Today Karen decided to drop some of us in the deep end by making us lead a warm up game/ short workshop by giving us the age of the participants and the type of warm up, be that physical, mental or vocal etc… Ruby was up first and she decided to do “elephant tree boat”. She started off by explaining the rules but Karen stopped her and explained that if you talk too much without showing, or getting the participants to demonstrate the instructions, the participants will lose focus, especially if they are young. We kept going through the warm up and at the end we discussed ways in which Ruby could have improved the way she facilitated it. It was then Abel’s turn and he had to facilitate a physical warm up for a younger set of participants. He explained the rules of “red yellow green” which was a traffic light style stop and go game. The first risk he had of facilitating this to young children is the danger of them falling, getting hurt, or crashing into others. We decided it was best to make sure they had bare feet and were all running in the same direction. Abel started to panic when we created a scene where one of the children had fallen and hurt their ankle, so I was brought in as a TA to assist. I was used for demonstration of the rules and to encourage everyone to participate but it was still quite messy.
After Eitan had facilitated his workshop to a good standard, (even if it was a slow race for pensioners), we sat down and discussed all the rules for a good facilitation:
- Confidence. You have to have confidence, if you’re not confident in facilitating you need to plan more. Lack of confidence will make your participants take over, and things may end up out of control, especially with younger participants.
- Explain instructions carefully. Make sure that everyone understands the instructions so that the warm up/workshop goes to plan. If people don’t understand the instructions/rules, it will be less of an enjoyable experience for others as time will be wasted.
- Be very clear. Make sure that when you are giving instructions you are very clear. Don’t repeat yourself too much, get straight to the point and make sure that everyone can hear/understand you.
- Take control. Right from the start, make sure that you have control and set the tone by making sure the participants know this. You are the facilitator, if something goes wrong it’s your responsibility to resolve this.
- Earn trust. Earning your participants trust is important, especially with young children. If the participants don’t trust you this can make them lack confidence, feel uncomfortable and can cause issues. Make sure you create a good relationship with everyone.
We then split off into groups and were given the task of discussing and writing down all the things to think about before/whilst planning a workshop. I was with Megan, Angelina and Ruby and we came up with this list:
- What Age are the participants? Certain workshops cant be delivered to people of certain ages, for example you cant do a fast physical workshop with elderly people.
- Do they have any disabilities/learning difficulties? If you’re working with people of disabilities you will have to take that into consideration when planning a workshop. Disabilities can be mental or physical and it may be that only one person in the group has a disability.
- Space. How much space do you have to delivery this workshop in? Are you in a small classroom or a big hall? Also consider whether you are inside or outside. What dangers are there in the space.
- Time limit. How much time do you have to facilitate the workshop? Time planning and staying on schedule is key.
- Group size. How big is the group? Also depending on the age group, if the group is large, will you need extra support?
- Aim/learning outcome. What is the aim of the workshop? Are you trying to improve their skills in a certain area? Are you trying to educate them on certain issues? What do you want them to get out of this workshop?
- Equipment. Will you need any equipment? What do you need to bring from home and what does the venue already have available for you to use?
- Circumstances/Characteristics. For example if you’re going into a PRU, the children there will be different and act differently than in a normal school, and you may encounter some difficulties. As you arrive, you may want to be made aware of any issues the group of people may have with one another.
- Experience in drama. This is very important; what experience do the group of participants have related to drama? Have the ever done drama before? You may be asked to come in and teach a drama workshop to a group of people with no past experience in drama so you will need to take that into consideration.
As the weeks go on we will all get a chance to facilitate a drama workshop and hopefully, now we understand how to plan, and have talked about tips on how to facilitate a good workshop, we will start to improve.
Participatory Performance Practices 