25/10 Crowd Sourcing
The whole room generates bold ideas on cards ("if you were ten times bolder…"), then mills and swaps cards while scoring each passing idea 1–5 over five rounds. Scores add to 25…
Thinking T5
Creativity
Ability to think outside conventional patterns, imagine new possibilities, and shape them into transformative ideas.
Tools for this skill (66)
Acting Everyday Chores
Everyone walks the room and the leader calls out a domain — morning routine, schoolwork, a winter activity, a holiday, a TV evening, the big shop, clothes shopping, cleaning — a…
Adjective Scenes
The audience suggests an adjective — warm, strong, sad, lost — and every actor in the coming scene tries to embody that quality or state as fully as they can. A variation gives…
Adventure Walk
The leader tells a story that everyone acts out individually and simultaneously: packing a rucksack, hanging it on your back, climbing out of the window, dropping to the ground,…
Affirm the Denial
Whatever one person claims, the other denies — and then the first has to affirm the denial while keeping their original claim alive. 'I'm getting married!' 'No you're not, you'r…
Animal stories
Students take a single animal's traits — how it moves, sounds and behaves — and apply them to a human character, then rehearse a scene in small groups where each person's charac…
At the Cinema
Lying or sitting in dimmed light, participants hear four short pieces of music and imagine a film to them — its opening and characters, its plot and genre, its turning point, it…
Björn Kellman
Teams of three or four are given a country and a year by the audience, take up to thirty seconds to confer, and then perform that country's invented Eurovision entry for that ye…
Boris
An interrogation room: an interrogator, a suspect, sometimes a secretary — and Boris. Boris is a horrible figure, a monster or a giant, and is not played by any actor at all. He…
Brainstorming with Eureka
A structured brainstorm in explicit ideation and narrowing phases: teams break a complex problem down, generate freely on cards, then converge on a simple narrative, idea, or so…
Change
One partner tells a story; whenever the other says 'change!', the last thing said has to change. Mostly fun, the manual says — until the Therapeutic variation, where a true, cha…
Costume Bag
Each person gets a bag of clothes, hats and props prepared in advance and builds a character from what is in it, presenting them either by describing or by dressing up and playi…
Create Obstacles
Two players chase each other around the room; the one being chased mimes obstacles into existence and the chaser has to get over, under or through each of them before continuing.
Creating New Metaphors
Groups examine the entrenched metaphors framing a complex issue (war on drugs, race to the top, footprint) and invent new metaphors that open different perspectives and options…
Creating permission for productive failure
To reduce the fear of failure that suppresses experimentation. Explicitly establish that thoughtful experiments that do not succeed are valued, not punished. Distinguish: • Prod…
Creative Destruction (aka TRIZ)
Serious fun with a subversive question: "what could we do to reliably achieve the WORST possible result?" Groups list that anti-recipe, then — the uncomfortable step — mark ever…
Cross-boundary exposure
To bring in perspectives and ideas from outside the team's usual context. Create regular opportunities to learn from outside the team's usual boundaries: • Invite someone from a…
Dedicated exploration time
To protect time specifically for creative exploration. Allocate regular time where the team explores new ideas without the requirement to deliver immediate outcomes. During this…
Drawing Together
Participants tell the story of a challenge and their journey through it using only five symbols — circle, rectangle, triangle, spiral, star-person — drawn, not spoken. Drawings…
Everyday Creative Practice
Choosing one creative activity that gives you relaxation, enjoyment and fun — drawing, music, writing, movement, crafts — practising it regularly, and deliberately exploring whe…
Film Posters
A genre and a title are called out — the horror film 'The Witness in the Attic' — and a group of three to five has to become the cinema poster for it, fast, then hold still. Nex…
Flash back, flash forward
A group freezes a moment as a tableau, then rebuilds it as the moment just before, then as the moment just after — three still images that imply a story either side of the scene…
Four Lines
Groups of four are handed a slip with four lines of dialogue and must stage them — all four, in the given order, with nothing else spoken. Everything else has to be invented aro…
Freeze
Two people improvise in the middle of a circle until anyone watching calls 'freeze'. The caller steps in, takes over one performer's exact physical position, and starts a comple…
Headline
Each person draws a newspaper headline the leader has cut out and pasted up, and invents the event they think lies behind it, telling it to the group. Once everyone has, they pa…
How's Yours?
One person steps out; the group picks something they all have — a toothbrush, or childhood memories — and the guesser may only ask 'How's yours?', receiving vague true answers u…
I'm a Tree!
One person becomes a tree; two more join the scene as an apple, a squirrel — or the tree's self-doubt — and the tree chooses which stays to seed the next scene. A quick improv g…
I’ve got some news...
Two people stand in the middle of the circle; one gives the other a piece of news — you got the job, your holiday is cancelled — and the other simply reacts. No scene has to fol…
Idea Generation
A structured creative round that alternates deliberately between divergent and convergent thinking — generate widely without judging, then narrow — so that a change initiative s…
Improv Prototyping
Groups act out a chronic challenge scene three ways — the dysfunctional version, an improved version, and wild variants — with player groups performing while observer groups har…
Introductions on One Letter
You introduce yourself — name, where you come from, dream destination, favourite dessert — with every single word forced to start with one chosen letter. The page's own example,…
Living Things
One character plays a scene and all the other actors are the objects in it — and the objects can talk. Drink a beer and the beer starts talking to you; step into a house and the…
Meanwhile
A scene is playing. At some point the audience calls 'meanwhile…' and a fresh set of players starts a completely new scene. When 'meanwhile' is called again the first scene resu…
Monster and Fairy Tag
One player is a monster and crosses the floor as hideously as they can, with noises; everyone else are fairies tripping on tiptoe. A tagged fairy becomes a monster, so the monst…
My life story
Groups invent a character who has lived an interesting life, pick six moments from it in order, and stage them as tableaux — a photo album the character narrates while the rest…
Object in a circle
An object sits in the middle of the circle — the more abstract the better. People step in one at a time and use it as something it is not, playing the use clearly enough that th…
Obstacle Tag
Tag in pairs, played in cartoon spirit — Tom and Jerry, Bugs Bunny. The one being chased fends off the chaser with mimed obstacles: felling a large tree in their path, painting…
On the bus
Chairs are set out as a bus and one person drives. At each stop a new passenger gets on carrying a clear attitude — furious about the delay, newly dumped, finding everything hil…
Pictures
Each person draws a picture — objects, places or abstracts, cut from magazines or the leader's own — and invents a story the picture could belong to, telling or playing it to th…
Props
Objects are laid out on the floor; participants wander among them, silently imagining what each might be and how it could be used. When the leader stops them, each picks up what…
Prototyping (Theory U)
Explore the future by doing: a small core team (~5, a microcosm of the challenge) moves an idea into a concrete experiential prototype — clarify intention, sense the system, hol…
Radio Theatre
Groups build a place entirely out of sound made with mouths and bodies — no speech — and perform it to the others, who listen with their eyes closed. The next steps are to rende…
Renew Yourself Tag
When the tagger catches you, both of you stop and you must improvise an action — skipping rope, singing, ice skating. The tagger can interrupt at any moment with 'renew yourself…
Setting, Character, Object, Feeling
Each small group writes one thing under each of four headings — setting, character, object, feeling — then passes the paper on. The receiving group has to stage a short story in…
Shift the Genre
Groups take a story everyone knows, name its genre, and move it to another one. What happens to the romance if it becomes a grand opera? To the horror story if it becomes a come…
Shift the Period
Groups take a known story, work out when it is set from the markers in it — a princess, a castle, a witch, a prince on horseback suggests the Middle Ages — and move it to anothe…
Statue Tag
Whoever is caught freezes as a statue of something specific, and is released when another player comes up and correctly guesses what it depicts.
Story Bag
Each group gets a bag of objects. One person pulls out an object and starts a story from it — a pen becomes Percy Pen, or a wizard's pen, or a letter someone wrote — then passes…
Story from A to Z
Sitting or standing in a ring, the group builds a story one sentence at a time — but each sentence has to begin with the next letter of the alphabet. The source reminds you not…
Strange Bedfellow
Each actor is assigned a famous person, and the scene begins with them together in bed. Only the actors know who they are; the audience and the other actors have to guess. The s…
Structured ideation sessions
To generate diverse ideas systematically when facing challenges that require creative thinking. When facing a challenge that requires creative solutions, use a structured proces…
The Analogy Bridge
A seconds-scale daily micro-practice for Creativity (VCoL collection): When working on a challenge, pause and ask: 'What is this situation like from a completely different domai…
The Chase
Everyone stands in a circle facing the back of the person in front, evenly spaced, and each player tries to tag the back of the one ahead of them. The addition that makes it dra…
The Combination Experiment
A seconds-scale daily micro-practice for Creativity (VCoL collection): Take two things that seem unrelated. Ask: 'What would happen if we combined these? What new approach might…
The Pocket
'You don't know what I've got in my pocket!' The other answers with something — a ticket to Kiruna, say — and you must agree you have it and supply the reason it is there: you a…
The Transforming Pen
A pen goes round the circle and whoever receives it must use it as something else — a lipstick, a cigarette, a fishing rod, a banana — playing the use clearly enough that the ot…
The What If Disruption
A seconds-scale daily micro-practice for Creativity (VCoL collection): Identify a constraint or assumption that seems fixed. Ask: 'What if this were not true? What if we could n…
Thief and Police Tag
One player is the police, one the thief, and everyone else are stones curled on the floor with room to run between them. The police plays as firm as they can in body and voice,…
Titles
Small groups are each given a title — 'The Surprise', 'The Big Day' — and five to ten minutes to build a short scene from it without telling the other groups what they were give…
Using a stimulus
A bank of what-if situations to drop an existing character into — the bus leaves without them, their wallet vanishes at a festival, they record a video explaining why they acted…
Visual Narratives
Groups build a collective narrative about stress and translate it into object-based art installations — working with creative constraints, a scent, found objects, and feedback f…
Visual Offers
Player A makes a physical shape. Player B looks at the gesture for three seconds and then 'motivates' it if they can — playing, in about five seconds, enough for the audience to…
Walk As If
Walk the room as if — on ice, in deep snow, on hot asphalt, on a swaying bridge, at the water's edge, across a busy street, needing the toilet, late for something fun, late for…
What’s my line?
Everyone writes one line of dialogue on a slip of paper and drops it in a box. Small groups draw a line each and build a scene that contains all of them, working to make the lin…
Whatcha Doin'?
One person mimes an action; the next asks 'Whatcha doin'?' and is told something entirely different, which they must then mime for the next asker. Speed is the point — answer be…
Word Association
Around the circle or back and forth in pairs, each person says the first word the last one prompts, as fast as possible and uncensored. The manual's variations narrow it to a ca…
Also develops it (47)
Alphabet Letters
In groups of four or five, a letter is called and each group forms it with their bodies. That is the whole game — fast, physical, and requiring a group to negotiate shape withou…
Blind Statue
Everyone closes their eyes and the group builds a single statue together — a 'glittering emerald', say. When it is finished and everyone has found a position, they open their ey…
Changing Statue
In groups of four or five, numbered so the order holds, one person makes a statue and each next person connects to it until everyone is in. Then number one steps out, looks at w…
Collaborative working sessions
Most team meetings are for coordination. Teams need dedicated time for actually creating together. Create working sessions specifically designed for collaborative creation. The…
Creating unconditional space for emergence
To create opportunities to explore without pressure to reach conclusions. Periodically create protected time for a different quality of conversation: • No agenda or predetermine…
Different Places, Different Feelings
The stage is divided into four squares and each is assigned a feeling. For as long as a character stands in a square they carry that square's feeling, so moving changes what the…
Family Photo
About five people step forward and the audience calls out a family theme — the monster family — and the group becomes that family photograph, frozen in a pose — the page's advic…
Feeling Meter
The group sings a song everyone knows — the source's example is Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star — and then sings it again in different feelings, deliberately exaggerated. Half the…
Feeling Scenes
The audience suggests feelings — sad, angry, in love — and in the coming scene every actor tries to hold that feeling as fully as they can. A variation gives each actor their ow…
Fortune Cookie
Around the circle, each person adds one word to a sentence nobody is composing; the result is the group's fortune, repeated back word by word and honoured with a bow. 'A great e…
Fostering Collaborative Creativity
Participants learn to lead brainstorming-centered co-creation themselves: hosting inclusive ideation, protecting wild ideas from early judgment, and steering groups toward break…
Future Folktales
Over a multi-session arc, participants craft folktales told FROM a regenerative future — drawing on future visions to build narratives of being, not just technology — and tell t…
Guru Game
On a higher chair, in touch with an inner guru, one person answers the group's questions — 'oh Guru, what is the meaning of life?', 'how can I decide when to stay with my lover…
Half-Sentence Storytelling
Sitting in a ring, the group composes a story by each contributing half a sentence. The sheet suggests agreeing the kind of story first — a ghost story, perhaps.
Here We Come
Two teams face each other from opposite walls. One links arms and marches across chanting 'here we come!' until stopped at arm's length — 'not one step further until you show wh…
Human Clay
Three people: a model who takes a sculptural position standing behind the clay so the clay cannot see them, the clay who is shapeless, and an artist who must form the clay into…
Human machine
One person starts a simple repeatable movement with a sound. Others join one at a time, each physically connecting to somebody already in it and adding a movement that fits, unt…
Imagining the Future
A guided exercise that first loosens the imagination into an expanded state and then invites a concrete envisioning of a desired future — held long enough to notice details, fee…
Improvised Proverbs
Sitting in a ring, the group builds a proverb one word at a time. When somebody judges it complete they say 'full stop', and everyone presses their palms together fingertip to f…
King Lizard
Everyone picks an animal with a sound and a motion. A player sends the impulse on by performing their own animal and then someone else's; that person does theirs and passes it o…
Listening to a Story
Everyone settles comfortably and the leader tells a story. That is the whole exercise. The sheet notes a recording works as well, and that dimmed light shuts out the visual and…
Long-term scenario exploration
To develop capacity to think about alternative futures. Periodically spend time exploring alternative future scenarios: 1. Identify key uncertainties that affect your work—marke…
Mimic Tag
Whoever is caught starts miming an activity — boxing, dancing, tying their shoelaces — and stays stuck in it until a free player stands opposite them and copies what they are do…
One Scene Affects Another
Two scenes with entirely different casts, not necessarily in the same place or period. The rule is that the second must raise the stakes of the first without anyone from the fir…
One-Word Story in Pairs
In pairs, a story built by taking turns to add one word each. The source notes that doing it as a whole ring is usually harder than doing it in twos — and offers writing a lette…
One-Word Storytelling
Sitting in a ring, the group writes a story together by each saying a single word in turn. The sheet's advice is to settle what kind of story it is first — a fairy tale, a docum…
Performance in a Minute
A group is given one minute to prepare a performance. The brief can add conditions — that it be about a particular theme, run at least so many minutes, or contain at least so ma…
Portrait Pictures
Each person draws a portrait of somebody none of them recognises and builds the character they think the picture shows, presenting them by description or by playing them. Groups…
Postcard Storytelling
Sitting in a ring, the group writes a postcard together one word at a time. The sheet's advice is to settle first where you are and who the card is going to; punctuation can cou…
Reverse Chair Dance
Musical chairs inverted: when the music stops, the player without a chair has to get their feet off the ground some other way. Chairs keep being removed, so by the end everyone…
Rhythmic Story
The group establishes a steady beat and one person tells a story with one word on each beat, so the words come at an even pace with no room to search for them. Variations: the c…
Rolling Statues
Groups of about four: the first goes in and takes a position, the second follows, and so on. In the rolling version — in a group of nine, five are always on stage — as one perso…
Scribing (Visual Practice)
A practitioner draws the conversation as it happens — mapping ideas, tensions, and emerging patterns on a large visible surface while people talk — so a group can literally see…
Sculptors in a Ring
Half the group stand in a ring facing outward as unfinished sculptures; the other half each take one and modify it, then rotate one place to the left and continue what the previ…
Storytelling Reflection
In a group of four or five, one person stands and acts out a story or a prompt — your first time, a part of you that feels broken, who you were that has changed — with words and…
Strange Neighbour
Round the circle, each player turns to their left-hand neighbour and says something absurd about them — a giant mushroom is growing out of your right shoulder. The neighbour has…
The Absent Character
Two people improvise a scene about somebody who is not there yet but is on their way. Over at least six to fourteen lines their dialogue has to establish where they are and, abo…
The Bartender
The audience is asked to name a personal problem. A scene then plays out to music in which somebody unburdens themselves about that problem to a bartender in a pub — sung, impro…
The director’s theatre
One person calls theatre commands — upstage, stage left, bring in the flies, tableau, tragedy, comedy, wings — and everyone else obeys as fast as they can, miming or running to…
The Imaginary Ball
The group throws an imaginary ball around the circle, and once the tempo is up the leader calls out how the ball changes — heavier, lighter, faster, smaller, bigger, higher — an…
The Interpreter
An expert is invited to address a gathering but speaks only gibberish. An interpreter tells the audience what the expert is saying, and asks the expert questions when needed.
The Picture
One person walks on and says what they are — 'I am a tree' — and anyone may come in and complete the image by being something else that belongs in it. When everyone is in, the p…
The Silent Teddy Bear
A solo improvised monologue directed at a teddy bear, which of course never answers. You can accuse the bear of anything. The source suggests playing a dramatic scene — some kin…
The Square
A square marked on the floor. When you step into it you have to do something — a sound, a movement — and you may associate to whatever you happen to see. You are not allowed to…
The Stuck Exercise
A Social Presencing Theater practice: one person embodies a real stuck situation from their life or work as a physical shape ("sculpture 1"), stays with it, and lets the body —…
Toe Disco
Everyone sits in a circle of chairs with their feet together on the floor for a disco danced entirely with the toes. The leader leads first, everyone copies, and thanks the grou…
Weaving Stories
Three people, three invisible lines across the stage — back, middle, front — and three rounds of telling. In the first, each tells a short first-person monologue that sets up an…