This past week has marked a year since I was in France, with Nomadways, working with an amazing and inspiring group of people talking and learning about storytelling. At the outset of the residency, we were each given a small notebook to keep track of our days, make notes, write, draw and dream in. I…
Tag: stories we tell
Two more energizers
Further to last post, I thought I could include a couple more ways to get a group moving: Silvia‘s energizer was fun and got us moving. I don’t know what to call it and so name it: Silvia’s energizer The group stands. Starting with one arm, shake it vigorously while counting to 16. Switch to…
Two energizer activities from Stories We Tell
While we were in Bernay-en-Ponthieu we did a variety of different energizer-style activities at different times to perk us up or shift the energy of the room. It’s high time I put some here, wouldn’t you say? The first one was offered up by Meriç: ‘The sun shines on…’ This game is very similar to…
Sound Story
A new experience for me in Bernay was creating stories that had no words or images in them. On day 4 of the workshop experience we listened to a traditional/historical story of the Bernay region, and without speaking, we took a piece of paper and each drew our favorite part of the story. Still without…
Bernay Stories
This was one of my favorite writing activities while we were working together in Stories We Tell with Nomadways. We were released into the community in small groups to explore and collect ideas and inspiration for 3 different types of stories. Our group worked together to find sounds and sights for each other’s stories, and…
Scavenger Hunt Story
We did this workshop in the afternoon of the first day in Stories We Tell with Nomadways. It was on the schedule as ‘team building’ – it was, and so much more. The charm of this was being in a country that was not my own, in a sweet and bucolic small town steeped in…
Writing From The Future
We did a writing exercise while in Bernay-en-Ponthieu with Nomadways in which used our imaginations to look back on our career. We imagined that we were writing an introduction to our last collection of short stories. You can read mine here. Writing From The Future Materials needed: paper, pens/pencils Time: 1 hour Participants: work individually…
Looking out / Looking in
We used this exercise with Nomadways to jump-start our reflective processes and get us in the learning/analyzing/critical thinking mindset. Looking out / Looking in: Materials needed: paper, pens Time: 1 hour with a large group. Final discussion time can be shorter with a smaller group. Participants: pairs, sitting facing each other with writing/drawing surface between…
Getting to know you
We did an interesting exercise with Nomadways to get to know each other. Our group was about 20 people and we were able to learn each other’s names within the first day partly thanks to this little game. We played after doing a brief introductory round in which we stated our names, where we were from,…
Update from the bucket brigade…
I’ve been back in Canada a little over a week now, settling in to regular life again with a few bumps along the way – the biggest one being that my basement has been taking on water for 8 days now. Crazy. I’ve got a sump-pump running down there to keep things as dry as…