Play event at Dana

Last night a few of us went to the Dana Centre for a "PEST" type event (on play and learning).

The event eschewed the traditional set up of speakers giving presentations followed by questions. Instead, four speakers gave short (3 min) introductions of themselves. We were then sorted into groups, so you'd not necessarily be with people you know.

Each group was timetabled 10 mins with each speaker. The speakers sat in a circle of chairs and when we joined them we were just expected to talk. Some speakers gave a lead in, some just said "so, what you want to talk about". At the end of the night the groups joined together again and the speakers made a sum up comment. There was the opportunity to for the debate to continue, although no one took it up.

There was a whiff of speed-dating about the process.

Personally, I thought it worked better than I imagined it was going to. Conversation was quite stilted at the start, but by the end people had relaxed into it. A little at least, there was never a huge amount of energy in the room. Moreover, I worry the set-up of letting the audience talk as much as possible favours those who come with previously formed views on a topic. One problem might just be that audiences aren't used to acting like that - several people had come along armed with notebooks.