Collaboration powers our innovation, creativity, and success. Hopefully you’ve seen this in action with design thinking activities or co-creation workshops. It might have been by jotting concepts on post-it notes furiously in Crazy Eights, or sharing whiteboard markers while sketching concepts.
These events can be stressful, though, putting us into a performance mindset as we strive to show our best collaboration. We need opportunities to also grow these collaboration skills in a safe space. We need to exercise the give-and-take of watching our ideas soar, evolve, or crash. Art in the Round is a great activity to practice collaboration while also nourishing relationships with the kids in your life. Who knows, those kids may in turn be building amazing collaboration skills to be the Product Managers of tomorrow!
Art in the Round is a fun, easy way to co-create artwork. Gather your kid(s) and:
- Choose a theme for your art, like cakes or turkeys
- Give each participant a big piece of paper and a shared pool of art supplies
- Choose a fun album or playlist, and start it playing
And you’ll end up with great art like this:
(note, I may be biased as my six-year-old daughter and I made these)
As the first song plays, each person will start their picture however they choose. There are no artistic rules to Art in the Round. Hopefully your song will be about two to four minutes, giving a great amount of time to make progress but not too much. I usually play something chill, like Emancipator or Thievery Corporation. When the song hits the final note, everyone passes their paper to the person to their left. If they’re halfway through a line, drop the marker! These are some of the best moments to see what someone else does with your art. The next artist will add to the art for another song. If you’re a group of two, you pass the papers back and forth to each other. Continue until the art is looking great or for a predefined number of passes.
Art in the Round is going to help you grow and share your collaboration in several ways:
- You’ll practice drawing, which is always great for visually communicating your ideas
- You’ll experience the feelings of having others take your idea and make it what you weren’t expecting, perhaps ruining it in your opinion
- You’ll see how childlike curiosity and innocence lead to art that you couldn’t make yourself. You’ll witness diverse views making better and bigger ideas!
Along with growing yourself, you’ll be helping your daughters/sons, nieces/nephews, or kid friends learn how to better share, exchange ideas, and co-create. Skills that will make you and them both successful at life!
If you try it out, I’d love to see your art in the comments!
Further Learning
- Get more inspiration on this blog for how to train the youngest PMs in your life
- Learn more about Design Sprints from Google, via the book Sprint or Google’s Design Sprints Kit
- Up your creative thinking with The Art of Possibility