Creative Facilitation

Creativity and creative collaboration in product innovation

Creative Facilitation is the art of leading a team through a creative process in order to solve problems or generate new, shared visions and opportunities for organizations. Getting everyone on the same page in an open and trustful atmosphere of creative collaboration demands special care and attention.

Throwing ideas about in a quick brainstorm session is often based on memory and logic, and with the right experts this often does the trick. However, when facing more complex design issues, or in cases where shared understanding is required, Creative Facilitation offers an important added value when addressing these issues. Creative Facilitation uses the fundamental concepts of Industrial Design Engineering to create and elaborate ideas into workable solutions.

Curriculum


In this Master Class, we address these issues from the point of view of designing and leading creative processes as a creative facilitator.

Learning Objectives

During this master class, you will learn to:

  • create an atmosphere of trust, and achieve so-called ‘suspension of disbelief’;
  • design and run creative processes for specific problems or issues;
  • inventorise and redefine problems and objectives in context.

I used these tools in practice right away.

― Participant

The class provided very useful methods and insightful feedback.

― Participant

Speaker

Marc Tassoul

Marc Tassoul is lecturer in Creativity and Creative facilitation at IDE, TU Delft. He has a vast experience in running workshops and sharing his knowledge and insights via presentations and publications.

Programme

Please note: this Master Class has an evening program on the first day.

9:00 Welcome and coffee
9:30 Introduction
Who's Who
Overview Programme
Objectives
Expectations
10:15 General overview Creative Facilitation
Creative Process
Conditions and basic rules
Suspension of disbelief
Relating and naming / vision in three
11:15 Typical issues for Creative Facilitation - problems and opportunities
Interactive session with participant input
What kind of questions could one face as a Creative Facilitator?
Short intro on problem definition
12:30 Lunch
at the Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering
13:30 Example Session - detailing all the steps
Learning by doing - going through a typical Creative Facilitation process step by step
15:30 A multitude of techniques for idea generation
17:30 Dinner
19:00 Learnings from practice 
Alternative experience more 'exotic' idea generation techniques methaphor, guided fantasy, creating shared vision
21:30 End of the first day
9:30 Start
New thoughts, ideas and expectations for this second day
10:00 Process design
Deciding on example cases to work on in groups
Sharing these plans and comments
11:15 First part of session
Problem analysis and problem redefinition  
12:30 Lunch
at Art Centre, Delft
13:30 Lecture on Group dynamics & the facilitator
Facilitation as a leadership style / process consulting
14:30 Second part of session
Idea generation & selection
Acceptance finding & presentation
16:00 Learnings
Sharing experiences of these sessions
Reflection & Recommendations
16:30 Closure and Drinks
Q&A
Checking outcomes with expectations
What's next?

Practical Information


How to prepare?
No preparation required.

Materials
Hand-outs of all lectures will be provided with space for personal notes. All materials provided are included in the course fee.
Participants will receive the book 'Creative Facilitation' by Marc Tassoul.

The Class itself
The first day will be oriented towards introducing approaches and techniques, supported by exercises. The second day will be more oriented towards Experiental Learning and Reflection in Practice.

After the course
Two months after the course, a pre-set consultation timeslot will be offered to all participants to share experiences and ask questions to the IDE Master Class. The format and the timing will be discussed with the participants during the IDE Master Class.