Life-Mapping Exercise The life-mapping exercise can serve as useful opening activity in a multi-part dialogue series or an extended event

like a weekend retreat. It gives participants an opportunity to share stories about their backgrounds and experiences in a creative and engaging way. Participants create sketches that depict experiences, people, places, or relationships that have led them to to take part in the dialogue. They then share their drawings with one another. You may want to use this exercise in the first or second session of a series. We recommend that you establish the purposes of the dialogue program, set up communication agreements, and give participants a chance to introduce themselves briefly and to share their hopes for the program before leading a life-mapping activity. Time: 45 minutes to 2 hours Group Size: The exercise works best with small groups. Supplies Needed: artists sketch paper (sketchpads that measure 11 x 14 or 14 x 17 work well) color pens, pencils, or fine-tip markers (make sure you have enough so that each participant has access to several different colors) Purposes: Life-mapping can help to establish a strong foundation for dialogue by enabling participants to share stories about their backgrounds and experiences with one another at length. Participants who are not fully comfortable speaking about their experiences sometimes benefit from having an alternative way of expressing themselves. This exercise enables them to share feelings and thoughts that they may not be able to communicate with words. The exercise provides participants with an opportunity to reflect more deeply on their experiences and feelings than they might if they simply shared their stories verbally, and it supports them in organizing their thoughts. The process of brainstorming and selecting experiences to present, considering how to represent them visually, and finding ways to illustrate the connections between them can bring forth new insights. The exercise encourages participants to be creative and flexible, and it helps to create a lively and engaging atmosphere. Instructions: 1. Give each person a piece of sketch paper and distribute pens, pencils, and/or markers. (You may want to distribute them in a way that encourages participants to share them during the exercise.) 2. Explain the goals for the exercise and lay out the steps that are involved. The exercise will give them an opportunity to share their stories with each other in a creative way.

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3. Say something like: You will have 8 to 15 minutes to make a drawing that represents some of the most important experiences, people, places, relationships, interactions, etc. that have led to your being here today, participating in this group. You can draw just a few items or lots of items however many you want. Many people choose to draw somewhere around 5 or 7 images, but any number is ok. You can use arrows or lines to show the sequence in which these experiences happened or to illustrate the relationships between the different images. You're welcome to write words on the paper as well, if that's helpful to you. After everyone has had some time to draw, you'll each present your drawing to the group. 4. Invite the participants to spread out in the room to create their drawings. 5. Once the time you've allocated for drawing is up, or once the participants are ready to continue, take a short break, and then bring the participants together in a circle. Invite the participants to present their drawings to the group one at a time, explaining them and elaborating on them in any way they'd like. Give each person five or six minutes to share their drawing. Optional activities 6. After all of the participants have presented their drawings, you may want to invite them to ask questions of each other: Is there a story that you'd like to understand better? Are you curious to learn more about some aspect of another person's background or experience? Be sure to remind the participants that they are welcome to pass if they don't want to answer a question. You may want to go around the circle in order, inviting participants to ask a question of each group member in turn: Does someone have a question for Adam?, Does someone have a question for Rebecca?, etc. Alternatively, you can invite participants to pose questions in any order they wish. If you choose that option, take note of which participants are receiving the most questions. As the process unfolds, if some participants receive many more questions than others, share that observation with the group and invite them to ask questions of the participants who have received fewer. 7. Invite participants to reflect on what the exercise was like for them: What did you appreciate? What did you learn? What surprised you about other people's stories? What resonated with you? Did you gain any new insights about your own experience?

This work by Jewish Dialogue Group is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

This work by Jewish Dialogue Group is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License