Representing others can be hard – what if their ideas don’t completely match up with yours? This is a chance to try on other people’s passions, and see how best to represent them.
Getting Started
Discuss what issues you are each passionate about. This could be absolutely anything you have strong feelings on, whether it is a personal or local issue, or a worldwide one. For example: school uniform, veganism, the armed forces, friendship, vaccinations.
Each person needs to write their most passionate view on a piece of paper, without showing anyone else. If you are doing this online, they could message their passionate view privately to whoever is leading the activity. Collect the pieces of paper in a hat and mix together, then ask everyone to pick one out – if doing this digitally the leader can allocate the topics at random around the group.
Representing Others
Take 3-5 minutes for everyone to think of 3 short points about why the thing that someone else has put on the paper is important. Then take it in turns to present these three points.
Finally, reflect as a group on how it felt to have to speak on someone else’s behalf and to hear someone else representing you. Did it make you think about anything differently? What were the most successful arguments? What was it that made them persuasive?
Take It Further
If you enjoyed Representing Others, try out Flip Flopping and Play Your Role.
