Residency Simone Poutnik and Hendrik Tiesinga

Simone Poutnik and Hendrik Tiesinga are long-term collaborators and members of FoAM Brussels. In October 2011 they weighed anchor to become journeyers – nomads traversing the cultural landscape to learn and develop themselves as resilient creative practitioners and researchers, and share their skills and interests for the benefit of the local communities through which they pass. It was apt that their first stop was at FoAM. With their few remaining possessions, Simone and Hendrik moved into the sheltered refuge of the studio, contributing their multifaceted skills in hosting, facilitation and participatory design while preparing for their imminent departure. In the final days of their residency, they facilitated their first Lego Serious Play workshop to help us distil a few guiding principles for our work at FoAM in the coming 2–3 years.

Simone is a social entrepreneur, action researcher, designer and facilitator of collaborative innovation processes. She initiated and co-founded the Hub Brussels before co-founding Natural Innovation with her partner Hendrik. Since 2006 she has been a practitioner of the Art of Hosting meaningful conversations, applying the patterns and practices in her daily life and work. In recent years, among other things, Simone worked with FoAM on participatory design, and with the EC and other institutions on incubating Communities of Practice.

Hendrik is an experienced designer and facilitator of multi-stakeholder learning and innovation processes in the fields of sustainability in business, social innovation, and new ways of collaborative working. He was one of the co-initiators of the Finance Innovation Lab and has designed and facilitated a variety of projects ranging from multi-stakeholder dialogues on nano-technology, participatory space design, trainings on sustainable innovation and creative labs with WWF, Siemens, The EC, The Hub, FoAM, The Institute for Strategic Dialogue, to the Innovation Exchange of the UK Cabinet office.