Over the last few weeks I’ve been sharing my experience from the Art of Tinkering Workshop (check out Week 1 and Week 2). In order to write these posts I’ve been reflecting a lot and it’s through these reflections that I’m starting to realise the learning that I experienced. As one of my professors used to say, “you don’t learn from experience, you learn from reflecting on the experience”. But my experience reflecting on the workshop hasn’t just been limited to post-workshop reflection. Reflection was a core component of the workshop itself. After every activity we took time to reflect on what we had done and to consider our own ideas of what it means to tinker.
During the workshop we reflected in a variety of ways. Sometimes we considered activities on a spectrum of “Less to More”. Other times we reflected through responding to a prompt like “what surprised you?” or “what did you find challenging?”. Reflection was such a key component of the workshop that it formed one of the three guiding principles that the Facilitation team embodied in the planning and execution of the workshop. These guiding principles were Plan > Facilitate > Reflect (Repeat).
But even without these formal moments of reflection, reflection was constantly being encouraged. During activities, facilitators would ask questions, “why are you doing that?”, “what do you want this to do?”. These questions encouraged us to share what we were doing and to reflect on how they helped execute our intention.