Imagination Bootcamp
Imagination Bootcamp badge

Train your imagination
like a muscle

An experiential, site-specific workshop series that treats imagination like a muscle — one that strengthens through practice and grows more powerful in community.

A facilitator in a pink Imagination Bootcamp shirt points out an inscription on the Mary McLeod Bethune memorial as kids gather round
Adults stand in a circle in the Folger's stone entry hall with two facilitators in pink Imagination Bootcamp shirts

Up next

Neither Here Nor There: Musetech as Ecotone

MCN 2026, Seattle · Thursday, October 22 · 3:15–4:00 P.M. PDT

Our first Imagination Bootcamp designed for museum technologists. Ecotones are the zones where two ecosystems meet — the most generative places in nature, and the most precarious. Taking the conference hotel itself as material, we'll move through a somatic warm-up, a site-based practice that connects us to the workers and guests who have passed through the building, and a small-group exercise that extends attention to the more-than-human world sharing the space.

Comfortable walking shoes recommended.

A hand holds up an old postcard of a streetcar at the same Lincoln Park corner where a cyclist now rides by
Matching an old postcard to the same corner of Lincoln Park. The park we stand in isn't the only park this place has been — and it won't be the last.

What is Imagination Bootcamp?

Imagination Bootcamp trains your imaginative capacity through attention, the body and the place you're standing in. It borrows the familiar shape of a fitness class — a warm-up, a sequence of reps, a cool-down — and fills it with somatic and creative exercises.

It's a facilitated space to question your assumptions, envision alternatives and discover that the future is something you can actively shape. Physical without being strenuous. No experience required.

Every Imagination Bootcamp adapts to its site, its people and its moment: a neighborhood park, a library reading room, a hotel lobby, a museum.

Why imagination matters

Imagination is a muscle. It isn't rare, but without practice it gets trained out of us.

98% → 2%

of five-year-olds scored as highly original thinkers in a long-term study. By adulthood, just 2% did.

73% / 9%

73% of organizations want creativity and innovation from their people. Only 9% train and support those skills in their employees.

Sources: Land & Jarman, 1993; Deloitte, 2024 Global Human Capital Trends.

How a session works

Like a fitness class, with a theme as the lens.

Togetherness session arc. Warm-up (get ready in the locker room; what is togetherness?) loops to Present (practice seeing what's right in front of us with new eyes), down to Past (practice togetherness through place), up to Future (practice togetherness across time), and down to Cool-down (make a secret gesture that asks for togetherness with your adult).

Where we've trained

Kids draw together on a big sheet of paper on a blanket in front of the Mary McLeod Bethune memorial while adults look on
Kids & their adults · Outdoors

Togetherness

Lincoln Park, Washington, DC · March 23, 2026

A neighborhood park that is also federal land. Kids led their grown-ups in play, and adults reflected back the creativity they saw in their kids.

We talked to trees. We became history detectives, reading the park's footpaths, archival photos and sculptures to see how togetherness has been built and rebuilt here — including the often-overlooked memorial to Mary McLeod Bethune. And we made hand gestures for moments when words aren't enough.

Kids hold up their drawn banner of wishes against the Bethune memorial
Participants stand with eyes closed in a Folger exhibit gallery as a facilitator reads from a clipboard
Adults · Indoors

Mending

Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC · March 25, 2026

In a library, the movement got smaller: hand-sized gestures, stitching, close and intimate work. What could repair look like — not a reconstruction of what was, but something new that care makes possible?

Participants embodied scraps of reclaimed material in a mixed-media artwork, learned backstitch as a meditative practice, examined a Shakespeare folio with their eyes closed, and renamed themselves with a title and role in a future built on care.

Participants look closely at a beaded, draped textile artwork at the Folger

What participants said

Mending participants smile and hold up handwritten notes to people they care about
An immersive museum-based workshop to help activate physical senses and internal senses toward care… an important pause in my day.
Experiential, touchy-feely, friendly, encouraging, camaraderie boosting, sensory.
Both adults and the children were fully engaged the whole time.
I want to go to ALL museums with you guys.
Kids, their adults and two facilitators gather on the steps of Lincoln Park in the spring sun

Parks · Museums · Libraries · Places in transition

Bring Imagination Bootcamp to your people

Imagination Bootcamp works best for organizations, teams and communities looking to build trust, navigate change or collaborate across sectors. We start by interviewing stakeholders to hear their hopes and concerns first-hand, then design a session around the relationship with the future you want to practice — whether that's finding agency or weathering forces you can't predict.

Commissioned workshops

Site-specific sessions for your public audiences or your internal team.

Support through transition

For institutions and communities imagining a new future while change is already underway.

Imaginative practice consulting

Bringing Imagination Bootcamp principles into your own workflows and programs.

Get in touch

Your trainers

Two museum people, deeply in love with museums. Marina's practice lives in close attention; Isabella's lives in the future. Imagination Bootcamp is where they meet: embodied, grounded in place, and open to many possible futures.

Isabella and Marina, in matching pink Imagination Bootcamp shirts, sit side by side at a long table of participants

Isabella Bruno

Lab for Radical Museum Futures

Isabella creates hands-on experiences that teach people to strengthen their creativity and stay open to new possibilities, even when the future feels uncertain. Her approach: build imagination as a muscle for everyday life, embrace uncertainty, and spot possibility as it emerges. She has worked on museums from every angle — within the Smithsonian Institution, as an outside consultant, and as a partner to groups big and small.

radicalmuseumfutures.com

Dr. Marina Gross-Hoy

Laboratoire d'attentions

Marina is a consultant, writer, speaker and scholar whose work invites people to cultivate new relationships with embodied experience. She founded the Laboratoire d'attentions, a research-creation initiative grounded in embodied attention, slow looking, sensory interpretation and trauma-informed approaches. She holds a PhD in Museum Studies from the Université du Québec à Montréal.

marinagrosshoy.com

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