How Manuel used Idea Tactics to run a creative workshop at his church

Manuel was planning a workshop to brainstorm ideas for rebuilding the stage in his church. 

This was a chance to get people involved and shape the future of this sacred space.
Keep reading to see how the workshop went. 

Preparation

Manuel had two hours planned for the workshop, with the option to extend it to two and a half hours. 

To prepare for the workshop, he asked each participant to collect digital images of stages they found inspiring, using a Combinaboard. He briefed the participants to bring their own computers or tablets with their images already collected.

In addition, he wanted to use Idea Tactics to facilitate the brainstorming process and generate creative ideas.

The workshop 

Manuel chose to use the following Idea Tactics cards in the following order:

1. Mood Check-In – to get everyone primed and ready for the workshop
2. How Might We – to state the problem they were solving
3. Like, Wish, Wonder – to react to the inspiration gathered in the Combinaboards
4. Crazy Eights – to generate new ideas based on all these great ingredients
5. Invest Your Pipcoins – to identify the strongest ideas from the Crazy Eights
6. T-Bars – to develop the top-ranked ideas further
   

Manuel also considered using ProvocaPrompts to stretch the ideas further, but he decided to save that for a follow-up session.

What Manuel learned

During the workshop, Manuel had to think on his feet. So, how did he get on? 

Like, Wish, Wonder

Manuel wasn’t sure what to do with the results of the Like, Wish, Wonder exercise. They collected many likes, wishes, and wonders on the Combinaboards, but then they had to move on to Crazy Eights.

Manuel decided to tell the participants to use the Likes, Wishes, and Wonders as inspiration for the Crazy Eights – perfect!

Crazy Eights + PipCoins

Manuel discovered that theme sorting of Crazy Eights before using Invest Your PipCoins would’ve been a smart idea. 

They did the theme sorting afterward, which resulted in more work and a little confusion. 

This is a great lesson for everyone – theme sort your Crazy Eights ideas before ranking them if there are any obvious overlaps!

T-Bars

Manuel wasn’t sure how to distribute the top-rated ideas from Crazy Eights for people to develop using T-Bars, so he told all the participants to take inspiration from all the top-rated ideas. 

Unfortunately, this resulted in everyone having more or less the same ideas at the end. He realised that assigning one of the top-rated ideas to each person would have been a better approach to add more uniqueness to each person’s T-Bar.

Despite a few challenges, Manuel felt the workshop went well. 

What next? 

Manuel scheduled another session to redo the T-Bars with distributed ideas. Then they would analyse the ideas with ProvocaPrompts to identify any potential problems for each idea. Finally, they would set up a PrioriTree to prioritise the absolute must-haves and future add-ons.