Be a penguin

International Resource Office - Lund, Sweden

How can cultural workers keep their spark alive?

This question has been at the heart of the penguin project and will be the lynchpin of this workshop. We will use some core metaphors of the project – among others the famous penguin metaphor – to inspire introspection, provide you with a new perspective on your relationship with your work in culture, and facilitate group discussion and sense making.

The workshop objectives were:

1. Get people interested in developing a deeper understanding of their spark and how to keep it alive
2. Map out what is actually charging and draining them at work
3. Begin to see what can be done to enhance their circle of influence over their contexts and challenges
4. Make their internal dimension (their needs, motivations, principles) part of the how they evaluate and respond to their challenges in the day to day

What we did

Our participants brought specific challenges from their current working experience (and that they find draining). In the workshop we started by looking into our internal dimensions, finding and sharing what drives us, then we shared our challenges and as a team found new interpretations of them. Finally we started to look at our challenges with a deeper awareness of what keeps our spark alive and uncovered possible ways to begin influencing the things that we can control.