A sandpit is a residential interactive workshop over 5 days involving 20-30 participants, the director and a number of independent stakeholders. An essential element of a sandpit is a highly multidisciplinary mix of participants taking part, some being active researchers and some being potential users of research outcomes, to drive lateral thinking and radical approaches to addressing particular research challenges.
How do they actually work? Is it just technical presentations?
The sandpit is an intensive discussion forum where free thinking is encouraged in order to delve deep into the problems on the agenda in order to uncover innovative solutions. Each sandpit is led by a director, whose role is to define the topic and facilitate discussions at the sandpit event. The process can be broken down into:
- Defining the scope of the issue.
- Agreeing a common language and terminology amongst people from a very diverse range of backgrounds and disciplines.
- Sharing understanding of the problem domain, and the expertise brought by the participants to the sandpit.
- Taking part in break-out sessions focused on the problem domain, using creative and innovative thinking techniques.
- Capturing the outputs in the form of a research project.
Sandpits are intensive events. For the well being of participants, the venues offer opportunities for relaxation, and the timetable includes informal networking activities as a break from the detailed technical discussions.
Owing to the group dynamics and the continual evaluation it’s not possible to dip in and out of the process. Participants stay for the whole duration of the sandpit event.
Does every attendee go away with some funding?
No, not necessarily. The aim of the sandpit is not to spread the funding evenly across the participants. It may be that no new ideas arise from the sandpit, or it may be that only one or two projects are successful. A variety of outcomes are possible, ranging from a single large research project, to several smaller projects, feasibility studies, networking activities, overseas visits and so on. The outcomes are not pre-determined but are defined during the sandpit. IDEAS Factory funding is only allocated to the outputs of the sandpits.
For more information see the more about sandpits page.