How our workshops are designed
A page for those who want to understand what’s behind the experience.
Born in Europe, brought to Japan
These workshops didn’t emerge from a corporate training department or a consulting firm. They were created by educators, engineers, scientists and activists who believed that understanding the world’s biggest challenges shouldn’t require a PhD – just curiosity, a table, and good company.
It started with the Climate Fresk, created in France in 2018 by a teacher and engineer. The format was an immediate success: within a few years, millions of people across more than 160 countries had experienced it. That success inspired a wave of new workshops built on the same principles – the Biodiversity Collage, the Digital Collage, the Plastic Collage, and many more. Today there are over 100 workshops using this card-based, collective intelligence format, covering topics from gender equity to planetary boundaries.
Each workshop is developed and maintained by a dedicated non-profit association, backed by a global community of trained facilitators who share best practices and contribute to continuous improvement. The science behind the cards is regularly updated. The pedagogy is constantly refined.
Ichigo Bloom brings to Japan the workshops we believe are most relevant and impactful for Japanese organizations and communities. We facilitate in Japanese and English. In some cases, like the Gender Equity Collage, we localize the data and examples to reflect the Japanese context. Thanks to dozens and dozens of sessions across Japan, we know how to run these workshops effectively for Japanese professional environments, and we adapt our facilitation approach accordingly.
A methodology built for real learning
The workshops look simple from the outside: a table, a set of cards, a small group. But the format is the result of careful pedagogical design, drawing on decades of research into how adults actually learn and change.
Head, Heart, Hands
Every workshop moves through three dimensions, and this is not accidental.
Head: The scientific content comes first. Each card is backed by peer-reviewed research from recognized institutions like the IPCC, the IPBES, the Stockholm Resilience Centre. Participants build a rigorous, evidence-based understanding of a complex topic, collectively and progressively.
Heart: Scientific data alone does not drive behavioral change. Research consistently shows that emotion is a prerequisite for lasting attitude shifts. The workshops create space for participants to share what they feel – surprise, anxiety, anger, hope – and discover that others feel the same. That moment of shared recognition is where something shifts.
Hands: Every session closes with participants projecting themselves into the future: what can we actually do, as individuals, as a team, as an organization? The brainstorm is guided by action cards, concrete, feasible ideas, and shaped by the conversation that has just happened in the room.
Multi-sensory, multi-pathway learning
Not everyone retains information the same way. Some people learn by reading, others by listening, others by doing. These workshops are specifically designed to engage all channels simultaneously.
Participants read the cards. They listen to each other. They speak – everyone must contribute. They draw arrows, add sketches, decorate their fresco. They brainstorm and write down ideas. By the time the session ends, the content has been encountered through text, images, conversation, physical arrangement, and creative expression. This multi-sensory approach is one of the key reasons the format produces such high retention rates, and why participants consistently say the three hours fly by.
Not a lecture. Not an e-learning.
In a typical session, the facilitator speaks less than 10% of the time. The rest comes from the participants themselves – their questions, their knowledge, their debates, their ideas.
This is a fundamental design choice. The card format externalizes knowledge: instead of a speaker telling participants what to think, the cards invite participants to figure it out together. More experienced participants naturally share what they know. Less experienced ones learn from peers rather than from authority, which is less intimidating and more memorable. The facilitator’s role is not to teach but to guide: holding the space, ensuring everyone participates, asking the questions that deepen the debrief.
This is why trained facilitation matters. Running these workshops well is a specific professional skill. All Ichigo Bloom facilitators are certified by the workshop developers.
Designed for everyone
These workshops were not designed for sustainability experts. They were designed for anyone: any profession, any sector, any level of prior knowledge. The card format is specifically calibrated so that participants who know a lot can share their expertise, while those who know nothing can guess, learn from the cards, and be guided by the facilitator. No one is left behind, and no one is bored.
The format works for a 20-year-old student and a 60-year-old executive in the same room. It works for a team of engineers and a team of HR managers. It works in Japanese and English. This universality is not an accident: it is one of the most carefully designed features of the format.
A theory of change
These workshops do not claim to change the world in three hours. The creators of the Climate Fresk are explicit about this: behavior change takes time, requires support, and depends on each person’s unique context.
What the workshops do is trigger a shift in knowledge, in emotion, and in behavioral intention. Participants leave knowing more, feeling more, and having articulated out loud, with other people, what they could do differently. That shift is the starting point. When it happens at scale, across thousands of organizations and communities, it contributes to the social tipping points that make systemic change possible.