SeriousWork team member Caroline shares how her participants builds told her she needed to buy more bricks.

I’ve built up a reasonable quantity of “brick soup” over the last couple of years which I thought was a pretty good fit for the needs of my clients. However, I recently noticed that in some of my longer workshops, (especially those where we kept models for the whole day) a lot of skeletons were appearing in models.

A little investigation led me to realise that participants had used up all of the mini-figs in the earlier builds and were looking for substitutes. They had resorted to using skeletons, not because they wanted a skeleton per-say, but simply because they were the ‘most people-y’ bricks available.

As a facilitator this sub optimal, skeletons imply their own meaning, and if this does not align with the intentions of the builder the whole model could be thrown off. People were searching for bricks I didn’t have and so I was inadvertently influencing the outcome of the session.

To solve the problem I simply bought a lot (250!) more mini-figs and added them into my brick soup.

I’ve since run a couple of workshops and the builds and models are noticeably different: People spend less time searching through the bricks and get going faster. Mini-figs are really popular, and skeletons feature much less!

My advice? Heighten your focus. Be watchful for themes that reoccur within your sessions – obvious patterns within your participants builds will tell you when you need to buy more LEGO. Your brick soup will influence what is being created, and so be ready to make adjustments as your practice grows.

Afterthought: We know that within LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® participants can give bricks any meaning they want, and so it could be argued that it’s not essential to have any mini-figs in your brick stock. However, participants are pressure to think fast and mini-figs convey a lot of meaning quickly. Mini-figs also provide rich stories – they can be accessorised and arranged to make gestures, which is more difficult when using alternative bricks as a metaphor for people.