Clean Space Fundamentals
Take 4 hours to delve into the essentials of a simple yet powerful coaching process. Experience how different spaces can stimulate various types of thinking and creativity, and learn how to make ‘space’ your co-facilitator.
We often talk about ‘looking at a problem from different angles’. We speak of ‘coming at life from a whole new direction’. We insist, ‘Well, that’s how it looks from where I’m standing!’ Yet if questioned on our choice of phrase, we would likely shrug: ‘It’s just a manner of speaking.’
Clinical psychologist and therapist David Grove wondered what might happen if we were to take phrases like these literally - and physically. What if we were to physically move in three-dimensional space to gain an actual new perspective? Might we learn new information about ourselves and the world we create around us?
David experimented over several years with these ideas, discovering how the new disciplines of self-organisation, networks, and emergence revealed previously unobserved patterns in the process of creativity and problem-solving using space. All this work culminated in the process we now know as Clean Space.
In this focused session, you will get a taste of this extraordinary - yet exquisitely simple - form of clean facilitation, designed to encourage creative emergence in individuals.
Who is it for?
- Coaches, therapists, managers, and anyone who wants to help others to think more creatively
- Leaders who prefer to empower people rather than telling them what to do
- Students of Clean Language and other clean approaches
- People who need to generate new and creative ideas for problem-solving
- Anyone who enjoys learning new tools and different ways of thinking
What’s involved?
The workshop starts with a brief overview of the Clean Space process and its origins in David Grove’s work. You’ll engage in a 'mini Clean Space' session to whet your appetite before witnessing a longer demonstration. This will be followed by a chance for you to have a go in the role of facilitator and client. The session will provide instruction, tips, and a chance to practice, with some guidance and feedback to help you get started. You’ll leave with a foundational understanding of how to use Clean Space techniques to foster creative thinking and problem-solving, including how to facilitate the process online.
During this workshop, you will:
- Discover how to use space as your co-facilitator
- Gain new insights into your own world using the Clean Space system
- Facilitate creative thinking and make transformative changes
- Help someone to emerge their inherent creativity with minimal interference
- Learn to embrace the concept of ‘not-knowing’ - and not needing to know
- Unlock the potential of your imagination and creativity with this powerful introductory session.
It is our imagination and creativity which will open the doors to progress. In the search for [greater] understanding ... we need tools that have not been part of our standard education and experience, tools that will open up the territory of our mind.
Joyce Wycott, author of “Mindmapping - Your Personal Guide to Exploring Creativity and Problem Solving
The problem is never how to get new innovative thoughts into your mind, but how to get the old ones out. Every mind is a room packed with archaic furniture. Make an empty space in any corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it.
Dee Hock, founder and former CEO of Visa
Additional Information
James and Marian’s book, Insights in Space, is required reading for this course.
Frequently asked questions
What is Clean Space?
Clean Space is a facilitation process that emerged out of David Grove's continued search for a way to facilitate clients effectively and efficiently to do the personal work they need to do with the least possible interference from a facilitator.
In a Clean Space session, the facilitator invites the client to find different physical spaces (usually in a room, although it can be anywhere) to represent different aspects of their thinking. The client moves from space to space, pausing in each one to consider what they know there. In this way, they build up a network of connections between the many thoughts, feelings and ideas in their mind and body.
Upcoming events
Clean Space Fundamentals
- Places available
- Wednesday 29 January 2025, 2pm to 6pm GMT
- Online via Zoom
- With Marian Way