🎟️ Note: This is a free event, please make sure you reserve your spot on Eventbrite here. The Room of Difference
A monthly group for anyone who wants to advocate for themselves more effectively — and more sustainably.
Do you know what you need but struggle to say it? Speak up and aren't taken seriously? Or find yourself managing everyone else's comfort at the expense of your own clarity?
The Room of Difference is a live, collaborative space built around real situations — at work, in relationships, and beyond. Each session is shaped by what members actually bring, not a fixed curriculum or lecture. Peer support sits at the centre, with a facilitator guiding the conversation deeper.
What happens in a session? Members take turns bringing a situation they want support with — managing up at work, preparing for a hard conversation, holding their ground in a group, or navigating a politically charged dynamic. The group works through it together: sharing what they know, what they've tried, and what's helped.
Skills you'll build:
Stay present under pressure and choose how to respond, not just react
Speak honestly without triggering unnecessary conflict
Advocate for your needs clearly — without shrinking or over-explaining
Hold your ground without losing the relationship
Raise difficult points in ways that are grounded and hard to dismiss
Skills to deal with mindset -related challenges such as imposter syndrome.
Skills to deal with emotional challenges such as anxiety
An understanding of the societal topics that can make advocating for oneself a bit more difficult
What to expect: Sessions open with a check-in, move into member-led discussion with facilitated prompting, and close with a group reflection. No preparation needed — just come with something you're navigating or want to think through. Strong emotions are welcome and treated as information, not disruption. Everything shared stays within the group. Facilitators are trained in trauma-informed practice.
Format: Monthly | 2 hours |
You don't need to be confident or outspoken. You just need to be willing to practise staying present.
Facilitator
Mark Blake is the facilitator of The Room of Difference. His work is grounded in a simple but demanding idea: difficult conversations don’t fail because people lack intelligence or care — they fail because most of us were never taught how to stay present when emotional, relational, and identity stakes rise.
Over the past eight years, Mark has worked across high-stakes systems and community spaces where misunderstanding has real consequences. He has led reform work with the police and the NHS to improve responses and outcomes for domestic abuse survivors and sexual assault survivors, worked with politicians whose values and motivational systems differ sharply from his own, led communities of trauma survivors, and supported businesses navigating complex interpersonal and cultural challenges. Across these settings, the same pattern appeared again and again: people were speaking, but understanding remained fragile — and when understanding breaks down, trust, safety, and systems follow.
Alongside this systems-level work, Mark has helped build neuroinclusive community spaces from the ground up. He co-founded Joyfully Different, where he developed safeguarding practices, co-designed learning modules, and facilitated conversations on trauma, neurodivergence, diversity of thought, and joy. These experiences shape a facilitation style that balances emotional holding with clear structure and firm, consistently enforced boundaries.
Mark’s approach recognises that communication is never just about words. It involves nervous systems, identity, values, fear, and meaning-making all operating at once. His role in The Room of Difference is not to lead people to agreement, offer therapy, or resolve conflict for others, but to hold a clear, consent-based container where participants can practise staying present with disagreement, challenge, and strong emotion — without collapse, avoidance, or moral performance.
Mark has been mentored by international coaches and facilitators, and his work is shaped as much by lived experience in crisis rooms and community circles as by formal frameworks.