“Whence came you hither?” asked the golden king.

“Out of the clefts where the gold dwells,” replied the serpent.

“What is more glorious than gold?”

“Light.”

“What is more quickening than light?”

“Conversation.”



From Goethe's “The Green Snake and the Beautiful Lily.”



Goethean Conversation is, in my view, pure applied improvisation.



Here's some more about it:…

Here's my golden rule of applied improvisation:

The skilled applied improviser always improvises the improvisation they are applying.

Inherent in this rule is the notion that, on some occasions, the improvisational step the facilitator will take, will be to break the golden rule.

I've mentioned this because, otherwise, the idea of the word "always" in a golden rule about improvisation might appear to be too fixed and generic. When we decide to NOT improvise, if…

Two Applied Improvisation Facilitators (including your truly) dive deeply into facilitation, leadership, heroes, myths and change. Comments welcome. We'll be adding to these and I'd be very up for recording similar skype chats with interested AIN members. What might we explore? (The link opens an audio player). Here's the link.

Facilitation (and therapy), at its worst (and this I believe is very widespread) is when the participants are simply an occasion for the facilitator to engage in a self-conversation. Too many facilitators are in an often sub-conscious self-conversation, as are groups of facilitators. The workshop becomes a fake excuse for self-validating, self-healing, self-boost, and self-justification. And, one day, we will recognise it as a form of abuse, perhaps even a crime against…

Thought for the day: If your inner conversation sounds like a strategy, the chances are you'll soon become a victim of your own tactics. Inner conversations should feel more like poetic dialogue, like music, and sometimes like a rollicking good drama.

I believe that status games still have a role to play in applied improvisation, as long as we remove the concept of "status" from them.

Status is an outdated idea that belongs to tired old hierarchies. They mostly still exist in Applied Improvisation work because facilitators like running the activities, and a lot of client organisations are keen to maintain the collusion that tired old hierarchies bring.

Status has even come to mean something quite different…

Do be do be do.

Below are some thoughts and reflections on Improvisation which I hope will offer Applied Improvisers a different take on the core of what we are about.

I'd be very interested in your reactions and comments. These thoughts have arisen from experimental work in improvisation over the last couple of years and I've taken the liberty of writing in a particular style that gives me a lot of permission to raid the loft and the cellar of my…

I'd like to distinguish between a state of joyfulness that can arise in an improvisation activity and the kind of sometimes bordering on hysterial "euphoria" that can also arise.

Many "improv" games are inherently designed to elicit laughter and smiles. This is no bad thing per se. However, there is a danger that the comedy element and its associated giggles can take over from the core purpose of the activity, which may well be more profound than the eliciting of…