WAKA · In Nature We Believewaka.gaiaeducation.org/collection/perspectives-lenses-glasses/
Perspectives, Lenses and Glasses
Finding out what everyone brought with them
Surface the diversity in a group on day one, so that later disagreement reads as difference of lens rather than as conflict of character.
- Duration
- 60–90 min
- Group size
- 8–30 people
- Setting
- either
- Energy
- gentle
- Materials
- PaperColoured pensWall space or a long table
In an international group, the interesting arguments in the second half of the week are almost never about the thing being argued about. This session gets ahead of that.
How it runs
- Draw your glasses. Each person draws a pair of spectacles filling a sheet. In one lens: what shaped how you see nature — a landscape, a family, a job, a loss. In the other: what shaped how you see groups of people.
- On the arms of the glasses, write the two or three things you were taught about nature that you now think are wrong.
- Pairs, eight minutes each way. Explain your glasses. The listener asks questions only.
- Gallery. Hang them all. Walk in silence for ten minutes.
- Whole group, twenty minutes. Not “what did you see” but: where in this room is there a lens very different from mine, and what would I miss without it?
Facilitator notes
- Facilitators draw their own and hang them up. This is not optional.
- The gallery stays up all week. Point back to it when a disagreement arrives on day four — it will.
- Keep it descriptive, not confessional. If someone goes deep, that is their choice, but the design should not require it.
