The purpose of this workshop is to provide participants with an insight into the ways in which Lego can be used as a tool to explore practice related issues for Social Care Practitioners and Service Users. The workshop lasts for one hour during which time participants will be invited to engage in an experiential process focussed on diverse practice related issues. The workshop is divided into three sections each lasting approximately twenty minutes. The first part introduces the concept of Lego Serious Play and provides a theoretical base from which to begin. The second section invites participants to engage in the process of Lego Serious Play in order to make their creations. The final section of the workshop focuses on the use of Lego as a valuable tool for storytelling in presentations of work.
The workshop advocates that Lego and other ¿tools for thinking¿ (Gauntlett, 2007) can be used to support students, researchers and practitioners struggling to make connections between theory and practice. Through the use of Lego creations participants are able to articulate dilemmas and contradictions and move beyond them to create solutions and integrate opposites. Furthermore, the use of Lego provides the facilitator with accessible ways of communicating when attempting to engage culturally diverse, socially differentiated, specialist and non-specialist audiences in a variety of teaching and research situations with students, practitioners, researchers and academics. The learning process and the acquisition of knowledge follows the notion of the rhizome as proposed by Deleuze and Guattari (1987) whereby knowledge is recognised as being multi-dimensional and non-hierarchical. A poster will also be submitted to support the ideas presented in this workshop.