Discovery
To begin the Discovery phase, the team engaged in a icebreaker activity, where they came to know each other, and areas of commonality. They discovered that the group was exceptionally diverse, but that they had a mutual interest in arts education. That subject became a focal point for further exploration.
Context Mapping
Context mapping is designed to help the team form a shared contextual understanding of the central question and bring out areas of expertise and passion to determine the team’s unique personal take on the central question.
During the Context Mapping activity, the team looked at trends or tensions affecting the performing arts. There is a tension between generational shifts in audiences and in available content available to consume. At the same time, live arts are expensive, especially when one considers inequality and inflation. Stakeholders like audiences, performers and institutions can look to new modes of asynchronous offerings and algorithmic curation technologies. Some issues identified by the team included questions about how to remain profitable, challenges around venues and a new, more polarized population considering authoritarianism and censureship, while experiencing new levels of disconnectness after the COVID pandemic.
Below is Team 2’s Context Map: (click to zoom in)
Sense Making
During the Sense Making stage, the team captures insights from the Context Map and identifies patterns. During this 15 minute time, the facilitator captured and identified these patterns using the Context Map. Sometimes ideas move from a laughable idea (“Ha Ha”) to a discovery (“Ah Ha!”) to a resolution (“Ahh”).
