3D Sculpting a System
3D sculpting is an exercise that invites people to look at the reality of a system from different angles and perspectives with the aim to help identify the key strategic leverage points in changing the current system.
One can create a 3D module/sculpture of the system by assembling an assortment of items containing anything from playdough, cotton, pipe cleaners, and figurines to any small objects available. After completing the sculpture that depicts the system's current reality to be transformed, the individual (or group) moves around the sculpture stopping at each side, East, South, West, and North, reflecting on the present system's characteristics from different perspectives. After completing the analysis from four directions, it is time to adjust and change the model to better represent the future system one wants to create while identifying key leverage points of transformation.
3D Sculpting exercise by catalyst Boryana Milova
How the method works
The process is divided into 4 parts. Although this instruction is for pairs, this exercise can be done in groups as well.
Part I: Map Current Reality - 10-15min
With the objects available to you spread out, think about the different elements, quality (inner or outer), or system stakeholders.
Once you select the objects representing all the system's key aspects, you can start modeling/sculpting your current situation.
Part II: Reflect from Four Different Directions - 50min
Decide who is going to describe their module first (person A). Person B takes notes of what person A is sharing.
Person A: take 5 minutes to describe to your partner your model and what each object represents. Ensure to include the inner and outer realities, internal and external stakeholders, and your roles. Then for the next 25 minutes, walk around your model to reflect on it from four directions, East, South, West, and North, using the different perspectives and guiding questions below:
EAST - Embodied Emotional Intelligence / Feeling & Relationships
Looking at your model from the East, pay attention to "feeling and relationships," taking a moment to sit with your senses and an open heart. Pause, perhaps close your eyes, and then consider:
What do you love in this model?
What other emotions arise?
What are the essential relationships (connections or separations) between the parts - and what feelings do these generate?
SOUTH - Practicality / Truth / Action
Now, look at your model from the South, from the viewpoint of truth and action:
What are the fundamental conflicts and hard truths that you have to face to move forward?
Where do the different sources of power lie in this system?
WEST - Perspective & Insight / Reflection & Learning
Now, look at this model from the West, stepping back with perspective:
What are the most important barriers or bottlenecks that, if removed, could help the current system to evolve?
What is ending in this situation [wanting to die], and
What is seeking to emerge [wanting to be born]?
NORTH - Vision / Purpose / Understanding
Now, look at this model from the viewpoint of the North, with purpose:
What is this situation might trying to teach you?
What do you feel is the highest future potential that is being called for in this situation?
Once person A is through, repeat the same process with person B while person A takes notes.
Part III: Map Your Emerging Future - 5min
Based on your experience with looking at your sculpture from four different perspectives, now change the model so that it better represents the emerging future that you are perceiving. Begin with a moment of intentional stillness. For a minute or two, just look at the model in light of this question:
“What highest future possibility is trying to manifest/is trying to be born?”
Then, after a couple of minutes, silently move into modifying the model so that it better represents the future that you want to co-shape.
Part IV: Harvest and capture key insights - 15min
For this Part, the scribe can capture the essential points for you. (5'' per person)
Step 1: Reflect on the result.
What are the most important structural differences between models 1 and 2?
Step 2: Reflect on the process.
What were the most important changes that transformed model 1 into model 2? What key intervention shifted the old structure (model 1) into the new (model 2)?
What did you do first? What was the first significant change that you undertook?
Step 3: Closing Reflection
Now you can engage in a generative dialogue about the key findings of the sculpting exercise around purpose, strategy, leverage points and many other dimensions. It opens up many entry points for a creative process of inner and outer transformation.
Materials, Time and Group
Time: 80 minutes
People: Pairs or groups
Tools/Materials: basically anything from playdough, cotton, pipe cleaners, figurines to any kind of small objects additionally to scissors and glue.
Experience with this exercise
In collaboratio helvetica, we are using the 3D system sculpting to create an externalized view of the current reality and gain insight, from multiple perspectives, into some of the systemic underlying causes and shaping factors. It further supports to sense and surface the inherent possibilities pushing through current reality, and to begin to activate them.
It can be applied to an individual or collective ‘system’, and when combined with inquiry from four specific vantage points, allows for a 360 degree view of current reality and its underlying (emerging future) potential. It can be used for different purposes such as sense making, strategy processes or innovation. In short, this is an effective, inclusive and playful way to engage in a process of current reality and future strategy for yourself, with your team or with a bigger group.
Boryana Milova, a participant of the 2020/21 version of the Catalyst Lab, states that:
“The 3D modeling shows a vision of the system I would like to create, one in which the waste bubbles are eliminated, as the loop is closed and materials are being reused. Financial institutions are closer to nature - driving investments towards sustainable solutions. Finally, the weight in the system is dispersed, there is more equality and balance on the financial flows of the system”. - Boryana Milova works towards a more regenerative economy.
Sources and further literature on the topic
The principles of this exercise were developed by the Presencing Institute . However it employs similar ideas discussed by design and system thinking. The literature below gives emphasis on the later providing content for a more in-depth discussion and potential exercise with stakeholders of the system:
Claudia Marcelloni has worked in science communication and innovation for more than a decade, mostly at the world’s largest laboratory, CERN leading projects such as TEDxCERNand Sparks. While working towards bridging the gap between scientific and technological development to public knowledge, Claudia grew interested in learning how these advances could be put to use for the social good. She was part of the first cohort in Social Innovation at Cambridge Judge Business School, conducting research on collaborative methodologies for social innovation labs.
Severin von Hünerbein is in charge of the design and facilitation of collaboratio helvetica’s Catalyst Lab, a learning and design process created to support the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Switzerland. He started his career in training and facilitation with euforia in 2010. After graduating from the University of St. Gallen (HSG), he has been determined to bring social innovation to the business world through creating brave spaces that allow a diverse group of people who would usually not meet to find new forms of collaboration, dream together and to co-create innovative and sustainable solutions for systemic change.
He is decorated with a MA degree in International Affairs and with a mind full of jokes, joie-de-vivre, and patience.