Creative Facilitation

Creativity and creative collaboration in 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.

In this two-day program the focus will be on developing and deliberately applying the most important 21st century skills: ‘creative thinking’ and ‘problem solving’. The masterclass will provide an opportunity to expand your knowledge of creative techniques and processes and learn from experience through real-life cases. Creative Facilitation uses the fundamental concepts of Industrial Design Engineering to create and elaborate ideas into workable solutions.

Curriculum


After this masterclass you will be able to apply creativity in a deliberate way in your daily work whenever you need it: Whether it concerns inventing and developing new concepts in a project team; solving complex issues with a multi-disciplinary group; convincingly facilitating a creative session for a client; or in case you need an intervention to make the weekly team meeting more effective.

Learning Objectives

During this master class, you will learn to

  • apply the principles and ground rules of deliberate creativity in groups
  • guide a group through a creative process
  • select and apply effective creative techniques
  • organize and facilitate creative processes for specific problems or issues

I used these tools in practice right away.

― Participant

The class provided very useful methods and insightful feedback.

― Participant

Speaker

Her approach to groups is described in the practical handbook: Road Map for Creative Problem Solving Techniques, including 40 techniques on how to organize and facilitate creativity in group sessions. In 2022 she launched a Dutch book on individual creativity techniques as well: 101 ideeën voor ideeën

Her ambition is to bridge the gap between science and practice (and vice versa). In her role as Vice President of the European Association for Creativity and Innovation she therefore organized the conference: Connect2Create. And as co-director of the Delft Design Lab Connected Creativity she also connects organizations with academia.

 

 

Programme

Location: Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, TU Delft

9:00 Welcome and coffee
9:30 Introduction
Who's Who
Overview Programme
Objectives
Expectations
10:15

General overview Creative Facilitation
Interactive session to dive into:

Creative Process

Principles and ground rules for deliberate creativity in groups

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
15:30

Preparing your own session 
Developing (part of) a session

Selecting effective techniques

16:30

Learnings

Sharing experiences of these sessions

Reflection & Recommendations

17:00 Time to relax

Location: Art Centre, Delft

9:30 Start
New thoughts, ideas and expectations for this second day
10:00 First part of the session
Problem analysis and problem redefinition
11:15 Second part of session
Multitude of idea generation (diverging) techniques  
12:30 Lunch
at Art Centre, Delft
13:30 Third part of the session
Acceptance finding & presentation
14:30 Reflection
Learn from experience by reflecting on it.
15:00 Lecture on Group dynamics & the facilitator
Facilitation as a leadership style / process consulting
16:30 Closure and Drinks
Q&A
Checking outcomes with expectations
What's next?

Practical Information


How to prepare?

In order to kickstart the masterclass, we would like to know already a few things about you prior to the start. Therefore, please e-mail us your answers to the following questions about your experience and your goals by April 11th:

  1. About your experience: what kind of experience do you have with creativity, creative processes or with facilitating in general? Can you briefly describe that.
  2. About creativity techniques: which creativity techniques do you know already, or have you used before? (Either as participant or as facilitator)
  3. About your personal goals: which three things (e.g. skills) do you hope to develop during this training?

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 ‘Road Map for Creative Problem Solving Techniques - Organizing and facilitating group sessions’ By Katrina Heijne and Han van der Meer. 

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.

 

Training material

During the training the practical handbook Road Map for Creative Problem Solving Techniques will be used as a guide.