A collage-based activity to settle your mind after a large mental meal
Activity summary: A 20-minute reflective collage workshop designed for UX Camp Brighton 2025.
By this point in time - April 2025 - I had already ran a few arts and crafts-based workshops in the Brighton tech community. These were mainly designed to explore specific topics.
This workshop was a bit different because 1) I was doing something at a conference for the first time, and 2) the purpose was predominantly wellbeing – to offer a mindful activity in contrast to the information ingestion of the other sessions.
Quick bit of context about 'unconferences'
For those unfamiliar with UX Camp Brighton, it's an annual event for practitioners and people interested in user experience design (a design practice that centres someone's actual experience of using a product or service). You can learn more at uxcampbrighton.org.
The format of UX Camp Brighton is that of an 'unconference'. All speakers pitch their talks, and attendees can chose which sessions they want to attend throughout the day. There can be 40+ talks and workshop to choose from. It is chaotic, sociable and illuminating. But it is also a lot to take in in one day.
I had suggested a collage activity to the organisers the previous year. The purpose was the same – a reflective activity to help people process the day – but offered during the lunch break (so it was part of the overall event experience).
Logistically, that didn't work out so in 2025, I decided to do it anyway but as one of the speakers / facilitators. Be the change you want to see in the world, people.
The activity itself
A big influence behind the format of this workshop was swollage (a portmanteau of SWOT analysis and collage). Developed by Julia Reeve and Kaye Towlson, swollage is a technique that uses free-association collage to build skills in self-reflection and foster self-awareness.
The second influence was Here, There, Everywhere, a reflective exercise created by Dave Mastronardi and Eric Wittenberg. I'm a big fan of this framework and have used it a lot for other talks and workshops (including reversing the order to form a chronological timeline).
See the cross-pollination section at the end to find out more about both these things.
Although attacking a magazine with scissors is soothing in itself, I wanted to help people connect their collage to the conference content (plus encourage some conversation around the table). Therefore, the format for the workshop was as follows...
- Freestyle collage – no thinking, just cutting and sticking
- Reflective questions – loosely based on the Here, There, Everywhere framework, I asked attendees to consider the images they'd cut out and see what had caught their attention, if they could connect them to anything they had heard or learnt previously that day, and what might they add next
- Sharing – encourage people to share their collages with each other
Here is the activity in a handy PDF format if you want to try it yourself:
Reflecting back, thinking forward
The biggest challenge with this activity was timings. With explanations and material wrangling (the 20-minute time slot included setting up and tidying up), there was only really 10 minutes of usable collaging time. While the attendees all created wonderful things (and conversation and sharing naturally happened throughout the session rather than at the end), I think any future versions of this workshop require a slightly longer timeframe.
Speaking of the future, I would like to offer this kind of activity at other events. From an experience and organiser perspective, it changes attendees from passive consumers into active creators, making a little space for deeper engagement. It also creates connection between people, which might even continue beyond the event itself.
Just planting that seed...
Cross-pollination
Julia Reeve
