‘expressions corner’ Ready to Roll

‘expressions corner’ was designed and developed as a new method for insight gathering that is highly confidential. It draws on the structure of interviews, but re-designs them to focus on providing an exciting and unusual experience for participants, in contrast to only aiming to capture information from them. Furthermore, unlike interviews, it allows participants to say as much or as little as they like, and it empowers them to control the order of the issues they want to talk about. How this is done is covered in the ‘Red and black cards’ section below.

Overview

‘expressions corner’ is my second fieldwork method and it was informed by the findings that surfaced from my first fieldwork method ‘explorations’. Some of these findings were that participants defined their identities through the following criteria: Geographic region, politics, religion, language, culture and nationalism. So the aim of ‘expressions corner’ is to gather more in-depth answers about these criteria, without any stigma, judgment, offense or subjectivity towards participants, in addition to engaging the target audience in idea generation of potential initiatives that can overcome these dividing lines.

‘expressions corner’ is designed to run alongside existing social workshops, camps, or other activities around Lebanon, that bring together youth ranging from 18 to 30 years old. ‘expressions corner’ will be set up in a corner of the workshop space, in a nearby room, or outdoor, depending on venue and availability.

Structure

Introduction and consent forms:

The facilitator introduces ‘expressions corner’ to all the participants as a group, and distributes consent forms that clearly explain and guarantee the confidentiality procedures of this activity. Participants are assigned reference numbers, and are invited one by one, in numerical order, to visit ‘expressions corner’ for a 30-minute experience. This experience involves the participant sitting inside a tent containing: A cushion, a headset, and 2 sets of cards. The headset is connected to a laptop and WISE wireless internet device situated outside the tent. The participant is asked to wear the headset. Through a Skype call, I explain to the participant the cards task in front of him/her. All the conversations will be recorded, however the participants will never see me or I see them (as I am in a completely different geographical location altogether), so their identity remains unidentifiable. Similarly, the ‘expressions corner’ facilitator who sets up the space, invites participants and runs the activity, will never enter the tent and listen to the conversations.

Red and black cards:

The participant is faced with 2 sets of cards: A red set with a question mark on the box, and black set with an asterisk sign. The red set contains numbered cards (1 to 46) that question the participants about their identity and perceptions towards others’ identities, and the black set (47 to 52) questions them about their reflections, opinions, experiences, and invites them to come up with ideas that encourage social integration and coexistence. The participant is first asked to pick up the red box, take the cards out, and shuffle them with their eyes closed. They then pick up the first card on top of the deck, tell me the number and talk about it for up to 30 seconds… just the first things that comes to their mind. When through, they put it away and repeat the same with the following card. This is a very quick process, and a participant needs to respond to cards as quickly as possible. I can also stop them and ask them further questions about a specific card. A participant may also choose to postpone up to 3 cards if he/she does not wish to speak about them straight away. They can place them on the bottom of the deck, but once they reach them again they will have to talk about them.

When the red cards are exhausted, the participant is asked to pick up the black box and speak about the black cards but his time without shuffling them as the cards take them through a self-reflection journey warming them up for the last card which is idea-generation.

Discussion guide cards:

These cards are only for my use. They contain the same images and words as the red and black cards, and are laid out in front of me in numerical order, to offer a guide of questions on the back. These help me prompt participants with additional questions about the cards they’re picking up if they are not being responsive enough.

Cues and notes form:

When a participant tells me the number on their card, I quickly write the recording time on the Cues and Notes Form and write any important notes next to the number. This will help me find cues in the audio files later when analysing responses.

Facilitator’s briefing pack:

This pack provides all the information a facilitator needs to know, to run ‘expressions corner’, including the agenda, emergency backup plans (where the internet and/or computer is down), and useful contacts for technical or strategical support. So far, 2 excellent facilitators, Tonnie Choueiri and Maya Jizzini, with previous experience in social work, have been trained through this pack and more could be trained if the ‘expressions corner’ schedules do not suit their availabilities at any point.

Next steps

The ‘expressions corner’ team is now ready and willing to integrate expressions corner in scenarios that bring together a relatively large gathering of young people between the ages of 18 and 30, in different regions around Lebanon. Suggestions and invitations for where and when to run ‘expressions corner’ is most welcome from any interested NGOs or other organisations, youth centres, community groups, educational institutions… Please contact joanna@therefordesign.net.

Thank you to the team at .: there for design … for producing all the resources and equipment of ‘expressions corner’ in such a short turnaround, and supporting this initiative as a whole!

A Wordle of this!

At Uscreates, we’ve been using Wordle as a tool to analyse both websites and content, and it’s been proving very useful. What Wordle does is create a hierarchical visualisation of a website or any piece of text by making the words with the highest occurrence largest, and those with the fewest smallest. Simple.

I decided to create a Wordle of this blog and this is what came out!

What I like about the results is that Participant and Participants are massive! This is great because I really want my research to be participatory, a joint collaboration between all the parties involved, and I guess a lot of my writing is focusing on that. Some other great results are:

Lebanon – Of course my case study

Methods – Of course because it’s a practice-led research

Different – I love this one, because that’s the main problem I am trying to tackle; how can I design things that help ‘different’ people integrate?

Dialogue – Great, it’s a social integration method

Social/people – At the heart of the research

Visual – Looking at the problem from the perspective of how visual methods, communications contribute

Camp, Explorations, Probe – Of course, my latest fieldwork

Now what is slightly worrying is how small Communication and Design are, when these are the first two words in the PhD title! I know that I am now at the scoping/insight stage, and have not started developing any communication design yet, but I still need to boost my reading and writing in this area. A definite task for the near future.

I can start seeing how Wordle can help me map my literature review, and the best part is it only takes seconds!

A journal on International Work and Study Camp 2009

I had introduced the Forum for Development Culture and Dialogue (FDCD) in a previous post. Since 2005, FDCD has been holding, in partnership with other organisations, a yearly summer camp that brings together 23 to 33 year-old participants from different religions, backgrounds and countries across the world. I participated in this year’s camp which took place in Syria (Saydnaya) and Lebanon (Dhour Choueir) from 3 to 13 July.

Left: Saydnaya, Syria – Right: Dhour Choueir, Lebanon

This initiative is grounded on the organisation’s conviction that interaction transforms relationships and facilitates dialogue, understanding, peace building, and prevention and transformation of conflict. The interactive methods in the camp range from sessions, lectures and workshops, to field visits, games, and culture nights.

“Living together for several days in an isolated location and sharing three meals a day plays a large part in the transformation that occurs in these camps, and is a model for One living. Participants experiment with positive and peaceful alternatives and ways of dealing with their problems and with others, celebrating differences, thus becoming a starting point of transformed and transforming relations.” (IWSC brochure, 2009)

Participants:

This year, the camp brought together around 40 Christian and Muslim participants from Lebanon, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Mianmar, Denmark, Norway and The United States.

Participants and organisers on the last day of the camp

Sessions:

Every day, participants attended one or more sessions on dialogue, and each session was followed by exercises that exemplified and demonstrated the theories discussed.

––––––––––

Ms. Agnete Holm introduced the different types of dialogue: Dogmatic/philosophical/theological, intellectual, confrontational, reformative, social/ethical, and personal/spiritual. Ms. Agnete then talked about the difference between listening and speaking from the heart (the centre of the person), and the mind (rooms containing previous knowledge and influences from other people). In good dialogue, it is important to recognize whether a person is speaking from the mind or the heart, to be able to trigger the right type of listening. Ms. Agnete explained that there are four listening skills: Downloading (requires social intelligence when listening to the familiar), object-focused (requires academic intelligence when listening and analysing both familiar and non-familiar things), empathic (requires emotional intelligence to place oneself in the other person’s shoes), and generative (requires spiritual intelligence when the conversation moves both speaker and listener to a different stage).

First session: Introduction to interfaith dialogue

Another session focused on intercultural sensitivity by questioning our assumptions of the other. Achieving intercultural sensitivity can then lead the way to intercultural integration. Ms. Agnete divided the process of integration into a number of ethno-centric and ethno-relative stages. These stages were developed by Milton J. Bennett.

Ethno-centric stages:

1. Denial: a. Isolation – b. Separation

2. Defense: a. Denigration – b. Superiority – c. Reversal

3. Minimization: a. Physical universalism – b. Transcendent universalism

Ethno-relative stages:

1. Acceptance: a. Respect for behavioural difference – b. Respect for value difference – c. Adaptation – d. Empathy – e. Pluralism – f. Integration

––––––––––

Rev. Hadi Ghantous gave a session on important issues regarding interfaith dialogue. The ways in which we perceive another religion can be very different:

1. Intolerance: I don’t want to know

2. Indifference: I don’t care

3. Exclusive: The truth is only in my religion

4. Inclusive: The truth is in many religions, but my religion includes the entire truth

5. Plural: All religions are true and lead to the same place

It is by understanding the pluralistic nature of religions that interfaith dialogue can occur.

––––––––––

Rev. Hadi also discussed the religious fallacies that can lead to conflict. For example: Imposing a religious belief on others, interpreting religions literally, blind obedience of religious leaders, taking the responsibility to fulfill a religion’s promise, claiming that goals justify the means even if the means contradict the religious belief, and initiating holy wars.

––––––––––

One of the primary objectives of the camp is to empower participants to, upon their return, initiate integration projects in their local communities. For this purpose, Mr. Ahmed Hazem offered a number of sessions on team building. He helped participants recognise what type of person they are because this influences how they implement projects. The types were:

1. Amiable: People oriented, ask

2. Expressive: People oriented, tell

3. Analytical: Task oriented, ask

4. Driver: Task oriented, tell

In a session on project management, Mr. Ahmed explained that accomplishing a project successfully requires a team balance between idea people (head), action people (hand), and community people (heart). If the team does not engage these three types of people, a project’s process is more likely to get deterred at one or more of its stages.

Exercise to discover our role inclinations by solving a problem as teams

Lectures:

A number of prominent religious figures, communtity leaders and dialogue practitioners visited the camp and gave enriching lectures:

1. Fr. Paolo Dell’Oglio: An Italian Jesuit who founded the monastery of Mar Mousa in Syria.

2. Ms. Aude Lise Norheim: Norwegian ambassador in Lebanon, and one of the main funders of the camp. She shared her peace-building experience in Africa.

3. Sheikh Hani Fahs: A member of the Higher Shiite Council of Lebanon.

4. Judge Abbas el Halabi: The president of the Arab Group for Muslim-Christian Dialogue.

5. Ms. Sarah Adams: A member of the Mennonite Central Committee.

Left: Norwegian Ambassador Aude Lise Norheim – Right: Sheikh Hani Fahs

Workshops/games:

The camp programme also included some engaging and stimulating workshops.

On the first night of the camp, Mr. Amer Ghantous held some ice-breaking games to introduce participants to one another. For example, participants were asked to match lifestyle facts to corresponding participant names, by investigating and asking questions as quickly as possible.

––––––––––

Mr. Ahmed Hazem gave a workshop on listening and communication. Participants had to sit in pairs back to back. The first person was given a domino arrangement and had to describe it verbally to the person behind them. The latter needed to use the verbal description to construct exactly the same arrangement with their domino pieces.

Mr. Raffi Feghali held an unusual conflict resolution workshop. He used music as a metaphor. Each participant was asked to find sounds that represent his/her identity. Participants were then asked to play their sounds together, by starting with a pair, then growing into bigger and bigger groups, to finally create an orchestra of over 40 instruments. Participants needed to adjust conflicting instruments to synchronize with others, without sacrificing their sounds/identities. This is what the final ensemble sounded like:

Participants also took part in a forest cleaning workshop. In teams, they needed to coordinate to clean and maintain a few forest and garden spaces in Dhour el Choueir, using a limited number of tools, and during a relatively short period of time.

Garden maintenance in teams

Energizers:

Every morning a different group of participants was responsible for kick starting the day by giving a morning opener, an impression about the previous day, and an energizer that can get participants going. The group was also responsible for throwing energizers in the middle of the day if the participants’ energy drops. Some of the energizers included learning new dances, singing, yoga, cultural games, prayers, etc.

Left: Fruit salad Danish game – Right: Yoga session

Culture nights:

The camp encouraged participants to share their culture and learn about new cultures. A few evenings promoted that. On one night, a Palestinian orchestra and choir visited the camp and performed concerts, and an Iraqi dance group performed a Brazilian dance. On another night, participants from every country were required to present their cultures in 15 minutes. Dances, cuisines, games, histories, fashion, and other cultural themes were shared with others during a very entertaining night. Other culture nights were less planned though, especially when the word got out that a Syrian wedding was taking place in a restaurant near by. Participants self-invited themselves to the wedding and headed out exploring!

Different cultural evenings

Field visits:

Visits were organized to different religious and touristic sites in both Syria and Lebanon. Participants met with the Minister of Awkaf in Damascus, the Ummayyad Mosque and spent the rest of the day touring the souks. Other destinations were Maaloula, a small town in Syria where residents still speak Aramaic, the original language of the Bible. In Lebanon, visits were arranged to Bourj Hammoud – a popular shopping street, Mohammad al-Amin mosque in Beirut, a church in Minyara north Lebanon, Harissa – an important pilgrimage site for the Virgin Mary, Jbeil – an ancient Phoenician city on the coast, and Jeitta’s underground grotto.

Left: Ummayad Mosque, Damascus, Syria – Right: Church in Minyara, Lebanon

To conclude, the camp was very impactful on me in many senses. On the one hand, the learning experience from people, places and cultures was fascinating, and on another hand, the theories and knowledge acquired from workshops, sessions and lectures contributed a lot to my PhD research. But to add to these – and I think this ranks as the highest benefit – I was placed in a safe environment where I could interact and meet with wonderful people I would have never met or interacted with otherwise because of many social barriers in both Lebanon and the UK. So in simple terms, I was able to practice social integration at its best, and place myself empathetically in the shoes of my target audience.