Categories
facilitating & hosting

Improvising Your Way Through

Today I got to play with a great group of forty-ish bright, talented young women (and one gent!) at the Beyond Pink 2012 Conference, hosting the session “Improvising Your Way Through”: Life isn’t scripted – it’s more like improv where you’ve got to be ready for whatever’s thrown at you. This workshop will build skills to […]

Categories
facilitating & hosting

Improv Books

Sharing some improv book recommendations from the hivemind: Keith Johnstone’s Impro and Impro for Storytellers Viola Spolin’s Improvisation for Theater Patricia Ryan Madsen’s Improv Wisdom Robert Poynton’s Everything’s An Offer Keith Sawyer’s Group Genius Kat Koppett’s Training to Imagine  Joseph A. Keefe Improv Yourself Tom Salinsky and Deborah Frances-White’s The Improv Handbook Kathy Lubar and Belle […]

Categories
facilitating & hosting

Improv Gift: Viv and Johnnie’s Super Cool Cards

One of my favourite take-aways from the Applied Improv Network Conference was a set of the super cool cards Viv McWaters and Johnnie Moore co-created with designer Mary Campbell. The cards are all about “using serious playfulness to navigate uncertainty”, and they describe how Viv and Johnnie practice together in their Creative Facilitation work: We created these little cards to […]

Categories
facilitating & hosting

Deep Fun

Sharing this immense gem of a blog I’ve started following: Bernie DeKoven’s Deep Fun. When I clicked through to his website after the Applied Improv Conference I had the reaction of “How am I NOT following this already?!?!” So quickly into my RSS reader he  went (well, his blog) and I’m loving the near-daily posts. If […]

Categories
facilitating & hosting

Portkey

One of the delightful improv games I learned at the Applied Improv Network Conference was Portkey. I found it to be a simple way to tap into the storyteller in each of us and I can see it fitting in beautifully in ‘getting to know you/relationship building’ intro activities. Gratitude to Chris Sams for sharing […]

Categories
facilitating & hosting

Silly Games

My final mini-harvest from my time at the Applied Improv Network Conference. This one from Viv McWaters (who I finally met after knowing her on Twitter for almost three years). We were in a lovely breakout session swapping games and had finished playing a game some might call silly.  The game was Lame Duck, where […]

Categories
facilitating & hosting

Game Versus Play

Harvesting another little tidbit amongst all the learnings I had at the Applied Improv Network Conference. This one from the opening session with Bernie DeKoven and Matt Weinstein, when Bernie talked about game community versus play community. In a game community the big question underneath is “is the player good enough to play”? And in […]

Categories
facilitating & hosting

Co-creating: A Fine Line

Onto another mini-harvest from my time at the Applied Improv Network Conference. One of my main ah-has on Friday came from a break-out session and partnering with Chris Corrigan. We had done an activity where in the first part of a brainstorm I responded with a “yes but” to every suggestion Chris had, then we switched […]

Categories
facilitating & hosting

Johnstonian Intensive with Kasey Klemm

The bar was set high for my Applied Improv Network Conference when I kicked it off with a one day Johnstonian Intensive with Kasey Klemm: In this one-day workshop, Kasey Klemm will guide you through the philosophies, techniques and activities of improv innovator Keith Johnstone, author of Impro and Improv for Storytellers and creator of Theatresports, […]

Categories
personal reflections

Travel Day Lessons

Two little learnings on yesterday’s travel day to the Applied Improv Conference: 1. I pre-booked my shuttle from the airport to my hotel. Waited a loooooog time and watched many many other shuttles come and go before mine finally arrived. Texted my sweetie and told him my lesson that pre-booking a shuttle isn’t necessary in […]