Provide context and thank participants for coming, but don’t explain too much in advance about the content, as this might narrow down what kinds of responses you might get – unless you want a specific narrow outcome, which you can justify.

• These are individual exercises that allow participants to reflect on the topic of their mobility practices and contexts first without influence from others around them. Give 5 minutes for each drawing/collage – it is deliberately short so that people do not feel it should be a professional drawing but rather include their first, instinctual ideas about this path.
  • Ask participants to draw or make (e.g. through collage) their path from home to school or home to work.
  • Ask participants to draw or make (e.g. through collage) their favourite mode of transportation.
  • Ask participants to draw or make the mode of transportation that a child should first use.
• Ask participants to briefly share one of their artworks with the group, if they feel comfortable to, and explain.

• Ask participants to write or draw on post-its which culture(s) they have had important/”formative” contact with throughout their lives – one culture per post-it. Give them 5-10 minutes for this (sense in the room if people appear to need more or less time).
• Once they are done, ask them to place the post-its on the large sheets of paper you have placed in different corners/areas of the room, labeled “National”, “Regional”, “Local”, and “Other (non-spatial)”. As they do so, give them yellow and green stickers, and invite them to read others’ post-its and place yellow stickers on the post-its of others that they feel they also relate to a little, and green stickers on those they also relate to strongly.
• Sharing: ask each participant to speak of one post-it they placed themselves, and one they have placed a sticker on. As you go, you might want to ask whether participants were in some way surprised by finding they had placed a lot / very little stickers, etc.

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Before you close, bring all participants together to share what they thought of the workshop, if anything surprised them, if there is anything about mobility cultures they’d like to share but weren’t yet able to integrate in the exercises / sharing moments, etc.

Explain (again) the context of this workshop, Also end with how you will proceed with the results, what they can expect to come from it, and where they will be able to find information about it. Finally, remind participants of the feedback form / page (in which you might ask to what extent they prefer this kind of workshop compared to a classic “narrative”/”debate” participation format, and whether they have any other feedback, or you can add more questions you find relevant – make sure to keep it short!).

• Identify your objectives. Ask:
  • What do you want to get out of this?What is realistic to get out of this?What do participants get out of this? (Different per group)
  • What is the role of using “art”? (e.g.: exploration, understanding, communication, representation)
• Prepare how you might answer questions about your objectives.
• Identify and know your audience (see also key actors below):
  • What age groups are you including? Who do you exclude and is that fair? (It is impossible to always include everyone – but it needs to be clear why you make the choices you do, and that no exclusions are systematic!)How many people should participate?
  • Who will be open to work in which ways? Who is it worth challenging / making (a little) unfomfortable, and who is it worth just involvin in a more classic sense?
• Idenfiy and book the space for your workshop (see materials)
• Prepare a support team (colleagues and/or volunteers) to help during the workshop. If experienced, at least one person per 15 participants, if not experienced, we recommend at least two per 15 participants. Make sure to be explicit about what you need from the support team. Be aware of the extent to which your support team is a good match with your audience – for instance in their talent for enaging with children, or their ability to speak languages you might not be as familiar with but that might be spoken during the workshop.
• Prepare how you will reach your audience. Consider direct invitations, event links online and/or with qr codes to disseminate in the relevant area, social media, event location agendas, newspapers, etc.
• Organize catering for snacks and drinks
• Set up materials in the room – either already on tables or on the side for people to pick up when needed (mind the layout of the room and space for movement for this)
• Identify the best place for the large sheets of paper where people can hang their post-its and place during that exercise. Leave enough space between / around the sheets so several people can stand in front / around them simultaneously.
• Prepare a sheet or other strategy for people to leave you feedback at the end of the workshop, and a way to keep people’s contact details.
• It may be wise to place some large paper or other cover on tables to protect them from being drawn on or being smudged with plasticine.

Manage expectations: clarify what the objective of the workshop is and share the overall steps to expect and the time they will take

• Be consistent between what you promise and what you deliver. And yet: be ready to let all your plans go and take it in a different direction. If you change objective or tactic during the process, be prepared to explain and be honest about adjustments (e.g. in relation to number of people)
• Having people think individually and only gradually in groups can be important.
• Depending on the group, writing or drawing (or taking photos or collage, etc.) can be easier to start with. Think of what people are more likely to be comfortable with and start there, gradually going to the less usual.
• If someone is not cooperating: it’s ok if it’s not for everyone. Perhaps, if you have enough help, have a conversation / interview with them on the side, or give them more of a writing task for instance.
• Keep time – a trick for this can be to bring a bike bell or alarm clock that has a fun effect (or choose a funny / relevant sound for the alarm on your phone if you prefer), so that if you need to interrupt people it can come across as fun rather than reprimanding.
• Record whenever it makes sense – remember you will have to go through all that material for analysing it, and you need explicit consent for this, but you may
• Remember to ask for participants’ descriptions and interpretations of their drawing and/or artistic pieces. Your interpretation after the workshop may not at all relate to what they intended, and that defeats the purpose of their input

Remind participants of providing feedback and their contact details in case they want to know about progress

• You may use different softwares for analysis, such as Excel, Nvivo, or Atlas.ti for qualitative systematic coding and ordering of the outcomes of the workshops
• You may find keyword mapping (e.g. which themes appear where, when, by whome) and connection mapping (e.g. which themes are connected in which ways and more or less frequently) interesting for interpreting the results
• Make sure to contextualise the findings, such as images or recordings, as the context may make a big difference to their meaning.
• Remember that qualitative material is not quantitative material, even when you count it. This matters for the kind of consequences you can draw from it.
• Remember to come back to your objectives as you analyse, look for differences, similarities, outliers, groupings, surprises, etc.

• Remember to share your results with participants (think about this from the start)
• Make as much as possible of your material accessible
• Create diverse output – for the general public, policy makers, participants, academics
• If you think all this is old news – remember you’re most likely in a bubble!

The All-Ages Workshop is intended for a cross-generational audience. Ideally, if children are meant to be involved, it can be helpful to make this a family-based workshop. That is, inviting parents to bring their children, the children’s grandparents, and/or other extended family. This way, a comfortable environment is guaranteed for the children, and there will already be official guardians present to supervise the children and help them in the exercises. Note that children do often react differently when in the presence of their parents, so if there is a specific wish to reach childrens’ voices a specific workshop should be designed. Furthermore, parents may need dedicate themselves more to interacting with their children and may not have as much time to think of their own, more personal perspectives. In the family set-up, the children’s voice might be influenced by the parents, and vice-versa, so this must be taken into account. It can be a challenge, but may also reflect a more accurate experience of actionable practices than if each member of the family were responding/acting separately. Put more positively, the process can also encourage unusual topics of discussion across generations within families, and can be a source of rethinking actionable practices within the family unit.

For the all-ages workshops, keep in mind to:

• Make sure it is clear to the adult participants that the workshop is designed for children to work with the adults, not on their own, and thus the parents/guardians must remain and be resposible for their children, even if there is some support for the children.
• Bring age-appropriate games or toys for children that might not want to or manage to stay with the activity for the full time of the workshop – this way they can go in and out of the workshop.
• Make sure the space is child-friendly and people there are aware that children will be present.
• Ideally, have at least one person assisting you who can help with the children throughout the workshop – not to act as a guardian, but to help the parents have a chance to participate fully if their children are asking for attention.
• Make sure there are age-appropriate and healthy snacks and drinks. Remember that sugar will make children have an energy-spike, which may not be ideal for the workshop purposes.
• Watch for indications of the fine line between positive and negative sensations of discomfort. These workshops should ideally take people a bit out of their regular comfort zone, but no-one should feel truly unwell – make sure to give people an out if you get that feeling, offer them a way back to something that feels more natural – by allowing them to explain verbally, or to withdraw a little for example.

The Planners Workshop is intended for a practitioner audience, with the joint objectives of stimulating the creativity of the planners themselves in regards to the way they think about the content of their job, as well as inspiring them to potentially apply such workshop structures in their work, for example during participatory meetings with a wider public. For this purpose, it can be good to point these two objectives out at the start, and highlight the value of the workshop as training for practitioners. You can point to this toolbox for future reference if they are interested in using the method in future.

For the planners workshop, keep in mind to:

• Remind the participants to connect to their intuition, and not be too perfectionist about their drawings or other “artworks”
• Try to find out about projects these practitioners have worked on, as this may help interpret examples they may give.
• Ask for examples from practice during discussions
• Ask for both personal and professional insights, if possible.
• Watch for indications of the fine line between positive and negative sensations of discomfort. These workshops should ideally take people a bit out of their regular comfort zone, but no-one should feel truly unwell – make sure to give people an out if you get that feeling, offer them a way back to something that feels more natural – by allowing them to explain verbally, or to withdraw a little for example.

The Academics Workshop is intended to trigger out-of-the-box thinking among academics who are used to a lot of narrative and often higher technology type of work an engagement. It should allow a bit of a respite from, or challenge to, the tendency of academics to explain and reference a lot. Here, they are invited to connect to their more creative side, and perhaps to an inner child or to their more personal and leisure-based lives rather than their professional expert perspective.

For the academics workshop, keep in mind to:

• Remind the participants to connect to their intuition, and not be too perfectionist about their drawings or other “artworks”.
• Invite palyful engagement with the subject.
• Ask for both personal and professional insights, if possible.
• Watch for indications of the fine line between positive and negative sensations of discomfort. These workshops should ideally take people a bit out of their regular comfort zone, but no-one should feel truly unwell – make sure to give people an out if you get that feeling, offer them a way back to something that feels more natural – by allowing them to explain verbally, or to withdraw a little for example.