Please watch the full 3 minute video below … you will be moved, as we’re the 1000 people watching! Once Sam get’s singing it really takes off! But first, let me set the scene with a story about Community … It’s the Monday morning after the 5th annual Aireys Open Mic Music Festival and our community has celebrated another magical festival – with the tag line “It’s All About The Music”. This festival attracts thousands of music lovers, but it’s not the numbers that’s important … the vibe and sense of community it supports is amazing. This time last year, …

Last week I worked with a small team of people working within a rather large organisation. During the afternoon session, I introduced them to Improv Theatre – we played a little and explored how they might apply Improv Principles to the way they work. I also used the totally brilliant Improv cards that Viv McWaters has produced – read about a few of the principles here at Viv’s blog. I started the workshop by inviting participants to share something about the New Year … more specifically, sharing any thoughts they had on new year goals, resolutions, themes – BIG-do’s, little …

I have written about Vulnerability before, in the context of change and mental models. In this post titled Our Mindset, Mental Models and the Human Condition, I pointed to a great TEDx talk be Brene Brown on Vulnerability. I invite you to watch it if you haven’t already. Recently I attended the Story Conference in Melbourne – hosted by the wonderful Andrew Rixon. At the conference I was fortunate enough to have my story played back me by Melbourne Playback Theatre. My story fitted the theme of taking Creative Methods to our work and I revealed my inner fears about …

Last Tuesday night I went dancing! Not to a nightclub and not to a structured form of dance like Flamenco, Ballroom or Swing. It was a practice of dance known as The 5Rhythms. The classes have a host/facilitator to hold the space and invite participants to move, play and interact. In my case, the facilitator is a long time friend of mine, David Jurianz. Whilst I am intensely interested in the application of improv, movement and music to my facilitation work, I didn’t attend this workshop to figure out some magical formulae of how I can “apply it”. I showed …

How much can you prepare first time parents for the journey that lies ahead of them? How useful is ‘having a plan’ for the first 12 months of your baby’s life? These are 2 questions that came to me as I thought about our journey (the trials and tribulations so far!) with 3 boys. We did make plans and we definitely stuck to some plans that we should have abandoned. But, for whatever reason, most of our plans were like a sand sculpture at the beach. We could change them ourselves in response to what was happening, or the incoming …