A trawl of the internet, or a stroll through a big city centre OR a visit to toy shops illustrates the extent to which this globally known construction toy is used in a myriad contexts and for infinite purposes by a multitude of people of any age (Does that just about cover it?). In 2012/13 alone, Alison saw a sky-high Lego Christmas tree at St Pancras station, Lego movie characters in department stores, Lego prosthetic legs on Youtube, and was gifted her first ever Lego Advent Calendar which, with a model to build on each one of 24 days, more than compensated for the absence of chocolate. Lego appears in guerrilla construction activities such as these featured here. and in some ingenious film making, as in Jon Rolph’s Lego ‘painting’ a la Piet Mondrian.

However this is not a commercial for Lego, nor are we receiving commission in return for enthusiasm. What we want to do here is simply differentiate between the use of one highly structured mode of enquiry with Lego – Lego Serious Play –  (which we discuss in detail in Chapter 6) and other uses of Lego. We also recognise that not everyone is a fan of working three dimensionally with semi-rigid plastics and prefer to construct their metaphors with play dough (more malleable), wool, textiles and other materials, or more eclectic collections of items, while others use different kinds of formal but game-like approaches such as Ketso.

Alison and Darth Vader, Christmas 2013