Serious Play - Cleaning up Seattle's Lower Duwamish Waterway.

Here at RESOLVE, we've come up with the notion of Serious Play. Pint-size building materials (think Legos®, Tinker-toys®, K'nex® and PlayDough®) are often the most beloved toys from the childhood days of technical professionals. With the advice and encouragement of local residents, we asked our dedicated scientists and engineers to use 'play things' to go about the serious business of describing clean up options. The technical professionals were immediately enthusiastic and ready to go with this new approach. Through Serious Play, our engineers and scientists simply, elegantly and accurately explained their thinking and perspectives. With toys as the intermediary, there was a familiarity -- and even a bit of whimsy -- that emboldened community members. Residents asked questions, probed, challenged and taught their scientist colleagues things they, as locals, knew about the beautiful Duwamish River, its legacy and its future.

Check out a blog entry from Martha Bean about the project:
http://www.resolv.org/blog/serious-play/

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Tags:

• play
• game
• river
• water
• washington
• seattle
• educational
• nonprofit
• consensus
• solutions
• lego
• duwamish