• Getting to know each other better
• Create a peaceful and constructive atmosphere
• Building on our motives and joys
• Stimulating empathy between participants
• Welcoming and addressing people’s fears
• Enabling participants to take a step back from their personal point of view to better understand who is in the group and what could be the dynamic.

Duration: 1 hour (including a 10 minutes break)

Invite participants to take 10 minutes to reflect on what are the basic needs they have to be able to live and work with other people and write them on post-its (1 idea/post-it).

Give them a break (10’) and create a mind map from what emerged.

When the participants return from the break, outline the needs that emerged so that everyone can have a clear view of the needs of the group. Introduce then the participants to the concept of “Artful Participation” as a guideline to behave in the group for the week they will share together.

Invite the participants to reflect on the fears they have regarding both the seminar and the collective living and to write them on a piece of paper. Remember them that each fear has to be written on a different paper. (5’)

Make a circle and ask the participants to crumble the papers with their fears and to throw them in the middle of the circle. That way, the fears are no longer the fears of a person but the fears of the group as a whole. (5’)

Then, one by one, invite the participants to collect a paper, read it out loud and glue it on a common Flipchart blank paper (gather similar fears together as much as possible). Continue until all the fears have been read. (10’)

To conclude the session, invite the participants to focus on what will be their joys during this week.

The speech is free: they can express either personal, either social or pedagogical experiences. One by one, the participants who feel like sharing their ideas with the group will put themselves in the middle of the circle and expressing their idea out loud. (Only the ones that have an idea and want to share it will take the speech; the participants they are free to express or not).

Invite then the other participants to take position regarding it, by taking position around the person who made the proposition. The more they agree with the idea, the closer to the person they will go.

• Post-it
• Flipchart papers
• Blank paper