f-Activities with art: Be in the picture
(activities for facilitators of exformative cooperative learning with groups)
PLAY-BASED LEARNING DESIGN
f-Activities with art: Be in the picture
(activities for facilitators of exformative cooperative learning with groups)
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f-activities is a series of activities for facilitators of exformative cooperative learning with groups. exformation is a process where participants create learning value by experiencing the unknown.
among the many things I learned from Yoshi Oida is that the format is tai, while the learning outcome (or group development) is yu. remember this:
if tai is the moon yu is moonlight
activities do not need to be introduced or explained. learning value gets extracted by itself, or during debriefing. a post-activity debriefing can take as long as the facilitator or the group wants — according to how deep and profound you want the learning value to go.
activity #301
art galleries. be in the picture
tai
duration allow a maximum of 3 minutes per iteration per participant take another 10 minutes for debriefing an iteration in plenum
group size if the group size is such that an iteration + debriefing takes longer than 40 minutes, then break the group in subgroups. in the case of there being subgroups, add 10 minutes plenary “debriefing of debriefings” per iteration
hardware online: participants need a notebook with WIFI connection and enough broadband to share images if the workshop is in physical space: one notebook, one projector for the facilitator: a document camera (if the image gallery is a physical object — plates, prints, or a book) a stopwatch or other timing device a bell or gong to indiciate the end of a timebox
software online: communication platform with break-out and screen sharing facilities if the workshop is online and the image gallery is not a physical object: a gallery of high quality images
in all cases: a gallery of artworks with at least three times as many images as there are participants
space online or physical if physical, look for an otherwise empty place with a large white wall on which images can be projected if online, make sure that all participants are visible and can have their cameras switched on and off smartphones are unsuitable for this activity
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format adaptation
the process described below is based on an example — using Hokusai’s 36 prints with a view on Mount Fuji as source material. Hokusai was a master of ukiyo-e — a compound literally meaning “images of the floating world” — the very same idea which is expressed in the English “this too shall pass”. but be careful. it is not because I like to work with this sort of material that you must too. the facilitator should adapt the process of this f-activity according to her own preferences and in correspondence with the circumstances of the group of participants.
process
1 — create a social space in which the participants can wander and start conversations with each other at leisure. I usually set up a series of break-out rooms (online or physical) and randomize the participants into them, but not before telling them that everything is possible and they can wander from one room into another as per their own wishes or desire. to timebox this phase, use the timing formula
3P/B
P = number of participants B = number of break-out rooms
this means: for twelve participants and three break-out spaces, allow 12 minutes
2 — bring everyone together in the main room. invite the group to simply look at the images that you are about to show, in silence. flip through the entire series of images. allow four or five seconds per image. you can play some soft, neutral background music if you want. but silence is very much okay :)
3 — having gone through the entire collection, start flipping back from the end to the beginning — and at a random moment ask a participant for any number between 1 and 4. keep flipping back the number of images that the participant indicated by her answer. stop the image that you have landed on. everybody knows that it was randomly “given” to you. watch it intently for a second or so, but not longer. then proceed and tell your story.
Hokusai, 36 views on Mount Fuji, plate #14, 礫川雪の旦, The Tea House at Koishikawa
here is an example of what a story could be like:
There I am at the breakfast table, the morning after a nightlong of snowfall. even yesterday I had lost all courage. it had been one of those days when everything goes wrong. I missed an important meeting, lost my phone, missed a train, never got to finish my accounts, and when I came home I was exhausted.Today the air is clear & crisp. look there, she shouts out. and I see my goal before me, in clear outline, at yonder side of the lake. and then it strikes me. when I realize that in the clarity of the landscape, the boundaries between Fuji San and the surrounding landscape have blurred. for a second I had thought my goal was clear. yet now I see, my goal is nowhere to be seen. I cannot tell where no-Fuji ends and yes-Fuji begins. perhaps I am at my destination already?Three birds in the sky:
Transparency. Inspection. Adaptation.4 — make a randomized list of all the participants in the workshop. do not show the list to the participants. randomize everything so that nobody is able to “prepare” their story during the process, perhaps instead of listening to the stories of the other participants. take the first participant off your randomized list and ask them for any number between 1 and 4. proceed and flip as many pages as the participant has told you to. you arrive at a random image. ask the participant for their story.
5 — repeat step 4, till all participants have taken their turn.
optionally: do a few iterations of step 4, until all participants have told two or three stories and different stories have appeared for the same image(s)
6 — repeat step 1 (creating social space). now the participants are bound to elaborate on the stories they have heard (theirs, the others’ who are present in the break-out, and even the others’ who are in different break-out spaces).
yu
7 — end the session with a plenum guided by one or more leading questions. before the plenary conversation, ask participants to write their “answers” down in some abbreviated form.
here are some questions that you might ask:
questions for individuals
in today's session, what is it about yourself that got unlocked by seeing an image of yourself in an image?
during today's session, what is the part of yourself that you saw or heard reflected in the story of someone else?
what is the transformation that was brought about today, when you discovered you were no longer alone?
etceteraquestions for teams
what are the patterns in your team that have become visible today but were invisible yesterday?
from all the stories you have heard, what are the aspects of team culture that have emerged today, that add value to the processes and collaboration in your team?
from all the stories you have heard today,which are the transformations in your team that you think are immanent?
from all the stories you have heard, what are the aspects of team culture that have emerged today, that require transformation, and for which the readiness for transformation has not yet taken shape?
from what you have heard today, what is the change(in your team, your organization, your community) that you would identify as most urgent right now? and what is the role that you see yourself taking up in helping make this change happen?etcetera8 — close the session with free social and conversational space
comments
be in the picture is a format that I started using in the early nineties, with children in marginalized communities in India. the pictures I showed them were a mixture of art that they recognized (produced by their own community or comparable communities in South Asia), art that was completely alien to them (Japanese prints, photos by Saul Leiter, …), and stills from Bollywood movies. counter-intuitively, the format seems to work best with image prompts from non-familiar sources — perhaps this frees the imagination to a greater extent, or the “space” in which the storytelling takes place is perceived as more safe. usually, I make sure that the images contain animals or human figures that the participants can identify with. but this is not necessary.
I took up this format again in the context of a company launch in the Sultanate of Oman, in 2004, to much acclaim from the participants, and I have kept working with this since then. agile approaches to transformation have proven to be exceptionally suitable environments for f-activities of this sort.
attention should be given to the fact this f-activity is not some kind of Rorschach test. this is not therapy after all. the idea is plain and simple: create a space that is experienced as “safe,” use random visuals to elicit impromptu stories, confront the participants with the stories they have told, ask them what their takeaways are. period.
painting by Pieter Bruegel de Oude, 1562 CE — a favorite with workshop attendants — from my gallery of renaissance flemish paintings with animals
if you are intrigued by this f-activity, come and see for yourself and join the next edition of my recurrent workshop with the Hokusai’s 36 views on Mount Fuji:
if you’d like to know more about exformative facilitation and exformative education, you might think of joining the next run of our resourceful exformation book club:
here is how you can help support my writing on Medium:
1 — clap for this f-activity (you can give up to 50 claps for every story you read) 2 — **follow me on Medium. much appreciated! 3 — choose to get an e-mail each time I publish a story on Medium 4 — get [Medium membership through my referral page](https://francis-laleman.medium.com/membership)**
if you like my writing, there is more where this comes from:
1 get a copy of my book 2 explore my website 3 register for a workshop of your choice
are you a facilitator? the f-activity files are growing. check out more of them on Medium:
are you planning to use one or more of these f-activities? — I’d like to hear how you are doing. send me your feedback and ideas.
and, well, the least you can do is buy me a coffee :)
click here to buy me a coffee — much appreciated!
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