Activity 1: Reconnecting with our ideas of freedom

1 hours 30 minutes

Aims

To help us to reconnect with our own ideas about what led us to the journey of activism and what, from our individual perspective, it means to be free.

About

Robin DG Kelley’s assertion about the power of social movements and what draws us to them is an important starting point:

“progressive social movements do not simply produce statistics and narratives of oppression, rather, the best ones do what great poetry always does: transport us to another place, compel us to relive horrors and, more importantly, enable us to imagine a new society”

Task 1:

For this activity, we will do some group ice-breakers to warm people up, inject a sense of playfulness and reconnection. The facilitator can decide which kind of ice-breakers or songs might best suit their group. Following this, participants will be asked to find a partner, preferably someone they do not know well or work with often. You will work with a partner to tell three stories: one about justice, one about injustice, and one about how you came to be an activist. We will share what we learnt from our partners in a plenary session.

Task 2:

We will then think about what freedom is to each of us, drawing on our learning from the past 2 modules and our visions for what freedom might mean or look like. We will first do this through an individual written exercise. Each person will receive a cut out of a freedom/power fist (see attached). In the fist, write what freedom means to you: how do you capture in one or two sentences what freedom looks like?

Each person is now invited to stick their completed fist icon onto the wall or a large piece of paper and verbally state what they have written. This gallery of freedoms can be referred to or altered throughout the workshop.

After we have all had our turn in the circle, the facilitator will draw together the critical lessons emerging from the session.

Gallery

Last updated December 15, 2019 6:59 pm