To Be
Dream Together Set
A shared space for imagination, where possibilities are explored before judgement arrives. In the Spark stage of practice, we shape possibility together by asking what could this become? Children (4-10) and adults work as creative partners, building confidence through shared exploration and making. There are no right or wrong answers, only infinite ideas to explore. Start with what you have, right where you are.
Practice
Time guide: 10-20 minutes.
As you grow
4-6 years: Enjoy becoming things through movement and dress-up. Focus on how it feels rather than getting it ‘right’, or dressing up too much.
7-10 years: Experiment with detail, exaggeration, and interpretation.
Mixed aged children: Everyone becomes something in their own way, discovering how the same idea can be expressed differently through bodies, objects, and imagination.
Start
One person secretly chooses something to become. It could be an animal, an object, a place, a feeling, a weather event, a machine, a made-up creature, something completely unexpected.
Take a moment to think about it. You may close your eyes if it helps. Ask yourself how does it move? How does it feel? Is it heavy or light? Fast or slow? Calm or energetic? What might it sound like?
Make
Use your body, voice, facial expressions, and anything you can find around you (clothes, fabric, objects) to help you become the thing.
Start simply then adjust and refine as you go.
Notice what changes as you move.
Play
Enter the space with what you’be chosen to become.
Everyone else observes and shares what they think it could be.
Encourage multiple ideas before revealing what you’ve become.
Variations
Become something tiny, enormous, invisible, or imaginary. Become something from the past or the future. Become something that does not exist yet. Become a feeling (curious, nervous, excited, calm). Become something that helps people. Become something from nature or another planet.
Notice
What did people think you were becoming?
How many different ideas did they see?
How did your body help communicate meaning?
What changed between your idea and how others interpreted it?
What might you try next time?
Practice Notes
Dream Together Set: Designed around divergent thinking and draws on how creative thinking develops in practice. Spark opens up possibilities and Switch builds on what is already there by reframing it into something new.
Practice inspired by: Improvisation practices that use movement, imagination, and perspective-taking to explore ideas before they are defined. This practice helps children and adults experience how meaning can be communicated without words, and how the same idea can be interpreted in multiple ways.
Builds
Capabilities (what the practice builds internally): Embodied imagination, perspective-taking, creative confidence, expressive communication, empathy, and flexible thinking.
Future skills (what the practice develops externally): Communication, collaboration, improvisation, design thinking, storytelling, and human-centred thinking (aligned with the World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report 2025).
