Playful Learning 2026 Programme

The Monsters of Change: How to Fight with Fables and Transform with Tales

Lead Author: Pen Holland

Additional authors: Ella Howes, Laura Mitchell

Timetable: Thursday Session 8: 15:30-16:15, Terrace Room

Description:

If you go down to the woods today, you’re in for a big surprise. The woods are a mystery. They represent the future, the unknown, the uncertain, the people we know and the people we don’t, and places we want to get to but do not yet have the map. In the woods live lovely creatures and lavish greenery, high trees and hidden rivers and monsters that watch from the undergrowth. But one thing is sure: whoever steps beneath the trees emerges transformed.

In this session, we will take a journey into the woods. You will encounter different things as you explore with us. There might be a trail of breadcrumbs. There might be a gingerbread house. Will there be dreams of where you want to go? Or nightmares that you want to avoid? With their focus on values, archetypal roles and artefacts that are more than meets the eye, fairytales provide rich metaphors for exploring the complexities of culture change. At the beginning of your story, we will help you to identify an area of your professional life that you want to change, and start to articulate your change management journey by envisioning your happy-ever-after.

As we begin our journey through a roleplaying, card-scaffolded, giant imaginary board game with dressing up, we might meet artefacts and woodland creatures such as rats and pumpkins. If your Change Challenge simply needs a good storyteller to help it flourish, your Change Agent persona can be the fairy godmother. Perhaps you can find a way to transform the items at hand into a beautiful coach, and send Cinderella off to achieve her dreams by putting her in a pretty dress.

But if your management monster is an enormous wolf with great big teeth and great big goggly eyes, it is going to eat up the fairy godmother, put on her sparkly tiara and sit in her bed waiting for the next meal. You might need to be the Slayer, the Agent of Change that knows how to brutally dismember the monster; then fill its stomach with rocks so that it cannot rise back up and eat you again. Change management does not have to be the hero’s journey.

During the session, participants will reflect on real scenarios in training and change management using fairytale stories of heroism, challenge, death and glory, and apply their own narrative to get to a happy ever after that they are willing to live with. By the end of the workshop, you will be a wizard of transformation, able to creatively disguise yourself to make positive change in the world.

References, web links and other resources:

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/oct/28/sara-maitland-gossip-forest-review