Basic steps and considerations:
* Form a small team for planning and decide who’ll do what.
* Decide what you want for the title of the conference: will it be ‘in-your-face’ abolishing war, in which case would you have a speaker who takes the anti-war or …?
* Consider in this the likelihood of a school’s being willing to send pupils and theirs to come.
* Might you go for something a little more oblique/creative, such as ‘Alternatives to war’ of ‘The role – currently and potentially – of the UN’, or ‘Is war inevitable?’ or ‘The existential threats of war and climate change’, or ‘Working for non-violent change’.
* Related to those options is the question of what organisational hat you’re going to wear, e.g. if you’re members of UNA as well as MAW, might that be a more likely identity to get an ‘in’ with schools?
The format, venue and timing of the conference
If this is your first time you need to find out from your own contacts, direct or indirect, when would be a suitable time in the term and time of day to hold your conference and a suitable venue. Where I live those are mid-November and from 1.45 to 3.15pm and we book a venue outside any of the schools: a clearly adult venue. (We originally held the conferences in one of the schools but the students are much more seriously engaged since we made the change. We have to pay for the room we use but it feels well worth it and it can accommodate 90 students + the few teachers who come.)
The format we have developed is to start with the chairs in rows and to invite welcome the students and invite them to be seated; then the ‘MC’ appointed by the group to introduce the topic and speaker to them at the start time and outline what will happen.
The speaker then has 20 – 30 minutes to speak and field a few questions before the students take a short break, with fruit juice and biscuits on offer (supplied by us), while we rearrange the chairs into circles for groups of seven or eight, encouraging the mixing of schools. Their task will be to discuss the question(s) given, writing their ideas on flip-chart paper to present when the time comes to return to plenary (the chairs having been quickly moved back into rows by the organisers).
The groups are then invited, one by one, to present what’s on their flip-charts (which in our experience they do eagerly, usually sharing the task). The speaker and/or MC may want to comment briefly, then the MC will thank the speaker and all the students for what they have contributed.
Practical steps to make it happen:
*Decide among yourselves who’s in on this and who’s willing and able to do what.
* Discuss all the considerations listed above, then choose your conference title. At the same time research sixth forms and their heads to check for interest and a suitable time of year. (Ask for a fairly precise steer.)
*Find and book a suitable speaker, with both content and style of delivery in mind. (Quakers have been very helpful to us in both speaking and suggesting speakers.)
*Find and book a suitable venue.
*Send a first mailing to your sixth form contacts towards the end of the summer term, with all the particulars, and another once they’re settled back for the Autumn term, asking for likely numbers.
*Decide which of you will do what on the day: chair/facilitate, bring refreshments, move chairs around, help distribute pens and flip-chart paper (If not provided by venue, then by one or two of you).
*Chase the sixth form contacts again, as necessary, for numbers.
*Arrange to meet your speaker, feed them as necessary and get her/him to the venue.
DO IT! GOOD LUCK! Then evaluate and identify lessons for next time – and maybe write encouraging things to students and teachers.