ll know that we’ve been concentrating on identifying the aims – the interests, needs, values and principles – that underly the policies around which so much political argument takes place. We do this because it is at this deeper level that common ground is to be found. This event was different. Given aims for housing policy, how did […]