Podcast – Building Insights Brick by Brick: Lego Serious Play

Voice Over:

The Dementia Researcher Podcast, talking careers, research, conference highlights, and so much more.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

Welcome to the Dementia Researcher Podcast. Today, we are talking about creativity, collaboration, and a rather unexpected research tool, LEGO. We'll be learning how LEGO Serious Play can be used in academic research, particularly within dementia and neurodegenerative disease studies.

Hello, I'm Dr. Volkmer, your host for this episode. I'm a speech and language therapist and researcher at University College London, and I work closely with people living with dementia. So, I'm always looking for ways to better understand their experiences, which is why I'm excited to explore this innovative and engaging approach, which is often used therapeutically in speech and language therapy amongst paediatric therapists.

But I'm excited to talk about using it with adults in research. So, joining me today are three brilliant researchers, Dr. Warren Donnellan from the University of Liverpool, our expert on LEGO Serious Play, and a trained facilitator. We also have Dr. Alys Griffiths from the University of Sheffield who's used this method in a dementia research study. And Dr. Joe Langley from Sheffield Hallam University who combines design thinking with creative methods, like LEGO Serious Play in health and social care research.

So, let's start with a quick hello from each of you. Could you please introduce yourselves and tell us a little bit about your work? So, let's start with Warren.

Dr Warren Donnellan:

Thank you, Anna. Yeah, I'm a senior lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Liverpool. I've worked there for coming up to 14 years. Well, starting off during my PhD. My research is very much around dementia care, mostly looking at the experience of unpaid carers, but more recently paid carers. And I do a lot of work around the concept of resilience as well, how people manage and negotiate stress.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

Fantastic. Thank you, Warren. Alys, tell us a bit about yourself.

Dr Alys Griffiths:

Hi, yeah, I'm Alys. I work at the University of Sheffield broadly looking at the experiences of living with long-term neurological conditions such as MND and dementia. And prior to working in Sheffield, I worked in Liverpool, which is where I met Warren, and we started thinking about how we could use creative methods in research with people with dementia.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

Super. Thank you. And Joe.

Dr Joe Langley:

Thank you, Anna. So, my name is Joe Langley. I'm a design engineer and I'm a researcher at Sheffield Hallam University. I have been exploring the use of creative methods in relation to participatory research and co-design for many years. I trained as a LEGO Serious Play facilitator back in 2013/14, and have trained others since, specifically for use within research contexts. My work isn't dementia-focused specifically, I've got to say. I have done some work with people with dementia and people with other neurodegenerative diseases, but it's far broader than that.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

Oh, welcome. Thank you very much for introducing yourselves.

So, Warren, could you start us off by explaining what exactly Lego Serious Play is and where it actually came from?

Dr Warren Donnellan:

Yeah, sure. So, it started off life as a strategic planning tool, a facilitation tool, and I think it came out of the International Institute for Management Development in Switzerland, although don't quote me on that, but, yeah, it's about facilitation. It's about modelling to understand complex concepts. So, it works best when there's more than one answer. So, within psychology, for example, we often have lots of abstract questions that we're trying to gain answers to. So, yeah, it is a facilitation tool where we use modelling, we use principles of storytelling and metaphor to find solutions or potential answers to complex questions.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

Fantastic. And why is it different from other methodologies, other kind of creative or participatory crawl methods?

Dr Warren Donnellan:

Well, the reality is it shares lots of similar principles and the LEGO Serious Play method, as I'm sure Joe can attest to with his training as well, it's a very robust structured approach, whereas it can be used flexibly, so not under the guise of Serious Play, but LEGO, these kinds of creative methods. As you said, there are lots of similar principles, but I think what's unique about LEGO is, I think in the age of digital technology, there's something really refreshing about having something tangible to touch. I mean, I've got some LEGO with me here from my ...

There's something really nice about having something in front of you that you can touch and that you can see and play ... Using these artefacts, I mean, I'm not a neuroscientist, but it definitely activates parts of the brain that are not activated just for a standard conversation.

So, we can do interviews, we can do focus groups within research, but there's something unique about having this in front of you and it can really act as like a shared language where we're not relying on people to ... perhaps don't have the words to describe certain experiences, but actually through the process of touch and storytelling, as I said earlier, they can find answers to questions that they perhaps wouldn't have had previously. So, that's what's unique about it for me.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

And maybe this is a question for both you and Joe. If I was coming to participate in a LEGO Serious Play session, what would I be actually doing?

Dr Joe Langley:

Typically, there's a process of skills building that starts off with, so it's familiarising people with the material, the media, and the typical process and form. So, you go round and there's a series of questions and everyone builds something in response to a specific question. And then once everyone's finished, they then use their model to articulate some of their thinking and a key push or nudge to people is not to think of an answer and then build something in response, but to build whilst they're thinking.

So, it's that idea, I guess, that something around the process of making and building is distracting part of your conscious brain that allows some of your unconscious thoughts to come forward, and then you use the media to help you communicate that.

So, it has those two functions. It has to help you think and then help you share your thinking, and I think that's ... And as you build up familiarity with people, you then start to get into the tough questions, the more complex stuff, and the process can evolve in many different directions from that point onwards where you begin to combine different models for different people and begin to build shared understanding and shared models and so on. But there are various options and routes it can take from that point onwards.

Dr Warren Donnellan:

I think that's where the magic happens, if I can use that word, because I'm speaking to a colleague who I've trained who was using it in her teaching and she was saying, you start playing and you don't really know what you're doing, and as Joe said, you end up building something that you would never have thought of. So, that's absolutely key, what Joe just said, is just build. You just start building. Don't overthink it. And, yeah, that process of everyone builds, everyone should get stuck in with it.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

I was at a conference recently. It was the NIHR conference, actually. It was in November. It wasn't that recently. And they got everyone there, all the attendees to do LEGO in response to a question ... I think it was, where do you see your research going in 5 or 10 years? And some people were perhaps a bit more sceptical about the magic. How do you deal with that when people are a bit more sceptical about the magic?

Dr Warren Donnellan:

I can chip in. The reality is this isn't for everyone. These kinds of methodologies, they do break the mould. I've tried to implement it within our psychology curriculum, for example, which I appreciate is different from the research. It's difficult because you've got different styles, different people, different experiences. So, I don't force it on anyone. It's a tool at the end of the day. It's another option.

But, yeah, I think what I try to do is get people in the room, get people trying it. It sells itself, doesn't it? Everyone's familiar with LEGO. Everyone knows what it is. Completely ubiquitous. Getting people in a room, showing them rather than telling them, in my experience, is the most effective way of doing that.

Dr Joe Langley:

I think I would agree. But there's different kinds of scepticism or fear or resistance that I find. So, we've done some of this recently in public health sector with local authority people and they have a huge fear of ... They closed the curtains and don't want people looking in. There's this fear of the perception of people seeing public money and time being used in this way, whereas with other people it's a scepticism about the method and they see it as an away day where it's not really serious.

So, there is a bit of work to be done to overcome some of that, and some of that is how the method is introduced and set up for the day. And the fact that people are paying money, often, for us to come here and facilitate these sessions or is part of a research programme and a research process that's been funded by an external funder and there's a track record that we can point to of various pieces of success that we've had in the past, but also just telling people, if you don't invest in this, then you won't get as much out.

So, it's up to you. It is partly your responsibility to involve yourself meaningfully and people who don't ... We've had situations where real sceptics will ... Someone built a model over the singularity because they didn't want to engage in ... They couldn't grasp it or get it. And the process going, okay, well, that's your contribution.

It moves on. And they kind of marginalise themselves from the process, whereas everyone else kind of contributes and gets stuff out of it. And so, they become the outsider because of their own actions and the way that they're contributing, and it becomes obvious to everyone. You don't need to say it or point it out or anything.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

It's a bit like not taking a turn in a conversation, isn't it? I guess, they've excluded themselves from the conversation, basically. Yeah, that's so interesting. Alys, I know you've used LEGO Serious play and other creative methods in your dementia and neurodegenerative research. How's that worked? What kind of insights has this work helped you uncover that you don't think you would've uncovered through other methodologies?

Dr Alys Griffiths:

The first time that I used this method was when we were doing a World Cafe approach for trying to understand how we could improve psychotherapy and counselling for people living with dementia. And Warren and I were working together on that, and we were trying to put together co-production workshops that had lots of different options for people, particularly with dementia who might not want to communicate verbally or might not be able to communicate verbally in a way that would work within a larger conversation.

So, we were really trying to think how could we offer as many different options as possible for people that would play to their different strengths.

And so, Warren mentioned LEGO Serious Play as something we could incorporate, and I think pretty much everyone was on board immediately, partly given Warren's sales pitch, which you can imagine having just seen that introduction and overview. But for me, it worked even better than I was anticipating. So, I thought it would be good.

I thought we'd get a couple of people, like Joe said, saying, oh, it's not for me. And the way that we'd set up the room with lots of different tables meant that if it wasn't for someone, they never had to go down that end of the room. So, we had given people kind of an opt-out, but I don't think from memory there was anyone who didn't at least go to the table. So, some people went, had a look, weren't sure, hovered around a little bit, and then maybe after five minutes sat down or went to get themselves something to eat, then came back, passed it again, had a little look at what people were doing and then sat down.

I think the real strength that it had for me was that it allowed people to share something, so the people were sharing their, I guess, own experiences with therapy or with poor mental health following dementia diagnosis that may have been helped through some form of therapy. And I felt that people were a lot more open on that table than they were on the other table. So, we had other things for them to do.

So, there was a creative task around what the ideal healthcare professional therapist looked like, a kind of family tree thing where people described who was important to them, who they were, put them on a tree and a couple of other more verbally based conversations.

But actually, where we got people really, I guess, opening up and speaking about what had been really difficult and exactly how dementia had contributed to them feeling at times sad, at times anxious, at times worried, came from them creating these models and most people placed themselves in the model somewhere and talking about how their dementia affected that. So, I felt that we got a lot more personal and in-depth responses from people that I just wasn't anticipating at all.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

The way you are describing it's almost like a communication aid, isn't it? I guess. And it puts everybody ... I'm glad you prefaced it by saying that this is a tool where some people with dementia or neurodegenerative disease might not have linguistic, speech, communication skills, but do participants need any particular skills or preparation to take part? I think, Joe, you started talking about the preparation component, but how does that work?

Dr Joe Langley:

The method is ... if you follow the methods quite religiously, there is a skills building component to the introduction sessions and it's not ... it's quite substantive. So, it should take an hour or so to properly go into the skills building element and build familiarity and comfort with the method. I mean, going to Alys' point, I think, and your point about communicating, our perspectives are made up of two components.

There's how we perceive the world through our senses and how we conceive the world with our mind, and if we just use words or texts, spoken words, we can only ever the person hearing or listening can only ever use their imagination to try to understand what we're trying to communicate. As soon as we use a thing to help augment that, then we're beginning to engage people's perception and conception to be able to understand what we are trying to communicate.

So, you're immediately beginning to enhance and amplify the ability to transmit and receive whatever it is that you are trying to share. And that applies to all forms of creative media, not just LEGO. So, whether it's performative stuff ... So, Augusto Boal had the Forum Theatre, so where you use performance to help people communicate and share and understand as well.

And we've done I think a UK Knowledge Mobilisation Forum where we had LEGO, we had Plasticine on another table, we had cardboard and pipe cleaners and other creativity media on another, and we followed a LEGO Serious Play method at each table. So, the only difference was the media. And I think in those kind of conditions, there isn't much variation between them. With all of them, there's these connotations of playfulness, there's the connotations of taking people back to a childhood perhaps, and all of that helps people to look at the world in a different way.

So, they look at their own experiences in a different way to look at whatever it is they're trying to communicate in a different way, and then the media helps them to share that as well. So, I think that's if we keep on looking at these challenges and problems and experiences in the same way we're going to get the same answers and same responses.

We've got to start looking at them differently, both individually and together, and then we can start to explore different solutions to different answers. And that, I think, starts with how we think and communicate and share them and using different media from LEGO through to performance and lots of other things to be able to do that.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

So, you can look through different lenses. And what I like about the way you were describing that was using the word together because I'm mindful that with lots of people with dementia, they're often excluded from research activities because they cannot ... like coming back to the verbal component, I know you're saying other people need to use their imagination, but many people with dementia just cannot get those words out.

Whereas this is a levelling field. I can see that it's from a power perspective makes an equal playing field. So, would you say, Alys, that you can genuinely involve people living with dementia in this type of therapy? Were there any adaptations that you made in that research study that you described?

Dr Alys Griffiths:

So, I guess I've not got the same experience as Warren and Joe to know how it might work with other populations, but, for us, when people spoke about their models and described to us what they'd created, because researchers and their family members had been involved throughout, that was more of a collaborative summary together.

So, I guess in the way that in an interview you might expect the person to give you all the information in response to a question, this felt like, as a table, the people around them could support them and help them find those words or sometimes give some of those words for them and kind of discuss together how they'd got to what was then the model that was then in front of them, which, for me, felt again, a real strength of us being able to support people to share what they wanted to in a way that clearly made them feel comfortable.

That said, everybody who took part in those workshops didn't have any muscle weakness in their hands. We didn't have anybody who maybe had Parkinson's and had tremors, so there wasn't anything physically for anyone that prevented them. There was a couple of people who I think had some problems with arthritis and maybe were supported to do the physical building, but I found that to kind of increase the collaboration.

So, they were almost instructing their family member who maybe spent a lot of time caring for them. The person with dementia was then telling them off in a kind of hearted way for placing things in the wrong place. So, I think in terms of power, in some ways, it can give power back to the person. And with dementia then instructing the person who is now traditionally instructing them on doing something, which, yeah, I really enjoyed.

And Warren and I stood in the corner kind of for a few minutes just seeing joy on a table, which was lovely. And for me, I was quite anxious that people were going to worry about it being a bit kind of infantilizing or ... I think there is that real concern when you do creative methods with people with dementia that you don't want anyone to think that you're assuming they can't communicate or you're assuming they can't remember. So, for us to stand on the side and kind of just observe people really enjoying themselves whilst also knowing that this was research was really exciting for me.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

Well, I was going to ask a stupid question, and you can probably answer it in the thing you were going to say, and that is ... So, I have teenagers and we've gone through DUPLO and LEGO, and we now have DUPLO and LEGO, even though they're kind of mid-teens, they still combine DUPLO and Lego together. Do you ever use DUPLO as well, because that's bigger?

Dr Joe Langley:

We do. Yeah. Yeah. So, I think picking up on a couple of Alys' points, we've worked with people who have peripheral neuropathy. We've worked with people who are blind. We've worked with people who have Parkinson's and it's never a problem. Sometimes, there is a need for someone to work with someone else but under their instruction, but they don't even have to put LEGO bricks together.

You can place them out and arrange them on a tabletop to make some kind of picture, if you will, or model. So, it doesn't need to be stacked on top of each other and combined in one way. But the power thing I think is super, super interesting. In research particularly we've found this, so where we have consultants and professors and PhD students and people lived experience, there is something about the unfamiliarity of the method to everyone is levelling. So, there's no one who is more or less expert in the room in terms of using LEGO apart from the facilitator.

So, that equal unfamiliarity is a huge kind of levelling bit for the research side that we found, and it has an extraordinary value to it. We face the same kind of concerns that Alys talked about as well with some people being concerned about the childish nature of it. But that goes back to the point we discussed earlier as well, about how people begin to exclude themselves if they don't engage.

And I think sometimes it's one of the points is we will try to have an alternative method or media because if there are enough people who don't engage with it, you're then on a hiding to nothing with the session and it could be wasted if you don't have a backup plan. But we've never had to do that. So, it's always just a reserve plan that's never really brought into use.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

Well, that kind of feeds nicely into the next question I wanted to ask about challenges and limitations. I can just imagine there might be ... I can imagine my son doing this, just deciding, well, I'm going to build the Star Wars Death Star, not do the actual ... Do you ever have that kind of opposite experience where people start building something and they haven't really engaged with the topic? Or is that just me envisaging my child in that context?

Dr Warren Donnellan:

That's why it's important to have an initial briefing session where you just make sure everyone's on the same page because there are certain principles that kind of need to be followed, regardless of whether you're following it by the book or whether you're using it more flexibly. And when I first started the training, which is very intensive, surprisingly intensive training for what it was, I was doing it very literally. As you said, Anna, it was like we had to build up something that represented who we were.

So, I went straight to the mini-figure and built me as an actual person, and by the end of the training it got very abstract and there were trees to represent growth and bridges to represent connection. So, I think what people default to, particularly when they're nervous, is that kind of literal a person is a person.

So, we've never had a Death Star yet, but we do see that kind of, if in doubt, just build something that feels really tangible and familiar. So, sometimes, it's about giving people the confidence, whether that be through an icebreaker, whether that be through the briefing, milling around the room, sometimes sitting next to someone, giving them the confidence to think outside the box and to show them as well. I've got stuck in myself a few times just kind of rooting through the LEGO just to show that, yes, there's a facilitator, but we're in it together, which comes back to that power thing.

And the other thing I just want to say, I think it's so important, what everyone said is that collaboration is important. So, while you do start at the individual level, actually, you can see it grow. And then, again, the magic is when people look across the table and realise that someone has had the same idea that they have and, oh, you're doing a bridge, or there's something about bridging, oh, you've done flowers in a garden.

What is it about that? So, it's seeing that look on people's faces, particularly in the context of dementia or neurodegenerative disease. You can see, as Joe was saying, I think, thought processes being made tangible in front of your eyes. So, I just wanted to underpin that as well. But yeah, it's that literal moving away from that towards the more abstract level is quite challenging, sometimes.

Dr Joe Langley:

I think that's where the insight comes, isn't it? Because if each of us have an experience of something, we don't know it's significant until someone says, oh, I've had a similar experience. And when you get that sharing and there's like everyone's having a similar experience, but framing is like, oh, there's something really that's insight. That's what the methods ... when you start that sharing and start that combining, that's the part of it where it becomes everyone's face lights up, and as you said, Warren, it's why it's done like that.

So, you can find the ways of uncovering those ... what people individually will often reduce to ... it's just a normal everyday thing for me.

It's become normalised for them, but they don't realise its significance until, suddenly there's a whole bunch of other people saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's kind of similar or common with a group of people.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

That speaks to the concept of metaphor that you were discussing earlier, Warren, doesn't it?

Dr Warren Donnellan:

It does. There's a phrase that I learned on the training, which was everybody's monkey is important, which I thought what? But it basically means that ... That's another challenge is actually particularly ... Well, even working with students as I often do, is that level of making sure that everyone has a voice and an opportunity to tell their story and there are logistical challenges to that as well.

Having enough time, enough space, enough tables, enough facilitators, so that if you're going to do it, you kind of need to do it properly and thoroughly. So, making sure that everyone has a chance to speak in a really inclusive way.

There are logistical challenges to that as well. And luckily the method is flexible enough that it can be used in a short form, in a slightly longer form.

And then the only other thing I wanted to say as well, because it reminded me is there's a tendency when you are describing and telling these stories to over-interpret, and, especially the psychologists among us, there's always someone who starts psychoanalysing what something might mean on a really deep level or someone else will chip in even worse and start going, oh, do you not think that might mean this?

And that on the training we were told, no, that's bad. We need say what you see.

Just to quote the catchphrase. Roy Walker. You've got to say what you see, and then we can become more abstract. But again, people tend to jump to that really abstract psychoanalytical level, which can be quite humorous in the room, but yet, as a facilitator, you've got to rein that in. So, these are not serious challenges. They're not insurmountable challenges, but these things do come up during the sessions.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

So, how do you analyse the work that people produce? How might a researcher interpret the outcome of a LEGO Serious Play session, so to speak?

Dr Alys Griffiths:

I'm in the trenches of this at the moment, trying to work out how to present the findings, because what I want to do is share all the photos of the models because they are so fantastic. But if you try to present ... I don't know ... 20 models with 20 narratives that is no longer a paper and is now a monograph with pictures. And so, what we've been trying to do is think about how we can present this in a way that highlights and focuses and centres the person with dementia's voice without giving too much to an individual story in a way that wouldn't combine with a narrative of co-production approach in general, if that makes sense?

So, we've been analysing the recordings of people talking through what's in their model and looking at the interplay between the conversations and the ways that people support each other.

And I will probably include a couple of pictures as well if I can, because I just think you can describe them as much as you want but actually seeing them feels much more meaningful. So, I guess we've been trying to embed them into a broader kind of thematic or framework analysis with them being a part of a larger set of tasks within a workshop.

But we had a very clear aim from those workshops, which was to create core competencies for psychotherapists. So, the output is very specific, and so what we wanted to do with our analysis is describe how people talking about their experiences gave us a clear ... or sometimes very much unclear competency for therapists, if that makes sense?

Dr Anna Volkmer:

Yeah. Totally. I'm looking forward to reading this paper. Joe, you must have a lot more experience with doing analysis. Is thematic analysis and framework analysis just one tool to analyse? Are there other tools that people use?

Dr Joe Langley:

I guess, the models themselves have a limitation, and this goes to your previous question about limitation of lessons, outside of the actual session. So, they are a meaning-making product for the people in the room at the time. And even if you have a session that's split over two days, you come back into the room the next morning and the model's still on the table, the meaning is not the same. It's changed already.

So, it's very temporal. And I think understanding that as a limitation of the method is really important because when you take those images out, or even a video recording of someone describing a shared model and you've got their voice and they're pointing at different parts of the model saying "this means that", it doesn't mean very much to people outside of that session, outside of the room. So, the text, and going to my previous point about the use of written or spoken words to augmented by things, I think that has a very temporal component to it.

When you begin to have abstract things, an artistic representation of research evidence that sits outside, it doesn't mean anything to anyone else. So, I think that the text at that point becomes paramount when you're trying to share the understanding of this and the analysis and interpretation. But the shared understanding that you go through within the method in the session is the start of that analysis.

That's people co-producing a form of analysis of what those models mean. So, recording that and then any additional analysis we have to be open and transparent that that's no longer co-production. That's a research of doing analysis on the kind of co-produced initial analysis form product that comes out of the session. And I think to be transparent about what is co-production and what is not, that should be made clear, but then a whole range of different forms, depending on your method and your epistemology, you can use different forms of analysis depending on what you're trying to find out.

So, it is not prescriptive to one ... Narrative forms of analysis obviously favoured the kind of content that comes out, but that's not everyone's worldview. It depends on what they're trying to achieve, I guess.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

That was really useful. It made so much sense where you described that initial verbal discussion of the models in the session as being the initial analysis. I think that's really helpful in terms of ... I'm sure that's helpful for Alys in terms of writing up, but I can see that's helpful also in terms of people designing and implementing this type of research, and it brings me to this idea that I'm sure there'll be lots of early career researchers who are considering using these creative methods. What advice would you give them? Are there any resources or training opportunities you'd mentioned here?

Dr Warren Donnellan:

Yeah, there are lots. I did mine through a kind of higher education lens. So, my course, mine was a three-day intensive online course aimed at using it within higher education settings. But as we've discussed, there's so many parallels and so many applications for it. So, I'm sure we could link the listeners up to some resources in that respect. But, yeah, it's a simple Google search of LEGO Serious Play. There's lots of stuff, lots of literature to read. A lot of it is open access. So, that would be a good starting point.

Dr Joe Langley:

Yeah, I would agree entirely. I think for LEGO Serious Play, specifically, there were a lot of options. The method was made open source by LEGO, I think, back in 2013 or something, I think. And there were a number of really good facilitators who've done some kind of interesting evolutions of the method as well. So, one of the ones ... a couple of colleagues in my team had a facilitator training recently, and there was some super interesting stuff around in the skills building component of the sessions, how we develop skills specifically around storytelling and use of metaphor.

So, overcoming some of the things that I think Warren was alluding to is not overcoming them categorically, but trying to mitigate against them. And I think that's relevant as well. We've tried using LEGO Serious Play with people that have neurodiversity, and, for some people, the challenge of metaphor is quite significant.

So, they often default to literal models of literal stuff, which becomes quite different in the way that the narrative components then build up and you develop insights and all of that's really interesting. I don't have any answers, and it's just kind of stuff to be explored. I think for my biggest piece of advice to people would have a go and collaborate. Collaborate with people and learn from them.

Collaborate with people by learning through doing. That's one of the kind of biggest piece of advice I would suggest. I think for wider creative methods beyond LEGO Serious Play, there are some options available. I was at the NIHR conference, I think you were referring to, Anna, and we did a session the day before and after around creating methods and used a whole bunch of games and cartoons and comics and exhibitions and all sorts of stuff in that, and how they can all be used in participatory forms of research.

And we do ... I mean, we provide bespoke training for some of the NIHR arcs and other parts of the infrastructure, but there are many, many others. I'm not trying to sell our stuff. There are people all over the country and finding, for me, I think that collaboration with people local to you is really important because meeting face-to-face and doing these things face-to-face and in person with people is really, really, really important.

So, whether you're in North Wales and working in Bangor or wherever it might be, find people local to you and just try stuff out. And there is literature out there as well, and there are training courses, but I suggest get stuck in.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

That's super advice. Thank you.

So, we are nearly out of time, but let's end with ... this is going to be somewhat of a cardinal sin, I think, but we're going to ask a lighter question. If LEGO made a mini figure of you as a researcher, what accessories would it come with? Let's start with Alys.

Dr Alys Griffiths:

Oh, no. It would come with a dog. It would come with running shoes and a piano.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

Ooh. That's-

Dr Alys Griffiths:

It'd be quite a big accessory bag.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

Warren?

Dr Warren Donnellan:

Well, I've actually ... this is me. So, I made this in the Leicester Square LEGO shop about four years ago. I'm not sure how well you can see it. I like wearing a hat, so-

Dr Anna Volkmer:

Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Dr Warren Donnellan:

He's got glasses. He's got a cap on. This isn't a sword. This is an umbrella because it was raining on the day.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

Very good.

Dr Warren Donnellan:

But besides that, there'd be some cats around. I like to meditate and stuff like that, so there'd be a cushion for me to sit on. I also like running, so ... I don't know. I might be kind of in motion, might be in motion or something like that.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

I love that. Joe?

Dr Joe Langley:

You know the craze that's going around about creating little toy figures? Someone did that for me recently, one of my collaborators on a different project, and they stuck me with a MacBook and ... I can't remember. There was a couple of other things, which I suppose iconically design-ish, but I don't think that kind of ... if I had my own choice, I think I'd go with the dog as well.

I've got my ... I'm going to take him out for a walk when we finish this, but he's a big part of my life, I think. I obviously wouldn't have any wig or hair on my mini figure.

But, yeah, I think maybe something that represented a 3D printer or something like that as well because we print other stuff. We've actually got a guy in our team at the moment who works part-time with us and also works making bespoke LEGO figures. So, I'll see if I can ask him to ... If you send me what you want, I'll get one for each of us. And you can take photographs of them and put them on the podcast thing as well.

Well, yeah, just, we'll see what we can do. It is a side business, so I'd have to work out how it would get him ... but that's what he does. He paints and produces bespoke LEGO figures as a sideline.

Dr Anna Volkmer:

Well, then I might add mine. So, I would have glasses, obviously, also running shoes. But I don't know if you've noticed how much I like to talk. So, I'd probably have to have loads of attached speech bubbles because that kind of is my profession, and I've really enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much to my guests, Warren, Alys, and Joe.

If you'd like to learn more about LEGO Serious Play, check out the episode notes for links and hopefully our photo of our four mini figures that we are planning. They'll also be resources, blogs, and guest bios. But for now, I'm Dr. Anna Volkmer and you've been listening to the Dementia Researcher Podcast. Bye, everybody.

Dr Alys Griffiths:

Bye.

Voice Over:

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