Online workshop Festival Experimentation Guide
On the 17th of March 2021 Aranka Dijkstra and Marije Boonstra hosted an online workshop, which was all about designing a festival experiment using their Festival Experimentation Guide. Together, Aranka and Marije instructed the master students of Design Driven Innovation from the NHL Stenden University, how to work with the Festival Experimentation Guide and the FEG-canvas. Click on the link below to discover the world of learning from experimenting on a festival together with the Festival Experimentation Guide!
What was the workshop about?
The workshop was all about experimenting on a festival and was separated into four parts. First, an introduction session about living labs and experimentation was given after which Aranka and Marije reflected on festivals as sites for experimentation and shared some previous experiences. Then the students had to get to work themselves and design their own (fictional) festival. Aranka and Marije asked the students the following question: if you had the chance to test your own prototype at a festival, what would the experiment look like?
To answer the question, the students used their graduation project to fill in the canvas for their own imaginable festival experiment in small groups. To validate their experiment design, a second part of the workshop was a role play where the students had to judge their experiment from different perspectives. The students had to pitch their experiment as a final assignment during this workshop for the jury: Dennis Sieperda with his communication skills and Sybrith Tiekstra with her research skills.
The Festival Experimentation Guide
The workshop was a concrete follow-up from the internal publication of the Festival Experimentation Guide, which is written by Marije and Aranka within the Interreg Inno Quarter project. The canvas, which is in part II of the guide, was used during the workshop. The things they used specifically are the following building blocks: Sustainable Change, Your Innovation, Your Objective, Your Challenge, Your Method, Your Guinea-pigs, Your Story and Your Data Collection. The students were inspired to get in their role during the role play using the information from the Deep Dives sections from the Festival Experimentation Guide.
Looking back at the workshop
The reactions of the students were really positive. The students said things like: ‘It was so nice, thanks for the inspiration’ and ‘it makes you so creative and you have such a different perspective at your ideas because you had to place it in a ‘festival context’. The workshop was an interactive and inspiring session where you learn to design an experiment in a creative way.
Do you want to learn more?
At the time of writing this article, the FEG is in print and is expected to be publicly available from June 2021 via de website www.feguide.eu and the Inno Quarter website. Interested to know more or get in contact with the Aranka and Marije? Contact us!