Non-verbal communication
What was the goal of it? What did the participants learn?
The goal was to make activities that relied on other techniques of communication than verbal. It was also for them to realise that body language and non-verbal communication in general is everywhere in your daily life.
All our activities were supposed to happen in complete silence, for the participants to learn how to give information without resorting to talking.
Which materials and how much time is needed?
We needed a few pens (one per two people), we also used papers to announce changes in our last activity.
It took us around 2 hours to prepare everything (from brainstorming to realisation, one hour online and 1 hour all together in Bakuriani) thanks to Claire who knew a lot of games thanks to her work.
Description of theoretical + practical part
We had four activities :
- Walking in a room with different positions (first looking down, with closed shoulders, and opening up little by little), showing that body language is very important. Claire guided it with her voice to explain to everyone what they had to do.
- Pen activity : everyone was paired in a couple, which had a pen that they held together, one extremity in each one’s palm. Then you had to explore and move around without making the pen fall. It was led by me (Olivier) and I gave instructions all along so that even the less curious could experiment different things. It’s an activity that brings a connection between two people, they have to organise themselves without talking and making the pen fall, following each other’s movements.
- Mime exercice: We separated them in 2 lines for this one because we were too many but this can be doable in one line from 8 to 15 people I think. The first person gets a mime from the presenter, and has to recreate it the more precisely possible, and the last person has to guess what the action was in the first place. It’s an activity about loss of communication if it goes through a lot of different intermediaries. Axelle, Claire and Emmeline respectively mimed put pants on, change a lightbulb, and giving birth.
- Silent theater : We made two groups but this time it had a purpose : the second group had to guess the given situation to the first group, with them miming what they wanted. It was free expression and we gave very little information on purpose, for example : at the beach, on public transportation, in a restaurant. The goal was for them to organise themselves as a group without talking of course. For example who becomes the driver or the waiter. We also added an event in the middle of the scene to see how would people react, it was the same purpose but just a second prompt in some way. We showed the first group with papers and played the unexpected event ourselves to make it easier, but it was not well understood given that usually they just tried to play it themselves.
Project 2024-1-EE01-KA152-YOU-000239132