Living Together

Living Together

A space to engage, interact and connect across differences.

What we do

We facilitate relations in teams, groups, and public spaces to build connections, grow communities and develop competencies in a highly polarized and divided world—to find ways to live & work together better.

Read the story behind and learn more about some of our past events in Bern, Geneva, and Biel/Bienne:

🌿 May 2025 “Living Together: Yes? No? How?” open gathering at the Innovationsdorf Bern with 7Generations between Ukrainian refugees and local people in the community of entrepreneurs. Read our reflections here.
🌿 May 2025 “Integrating International and Local Students in School” facilitated discussion in collaboration with the Peacebuilding Initiative at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Read our reflections here.
🌿 September 2025 “Creating Community in a New Place” facilitated discussion in collaboration with the Peacebuilding Initiative at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Read our insights here.
🌿 October 2025, Building Intercultural Relationships interactive dialogue in collaboration with the Peacebuilding Initiative and GISA IHEID at the Geneva Graduate Institute. Read our notes here.
🌿 November 2025, workshop on financial inclusion of entrepreneurs with the refugee and migrant backgrounds at the First National Conference on Asylum and Entrepreneurship by SINGA Switzerland.

How we do it

We use deep democracy paradigm, a scientific approach based on physics, psychology, and anthropology, developed by Arnold Mindell. This paradigm allows us to bring awareness about individual and group dynamics, mainstream and marginal sides, notice and integrate missing information, and thus bring more flow in processes that are stuck, for better communication and relationships in highly polarized settings.

In our facilitated events we welcome different views and opinions, and create a space that can hold complexities and contradictions between diverse and opposing views. We believe that all voices, feelings, and positions have a right to exist and we facilitate interaction between polarities for new understanding and perspectives to emerge.

There is a hope that through a facilitated conversation, there could be more awareness that can positively impact life, relationships, and collaboration between different sides, cultures, nationalities, backgrounds, and worldviews in highly polarized society and workplaces.

Facilitators 
Magdalena Schatzmann, ProcessWork Dipl, a musician, a coach, and a facilitator, https://kulturland.ch. She lives in the Swiss mountains near Bern. 

Yuliya Filippovska, PhD, ProcessWork Dipl, a co-leader of the Deep Democracy Institute Ukraine https://filippovska.com. Originally from Kyiv, she lives in Geneva.

Our friends and colleagues from the Deep Democracy Alliance, a network of professional international facilitators from around the world. 

Our partners

Together with our partners we choose a particular theme. A facilitated event starts with 2-3 speakers, each sharing a story or life experience on this theme for 5 minutes. It brings a beginning understanding of different voices and polarities in the room. It follows by a facilitated conversations among participants.

Such facilitated events are meant to create a space in which diverse communities and viewpoints can interact with one another and share views in an open exchange, including those beyond political correctness. Such a public space is used to create connections, friendships, action groups, and initiatives. In addition, government officials, representatives from NGOs, or stakeholders of the topic can join our gathering to use insights from the discussion to shape their policies and initiatives. 

It is an alternative “United Nations” laboratory with unity as not given and static, but in flux and evolving as an ongoing process to work on together as a global community. If you are interested to participate, contribute as a participant or a speaker, and/or become a partner, please reach out to us.

What else we do

In addition to our research-based community-building project “Living Together”, we offer other services to support our fieldwork and worldwork, such as individual coaching, team facilitation, research, and training for teams, communities and organizations. Namely, we offer individually and as the team:

* Community and group/team work
* Individual coaching for leaders
* Research for programming and policy-making
* Training in leadership, conflict resolution, and facilitation

Get involved

Support us

If it resonates with you what we do, become a friend of the project and contribute to developing “Living Together” movement.

Sign up for updates

Get invitations to our future facilitated gatherings, receive reflections, and follow our research.

Reach out to us

Get in touch with us to set up a 30-minute call, so that we can learn more about your situation, and see how we can be part of a solution.

Contact us

facilitated events coming soon

in Geneva and nearby, winter 2025-2026

  • A Story Behind “Living Together”

    On November 19, Yuliya Filippovska (1st row, 2nd from the left), the founder of the “Living Together” project, shared her story about the project within the SINGA Stories event at the Fédération des Entreprises Romandes Genève (FER Genève). We share… more ›

  • Notes from Oct 30 Interactive Dialogue

    On October 30th, 2025, we facilitated an interactive dialogue together with students of the Geneva Graduate Institute, in partnership with the Peacebuilding Initiative (PBI), and the Geneva Institute Student Association (GISA). The topic we discussed was “Building Intercultural Relationships: an… more ›

  • Oct 30th: Building Intercultural Relations

    We are happy to announce that on October 30, 2025, we will facilitate interactive dialogue on how one can be free to be the authentic self and feel safe and belong to an international community at the same time. The… more ›

  • Key insights from Sept 30 discussion

    On September 30, 2025, in collaboration with the Peacebuilding Initiative, we organized a facilitated discussion, and met with the students of the Geneva Graduate Institute to talk about the topic of “Creating Community in a New Place.” Below are some… more ›

  • Sept 30th: Creating Community in a New Place

    On September 30th, 17:00-19:00, we are excited to hold our next facilitated discussion at the Geneva Graduate Institute, as we continue our collaboration with the Peacebuilding Initiative and its wonderful young leaders of the new generation.  Our theme will be… more ›

  • Reflections from May 15 Event at The Fab

    On May 15, 2025, in collaboration with “The Fab” and Peacebuilding Initiative, we (left to right on the photo below: Yuliya, Beatrice, and Magdalena) facilitated a discussion among Geneva Graduate Institute students on the theme of “Integration of International and… more ›

  • Reflections from our First Event and Next Steps

    On May 3, 2025, we held an open gathering at the Innovationsdorf Bern on the topic “Living Together: Yes? No? How?” Below are some of the highlights of the event. Living in parallel realities  We started a meeting with a… more ›

  • Event. “Integrating International and Local Students in School”

    15 May 2025 | 17:00 – 19:00 | Geneva La Fabrique de la paix, Maison de la paix, Geneva Graduate Institute How can we foster connection and collaboration between international and local students in school? What would help us belong?… more ›

  • Event. “Living Together: Yes? No? How?”

    3 May 2025 | 14:00 – 16:00 | Bern Innovationsdorf Bern What are the joys and challenges of living together in times shaped by war, migration, and transformation? What makes it work? What makes it difficult? What are our differences,… more ›

  • Our next event is on May 15 at “The Fab”, Geneva Graduate Institute

    We are excited to share the news that on May 15 at 17:00-19:00 another facilitated discussion will take place in Geneva, with a theme “Integrating International and Local Students in School.” It is an honor to be organizing it in… more ›