– conversations about the working life

Selvskaberne create workshops that engage participants in uncovering the core values that drive and motivate them as individuals. When rooted in these personal values, our private and professional decisions become more intuitive and grounded.

Our workshops are tailor-made for companies, trade unions, unemployment funds, job centres and educational institutions.

In the autumn of 2023, we will be offerring a new online format that is directed towards private individuals. You will be able to sign up for this at the bottom of this page.

Our workshops focus on

  • – self-insight in relation to your current job situation
  • – a broadened horizon in relation to the kind of job that may be meaningful to you
  • – understanding your motivations and strengths
Selvskaberne's Signature Workshop

In our workshops, we target questions that are fundamental when you are faced with a choice in your career, but are rarely explored in depth:

  • what drives you?
  • what kind of projects spark your creativity and engage you?
  • what kind of mark do you want to make on your life?

Wherever you are heading in life, it’s about recognising and choosing the path that excites you. In order to set the course, you need to know what you stand for and what you rest on. That’s what we call your personal signature.

Methodology

This workshop is designed for those who want to engage in a dynamic dialogue with other participants. It will help you become aware of making private and professional choices that harmonise with the person you are – so that you include yourself in your decisions. The day is divided into a series of group sessions, where one participant is interviewed about their working life, while two other participants testify. We use narrative techniques to build on a key story from the interviewee’s life. With curiosity and openness, the participants identify each other’s individual positions and motives and what characterises us when we thrive and unfold.

Who can participate

The Signature workshop is aimed at anyone in need of a pause to think about their job situation, such as

  • recent graduates
  • those in between jobs
  • those considering a change of employment

All that is required to participate is the the courage to engage in an active and open interaction with the other participants. Thus, we expect nothing more from you than that you are committed, will listen respectfully and with an open mind and that you will apply your own life experience, regardless of your age and education. And then we wish for you to leave the meeting with the Self-Creators with greater self-awareness, peace of mind and a new and intuitive way of taking a stand on all of life’s big and small questions.

2023

Calendar

Online Workshops

We are in the process of setting up a new format for online workshops aimed at private individuals.

These workshops will be open to everyone, with registration on this page.

More info to follow!

Our method and the ideas behind it

Our workshop is based on a so-called Signature Conversation between a Selvskaber and a participant. The conversation is attended by two other participants who listen and then reflect on what they have heard.

Based on a positive story, typically from working life, we jointly take stock of the motivational factors and inner values that drive the individual participant, and which will be a good starting point for navigating towards a positive work situation.

When meeting a potential employer and a new workplace, our candidates are aware of their individual values and are able to reaffirm their strengths and motivational factors. The result is greater mutual understanding and respect.

In the Signature Interview, participants meet on an equal footing with others who find  themselves in similar situations, but typically have completely different backgrounds. In our experience, this meeting paves the way for an understanding that one’s situation is not a reflection of personal shortcomings or vices. On the contrary, it typically turns out that the individual’s choices and rejections in life have been determined by important, value-based intentions that are identified in the dialogue. These are the intentions that it is important to hold on to.

In this way, the workshop becomes a respite that inspires participants to take a collective pause for reflection. Together, participants will discover eachother’s strengths.

About us

We believe that for our working life to be meaningful, we must first and foremost recognise our own strengths and our personal starting point in life.

Benedicte Nielsen Whitehead

Benedicte Nielsen Whitehead

PhD, linguist and lecturer at the University of Copenhagen

I am a researcher and lecturer in historical comparative linguistics at the University of Copenhagen. This career has a lot of dimensions I love: precision, immersion, systematics, creativity and the opportunity to deal with an infinite number of languages from ancient and modern times.

In my spare time I organize rock concerts in my home municipality of Frederiksberg.

The seed of Selvskaberne

My involvement in Selvskaberne, like my involvement in the local music scene, stems from a desire to help set an agenda, also outside the academic world.

It’s about how we as human beings can feel more at home in our lives. How we can avoid losing ourselves to a societal structure that makes ever greater demands on our performance and regulates our behaviour more and more. The times call for something completely different: civil activism and personal leadership. Selvskaberne are a small response to a very big call.

The good meetings and the boring ones

I am intrigued about what makes some encounters between people boring and awkward and others enriching and uplifting. As an introverted Dane and professional geek, I know the difference to the bone.

In my work organizing congresses and concerts, I love experimenting with the format in order to find those details in the planning that determine whether a room is filled with creative energy, humour and conversations that just won’t stop, or whether a few too many of us are just standing around stepping on our toes and looking forward to going home.

It’s a little piece of our lives where we can’t really figure out how to be present. And that’s crazy when life is actually our presence.

Conversations that unite and those that divide

I am particularly interested in the public debate as it unfolds on social media, and the difficult question of how we can include all voices, while debating factually and respectfully. It makes a big impression on me that public discourse is so powerful that it can divide entire societies. But also that it has the power to judge some people out and others in. I want to help turn that power around so that we can come together and create something new and better.

It’s about bringing people together. To get us to listen and talk and get the individual to unfold for the benefit of the whole. My dream is that Selvskaberne will be a space where these things will happen.

Karen Johanna Meyer

Music therapist, certified systemic-narrative family/psychotherapist and supervisor

Starting with oneself…

When I was invited to introduce myself through a story from my working life that I was particularly pleased with, in the best Selvskaber spirit, the following emerged: In 2015, I was given the task of teaching philosophy at a shelter for mentally vulnerable people. This resulted in the development of a concept that I called Form and Philosophy. Form and Philosophy is a creative poetic philosophical workshop where participants are invited to explore the meaning of an abstract concept using a lump of clay, pen and paper. This story bears my signature and contains important facets of what I stand for and what I enjoy.

The world in a grain of sand

Selvskaberne invite you to start from a single episode from your life and to consider what is evoked here as a signature through which who you are and what you stand for and accomplish in life becomes visible.

A systemic look through narrative lenses

My training as a Systemic-Narrative Psychotherapist and Supervisor has given me a systemic perspective. Here, contexts are examined by observing patterns of interaction, movements and relationships as a counterpart to analytical thinking and interpretation. With the narrative approach, the concept of identity is linked to the understanding that identity is created through language and the interaction between people.

When success is not a criterion for success

This approach provides a perspective on working life that is more closely linked to people’s intentions, values, endeavours, hopes and dreams, which is different from the results-oriented way we tend to measure and weigh our working life trajectory. When Selvskaberne work with working life narratives in this way, it is thus remarkable that outward success is rarely the criterion for the narratives that emerge.

On the track

When you get in touch with your inner values and intentions, it becomes obvious how, through almost everything you do, you make a valuable contribution to life. This is sometimes lost sight of, and you can lose your sense of direction. The Selvskaber workshop will help you get back on track.

Systemic/narrative musical, creative concept developer

As a Selvskaber, I draw on my entire repertoire of professional, philosophical and life-experiential intelligences together with the three other co-creators who each bring their own special work-life trajectory cocktails to the table.

Oliver Salomon

Cand.merc.pol., business consultant, entrepreneur and facilitator

In my work as a business consultant, facilitator and entrepreneur, I often deal with change management, scenario planning and similar disciplines that are called upon when an organisation has to find its feet in a changing world.

At Selvskaberne, I have replaced corporate sustainability with individual sustainability.

A world in great change

Fortunately, I am most comfortable on shaky ground and thrive when I help organisations find their feet.

At Selvskaberne, the goal is more than just being able to get by, but also to understand ourselves in our new reality. In my role as a facilitator and organiser, I look forward to helping you find your personal signature that will be the starting point when you take your next step.

In addition to my work as an independent consultant for various companies, I have in the last ten years been one of the main forces behind a socio-economic incubator, a venue for undiscovered music and a handful of IT startups.

Would you like to know more?

Use the contact form or call us on +45 28 74 18 66