Wilton Park Style

Wilton Park has developed a special house-style for its events at home and abroad. All conferences are held in a round-table format so that everyone gets the chance to participate in the policy debate. Speakers are encouraged to limit their presentations to 20-30 minutes and to use their presentation to set-out the policy questions for consideration in the round-table discussion that immediately follows. Each session is normally ninety minutes long to allow plenty of time for debate.

Discussions is almost invariably off the record to provide the opportunity for frankness and for open debate. We always say that participants aren't taking part in a negotiation - they represent themselves - not the official line of their institutions. Programmes are carefully structured to enable focussed discussion on the key issues. Powerpoint is used only when it adds to the clarity of a presentation, using a drop down screen.

Conference chairs from Wilton Park academic staff are neutral and try to make the atmosphere as relaxed as the seriousness of the subject under discussion allows. They are specialists in facilitating informed policy discussion.

The aim of each conference is to address the key policy questions in a focussed way to reach some conclusions that can be fed back into international policy-making by each participant and by a short conference report that is published and circulated.

Time is set specially aside for networking over coffee or tea, or over dinner and lunch in the sixteenth century Dining Hall, or in the oak panelled "Common Room" or the Library, or in the gardens. To make time for such discussions there is often a gap scheduled after lunch for individual conversations - a crucial part of the Wilton Park experience. In the evening the bar is open. Many a new policy has been hammered out in the informal surroundings of Wilton Park. Literally thousands of contacts and friendships and new ideas have been born there over the past 60 years.

Wilton Parks venue, a sixteenth century English country house, Wiston House, is ideal for breaking down barriers and thinking through the isues away from regular pressures. This is helped by its remote location in the English countryside at the foot of the hills known as the South Downs. This means that there are no distractions; the nearest village is a pleasant 30 minutes walk. But no one is cut-off; there are computers for e-mail and internet access is available including wi-fi. There are direct-dial phones and points for laptops in every room plus TV, including BBC World Service TV and all the main British channels. We are just ninety minutes from Central London by train or 45 minutes from London Gatwick Aiport.

It is a very different experience to a conference in a central City hotel. Wilton Park residential conferences are an opportunity to recharge intellectual batteries with fellow professionals and to focus on the policy agenda. To keep the process going after the conference is over, Wilton Park creates address lists so everybody can keep in touch. To make sure each event has a lasting impact on international policy, a report containing the key policy points and conclusions, always written on an off the record basis, is e-mailed to every participant and is then published.

We now hold an increasing number of events abroad at the invitation of Governments and NGOs. Our main condition in accepting such invitations is that the event should be as close as possible to the style we have evolved at Wilton Park. We always control the agenda. We also always seek a venue that is good for our style of policy discussion and also brings the added value of the hospitality of the host country and the geographical closeness to the issues under discussion.