What if a TV character and a football coach would deliver an applied improv workshop? Let’s explore the philosophy, principles, and leadership styles of famous TV series character Ted Lasso and Dutch football legend Johan Cruyff. Cruyff invented "Total Football" and showed a unique way of looking at things. People from various disciplines still study Cruyff's cryptic statements, such as "every advantage has a disadvantage." Ted Lasso was one of those people! He had a unique approach to people in and outside his team. We’ll look at Total Football’s effective leadership strategies, fostering an environment of collaboration, adaptability, and positivity. You don’t have to know anything about football or sports. If you like fun, humanity, and experimentation, you will have a great day of cryptic statements! Because if we tune the future, will it be Total Applied Improvisation?

In teaching practice, we can meet challenging participants who disrupt group work. Whether it's those who don't respect boundaries, don't respond, repeatedly reject, or embarrass the experiences of others. Such situations are challenging for all three sides—participant, group, and lecturer. Breathe, there is a way to deal with it. You need to keep a safe space and don't judge. Success in working with challenging participants lies in the combination of the lecturer's attentiveness, empathy, and effective communication. On this journey, you are going to get a mix of knowledge and practice in model situations, where you have the opportunity to constantly try new approaches and find those that work for you. And last but not least, we are going to work with the typology of the most frequently challenging participants, composed in cooperation with fellow highly experienced lecturers of applied improvisation.

We live in a time of polycrises and constant change, which will continue to increase in the future. To remain capable of acting in this complex environment, we need a strong connection with ourselves and others to sense relevant changes in the moment and react accordingly. On this learning journey, we will experience a radical collaboration with ourselves and others. It is not just about cooperating with each other briefly but about feeling ourselves as an organism that lives beyond our egos. We will experience the development from rigid, hierarchical structures to self-organized systems. We will then reflect on our experiences based on our scientific studies in the last few years. Which future skills and meta-competences do we need to improvise professionally? How can we support organizational emergence so that the new can arise? And how can we prepare for the future in the here and now?

Toward a system model of improvisation - click here

Improvisation as a design for organizational emergence - click here

Meta-competences in complex environments - click here

What are the elements of a good game? How do you choose the right activity at the right time? How do you make an activity feel safe and fun for everyone? In our rapidly changing world, learning games that already exist might not be enough. We need to be prepared to make up new ones. Good games are like good stories - there's an invisible structure that you can count on. We know with a story, there's a beginning, a middle, and an end. With a game - what IS that invisible structure? Come learn J.W. James' four structural elements of game creation: The Purpose/Goal, the Objective, the Mechanics, and the Metaphor. We will also explore how to leverage the natural arc of group development to create the conditions for safety, equity, positive growth, and creativity. Once you know these elements, you'll be able to create activities that fit the needs of any group. Then we will make up some games! And play them! Depending on the weather, we may choose to integrate a foray into the city into our creative process. We will conclude with a debrief of our creations and the possibility of offering them to the wider conference during Open Space.

Applied improvisation coaches and leaders are the facilitators leading the exercises and games for participants, but coaches and leaders often aren't able to get feedback for themselves about how they're doing what they're doing instead of what they're doing or if there is a better or easier or more fulfilling way to lead the exercises they do. Coaches and facilitators give so much feedback to their participants, but they so rarely get quality in-depth feedback about their communication, feedback, and presentational styles, and this workshop will give that to them.

What better way to experience Prague than to embark on an improvised adventure across the urban landscape of this city? The Quest: Improv for Transformation is a one-of-a-kind experience where improvisation, storytelling, timefulness, urban exploration, and magic meet. Meet The Quest! Described by participants as “completely transformational,” The Quest leads participants on a journey where they experience Being introduced to the improvisational mindset, taking the “improvisational mindset” (generally reserved for the stage) out into the everyday world, applying that improvisational mindset for an extended period, exploring what happens as a result of that approach, and reflecting on what was discovered during the experience. The Quest culminates in the participants coming together through casual conversation and storytelling, sharing experiences, insights, and discoveries that unfolded during that process.

As we look to the future, the world continues to move faster. Change requires people to act and think in new ways, and we feel our differences ever more acutely; we need people with the mindset and skills to create connections and achieve positive outcomes with others.  Enter the Facilitation Advantage. Great facilitators, no matter what job or role they are in, know how to create the conditions that lead to better collaboration and faster results, whether in-person or virtual. They build trust, reduce conflict, and accelerate positive outcomes. In this individualized, experiential practicum, we will explore both the value of great facilitation to further applied improvisation and how improvisation can support and improve facilitation.

The learning journey will support applied improvisation practitioners in tackling issues related to mental health difficulties. We do not need to be therapists to create social spaces that have healing (therapeutic) effects. Applied improvisation is an amazing tool to do so. Recently, Applied Improvisation has been attracting attention from mental health professionals. By exploring applied improv in this context, we are tuning up to the future of mental health care as AI is social, embodied, and, at the same time, a low-cost, inclusive, and easy-to-access tool. Therefore, improv might play a massive role in an overloaded mental health care system. Gestalt therapy and applied improvisation come from the same roots and share many principles as here and now focus on co-created spontaneous interaction. According to Gestalt therapy, mental health is defined by the ability to creatively and spontaneously adjust in an ongoing moment-to-moment contracting process between human being and their environment. We will focus on supporting this ability in ourselves and our clients.

Taste the Power sketchnoting

• Want to spice up your presentation?

• Need to engage your audience or customers?

• Looking for ways to improve your communication?

Sketchnoting can help you with that and more. I'll show you how to get the most out of simple lines and shapes, where to gather inspiration, and how to improve continuously.

To be human is to live in the tension between polarities, doing and being, belonging and freedom, masculine and feminine, and so on. We often have a preference for one side of a polarity and a rejection for the other side.  However, balance, health, and creative energy come through integrating both sides.  This isn’t just true for us as individuals but as a collective.  In teams, organizations, and communities, there is tension between structure and flow, leadership and followership, tradition and innovation, and the list goes on and on.  In this learning journey, we will play with polarities at an individual and a collective level. First, by identifying what are the important polarities, we need to bring them into focus by using polarity mapping and then, through applied improv and forum theater, create an embodied experience to bring these polarities into balance to unlock growth and creative energy.

Do you sometimes feel stuck in your life and work? Are there areas where you struggle?  Do you sometimes feel like it's an uphill battle with areas such as confidence levels, imposter syndrome, status issues, relationship issues, communication issues, managing your stress, and creating and building a successful business?  If you answered yes to any of these, this learning journey is for you.  We will explore the basics of emotional intelligence, and then you will take an emotional intelligence evaluation.  We will go through the results in detail and explore how they affect areas of your life and work.  Then, we will dive into exercises that will boost your confidence and ability to execute these areas to improve your life and work.  Using your knowledge of EI and AI, you will leave this journey with practical tools to improve everything for yourself and those in your life.