Inclusion is crucial when generating ideas

What do you do when someone in your team can’t participate in an exercise because of their cultural upbringing?

When we were running a series of workshops for the London Literary Festival at the Southbank, we had build a comprehensive list of exercises based on people’s musical experiences. 

I won’t give you the whole thing, but for example, people were asked to share:

• What songs did they first remember as children?

• What songs reminded them of a parent?

• What songs did they sing in the car/shower?

• What songs reminded them of their best friend?

And so on. Fine, right? 

Except when someone politely explained to me that in her country of origin, music was entirely forbidden. Until she moved over to the UK, the world sounded like talking, ambient noise, and silence. Did not see that coming.

However, our MO is always to have enough questions for everyone to participate in, and if there are some they’d like to focus on over others, that’s more than ok. This way she was still able to generate a tonne of material. 

More than this, there was ample time made for her to explore her feelings about that experience, and for it to significantly inform her final body of ideas.

So inclusion doesn’t always look like everyone doing everything. It sometimes looks like everyone having more than enough that they can respond to, and an equal amount of receptive space to share that response.

We put on the most powerful show at the SouthBank Centre as a result of those workshops, and can’t wait for the next set in 2023.

What songs did everything think of when they read those questions?