Creating Space for Possibility
When squeezed by restructuring, funding deficits, and a relentless audit culture, we often find ourselves endlessly firefighting. Rushing from one crisis to the next, we can quickly lose the capacity to imagine, lead with vision, and work collaboratively.
Through strategic diagnostics and creative facilitation, One Little Spark helps academic, civic, and mission-driven leaders navigate complex transitions. We help you align strategy, rebuild relational trust, and develop the adaptive capabilities required to shape collaborative futures.
Led by Professor Kieran Fenby-Hulse.
Services
Creative Facilitation and Strategic Away Days
Single and multi-day retreats to support strategy development, cross-departmental working, and team building, helping teams move from firefighting to co-designing collaborative futures.
Living Leadership Development
Cohort development programmes that equip leaders with the creative capability, personal agency, and adaptive mindset to embrace complexity, navigate change, and expand possibility.
Keynotes and Performance Lectures
Conference keynotes that combine storytelling, critique, and creative performance to challenge business-as-usual, sparking innovation and new ways of working.
Specialist Research & Impact Advisory
Research and Knowledge Exchange strategy development, impact and civic engagement strategy audits, and research culture and environment support
Residencies
Embedded partnerships for universities and civic institutions navigating major transition or restructuring. Tailored to meet your needs, residencies can include cultural diagnostics, strategy design and implementation, and leadership development across multi-term horizons.
My Approach
I am a strategic, facilitator, creative, and researcher with over fifteen years of leadership, strategy and organisation development. My practice combines thoughtful, creative facilitation with academic rigour and a DIY punk ethos and supports the design and development of institutional cultures and environments where ideas, creativity, and people can thrive.
My work and practice is defined by two landscapes: the bottle kilns of Stoke-on-Trent where I grew up, and the industrial coast of Teesside where I now live with my family. Coming from the Potteries, I learned early on that industry and creativity are not opposites, but parts of the same gritty, beautiful system. As an LGBTQ+ man, husband, and father living on the industrial coastline of the Tees Valley I have a deep commitment to place-based change, sustainability and flourishing, and balancing effective systems with care and compassion and a strong belief that imagination is a vital, practical act of world-building from the edges
I believe that when imagination is placed at the heart of leadership conversations, teams rediscover energy, clarity, and direction.
Explore my writings, retreats, and salons at:
Writings, Recordings, and Applied Research
Bi-weekly newsletter weaving systems thinking, creativity, leadership, place and philosophy to explore how to live an imaginative life.
A monthly audio exploration of what it takes to reclaim our attention, our agency, and our perspective in modern times.
Connect
Or send me an email: kieran@onelittlespark.uk
Testimonials
Kieran has a rare and powerful gift: the ability to envision what’s possible and inspire others to believe in it too.
Dr Helen Moore, Associate Professor (Teesside University)
His cabaret brought to life the very real conundrum between data and lived experience in a way that cannot be ignored.
Dr Kelly Pickard-Smith (University of Exeter)
Kieran is a very talented facilitator who brings creativity and fun to every interaction. With Kieran’s guidance, we were able to refine our future strategy to ensure the whole team was better focused on our shared goals and understood the pathways (and pitfalls) to meeting them.
Sarah Chaytor, Director of Research Policy and Strategy (University College London)
Kieran is creative, brings a lot of energy and professionalism to his work, and has the rare gift of being able to both organise events and facilitate them with energy and charisma, but also has the ability to synthesise lots of information to draw out key points and next steps in complex pieces of work.
Gemma Adams, Head of Projects and Innovation (NCCPE)
Recent Collaborations
