When we started this new chapter for Digital Action, one of our main goals was to make it a space in which our team, our partners and our ecosystem could find innovative ways to grow. That means opening spaces for creativity, experimentation and dialogue, even if that makes us look away from our timelines and calendars for a moment.
This goal was in part materialized by our Exploration Days, a time set out to take space and time to engage with the ideas, trends or phenomena that our different team members have been looking at from close for a while.
The inspiration for this came from Dalia’s time at The Engine Room, where a similar experience takes place under the name of ‘Deep Dive Week’. In that week the goal is not an output, or any other rigid result. These are days for the team to show what they’re thinking, leave questions open, or as they say themselves: to leave “raw edges, unfinished thoughts – and the possibilities for where we might go next as individuals and as a team.”
It’s all about the questions, and about claiming the right to let our minds roam free.
Our Exploration Days were meant to leave room to get lost and come back to tell what was found. But not only that. We wanted to play with stories, narratives, colors. It was very much about going out and bringing back, but also about the ways we would show and tell.
And so, day one was all reading, listening and watching. We shared a lot of our sources and also suggestions, comments and questions. On day two we had a coffee check-in. A way to reflect on it all, and see how we could make what we learned into something we could share with the entire team. We left prompts quite open but did have one ask: whatever you want to bring, please tell us a story with it.
Day three was time to build the story and find the best way to tell it. For this, we let ourselves run wild: We experimented with video, AI (which also meant taking the time to look for ethical tools), drawings, and familiar images. We went looking for metaphors in nature and found some useful help from poetry to express some of what we learned. In summary, we made time for us to let our imagination run as far as it could go, and then we made time to share what it saw during the journey.
We expected interesting results, but ended up with beautiful, profound ones. We opened a Padlet, shared notes and commented on each other’s explorations. We also shared a lot of what we found with our community, through our newsletter as well as our socials.
We can’t recommend this kind of team dynamic enough. If you think you and your team would benefit from some days of exploration, here’s what we learned about organizing them:
- Start with curiosity, not deliverables.
We knew from the start that we weren’t aiming for polished outputs. The goal was to explore something meaningful, something that felt connected to our work or our communities. Frame the experience around questions, not results.
- Give the gift of time.
We set aside three full days. Depending on your calendars and resources, you could go for fewer days or more. The important bit is that it feels like time that is deliberately protected from everything else. In an ecosystem like ours, in which so much of our work happens online –where it all happens at the same time– this is paramount. We’re not sharing a space, and notifications of all kinds will always be lurking. Preparing to avoid distractions or organizing days like these away from deadlines or submissions will help. You can even think of preparing automatic responses asking people for patience, and letting them know the team will be back in a few days.
What you’ll need is enough time to go down a rabbit hole, try something new, or sit with a complicated idea.
- Make it visible from the start.
A few days before, each person shared the topic they were hoping to explore in a shared document. No need for a thesis statement: just an idea, a hunch, or a question. This helped others chime in with suggestions, links, or encouragement. It also made the process collective, even before it began.
- Let people choose their own format.
Some of us started writing essays. Others made videos, sketches, or poems. One of us got deep into ethical AI tools to tell a story through AI generated videos. What mattered most was the freedom to experiment and the intention behind the story.
- Check in (gently).
Halfway through, we had a casual coffee check-in. Not to track progress. Just touching base: What are you discovering? What’s changing? Any stuck points?
- Share what you found.
After the three days, we gave ourselves a bit of breathing room, then reconvened to share our explorations with the rest of the team. There was no formal presentation, we only had one ask: make it a story.
- Trust that it’s worth it.
This sector moves fast, and it is constantly working with limited resources, limited time and a sense of urgency constantly beeping in the background. For many of us, it can feel counterintuitive to pause and focus on exploring. We often believe these activities can only happen when we’re physically together. However, this radical change of pace made us move differently, recenter our goals more strategically, and set the base of something new.
We found that this time didn’t take us away from our strategic work. If anything, it enriched it.