There are two things that make a workshop, well, work. One is having a diverse group of people involved. The other is playing.
And so it was with those thoughts in mind that Abi and Ben of The Conscious Project got in touch and suggested we run a day’s exploratory, playful workshop with a diverse group of people. We got Stephen from Nicely Facilitated involved, and then we did it.
I’d first met Abi and Ben a couple of years earlier, while walking in the South Downs on a ‘walkshop’ day. I really connected with the work they were doing, and was interested in their approach and how it differed to my own work at the time. We’d meet up periodically to chat, and to make sure it was a productive meeting one of us would bring a workshop activity to do.
Very quickly, it was obvious that we were learning new ideas from one another and adapting them to fit our own working methodologies. In a similar way that the activities I’m exposed to at one of Steve Chapman’s Labs do. And then you begin to ponder on what else might be learned from other people doing workshops in different ways and with a variety of sectors.
Play. Learn. Facilitate.
One of the hardest parts of a workshop, aside from building a programme of work that delivers against a desired outcome, is the facilitation. The ability to not provide the answers, but to ensure those participating come to the answers that work best for them. It’s a delicate balance.
By providing a playful set of tools and frameworks with which to work, participants begin to drop their working façade and show their humanity and humility, and begin to collaborate in interesting ways. Ideas are shared, debated, honed and often destroyed and rebuilt within one activity. And then everyone coalesces around a single idea, which they add layers to so that it gets better.
There is a sense of creating something together, which everyone has contributed something to. The ownership is collective.
It’s just that, when it comes to those tools and frameworks, you don’t know what you don’t know. You have to learn from others, just as Abi, Ben and myself had been doing over coffee.
On Friday, 24 November, we discovered a lot of new ideas, thanks to the 16 people who gave up their day to come along and play. A lot was packed into one day, too!
An exercise in playful learning
We began by introducing ourselves to others in the group. While some of us knew one another, many were new faces to which we needed to put names. To do this, we selected from a set of postcards, finding two that meant something to us. These were used as a prop to tell others something interesting about ourselves, framing what can sometimes be an awkward conversation into something personal yet simple. Once we’d told our stories, we swapped one postcard and moved on to another person.
Up next, I brought along an activity around group dynamics and ways of working. Deceptively simple, I asked the group to draw faces in six boxes. Each box had less time in which to complete the task, beginning with one minute and ending with two seconds. The output was a gallery of faces: The WallaceSpace Portrait Gallery.
We discovered the importance of sound and listening, as we explored a number of quick exercises within that space. Perhaps, unsurprisingly, the use of string and ‘slinkies’ will be remembered most, although the reflection afterwards brought about some incredible insights that I know I’ll be building into any new workshops I develop.
We also invited participants to bring their own playful experiments. Matt Ballantine took up the gauntlet and broke out the LEGO, giving us a simple task (build future transport options) to complete in any way we wished. The thing was, he also gave us competing instructions so we ended up concentrating on the wrong things – although we all discovered how much we seem to enjoy playing with LEGO.
Someone else brought a question they were hoping we might be able to answer as a group: how do we reduce NHS waiting times? We didn’t quite solve the problem but we generated a lot of useful questions to challenge shock statistics… And we chewed things over as more conversations began over a delicious lunch. Then sweets and (more) coffee were grabbed as we headed back downstairs for the afternoon sessions.
Anyone who thought there would be a drop in activity once we were all full of food was proved wrong as our first exercise got us up and active. We explored dynamism, intuitive movement and resistance over the course of the next hour – allowing us to think about the importance of physicality in groups, and, for me at least, how unfit I am. The image at the top of this blog post may give you some idea of how much fun was had, although in reflecting there were some serious points to be taken on the subjects of vulnerability and permission.
To follow, we sat down in a circle and used storytelling with items that meant something to us to thread together a winding narrative. Fun for sure, and certainly a test of memory. This kind of activity is definitely good for reflecting, and others chimed in with their thoughts on how it could be adapted for other circumstances – one of the key purposes of the day.
Finally, we broke into smaller groups to consider how games and ideas could help us facilitate learning around diversity. Brought as a request from Action Aid’s Deputy Humanitarian Director, this was a brief that had huge purpose. A tough one to crack, for sure, and one that some of us will be exploring in more detail over the next few weeks and beyond.
The problem with a day of play and learning is, it has to end. We finished up just after 5pm and some of us topped off the fantastic day with a glass of mulled wine. Possibly two for some!
I came away from the day with some new thinking, a whole bunch of new friends with which to collaborate on ideas, and a sense that being playful within a structured programme of work can really help breakthrough some serious challenges that groups of people, and organisations, face within their own working practices.
And the good news for those who couldn’t make it, we will running another, similar event in 2018.