I love origami and, as barely a day goes by without me folding something out of paper, I wanted to try and find a way to bring a little bit of origami happiness into my workplace. My colleagues and I spend most of our working day at a computer, in meetings or on the phone, so a creative interlude is often a great way to break up the day and give us time to focus our minds elsewhere. Running a few lunchtime sessions to fold simple models is enough to add something new to the working day without encroaching on work time. We’ve made basketball hoops (instructions in our ‘Learn to fold’ section of the BOS site), nodding dogs and pretty boxes, to name a few. Everyone who attends goes away with a big smile and sense of pride at what they have created in such a short time, often without any previous folding experience.

Origami can be a great icebreaker at the start of a meeting too. During a cross-supplier workshop of around 30 people, I showed everyone how to fold a waterbomb base. I then asked them to write their name and company on one side, before collecting up all of the modules and assembling them into several butterfly balls. These models then sat at the front of the room for the two days to remind us of how we need to combine our expertise and experience to form something bigger and better than its constituent parts (I didn’t mention anything about throwing it in the air and whacking it to pieces though…).

When sat in long meetings where concentration is required, but not much speaking, I’ve been known to fold simple modules (mainly for waterwheels), as I find it helps me to occupy the area of my mind that can easily get distracted. This makes it much easier to concentrate and stay focused on the meeting, as well as resulting in many small modular waterwheels to put on the front of greetings cards.

Why not try and bring origami into your workplace, school or community group? You’ll be pleasantly surprised!