Poster for the event
The goal of this workshop is to explore the notion of dialogue, as described by Paolo Freire in his book Pedagogy of the oppressed.
Ice-breakers:
– Emotional Check-in
As we stand in a circle, everyone says shortly how do they feel at the moment.
– Something in common
Each person in the workshop has to talk to all the other participants and find something they have in common. People should try to find something interesting, weird or uncommon. On a board, write the names of the participants in circle, when two people find something they have in common, they draw a line between their two names and write what they have in common. At the end, someone go over the board and read out all the connections.
– Expectations
In pairs people have 5m to talk about why are they attending the workshop and what are their expectations about it.
Introduction – Theory:
– Where do we start from
Select an imaginary line in the room, following a wall or between two objects. Participants position themselves along the line according to how well they think they know the topic, One extremity represents “I know nothing” and the other “I am an expert”. For this workshop the topic was “The notion of dialogue, according to Paolo Freire”. Then ask each participant to explain their idea about the topic, starting from the person who think they know the less and ending with the person who think they know the most.
– Common definition
Read out selected extracts from the book, explaining the idea of dialogue or have print out ready for people to read. Try to construct a definition together, to have a common understanding of the notion.
Notes from the workshop
– Concrete examples
Split the group in groups of 3-4 people. Ask each group to come up with concrete examples of a situation that is a dialogue and a situation that is not. After the discussion, share in the whole group
Role-play activity:
You will need to prepare a set of cards/pieces of paper with situations described on it. These are challenging situations that might require a dialogue process or we could reach the limits of dialogue. The idea is to explore how to react to these challenging situations as a facilitator. If there is enough time, the participants could come up with those situations themselves during the workshop. The situations that were presented in this workshop were:
- A participant accuse you of racist behavior.
- A participant is fat-shaming another participant as “a joke”
- A participants comes up to you, telling you that they feel unsafe in the presence of another participant and ask you exclude them from the process. You haven’t noticed anything yourself.
- You notice that a participant is having sexist comments and behavior repeatedly. The group has an agreement to be anti-sexist.
- One participant tells you that you constantly disrespects their culture.
Split the group in smaller groups (different groups than before) and give 2-3 cards to each group. Ask the groups to go over the different situations and to pick one. The group has to find a strategy to address the situation described by the card. They will then have to create a scene where they role-play the situation and their strategy to address it. After a time of preparation, each group perform short scenes in front of the whole group.