Playful Toolkit Activities for Creative Collaboration, Part 2
Three more activities that use imagination and play to enhance creative collaboration
Dear collaborative discussion friends,
This week we are highlighting three more activities from the Creative Collaboration Module that use play to help participants think outside the box, imagine boldly, and challenge taboos. All the activities in the toolkit have an activity key that indicates the level of the activity (beginner or advanced) and other characteristics using icons. Activities that use playful methods are denoted with the following icon.
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This week's activities:
Activity 2.7 – Expanding Thinking with Metaphors
Activity 2.8 – Encouraging Bold Imagination
Activity 2.9 – Challenging Taboos to Enhance Creativity
Three more activities that use imagination and play to enhance creative collaboration
Activity 2.7 Expanding Thinking with Metaphors helps participants move past their default ways of looking at an issue. It uses metaphors to help participants engage their imagination to see an issue in a new light. Participants are first introduced to a chosen issue that is relevant to the group and invited to write down some initial thoughts on the issue. Participants are then asked to describe the problem using a metaphor (for example, the cost of tuition is a sparrow caught in a tornado). If participants are having trouble coming up with metaphors, the facilitator of the activity can help spark ideas with examples by asking, for example, “How is this problem like a vegetable garden or a computer virus?”
Participants are then invited to share their metaphors with their small group and discuss how the metaphor applies to the problem. They are then encouraged to build on these ideas to craft new metaphors as a group. Each small group is then invited to share one or two metaphors with the full group. The full group then discusses how these metaphors helped them see the chosen problem in new ways and reflects on their experience generating metaphors individually compared to doing so with their small group.
This activity helps participants expand their thinking and look at a particular topic from new and different perspectives by connecting a familiar topic to a unrelated things using metaphors.
Activity 2.8 Encouraging Bold Imagination helps discussion participants imagine beyond what they currently think is possible. It helps them come up with creative solutions to complex problems that might seem intractable at the moment. This activity encourages discussants to be bold, dream big and then work backwards to figure out the pathway for getting to their ideal future vision. By imagining an ideal future, this activity helps discussants to seek out the positive potential in the present.
Participants are first introduced to a chosen issue and asked to individually imagine a positive future, 10, 50 or 200 years from now, where this issue has been solved. They are given the option to write down or draw their vision of this ideal future. Participants then encourage to imagine deeper by thinking in more detail about this ideal future, such as by engaging different senses and imagining what they might hear, see or feel, what might be missing from this ideal future that indicates the problem has been solved, and what people they meet might tell them.
Participants are then invited to briefly share their different visions of an ideal future in small groups. They are then asked now work backwards, as a group, to imagine the key events, policies, decisions, and technological or other developments along the way that led to this ideal future. Participants are asked to imagine the newspaper headlines that describe these milestones and asked to develop a timeline recording these key developments. Once they have crafted this timeline of the key milestones in this bridge to the future, participants are invited to now find the anchors in the present that are starting points for creating this bridge. They are invited to think of what changes or developments are already underway that can be built upon to lead to this ideal future.
Each group then shares their visions for the ideal future with the full group. Participants then debrief as a full group, discussing how they feel about these ideal futures and what are the most important anchors in the present than can be developed to reach these futures. They also discuss how they feel about positive change after having done this exercise, compared to before.
This activity is designed to help participants think creatively and come up with innovative solutions to a complex problem, building a sense of optimism about the present and the future.
Activity 2.9 Challenging Taboos to Enhance Creativity uses a playful exercise to demonstrate that challenging taboos is sometimes the best way to solve a particular issue. While they may be appropriate in some situations, taboos can also stop us from thinking of potential solutions or innovative ways of approaching an issue. It is often necessary to identify and move beyond taboos to unleash our creativity and find solutions to a particular problem.
In this activity, participants are first presented with the Ping Pong Ball challenge, described in detail in the full instructions for this activity. Participants work both individually and in groups to generate solutions. They then share their ideas with the full group to see if anyone was able to find the solution by thinking outside the limitations of taboos. Participants then discuss the limits taboos place on our imagination.
This activity helps participants gain a deeper understanding of how taboos can limit imagination, thus enabling them to challenge these limits and generate creative solutions to problems.
Upcoming Events
Registration is now open for our annual Collaborative Discussion Coach Summer Training! The cost of the training is $265. We are able to offer a discounted price due to the generous support of the Interactivity Foundation. Our programming should never be cost prohibitive. Please contact us if a scholarship is needed. Learn more and register here!
Looking forward to collaborating,
Ritu Thomas & the Collaborative Discussion Team