Material Metaphors
Use creative material to construct individual objects and morph them into one collaborative metaphor.
A 30-45 minute activity for 6 or more people
Is this the activity for your group?
- 30-45 minutes duration (increases somewhat with number of players)
- 6+ players
- Requires facilitator
- High setup (distributing various craft supplies)
- Medium difficulty (requires knowledge and creative thinking around your project or topic)
- High imaginative load (lots of player creation with minimal guidance)
- Medium trust required (collaborative re-working of creations, discussion of real-world difficulties)
Why play this?
- Staying With The Trouble (Engaging with difficulties in collaboration through metaphor without solution-seeking)
- Collective Imagining (Finding and creatively expressing connections in the entanglement of personal metaphors)
- Surfacing Worldviews (Perspective taking and exploration as a group)
Components
- Creative food material (eg. unboiled spaghetti & marshmallows)
- Large poster papers (1 per group of 3-4 players, ~50-100cm tall and wide)
- Craft tools (enough for each player to use them in groups)
- scissors
- glue
- tape
- felt-tip pens
- markers
- Various craft materials of your choice, we suggest:
- Cardboard
- Construction paper
- Patterned paper
- Felt
- Balloons
- Sticks
- Ribbon
- Foil
- Pipe cleaners
- Corkboard
- Modeling clay
- String
- Post-its
These are examples of components that can be used for this activity. These were collected over time from various charity shops. Certainly, you do not need this many things. Start with what you have available. Collecting sticks, pebbles and leaves is also a good option.
Background and objectives
Take your own perspective on a challenge you experience, or the perspective of a stakeholder, find metaphors for their work, and bring these various perspectives together in a model of entangled hopes, fears, and feelings.
Example 1: Material Metaphors: perspective building
Description of the purpose:
Imagine the perspective of a stakeholder, find metaphors for their work, and collectively bring these various perspectives together in a model of entangled hopes, fears, and feelings.
Example 2: Material Metaphors: building forward
Description of the purpose:
Select a challenge you experience in (interdisciplinary) collaboration (or in your work more generally), start building a metaphorical expression of the challenge, let yourself be surprised by the process of building and use of different materials. Then, connect each individual material metaphor with the metaphors of your group members.
Setup
Adjust a large poster paper to a table. Randomly organize creative material on the poster paper.
Step 1
Select a challenge you experience in (interdisciplinary) collaboration (or in your work more generally), start building a metaphorical expression of the challenge, let yourself be surprised by the process of building and use of different materials. (10-15 minutes)