Where we start

Creativity and positive inquiry fuels us to develop our ideas and fuels our imagination. Thinkers such as David Cooperrider have discovered that appreciating the positives and highlights of our every day motivates us to continue to thrive moving forward. We enmesh this thinking within our practice through involving participants in creative activities which you can both reflect on what is your current status quo and allow your mind to access new pathways and new ideas; ones that may not have been discovered otherwise.

It's in our nature

Being playful is natural to us, it's the first thing we do as children but it's often abandoned once we start to work. As a result, our activities often become mundane and repetitive. We're bringing play back into our every day to re-ignite the passion and motivation we once had. For us, play is also a crucial element of creativity and imagination; it's what provides the freedom and space for us to energetically and positively think of exciting possibilities.

If you can imagine it, you can build it

Imagination is a powerful and important tool in future-building. Through imagination, we can prepare for possible futures, we can model and experience the lives of others which "enhances our collective consciousness" and we can play with novel and seemingly impossible ideas, leading us to "expand the boundaries of human knowledge, reinvent paradigns, and make what had previously seemed impossible possible" (Candy, S., & Dunagan, J. (2017). Designing an experiential scenario: The people who vanished. Futures, 86, 136-153). We ask: what could the future be? what could your work look like? what is your dream for the next years? Through imagining a future that could be, we begin to find ways to change our present to fit our dreams.

A lot of our early ideas were shaped and rooted in our research into Action Research theory. In the SAGE Handbook for Action Research, chapter 1, Patricia Gayá Wicks, Peter Reason and Hilary Bradbury write: “[actions researchers and respondents found that] life is not a spectator sport but that participation is fundamental to the nature of our being”. We believe that our experiences are what shapes us (and our work); it's what makes you you and what causes your ways of being and believing develop. If participation is fundamental to life, then we must apply this philosophy in our work. We must actively participate in challenging the status quo, in hearing and developing ideas, in reflecting on our experiences and ultimately creating and imagining something new.

These ideas are the roots of our practice and influence the structure in which we work. We carry these ideas through centering people's experiences and encouraging equal participation from everyone. We don't tell you what is right and wrong, we provide the space for thoughts and ideas to naturally and creatively develop. Through group activities and equal partnership you will enact your fundamental role as a participate of your work. Through providing the opportunity to meaningfully engage with one another, you will also create a space to see one another as active participants in your work. As such, together, we begin to understand the fundamentals of our every day and can work towards a better future.

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