The village
From WRIWiki
The village game
Goals: to give people a common experience of a non-violent action
- to discuss general principles of non-violent strategy
- to provide a group challenge
- to build community
- to explore issues of community development and marginalisation
Materials: flipchart paper, markers, crayons
Set-up:
Arrange pieces of paper on the floor. Depending on your goals for this exercise, you may either want to set up one 'community' on which the whole group works (if you feel the participants would benefit from a 'whole group' experience) or various smaller communities. Since having several communities can allow you to de-brief on intercommunity dynamics and conflict and can enable you to set up communities with different levels of privilege and since the multi-community version is more complicated, that is what is described here.
Paper for a community should be laid out so that there are no gaps, but so that the border of the community is slightly irregular as the plots of land in an actual village might be. There should be no fewer than 4 participants per community and communities should be set up so that there are different sizes of groups, different amounts of paper and different access to pens and markers. For example a 'poor' community would have less land, more people and fewer (or lower quality) pens and markers. Try to set up any disparities as inconspicuously as possible. If you are one trainer working with a large group you may want to recruit one or more participants to be your allies, either overtly or covertly.
Procedure:
i. Tell the group that this is their chance to create an ideal community. Divide group unevenly and give each group their community of paper to work on. Ask 'What would you like to see in an ideal community or village?' When people give examples, give them markers and encourage them to draw or represent their ideas on the paper at their feet. As ideas proliferate, give out markers to the various groups (unevenly) and encourage them to draw together. Announce that they have ten minutes to draw. Give updates on the time. Watch inter- and intra-group dynamics.
ii. After ten minutes, ask groups to 'take a tour': looking at the other communities and explaining their community to the others. Begin with the most privileged community and end with the least. If you are feeling particularly cranky, give the less privileged community less positive feedback and less time.
iii. Invite people to return to drawing for one more minute, to add anything more to the community. The purpose of this step is to increase the level of realism (people do travel from community to community) and — most importantly — to increase the participants' satisfaction with their community. For this exercise to work well, it is important for each group to feel attached to their own created community.
iv. At the end of one minute, take away markers, beginning with the most marginalised group. Ask groups how they are feeling about their communities. Give more positive feedback on how lovely these communities are.
v. Slide smoothly into a trainer role change, informing participants that you are also the CEO of a nuclear power multinational (or logging company or whatever potentially destructive force might make most sense for your setting and participants). As you are telling them this information, circle the papers, until finally you step in and snatch (from the most marginalised community first), some of the paper — for your factory or plant or mall or McDonald's, KFC, logging, mine tailings dump, etc.
vi. Continue taking away paper in small amounts, focussing more on the more marginalised communities and continuing to talk about the advantages of development, etc. It is imperative to time your paper snatching so that it is slow enough that groups are not devastated and have motivation to organise. More activist groups will be able to tolerate faster snatching, 'beginners' will need you to go very very slowly. You do not want to create despair. Nor do you want to 'win'.
vii. Continue to take away paper until the group has organised sufficiently against you so that they have had an experience of non-violent action. Of course it is ideal if that is a successful experience, but if the group simply cannot mobilise itself, end the game, debrief on possible options and try the game again.
viii. Possible adaptations or additions:
- Enlist a participant to play a (covert) role of a community member that you can 'buy off' (sometimes you can buy people off even without pre-enlisting them)
- Choose someone to be a community leader (if you want to look further into intra-group dynamics)
- Add additional roles: a collaborator, member of the local elite, mercenary, soldier
- etc. (see sheet)
viii. Possible de-brief questions:
- How are you feeling?
- What did you do that was effective in stopping the takeover of your communities? What else could you have done?
- What did you notice about privilege? How did the different levels of privilege affect the exercise?
- What did you notice about the intra- (inter-) group dynamics?
- What got in the way of acting effectively?
- In what ways is this exercise like reality? What did it remind you of?
- Who in your story plays the role of the collaborator? of the developer / industry, etc.?
- What is the role of government here? How is government likely to respond to people organising for their community rights? Play it out.
