111 Facilitate a Creative Away Day …

The Creative Gorilla #111 With the right factors in place you can make your workshops outstanding… “In the closing session, participants described it as the best away day they had ever experienced.” Manager, Government department Would you like to make your next team away day really creative? As you may know, I really love to see examples of people putting creativity in to action. This article describes an away day facilitated by a student (and fellow Gorilla) who attended the Open University Creativity and Innovation residential workshop and joined my group of Creative Gorillas. She based the day on what she learned from our group, from her course material and from her own experience and creativity. She wrote the article for her in-house intranet site and I asked her if we could share it with other Gorillas.  This is a great example of how someone with limited experience of facilitation and creativity can produce a terrific outcome, using simple principles and relevant tools. Away days generate mixed expectations. Some people want to address the nuts and bolts of delivery; others are focused on team cohesion; a few just welcome a change of scene. When I undertook to plan the away day for our department, I felt it should be possible to address all of these, with some creativity and fun thrown in for good measure. With help from my Open University course on Creativity, Innovation and Change, and thanks to the energetic participation of my colleagues, we exceeded expectations.  So how did we do it? Three simple rules stand out: 1) Build a Creative Climate Being creative involves taking...