Why the ANM Summer School Should Be on Every New Mediator’s Radar
I qualified as a mediator not long ago. I have the certificates, the registrations with the Civil Mediation Council and The Society of Mediators and the awareness that there are a lot of mediators with a huge amount of experience out there. So when I heard about the Association of Northern Mediators Summer School, held this year on 14–16 May at High Trenhouse on the edge of Malham Tarn, I did what most newly qualified mediators probably do: I hesitated. Would I be out of my depth surrounded by experienced practitioners? Would I spend the weekend nodding along in discussion of cases and techniques and una ble to share war stories in the bar?
I’m not playing at this so I went anyway. And I am so glad I did.
The setting alone is special, the wild, open landscape around Malham Tarn is good for levelling everyone. There’s something about being somewhere genuinely beautiful that makes people more human, more open. And that, I think, is precisely why the Summer School works the way it does.
What I didn’t expect was quite how warmly the experienced mediators in the room would take a newcomer like me under their collective wing. These are people with several decades of practice between them, practitioners who have sat with some of the most complex, emotionally charged disputes imaginable. But not one of them made me feel like the newest person in the room was a problem to be tolerated. Quite the opposite. They were generous with their stories, frank about the mistakes they’d made early in their careers (and even continue to make) and genuinely interested in helping me find my footing.
Several f the participants offered practical advice about building a practice, who to speak to, which bodies are worth engaging with and how costs and fees are calculated. I will be following these offers up, be wanred!
Others simply listened as I explained how my career in PR and communications make mediation in that sector a natural progression, and reflected things back to me with the kind of attentiveness that reminded me why mediation matters in the first place.
But the Summer School is more than a networking event with sheep. The discussions go deep. Facilitated with real skill, this year by Mia Forbes Pirie on the broad theme of Mediation Challenges Across Tough Topics, the conversations move into territory that a standard training event or conferencce rarely reaches: the emotional weight of the work, questions of style and ethics, the craft of what we do and why it matters.
If you’re newly qualified and wondering whether you belong in a room full of seasoned mediators, my answer is: yes, absolutely. The ANM Summer School isn’t just good for your CPD hours. It might just be the thing that makes you feel like you belong as a mediator.
