{"id":1271,"date":"2019-12-02T08:00:43","date_gmt":"2019-12-02T07:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.exeter.ac.uk\/doctoralcollege\/?p=1271"},"modified":"2019-12-02T08:00:43","modified_gmt":"2019-12-02T07:00:43","slug":"overcoming-stuckness-in-writing-research-with-lego-serious-play-a-researcher-development-retrospective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/doctoralcollege\/2019\/12\/02\/overcoming-stuckness-in-writing-research-with-lego-serious-play-a-researcher-development-retrospective\/","title":{"rendered":"Overcoming stuckness in writing research with Lego\u00ae\u00ae Serious Play\u00ae: A Researcher Development Retrospective"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Ellen Grace Lesser is a PGR in the Department of Theology and Religion. Her current research concerns the relationship between nonhuman animals and the Christian God. Her research interests include: theology of nonhuman animals, philosophical theology, and theology and popular culture. In her spare time she writes poetry and fiction.<\/em><\/p>\n

When I first booked on to Debbie Kinsey\u2019s Lego\u00ae Serious Play\u00ae session, I wasn\u2019t quite sure what to expect. I had been to one of Debbie\u2019s Write Clubs where we used Lego\u00ae Serious Play\u00ae in our starting activity, but that was only ten minutes or so \u2013 this workshop was four hours.<\/p>\n

I walked into the room and was surprised despite myself: several tables had been set up end-to-end across the middle of the room and were covered with Lego\u00ae, a haphazard heap of bricks of all shapes and sizes and colours. I had played with Lego\u00ae when I was a kid, but in the intervening fifteen years it seems it has changed quite a bit \u2013 as some of us reminisced about our childhood exploits, we wondered when they had introduced pink and purple bricks to the canon.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I was told\u00a0to sit down anywhere there was a party bag. I chose a pink bag. Inside was more Lego\u00ae, a gift to each of the participants. Once given the permission to begin playing with it in the time before the session proper started, I got to work making a skier with a ridiculous hat. All the while I wondered how this was going to help me and my fellow PGRs with our writing and, more specifically, overcoming stuckness.<\/p>\n

By the time I left a few hours later, I was wondering no longer. Having made seven Lego\u00ae models as part of the session (and two models outside of the scheduled itinerary), I had an action plan as to how to move forward with my writing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Debbie took us through a journey using our models to guide us. We began with three small tasks which got us used to making models, figuring out how different bricks fitted together, and how to use the bricks as metaphors rather than studiously making models that looked exactly like what they were supposed to represent. Then, we turned to our writing.<\/p>\n

First, we made models of our writing priorities. Then, we made models of how we felt about our current writing situations. Our third model was of what was stopping us from getting from where we currently were to where we wanted to be. Finally, we made a model representing how we planned to get from model 2 to model 1, overcoming model 3.<\/p>\n