Since we want to provide the best possible services at Creative Industry Košice, we consider our own education to be essential. Study trips also help us with this. One of them was a mobility called Designing Policies with Simon Gough.
Our colleagues – Alexandra Tkáč Posypanková and Martin Mojžiš, participated in a two-day workshop during the summer. To gain new knowledge, in July, they traveled to London, Greenwich, where the Design district is located. It consists of 16 buildings designed by eight architects and offers workspaces for people in the creative industry. “Similar educational mobilities are very important for our organization. Educating and acquiring new skills from experts, not only foreign ones, moves us forward and broadens our horizons,” says Alex about the need for study mobilities.
“Similar educational mobilities are very important for our organization. Educating and acquiring new skills from experts, not only foreign ones, moves us forward and broadens our horizons.”
Alexandra Tkáč Posypanková
Martin and Alex acquired useful skills and knowledge in the field of facilitation. They taught different facilitation methods and when they are best to be applied – whether in research, strategy workshops, or ideation workshops.
The workshop was led by Simon Gough, an expert on the facilitation of design processes and skills. Simon Gough helps to create new services and build design skills in both startups and large companies; at the same time, he teaches service design, social innovation, and design leadership (service design, social innovation, and design leadership) at the Ravensbourne University in London.
Facilitation is a process that leads to a result
Facilitation is a method or technique in which the facilitator guides the participants in the facilitation process through a series of steps and leads the participants to a pre-defined goal or result. Thus, the task of the facilitator is to focus on the procedural aspects of the facilitation process, while the participants are tasked with applying their knowledge to the chosen problem within their organization.
Different people have different needs and expectations
At CIKE, we are part of many projects made up of diverse people. It is beneficial for us if we know how to facilitate and cooperate with different types of people and how to fulfill their needs and expectations. “We learned how important it is to create the right space for facilitation, in which the participants of the facilitation process relax, and how to create it,” Alex describes her knowledge. An important equipment of every facilitator are the so-called icebreakers, thanks to which he helps break the ice between workshop participants. Although the facilitators try to be innovative and use ever more interesting icebreakers, the participants do not always feel comfortable with activities that require a lot of interaction with strangers. “That’s why the well-known activity ‘two truths and one lie’ is a proven icebreaker, which is not the most innovative, but always works,” adds Alex.
Unconference removes the hierarchy of the organization
Another interesting method that we can effectively use is the so-called unconference. It is an alternative to traditional conferences – structured meetings in the form of lectures and discussion on a specific topic. Although this basic idea is preserved in an unconference, it is an unstructured meeting where the participants decide when and what they will talk about. The participants of the unconference are initially familiarized with the pre-selected topic and fill out the schedule of the unconference by themselves, based on an agreement between them. They can then choose which time slots they will participate in and at the same time facilitate the time slots and topics they have proposed. Thanks to this method, we can remove the hierarchy of the organization in which the unconference takes place, because each of the participants has the same opportunity to propose what will be discussed, regardless of their position in the organization.
What we have learned, we will use in practice
Not only the mentioned methods are very important when working with young people. They are a major part of the Youth 4 Bauhaus project. Within the Youth 4 Bauhaus project, it is a joint effort to build a sustainable, inclusive and beautiful future in which space is created for designing future ways of life. Speculative design is the process of addressing large social problems using design processes and systems. Speculative design allows designers to bring solutions that are not limited by technological, social, cultural or political barriers. Within Youth 4 Bauhaus, this technique could bring innovative solutions that strategically influence the development of society.
Thanks to similar mobilities and self-education, we are able to constantly move forward and improve ourselves as an organization. Read more about our projects and activities and find out how we succeed in using all our new knowledge and skills.
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The mobility within the project Co-creation mobility is supported by the Slovak Arts Council. The Slovak Arts Council is the main partner of the project.
