Last week at Teachers College, the Sesame Workshop team offered an usual prompt to all attendees of a lunch-and-learn event about AI in education: Make your own muppet.
At each round table around the room, in addition to a plate of food for each guest, sat a basket of art supplies that would make any kindergarten teacher's heart sing: Crayons, felt, pipe cleaners, Elmer's glue. The invitation? Make your own muppet. Play with us.
I love seeing creative, collaborative spaces in corporate settings, but this was the first time I've been at an event that so effortlessly infused serious discussions with hard-hitting professionals, with seriously playful table games. It reminded me that grown-up sometimes need a little extra time to get the creativity flowing. Here's what I learned.
Permission to Play
The lunch-and-learn started out typically enough. A salad for each person, the sort of awkward passing of platters around as you try to get to know the person next to you while simultaneously trying to gauge how much bread is too much to take for yourself. The adult version of sharing toys, I suppose.
But once people started wrapping up their lunches, I was quick to set my plate aside and jump into muppet mode. For the first 5-8 minutes, there were just two of us, at a table of 8, who decided to dive into the craft with gusto.
Then, slowly but surely, I watched people around me start to dip into their own muppet-making adventures.
This was it, the breaking of the seal, leaning into the invitation to play.
Building Off Each Other's Work
Once people recognize that it's a safe space to play, I started to notice a bit more faster-pace iterations and eventually most people around our table got into the creative activity. Here's the order I observed.
It took two people to normalize the activity around the table.
Muppet #2 - an abstract art rendition of collage work at its test. Notably, WAY better than mine. Since making a muppet involved minor disruptions—like setting aside plates and reaching for supplies—it was important to establish some quick "micro-trust" at the table. The "first follower" effect was in full swing. Only after the second person dug in with equal gusto did we signal to the group that it was OK to jump in.
2. The next few folks jumped in only after seeing a few ideas take shape. Maybe others were just slow to finish their lunch, but there was definitely a period where others largely watched and observed the two creators and new norms. Notably, the creative tactics that I took in my own art varied quite a bit from the second person. That variety was good, as it sparked an idea in someone else to jump in as the third muppet-maker.
When the third person jumped in, things went 3D.
The third person was the first to construct the first 3D muppet at our table, constructing a tubular figure that literally lifted off the page as more of a standalone puppet figure. From that point, other folks got really excited and we quickly saw one other 3D muppet creation jump off the page. This was a really cool moment. It was also the moment I realized that, despite being early to the creative act, I was in no means at all the most creative person at the table.
From there, the rest of the table jumped in with gusto. In fact, after the third person specifically, it crossed the tipping point and began to be more unusual not to make a muppet than to simply sit still without engaging. It was no longer scary to break the norms. People started more actively chatting about their work, asking for help, passing supplies back and forth across the table more freely, and getting really serious about those final touches.
Why Art Supplies Alone Aren't Enough
It's hard to be creative in a silo. Even if you have all of the supplies and tools in front of you, most of benefit from a little bit of "show and tell." That's why this activity was such a well-designed icebreaker to jumpstart creativity.
The very idea of "riffing" and building off one another is inherently social and deeply human. We look for this when building or ideating in any new spaces. Part of why I think it's been hard to learn about how to use new tools like AI is that, even though we have all of the art supplies on the table, so to speak, we (still) don't know exactly what to do. We don't know where to start, or what's possible.
This is why there's so much value in "showing your work" in whatever way that means to you. On the internet, this can look like Discord forums of people using Midjourney to show off their latest creations, or Reddit threads.
If you're curious about new technology, tools, or processes, maybe it's time to set aside the theory, pick up the scissors, and make yourself a muppet—preferably with a few friends around the table.
