Walking Brainstorm

Helps groups of any size to generate and build on each other’s ideas in a silent but dynamic setting. As the participants keep moving, the exercise is ideal to kick-off, for example, a full
day workshop.

Practitioners:

This activity is based on a further elaboration by JO Education’s staff of a resource curated by the partnership of the Erasmus+ Project FAVILLE.
One of the aims of the project FAVILLE was that of developing a digital application containing several resources that could be used both face-to-face and online by groups of people and learners, under the direction of a learning
facilitator.

Objectives:

Fostering group-based idea generation and collaboration between the participants. It can also work as a stimulus towards positive criticism.

Structure of the process:

Depending on the aim of the brainstorm, write topics or questions in different areas of a board.

Set a timer between 3 and 15 minutes, depending on the Group size in persons and the complexity of the topic. Every participant is encouraged to get closer and add his or her ideas in the board concerning some or all the topics.

Silently, they look around the board and share their ideas about the topics/ questions by writing them into the sections. Ideally, participants should apply an open “yes, and”  approach which means that they should build on each other’s ideas and try to make them work instead of pointing out weak points or deal-breakers.

Your Approach:

When time is up, you can either debrief with the entire group or split the group into small teams who work on the different sections/topics/questions and then share their results with the group.

Remarks

Participants should not be scared of adding “bad” ideas because every idea can at least be somehow of inspiration for further ones. The activity works best if the issues on the board are rather diversified.

Source/Acknowledgments:

Facilitators of Virtual Learning (FAVILLE)’s partnership, JO Education, Italy

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