FlourishCafé is a social enterprise aiming to support participants to articulate in their own words what flourishing means to them. We use creative methods such as world café (informed by systems theory, visual thinking, appreciative inquiry and constructivism) in order to support deep thinking, collective insights and collective intelligence.  

Because last year’s FlourishCafé (‘Flourishing through doing art’ together) went so well, we propose an adapted version of the workshop that will help to take participants of FlourishCafé into a new form of creative space. As such, we partnered with Studio resident, innovator and musician, Mark Lodge, to help facilitate this workshop and design bespoke AI technology.  

Part 1: pre-workshop – ‘AR Treasure hunt’ (all conference delegates) – ongoing  

We designed a map in a range of locations around the Locksbrook building where delegates may scan a QR code. Through use of a bespoke web platform, the QR codes generated pop up images, words and even AR worlds that emerged from last year’s FlourishCafé discussions (e.g. art as a disruptor, the artist as a martyr, solitude as the soil of flourishing, transcendence etc). 

This activity extended to all participants of the Doing Together Symposium 2025.  

Part 2: ‘A interactive dialogue with AI on flourishing in and through art’

For the first part of this workshop, we used assisted facilitation with Artificial Intelligence (for prompts to inquiry and discussion) to help to generate exploratory, engaging and fun ways of thinking and doing together. The aim of this element was to generate ideas that participants may not have considered without AI assistance.

Part 3: FlourishCafé Dialogue

We then sat together in community and explored questions that we co-created in situ. This was supported through a series of rounds of facilitated small group discussion and artistic creativity with a capstone group discussion element (Harvest) towards the end. This aided participants to develop deep learning and insight from the workshop and reach a point of collective resolution, intelligence and wisdom.