About Curated Workshops

We've been
in the room.

Curated Workshops is built by Robert and Margriet — two facilitators who got tired of watching great workshops produce nothing.

1000+
Workshops in 18 countries
200+
Google Design Sprints facilitated
10+
Years in the field
2
Founders. No agency fluff.
The origin

Why we built
this.

We started Orange Minds in 2014 — both leaving corporate life, separately, with one shared conviction: the way most organisations run workshops is broken. Not because people don't care. Because the structure isn't there.

Over the following decade we facilitated more than 1000 workshops and 200 Design Sprints across 18 countries — from the Netherlands to Lebanon, Tanzania, Hong Kong, and beyond. We got very good at knowing what works and what quietly kills a room.

Curated Workshops is how we put that knowledge in a box. So a busy team leader — without facilitation training, without a budget for an external facilitator — can run a session that actually produces something.

The people behind it

Robert & Margriet.

MB
Margriet Buseman
Co-founder · Facilitator
LinkedIn

Margriet left a corporate career in 2014 — hiked the Himalayas, came back well-rested and without a plan, and somehow ended up facilitating teams across the world. A decade later, fuelled by flat whites, she's still at it. She combines warmth with precision: creates rooms where people feel safe enough to say what they actually think, and structured enough to do something with it.

"On the other side of fear, lies freedom."

Quick facts
Favourite countryNepal
Free timeOutdoors — preferably on a bike
When it rainsOn the couch with a book
Powered byFlat whites
Expert atGetting things done
DislikesWet socks
RW
Robert Westerhuis
Co-founder · Facilitator
LinkedIn

Robert has been to 78 countries, hitchhiked from China to Turkey, and cycled from Amsterdam to Italy. He eventually turned this appetite for structured adventure into 200+ Design Sprints. He has a talent for making complex situations legible — designing workshop arcs that feel inevitable in hindsight. The kind where participants leave wondering why they don't always work this way.

"Stop talking. Start doing."

Quick facts
Favourite countryKyrgyzstan
Free timeSkiing, hiking, cycling
When it rainsFrustration
LanguagesLoves a good language barrier
Expert atBooking the perfect train ticket
DislikesIroning
Our vision

How we think
about this.

Four things we believe after a decade in real rooms — with real teams, real pressure, and real consequences.

01Structure is not the enemy of energy.

The best workshops we've ever facilitated weren't the loosest ones. They were the ones with the clearest structure — because structure is what sets people free to think instead of manage the room.

02Participation beats observation.

When a leader facilitates their own team session, the team loses their leader as a participant. The most important voice in the room goes quiet. We design our workshops so the leader can sit in the circle, not stand outside it.

03Rhythm beats one-off events.

A single great workshop changes something. A rhythm of them changes how the team works. We build our workshops to be run repeatedly — because real culture change comes from consistent practice, not isolated events.

04Names matter.

Every Curated Workshop has Robert and Margriet's names on it. We don't publish anything we wouldn't run ourselves. That accountability is the quality signal we think the market is missing.

The methodology

What goes into
every workshop.

Three disciplines and one hard-won rule. Each one leaves a mark on every Curated Workshop.

01Neuroscience-backed energy arcs

Every workshop is sequenced around how human attention and energy actually work — not how we wish they did. We build in energy shifts, breaks, and closing rituals grounded in how the brain processes and retains information.

02Liberating Structures

We draw on Liberating Structures — facilitation methods that replace conventional presentations and discussions with approaches that include and engage everyone. No more HiPPO dynamics. No more silent participants.

03Design Thinking principles

Every workshop is designed with the end in mind. What does the team need to leave with? What shift needs to happen? We work backwards from the desired outcome — the way a product designer works backwards from the user.

04Field-tested troubleshooting

The troubleshoot cards in every kit come from real situations — actual moments in actual rooms where something went wrong and we had to fix it in real time. That's a different kind of expertise.

Our broader work

Curated Workshops is one part of what we do.

Alongside the workshop kits, Orange Minds facilitates Design Sprints, runs leadership programmes, and builds custom workshop trajectories for organisations across Europe and the Middle East. If your team needs something more tailored than a kit, that's what we do through Orange Minds.

Visit orangeminds.nl →

Start with
Season Recap.

The flagship workshop. Fully built, tested in real teams, ready to run today.