The Fundamentals of Creative Facilitation
Fostering open, imaginative and participatory environments
Our next course: Thursday 26 and Friday 27 February 2026, 9am-4pm
With an optional Presence and Practice Day on 6 March 2026
Essentially experimental, creative facilitation brings diverse groups of people together to collaborate, take risks and form meaningful connections. Durham University’s Institute for Medical Humanities is in the unique position of having its own Creative Facilitation Unit.
We know that creative facilitation can make a real difference – from developing new research projects to running meetings more effectively – and we want to spread the skillset.
Whilst we are situated in a university, we know that creative facilitation can be useful in other professional environments and so have developed and delivered this course alongside people working in health, creative industries, and the voluntary sector.
The course is free to attend and includes lunch, refreshments and all course materials.
Led by our Senior Creative Facilitator Mary Robson and Honorary Fellow Dawn Williams from Riverside Associates and Blue Cabin, it introduces creative facilitation and how it can be applied.
We’ll examine methods, attributes, and aspects of creative facilitation that participants will be able to apply in their workplaces. You might want to be a facilitator, or to discover when and why to bring a facilitator in. This course will help you decide, and introduce you to a strong, mutually supportive community of people who use and champion the use of creative facilitation in health and wellbeing contexts.
Attendees will learn some key participative methods and there is an optional third day to give opportunities to further practice them in a supportive and interactive environment.
By the end of this course, participants will:
Be able to identify when and how to use creative facilitation methods.
Have gained confidence in the use of these methods in different contexts.
Have forged links with others keen to discover ways to use creative facilitation in their workplaces.
