"A Creative and Experiential
Intervention for Entrepreneurial
Learning: Developing Key Insights
into your Business Idea”
Dr Sue Elmer, Dr Emma Roberts and Hurol Ozcan
With Liz Cable and Dr Flor Gerardou.
Hurol Ozcan
Introductions
Please introduce
yourselves
to each other
Be prepared to be
playful!
In this workshop:
This workshop will provide an opportunity for you to try
sand tray work as a creative and experiential approach
to business start up.
Sand play, originally developed for treating children, is
adapted here as a sand sculpture activity designed to
enable entrepreneurs to develop their ideas through a
process of shaping and re-shaping objects in the sand
to symbolise entrepreneurial goals.
Our rationale
Creative teaching and learning strategies
can act as a highly effective means of
facilitating developmental and
transformative experiences in Higher
Education.
Liz and Flor:
Experiences of sand tray work
In the process of sculpting the
sand new ideas emerge
The sand play activity and ‘reading’
of the sculpture allows entrepreneurs to:
•make sense of their ideas,
find new solutions and ways forward
•communicate their project effectively.
What does it feel like?
• “...I guess I could compare it to the business
model canvas, - what the sand tray is doing is
teaching you to cover all different aspects, like
your target customers, how exactly the legal
systems is going to work, because the way I did it
in the sand was I just created a circle with those
wire things, those floppy wires. So I guess in that
context it can be compared to a business model
canvas”.
• UG student entrepreneur
•The process
of shaping
and reshaping
objects in the
sand also
identifies
potential
barriers to
realising
these and
realistic
means of
achieving
these goals.
It’s the idea that I needed to kind of be carried by
another business to increase my own exposure for
my own business. So yes I need to kind of get
exploited through somebody else to increase my
own following and my own brand identity, so I think
I put gorillas on each other’s backs, getting higher,
and that was me being carried by somebody else
but you didn't realise it because one was hidden
under the sand.
Interviewee 3.
Work in pairs.
Create a series of sand sculptures
tell the story of your model, describing how it works to your partner.
ask prompt questions to encourage further refinement of the sculpture.
Questions might include:
•tell me the story of your model
•what do you see as the strengths of the model?
•‘how might you develop it?’
•how might you enhance it?
•what do you see as potential barriers to its development?
Before beginning the next sculpture take all objects out of the sand tray, to
smooth the sand (thus creating a blank canvas) and to start the next
sculpture.
Stages in sand tray work
•
•
•
•
•
•
The sand trays
The objects
Instruction
Prompt questions to develop the narrative
Enhancement
Re-reading and Re-telling
Making meaning from the sand sculpture
•tell me the story of your model
•what do you see as the strengths of the model?
•‘how might you develop it?’
•how might you enhance it?
•what do you see as potential barriers to its
development?
Before you begin the next sculpture,
take all objects out of the sand tray, to smooth
the sand and to start on the next sculpture.
Contacts
[email protected]