Tips on running a research sandpit event

[dodi1978]

Hi! I am just wondering whether anyone has got any tips on running a research sandpit event.
I have recently established a cross-disciplinary research group in my institution. Most 'member' are social sciences, but there are a few from more tech - engineering fields. At the last meeting, there was great appetite for developing joint grant proposals.
How do you best run these events? In the last few meetings, we have already shared our general respective research interests / directions so I want to avoid repeating all this.

Any advice welcome! For context, if everybody who is currently on my 'list' takes part, there will be approx. 10-12 people.

do you have all day or half a day?
do the people know each other well or not?

I attended a research sandpit of 100 people (2 days) where they had talks + discussion sessions. we were at tables of 6-8 and each table had to come up with a project or proposal to address one of the 10 'big questions' on the board. then they present the ideas. After lunch, we swapped into different groups and did the same with different questions. It was kinda useful but there was a fair bit of luck as to who you ended up in a group with.

For your smaller group, you could divide into 2 subgroups for discussions and then share ideas?

If you know what grants your groups are eligible to apply for, that can be useful to have a focus.