Tools + Resources
Design → Develop → Facilitate → Capture → Share
Creative facilitation and engagement is rarely one-size-fits-all. I draw on, adapt and develop tools and resources to help people participate, explore ideas, navigate complexity and turn thinking into action.
Here you'll find a growing collection of my own tools, approaches I regularly draw on, and examples of resources I've developed with organisations.
If your project needs something more specific, I can also work with you to design the process and create the tools, activities or visual resources to support it.
Innovation to Action
A participatory tool for helping individuals and groups think through and shape ideas, actions, products, services or projects.
The overview (right) introduces the framework, while the full tool goes deeper with guiding questions, suggested participatory methods and workshop activities.
I use it to shape discovery days, workshops and resources — from exploring a particular challenge to guiding a whole process towards clear next steps.
Explore the overview — and join my community or work with me to experience more of the tool.
Expand + Shape
A participatory tool for helping individuals and teams recognise and make better use of different creative thinking strengths — from expanding possibilities to shaping clarity and direction.
The overview introduces the two modes, while the full tool includes activities that help teams explore their own tendencies, recognise the value of different approaches and deliberately put both modes to work.
I use Expand + Shape to help teams harness difference, think more widely and develop stronger solutions.
Explore the overview — and join my community or work with me to experience more of the tool.
Tools and resources
I’ve helped create
Over the years I’ve had the chance to develop and collaborate on a wide range of tools and resources — designed to make complex ideas more accessible, support learning and conversation, and help people explore, participate and take action. Here are a few open source examples that might be of interest:
C40 City Academy on Finance + Equity Workbook
A practical learning resource helping city officials explore climate challenges, equity, climate finance and the development of sustainable infrastructure projects.
Explore the workbook project →
Don’t Be Stuck — Cancer Awareness Resources
A community-led cancer awareness resource and animation co-created with HSE and Traveller communities, combining lived experience with accessible information to support earlier conversations and action around health.
Explore the resource →
TARA Trauma-Informed Practice Resources
A co-designed suite of practical resources created with UCC and frontline practitioners to support trauma-informed practice across child and family services.
Explore the resources →
Let’s Sing Together
A series of seven accessible sing-along animations created with HSE for older people, communities, carers and families, using familiar music to encourage connection and participation. Explore the resource →
WWF Innovation Toolkit
A visual toolkit of activities, prompts and approaches create with WWF, helping people move through an innovation and design-thinking process — from understanding a challenge to prototyping and testing ideas. Explore the toolkit →
Headtrip — Hearing Depression
A co-created immersive audio resource supported by Kings College London - Cultural King’s funding, using lived experience and binaural sound to build understanding, empathy and conversation around depression and mental health. Explore the tool →
Visual Storytelling for Climate Action
A flexible collection of visual communication resources created with the TalX network to make complex climate adaptation ideas easier to understand, navigate and communicate. Explore the project →
Imagining2050 — Deliberative Futures Toolkit
A participatory futures toolkit developed with UCC following creative public workshops exploring pathways towards a low-carbon and climate-resilient future. Explore the toolkit →
UNESCO Gender Equality Tutorial
A step-by-step learning resource helping policy-makers, planners and practitioners consider and integrate gender equality within local education policies and activities. Explore the tutorial project →
Engineers Ireland STEPS Learning Materials
A collection of illustrated educational activities and resources designed to help children and young people explore engineering and STEM in engaging and accessible ways. Explore the resources →
Enjoyment to Employment + Route into Work
Programmes, training and learning resources developed with Transport for London and London Transport Museum to help young people explore skills, STEM and routes into transport careers. Explore the programmes →
Tools and resources
I use in my practice:
There are lots of methods, frameworks and communities of practice that influence how I design and facilitate work. These are some of the places I regularly return to for activities, ideas and different ways of approaching participation, collaboration and change.
Liberating Structures
A large collection of facilitation structures designed to involve everybody in a group rather than relying on conventional presentations or open discussion.
Explore Liberating Structures
Design Council
Particularly useful around design thinking, systems thinking and the Double Diamond approach to exploring and responding to challenges.
Explore Design Council
Art of Hosting
Approaches and practices for hosting meaningful conversations, participatory processes and collective work.
Explore Art of Hosting
Presencing Institute – Tools
A collection of methods connected with Theory U, including approaches to listening, sensing, reflection and working with emerging possibilities.
Explore the tools
Collective Imagination Practices Toolkit
Tools for helping groups explore alternative and more hopeful futures through collective imagination, embodied practices, place, ecology and future thinking.
Explore the toolkit
SessionLab Library
A very practical library of workshop activities, facilitation methods and exercises that can be searched and adapted when designing sessions.
Explore SessionLab Library