Let's Draw It
Everyone draws the same shape. Nobody ends up with the same picture.
You put one simple shape on the wall and the whole room draws it, which takes four seconds and produces forty identical circles. Then you ask them to turn that circle into something beautiful, keeping the circle. What comes back is forty completely different pictures from one identical start, which is the entire point and needs no explaining afterwards.
You'll see a simple shape. Draw it. Then turn that same shape into something beautiful and creative. I may give you another shape for a second round.
You want a quiet, thinking activity rather than a loud one — and anywhere the day is about ideas, difference or approaching the same brief differently.
Props: Paper and a pen each
Run this when…
If none of these is your room, pick another.Before a session on creativity, ideation or problem-solving
A calm break in a day that has been all talking
A workshop where everybody has the same brief and different answers
How to run it
Written to be glanced at mid-room, not memorised.
- Check everyone has paper and something to write with before you start.
- Put the shape up. "Draw this." It should take seconds.
- "Now turn it into something beautiful. Keep the shape — it has to still be in there."
- Two or three minutes. Say nothing while they work.
- Ask them to hold their paper up all at once. The wall of different answers is the moment.
- Pick three or four and ask what they made.
- For a second round, change the shape in setup and run it again.
Running it well
Only the host sees these. Participants never do.
- Pick the dullest shape you can. A circle produces more variety than anything clever, because there is nothing in it to follow.
- Do not show an example. One example and half the room draws a version of it.
- "I can't draw" comes up every time. Say nobody is being judged and that stick figures are a legitimate answer, then move on rather than reassuring at length.
- Everyone holding their paper up at the same moment is what makes it land. Do not go round the room one at a time.
Watch out for
Space, safety and the traps worth knowing before you start.
- Paper and pens are the only props in this set — check them before the session, not as it starts.
- Anyone who finds drawing genuinely uncomfortable can describe in words what they would have drawn.
Already seated
Nobody has to stand for this one.
Designed for tables — paper and a pen each, and nobody leaves their chair.
If you want a debrief
Optional. Plenty of energisers are better left as the thing that woke the room up.
- Same shape, forty different pictures. What does that say about the brief we all get given?
Run it yourself
Free for thirty days, no card. Put it on the projector and step through it — nobody in the room needs a phone.
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- Where
- Needs a room
- Props
- Paper and a pen each
- Big screen
- Required
- Teams
- Individual only