Lucy Hawthorne's guest appearances

Lucy Hawthorne

Facilitation Stories

Your Brain On Climate

Lead with Purpose

OwlTail

On this episode of the Lead With Purpose podcast host, Tze Ching Yeung, talks to Lucy Hawthorne, a facilitator, campaigner and founder of Climate Play. Through play-based learning or, so called ‘serious play’, Lucy helps make it safe, light and fun to talk about climate change issues, helping people to engage more deeply, honestly, and creatively to a topic that people would rather run away from. KEY TAKEAWAYS  Serious Play is play with a purpose. It’s playful methods and techniques I used in order help make progress on serious, apparently grown up stuff. I use it in the context of environmental issues, trying to make it safe, light and fun for people to have conversations that they generally don’t really want to have. It’s a series of different methodologies that help unlock creativity, communication, connection. It takes all of the good bits about play and applies them to something. I used to work in the UK charity and NGO sector for years and then shifted to become a facilitator because what I’m really fascinated with is psychology, specifically in what makes people change their minds, what shifts people’s beliefs, what helps people engage and disengage. I combined an understanding of campaigning psychology and what helps people to learn because learning is totally fascinating.  I kept getting a familiar story of people feeling heaviness around social and environmental change, for good reason – there’s a lot of injustice and inequity. But that heaviness can sometimes be demobilising for people and it can end up fuelling apathy. Over the years I’ve been thinking about how you can engage people’s hearts and minds more effectively. You shouldn’t always be playful, but there’s a place for play in helping people to engage in topics that they don’t really want to. We need to counter depression, anxiety, demobilisation, stress to an extent in order to get people moving. I’m really fascinated by this weird binary of how we can deal with serious existential stuff with at least a smirk on our faces. I believe you can make significant, positive progress and be well, to an extent, in the process. The fundamental principle of Lego Serious Play is that it’s all based in metaphor because it’s essentially a story-telling technique. You’re not literally building things, you’re building metaphorically and telling a story, they’ve got a lot of complex meaning built into them. Sometimes people build these mad, really creative structures and others just build a couple of bricks, and they can be the most potent in the story they tell. You’re using a different part of your brain, feeling your way through the meaning rather than thinking.  BEST MOMENTS ‘Play is a basic building block of life, it’s about how we explore, learn, connect and develop.’‘Lego is the main thing that I use in Serious Play, partly because it just works and it doesn’t tend to freak people out, it’s got a low barrier to entry because people are very familiar with it – and adults have been cultured out of playing.’‘Fear has a very helpful role, in some ways, but it can be incapacitating.’‘The opposite of play is not work, it’s depression.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Lucy Hawthorne is a campaigner at heart, using facilitation, coaching and peer learning to help social justice organisations increase their impact. Nominee 'PRCA Voluntary Sector Campaign of the Year 2020' (CPRE, Don't Fast Track Fracking campaign). Particular focus on how to create open, safe and inclusive conversations that catalyse climate action. https://www.climateplay.org/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucyhawthorne/   ABOUT THE HOST Tze Ching started her entrepreneurial journey back in 2007 with the launch of a sustainable clothing and home furnishing ecommerce business. Next, she created a sustainable fashion brand. In 2019, she launched a social enterprise to help raise awareness about the negative impact of fashion at schools and colleges.  Through the 15-year journey, she learned so much, but easily the most meaningful lesson learned was about the importance of marketing. She now focuses on channelling those insights to help others succeed, through We Disrupt Agency, a business coaching, mentoring and digital marketing company.  Tze Ching’s mission is to create a community of global change makers and to contribute to positive change in both people and planet. CONTACT DETAILS Tze Ching’s website: https://wedisruptagency.com  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/wedisruptagency  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wedisruptagency/ Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/wedisruptagency  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tzechingyeung/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On this episode of the Lead With Purpose podcast host, Tze Ching Yeung, talks to Lucy Hawthorne, a facilitator, campaigner and founder of Climate Play. Through play-based learning or, so called ‘serious play’, Lucy helps make it safe, light and fun to talk about climate change issues, helping people to engage more deeply, honestly, and creatively to a topic that people would rather run away from. KEY TAKEAWAYS <ul> <li>Serious Play is play with a purpose. It’s playful methods and techniques I used in order help make progress on serious, apparently grown up stuff. I use it in the context of environmental issues, trying to make it safe, light and fun for people to have conversations that they generally don’t really want to have. It’s a series of different methodologies that help unlock creativity, communication, connection. It takes all of the good bits about play and applies them to something.</li> <li>I used to work in the UK charity and NGO sector for years and then shifted to become a facilitator because what I’m really fascinated with is psychology, specifically in what makes people change their minds, what shifts people’s beliefs, what helps people engage and disengage. I combined an understanding of campaigning psychology and what helps people to learn because learning is totally fascinating. </li> <li>I kept getting a familiar story of people feeling heaviness around social and environmental change, for good reason – there’s a lot of injustice and inequity. But that heaviness can sometimes be demobilising for people and it can end up fuelling apathy. Over the years I’ve been thinking about how you can engage people’s hearts and minds more effectively. You shouldn’t always be playful, but there’s a place for play in helping people to engage in topics that they don’t really want to. We need to counter depression, anxiety, demobilisation, stress to an extent in order to get people moving. I’m really fascinated by this weird binary of how we can deal with serious existential stuff with at least a smirk on our faces. I believe you can make significant, positive progress and be well, to an extent, in the process.</li> <li>The fundamental principle of Lego Serious Play is that it’s all based in metaphor because it’s essentially a story-telling technique. You’re not literally building things, you’re building metaphorically and telling a story, they’ve got a lot of complex meaning built into them. Sometimes people build these mad, really creative structures and others just build a couple of bricks, and they can be the most potent in the story they tell. You’re using a different part of your brain, feeling your way through the meaning rather than thinking.</li> </ul> BEST MOMENTS ‘Play is a basic building block of life, it’s about how we explore, learn, connect and develop.’ ‘Lego is the main thing that I use in Serious Play, partly because it just works and it doesn’t tend to freak people out, it’s got a low barrier to entry because people are very familiar with it – and adults have been cultured out of playing.’ ‘Fear has a very helpful role, in some ways, but it can be incapacitating.’ ‘The opposite of play is not work, it’s depression.’ ABOUT THE GUEST Lucy Hawthorne is a campaigner at heart, using facilitation, coaching and peer learning to help social justice organisations increase their impact. Nominee 'PRCA Voluntary Sector Campaign of the Year 2020' (CPRE, Don't Fast Track Fracking campaign). Particular focus on how to create open, safe and inclusive conversations that catalyse climate action. <a href="https://www.climateplay.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.climateplay.org/</a> <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucyhawthorne/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucyhawthorne/</a> ABOUT THE HOST Tze Ching started her entrepreneurial journey back in 2007 with the launch of a sustainable clothing and home furnishing ecommerce business. Next, she created a sustainable fashion brand. In 2019, she launched a social enterprise to help raise awareness about the negative impact of fashion at schools and colleges.  Through the 15-year journey, she learned so much, but easily the most meaningful lesson learned was about the importance of marketing. She now focuses on channelling those insights to help others succeed, through We Disrupt Agency, a business coaching, mentoring and digital marketing company.  Tze Ching’s mission is to create a community of global change makers and to contribute to positive change in both people and planet. CONTACT DETAILS Tze Ching’s website: <a href="https://wedisruptagency.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://wedisruptagency.com</a> Facebook: <a href="https://www.facebook.com/wedisruptagency" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.facebook.com/wedisruptagency</a> Instagram: <a href="https://www.instagram.com/wedisruptagency/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.instagram.com/wedisruptagency/</a> Twitter: <a href="https://www.twitter.com/wedisruptagency" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.twitter.com/wedisruptagency</a> LinkedIn: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/tzechingyeung/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.linkedin.com/in/tzechingyeung/</a> See <a href="https://omnystudio.com/listener" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">omnystudio.com/listener</a> for privacy information.

Interview With Lucy Hawthorne

In this episode Nikki talks to Lucy Hawthorne who for the past year has been experimenting with bringing playfulness to conversations about climate. Lucy is a facilitator by trade and an environmental campaigner by background and has been exploring the link between playfulness and climate action for around five years. In the latter stages of her campaigning work, Lucy was at her most successful, including involvement in the ban on fracking in the UK, but was also at her most jaded. She was becoming adept at political maneuvering but not really shifting people’s hearts and minds, and began to think about how to engage people more deeply in this important subject.  As she moved into facilitation she began to look for the antidote to the lack of deep engagement and realised that people were being scared into action, but crushed into apathy. Maybe plan was the antidote.  Lucy has spent a lot of time thinking about what play means and how it is both a set of tools and a mindset.  The project hasn’t developed in quite the way Lucy expected but the end point is roughly where she was expecting. Initially Lucy thought this might be like a research mission looking at different elements of play and climate, systematically interviewing people and writing up findings, and at the end of the year, she’d have a pseudo evidence-base on the benefits of play in climate action.  But being playful and iterative about the process, Lucy has found other ways forward, asking the same questions but being less methodical about recording the evidence and dived quicker into action, prototyping and testing the concepts and principles out with people. Lucy uses Lego a lot in this work as it has a low barrier for entry.  It’s familiar for people and Lucy describes it as the “trojan horse”, getting people in as they think it’s fun and whacky but then having conversations that are fun but also serious and at times quite profound. She is also interested in play more generally, and talks about techniques such as improv, drama and art as different mechanisms of playfulness. Lucy is particularly interested in how to get people involved in a conversation that they generally avoid, or avoid having as deeply as they could do. Lucy tries to use tools that make it easy to get started. Nikki asks Lucy what prompted her to put the ideas into action.  Lucy feels this isn’t really a choice: climate action is urgent and theory isn’t very useful, there’s a need to give things a go and iterate to see what works.  It’s also about Lucy embodying in her practice as a facilitator, the things she’s talking to other people about.  For Lucy, playfulness is about curiosity, experimentation and going with the flow which is counter to her experience as a campaigner.  She’s pushed herself to give things a go, to run events and have conversttions with people that previously would have terrified her- and counting that as playfulness. They move on to talk about how Lucy has used a prototyping approach.  Her first event posed the question “How playful is the climate movement?”, and this helped set up different avenues of enquiry for Lucy, both on how people relate with climate change but also how they relate with play as adults.  She’s found a network of people who’ve helped to “chew the process through”.  She then started iterating workshops, online and in person, using Lego Serious Play for different audiences, and looking at different aspects such as emotions and blockers to action  She’s also done in-house company events and lectures, talking about principles around play and how it might relate to climate action. Nikki asks about the challenges and opportunities of using a physical medium such as Lego both on- and off-line.  Lucy has found the kinds of conversations people have had have been different.  Face to face conversations have generally catalysed a sense of connection, but because online is slightly more independent, people have noted a high level of quiet reflection.  Lucy also notes that with the online work has allowed the reach of the work to be much wider, involving participants globally. Lucy talks about some of the logistical challenges, using second hand lego as far as possible and finding ways to incentivise people to return it.  It’s also a challenge to work on in 2023 as she’s keen to make this accessible to people whether or not they have Lego at home, wherever they are in the world.  Lucy has enjoyed the online sessions but also feels there’s nothing like being in a room with a table full of toys. It’s been a rich year of learning for Lucy, mainly that there is “just something about play” and the word “play” that is different to parallel words.  Lucy’s convinced that if she changed the wording it wouldn’t be as effective.  She’s found it seems to appeal more to women and this is something she wants to unpick further.  She’s also found these freeing, playful techniques are most effective when talking about the difficult emotions associated with climate change, and “moments of stuckness”. From this learning she now understands her mission to be how to make it safe, light and fun to talk about climate change, so that people can engage more deeply, honestly and creatively with the subject. Lucy and Nikki do a live demonstration of some mini Lego Serious Play exercises building on the metaphors that are the basis for Lego Serious Play. Lucy is curious to continue exploring her role in how to support people to make faster progress and move into more radical action. Lucy is ready to launch Climate Play as an organisation in its own right and will now be diving deeply into this work, particularly helping businesses to solve climate blockers and how to partner with other people working to the same ends and help them increase the impact of their work.  There will be a full series of events, more in-house workshops and exploring the broader principles of what it means to have a playful mindset.  Links: To find out more about the Climate Play project: https://www.climateplay.org/ To attend future events:   https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/lucy-hawthorne-founderfacilitator-climate-play-29888274577 LinkedIn for Lucy:  https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucyhawthorne Nikki on Twitter: @NiksClicks

In this episode Nikki talks to Lucy Hawthorne who for the past year has been experimenting with bringing playfulness to conversations about climate. Lucy is a facilitator by trade and an environmental campaigner by background and has been exploring the link between playfulness and climate action for around five years. In the latter stages of her campaigning work, Lucy was at her most successful, including involvement in the ban on fracking in the UK, but was also at her most jaded. She was becoming adept at political maneuvering but not really shifting people’s hearts and minds, and began to think about how to engage people more deeply in this important subject.  As she moved into facilitation she began to look for the antidote to the lack of deep engagement and realised that people were being scared into action, but crushed into apathy. Maybe plan was the antidote.  Lucy has spent a lot of time thinking about what play means and how it is both a set of tools and a mindset.  The project hasn’t developed in quite the way Lucy expected but the end point is roughly where she was expecting. Initially Lucy thought this might be like a research mission looking at different elements of play and climate, systematically interviewing people and writing up findings, and at the end of the year, she’d have a pseudo evidence-base on the benefits of play in climate action.  But being playful and iterative about the process, Lucy has found other ways forward, asking the same questions but being less methodical about recording the evidence and dived quicker into action, prototyping and testing the concepts and principles out with people. Lucy uses Lego a lot in this work as it has a low barrier for entry.  It’s familiar for people and Lucy describes it as the “trojan horse”, getting people in as they think it’s fun and whacky but then having conversations that are fun but also serious and at times quite profound. She is also interested in play more generally, and talks about techniques such as improv, drama and art as different mechanisms of playfulness. Lucy is particularly interested in how to get people involved in a conversation that they generally avoid, or avoid having as deeply as they could do. Lucy tries to use tools that make it easy to get started. Nikki asks Lucy what prompted her to put the ideas into action.  Lucy feels this isn’t really a choice: climate action is urgent and theory isn’t very useful, there’s a need to give things a go and iterate to see what works.  It’s also about Lucy embodying in her practice as a facilitator, the things she’s talking to other people about.  For Lucy, playfulness is about curiosity, experimentation and going with the flow which is counter to her experience as a campaigner.  She’s pushed herself to give things a go, to run events and have conversttions with people that previously would have terrified her- and counting that as playfulness. They move on to talk about how Lucy has used a prototyping approach.  Her first event posed the question “How playful is the climate movement?”, and this helped set up different avenues of enquiry for Lucy, both on how people relate with climate change but also how they relate with play as adults.  She’s found a network of people who’ve helped to “chew the process through”.  She then started iterating workshops, online and in person, using Lego Serious Play for different audiences, and looking at different aspects such as emotions and blockers to action  She’s also done in-house company events and lectures, talking about principles around play and how it might relate to climate action. Nikki asks about the challenges and opportunities of using a physical medium such as Lego both on- and off-line.  Lucy has found the kinds of conversations people have had have been different.  Face to face conversations have generally catalysed a sense of connection, but because online is slightly more independent, people have noted a high level of quiet reflection.  Lucy also notes that with the online work has allowed the reach of the work to be much wider, involving participants globally. Lucy talks about some of the logistical challenges, using second hand lego as far as possible and finding ways to incentivise people to return it.  It’s also a challenge to work on in 2023 as she’s keen to make this accessible to people whether or not they have Lego at home, wherever they are in the world.  Lucy has enjoyed the online sessions but also feels there’s nothing like being in a room with a table full of toys. It’s been a rich year of learning for Lucy, mainly that there is “just something about play” and the word “play” that is different to parallel words.  Lucy’s convinced that if she changed the wording it wouldn’t be as effective.  She’s found it seems to appeal more to women and this is something she wants to unpick further.  She’s also found these freeing, playful techniques are most effective when talking about the difficult emotions associated with climate change, and “moments of stuckness”. From this learning she now understands her mission to be how to make it safe, light and fun to talk about climate change, so that people can engage more deeply, honestly and creatively with the subject. Lucy and Nikki do a live demonstration of some mini Lego Serious Play exercises building on the metaphors that are the basis for Lego Serious Play. Lucy is curious to continue exploring her role in how to support people to make faster progress and move into more radical action. Lucy is ready to launch <a href="https://www.climateplay.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Climate Play</a> as an organisation in its own right and will now be diving deeply into this work, particularly helping businesses to solve climate blockers and how to partner with other people working to the same ends and help them increase the impact of their work.  There will be a full series of events, more in-house workshops and exploring the broader principles of what it means to have a playful mindset.  Links: To find out more about the Climate Play project: <a href="https://www.climateplay.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://www.climateplay.org/</a> To attend future events:  <a href="https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/lucy-hawthorne-founderfacilitator-climate-play-29888274577" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/lucy-hawthorne-founderfacilitator-climate-play-29888274577</a> LinkedIn for Lucy: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucyhawthorne?originalSubdomain=uk" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucyhawthorne</a> Nikki on Twitter: @NiksClicks

FS51 Exploring play in climate conversations with Lucy Hawthorne

We play when we're kids to try new things and learn how the world works, and when we think no-one's looking we do it as adults too. Play's  important for our development and so you should probably do it or you'll turn out a wrong'un. But Dave's guest today says play is also a way to smash the Very Serious Rules of how to think about climate change - rules the following of which demonstrably are not working.  If play = creativity, and creativity = necessary, is it time to lark about more in the name of saving the planet? Joining Dave this episode is Lucy Hawthorne. She's a creativity facilitator who uses Lego - yes, Lego - to teach adults a thing or two about how to think sideways about climate change and what to do about it. She even sent some in the post to Dave.  Find Lucy at Catalysts Club and Climate Play.Owl noise: Find out more about Stuart Brown's eight categories of play.Your Brain on Climate is a podcast about human psychology vs the climate crisis: what we think, why we think it, and how it all adds up to a planet-sized emergency.  Contact the show:  @brainclimate on Twitter, or hello@yourbrainonclimate.com. Support the show on Patreon: www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate. The show is hosted by me, Dave Powell, who you can find @powellds on Twitter.  Original music by me, and I twiddle all the production knobs too. Show logo by Arthur Stovell at www.designbymondial.com.   

We play when we're kids to try new things and learn how the world works, and when we think no-one's looking we do it as adults too. Play's  important for our development and so you should probably do it or you'll turn out a wrong'un. But Dave's guest today says play is also a way to smash the Very Serious Rules of how to think about climate change - rules the following of which demonstrably are not working.  If play = creativity, and creativity = necessary, is it time to lark about more in the name of saving the planet? Joining Dave this episode is Lucy Hawthorne. She's a creativity facilitator who uses Lego - yes, Lego - to teach adults a thing or two about how to think sideways about climate change and what to do about it. She even sent some in the post to Dave.  Find Lucy at <a href="https://www.catalysts.club" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Catalysts Club </a>and<a href="http://www.climateplay.org/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> Climate Play.</a> Owl noise: Find out more about Stuart Brown's <a href="https://www.nifplay.org/what-is-play/play-personalities/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">eight categories of play</a>. Your Brain on Climate is a podcast about human psychology vs the climate crisis: what we think, why we think it, and how it all adds up to a planet-sized emergency.  Contact the show:  <a href="http://www.twitter.com/brainclimate" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@brainclimate</a> on Twitter, or hello@yourbrainonclimate.com. Support the show on Patreon:<a href="http://www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> www.patreon.com/yourbrainonclimate</a>. The show is hosted by me, Dave Powell, who you can find <a href="http://www.twitter.com/powellds" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">@powellds</a> on Twitter.  Original music by me, and I twiddle all the production knobs too. Show logo by Arthur Stovell at <a href="http://designbymondial.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.designbymondial.com.</a>