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ARTLAB AND LEGO SERIOUS PLAY RESEARCH COLLABORATION
David
Gauntlett, Professor of Media and Communications at University of Westminster,
is collaborating with the Lego Group, the creative toy company, to explore the
ways in which creative construction of objects can unlock feelings and insights
into everyday experience.
Lego Serious Play is a consultancy practice for organisations and businesses, based on the idea that "hands-on, minds-on learning produces a deeper, more meaningful understanding of the world and its possibilities". Through a process which involves modelling metaphors for the organisation in Lego pieces, the Lego Serious Play process develops imaginative thinking, communication skills, confidence and insights.
The ArtLab approach is all about the idea that making things, using the hands and the body, and through imagination and creativity, can help us to unlock ideas and feelings which otherwise might not be accessed through language and discussion alone. This links directly with the ideas underpinning Lego Serious Play - hence this collaboration. Lego are funding and supporting a scheme of research in which David Gauntlett has been trained as a Serious Play facilitator at Lego's home in Billund, Denmark, and is now going on to explore the use of Lego Serious Play's processes as part of qualitative social research.
Gauntlett
is working with Lego Serious Play to explore the possibilities for using Lego
as a tool in developing and expressing self-awareness and self-identity, and using
Lego within social research - for the same reasons that Lego Serious Play uses
it when working with individuals in businesses and organisations - as a tool which
enables people to think creatively or metaphorically, and to express their perception
of their experiences. The Serious Play model, which encourages individuals to
express and explore their relationship with a business or organisation, could
also be used in working with people to express and explore their feelings about
family life, their learning experiences, and their social world, and as a starting
point for discussions of aspirations, and change.
This
research project will explore how creative production can lead to greater clarity
of expression and emotion, and will study how the process of making something
can focus the mind and unlock new thoughts.