Last week, I travelled to Madrid to teach with Mariana Salgado Deliberate Creativity, an intense 4-day workshop about imagination and individual creativity (little c). Participants were a group of 16 professionals from diverse backgrounds and industries including creative directors, entrepreneurs, art and digital product directors, urban planning consultants, engineers, and computer consultants.

The workshop was an extremely rewarding experience and an opportunity to share the benefits of reconnecting with our biggest superpower: our imagination. On the last day, it was humbling to witness participants’ creative transformation. This was possible thanks to their open minded and committed attitude since the beginning as well as many questions, a lot of energy, amazing ideas, and loud laughs.

Designing such an experience involved being intentional about everything. Daily, adapting the classroom set up and curating each activity, flow, and materials to the needs of the group was essential to build the supportive atmosphere needed to nurture imagination and creativity. Choosing warm-up activities that put concepts into practice also helped participants start with the right mindset. A short lecture – or conversation – was important to provide context and the rationale of the concepts we were covering and practicing. A combination of individual and group exercises was key to bridge theory and practice, and to help participants build personal awareness as well as identify what techniques worked best for them. Activities were also designed to help participants deepen their personal journey and explore the world through different senses – sight, touch, hearing, movement, emotions. Debriefing, group conversations, and discussions helped identify areas where we needed to dig deeper and practice more the following day.

Thanks so much to La Nave Nodriza for the opportunity to keep spreading the Imagination seed and helping people reconnect with their superpower. The next four blog posts summarize each day of the workshop and present core exercises and learnings.