A Fair Attitude to the Past?
Materials: Flipchart paper, markers
Exercise description
Step1. Split into smaller groups based on nationality, ethnicity or religion. Each group is tasked with making a wall newspaper on: “What would need to change where my people are the majority in order to have a fair attitude to the past and take a step towards reconciliation?” The time for group work is 20 minutes.
Step 2. The groups present their wall newspapers, with possible questions for clarification.
Step 3. After that all the wall newspapers are put up where everyone can see them. The task for all the participants is to look at the wall newspapers their group did not make and add what they think is missing: “What else would need to get sorted in these communities in your opinion?” They write on the same paper but use a different coloured pen. They have 20 minutes.
Step 4. They read the additions and discuss the key issues that crop up in the plenary.
Discussion in the plenary
Suggested questions for the discussion:
What was it like writing about yourselves, and about others? How do you feel about what everyone else added to your newspaper? How much opportunity do you get to discuss this in real life and what is the attitude towards the “additions”, the tasks that people outside your group put before you?
Alternative version
In step 3, instead of all the participants adding to all the other wall newspapers, you can form smaller groups and task them with adding to specific wall newspapers. The smaller groups should be made up of people that did not participate in making the wall newspaper they are adding to. This way people would not walk around the room and go up to all the wall newspapers, but would stay in one place and focus on adding to just one wall newspaper.
Notice:
Keep in mind that some people may feel uncomfortable writing on wall newspapers made by others, so they will need to be encouraged or you will need to clarify the purpose of the exercise and how helpful feedback from others can be.
Possible difficulties:
Related Workshops: