Facilitation
I use creativity and curiosity to help people collaborate better.
As a creative facilitator I run workshops that can offer meaningful, structured space to collectively explore issues and build shared understanding. These can range from interactive sessions for public audiences with collaborative group exercises, or much more bespoke, carefully crafted sessions for organisations who need space to think, process, solve problems and find shared purpose.
My facilitation style is playful at heart but paired with clarity and structure, and everyone’s knowledge and experience is invited and valued. I specialise in helping people delve into the messy process of Co-Production, using effective facilitation practices and an interactive tool called The Co-Production Oracle that I created with the University of Exeter.
You can find out more about the card deck, and the principles of Co-Production, here.
Recent facilitation work and testimonials:
My collaborator Ella Harris and I have been working with the Data Stories project at Maynooth University on a year-long residency throughout 2025. Our role as artists is to work closely with researchers within the project, looking at two case studies which explore different themes within housing data in Ireland. We will be producing two creative pieces, one per case study, to translate the findings of the research into engaging formats.
The first case study is in partnership with the Central Statistics Office (CSO) and focuses on gaps and silences in housing data. For this we ran 2 workshops at the CSO headquarters with more than 50 housing experts, policy makers and academics, to explore the idea of data gaps using the metaphor of solar systems and space travel. We asked attendees to map the knowns and unknowns of the housing data solar system in small groups and audio-recorded their conversations over a total of 11 hours of workshop time. This audio was transcribed, and from these transcriptions we are extracting narratives about data gaps, to create a digital comic that explores the issues raised, through the metaphor of space travel.
The second case study focuses on commodity narratives and desire within housing data, and for this we will be producing an i-Doc that takes the form of a property listings website, with interactive games that invite the audience to engage with questions about desire, and choice.
Co-Production training workshops - Brigstow Institute, University of Bristol
I facilitate free half-day workshops for the Brigstow Institute multiple times per year, that invite researchers, members of the local community and artists to work collaboratively to explore the core principles of co-production.
“Working with Hannah has been a fantastic experience. She has introduced us to the Oracle cards which are a brilliant resource for challenging mixed research teams about their values and principles in a playful and engaging way. We have used the cards as a team in various different contexts and they never cease to delight us! Hannah has also facilitated workshops for us - both with researchers, artists and community members before they apply to us for funding and for teams that are funded. She explains co-production in accessible and interesting ways and has a wealth of participatory experience which she brings to workshops. Her approach is engaging, fun, thoughtful and gently provocative in ways that make participants feel challenged but carefully held - which is incredibly skilful. We have ongoing work planned with Hannah and would not hesitate in recommending her to new clients.
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https://www.bristol.ac.uk/brigstow/ I designed ‘Playing Human’ as a workshop format that uses games mechanics to help participants grapple with what it means to live a ‘successful’ human life.
The workshop offers a half or full day in-person experience to groups between 10 - 25 people, and is based around playful, fun interactive activities. It uses mechanisms like a wheel of fortune, flags, points, and fast collaborative problem solving, to open up big existential questions in a way that is surreal and absurd.
I offer a half-day training workshop (often co-facilitated with the brilliant brain of Ella Harris) that is designed for early career researchers or anyone working in research that is curious about how to bring in arts practice in generative, meaningful ways. Participants are invited to learn about the key elements of arts based research and how it can be applied at all stages of the research cycle; try out some creative methods through hands-on introductions e.g. to Blackout Poetry, and critique real examples of arts based research to understand how the principles can be put into practice.
This project focused on sharing different knowledge and experience about flood risk in the Topsham Ward community, bringing together residents, community leaders, and experts-by-experience to produce personalised creative knowledge maps.
Myself and Hannah Hayes (a researcher specialising in flooding) co-facilitated a creative space for local people to explore their feelings and experiences of flooding and how floods are managed, and the potential impact of climate change on this local area.
We used map making and creativity as a way for people to share their different perspectives.
Read a summary of the project (with photos and quotes) here and listen to our podcast episode at the CreativeArc website.
I worked with the Dialogue Centre at Aberystwith University to produce ‘A Collage of Dialogue’, a printable toolkit that provides a simple step-by-step guide to running a two-hour workshop where collage making is used as a way of exploring political, social and economic challenges. The toolkit was launched at the Hay Festival in May 2024, and is offered in both English and Welsh language versions.
In order to design and produce this toolkit, I worked with the research team at Aberystwith University closely to understand the research around using collage as a methodology within deliberative conversations, for instance at citizens’ assemblies. I ran a series of online workshops for the research team and project contributors to collectively envision a toolkit that would bring to life the research in a way that made it accessible and replicable for a public audience. This involved mapping the purpose, content and user journey through a series of collaborative exercises (see screenshot on the left for an idea of what the mapping process looked like in MIRO).
I then designed and illustrated the toolkit with ongoing input from the team.
“We have loved collaborating with Hannah as part of our recent project on co-production for food systems transformation. Hannah is an incredible arts-based practitioner who puts creativity at the heart of everything she does, and she brought a unique and innovative slant to our project delivery and outputs. This involved the design and facilitation of fun and thought-provoking workshops, tailored perfectly to our needs for this project including a diverse range of activities ensuring all participants could contribute to discussions. Hannah also produced some beautiful illustrations for the online resources we developed from our project, which ensured these key outputs were truly unique and eye-catching. Having someone like Hannah on the team meant that we were able to reflect more deeply (using her amazing ‘co-production oracle’ cards as tools) and this resulted in us considering some complex issues in a very different way. She really gets it! I think every academic should be working with someone like Hannah, to shed traditional fixed ways of thinking and bring a spark of playfulness to fully embrace authentic social impact.
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https://www.plymouth.ac.uk/research/synergy
“Working with Hannah was a delight. She facilitated a collaborative workshop on co-design with skill and care, carefully guiding the group through complex concepts and questions, ensuring that all voices were heard. After the workshop, she sifted through copious notes and produced a series of beautiful images that captured some of the foundational ideas that were raised by the group. We are still using these images to communicate the vision of the group, and to help foster our sense of shared identity and purpose.
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University of Exeter Critical Friends Network
“Hannah is my favourite kind of artist – highly original in her thinking, brilliant skilled in her making, and a reassuringly confident and considerate facilitator. I first met Hannah when she was selected to create a new resource for the Global Systems Institute. Her work with Dr Ernesto Schwartz, resulting in The Co-Production Oracle, is inspired and inspiring. Having attended the launch event, which included a workshop led by Hannah to familiarise staff with how to use the Oracle, I wanted to help get word out and promote the resource further. I programmed a Co-Production Oracle session as part of my termly Critical Friends Network that brings together staff from across the University who are interested in creativity and creative processes. We ran the session twice – once in Exeter and once in Penryn. Again, the responses from participants showed the resource to be a powerful experience, really opening up those deeper and richer conversations around co-production that are so important. I recommend Hannah very highly; her professionalism and expertise make her a joy to collaborate with.
- Associate Director for Arts and Culture, University of Exeter
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Curious about working together?
Contact Me