Abstract

This session shares a playful activity, facilitating students to get to know each other while engaging in speculative thinking. Each year, the LCF postgraduate Fashion Together Elective unit brings over 200 students from across the College to work together on industry and research briefs. However, the words ‘group work’ or ‘collaboration’, can provoke feelings of anxiety, potentially challenging senses of belonging and participation in the unit. The workshop’s objective is to provide students with a safe space to listen to each other’s ideas, to encourage them to think out loud and allow their imaginations to ideate what something could be.

Session and activities

The aim of this lighting talk is to share an interactive workshop I designed through 20 slides and an overview of the aims of the workshop, how it works in practice and its impact. 

Slides 1 to 5 illustrate the dual focus of the workshop: firstly, to inspire students to think beyond their wildest dreams, drive innovation and think more like intrepid explorers; secondly, to introduce students to one another and the positive potential of group work/collaboration. This helps students to experience rapidly the mindset, enthusiasm and generosity needed when working in diverse teams with varying strengths and weaknesses.  

Slides 6 to 10 illustrate the tasks given to students to engage with, the guidance and materials provided. The tasks appear easy yet are potentially challenging. Working in groups of 3 to 5, the students need to collectively examine an unambiguous object their group has been given, ideate possible functions for the object, decide what it could be called and share it with their peers. 

Slides 11 to 16 illustrate examples of how students within their groups rapidly transform ambiguous objects through their collaborative speculative thinking. 

Slides 17 to 20 illustrate students’ and the teaching team’s reflections. We want students to simply enjoy the process, but we want to give them all time to reflect on what they did or didn’t do, how they experienced and contributed to the group dynamics, what roles they played and what they might do differently next time they meet their team.