Thursday, 10th January 2013
Indigo Brave ran a workshop with us to show everyone on the project what they are all about and how we could include there main opinion of peace and sense of emotional intelligence into the design.
(Introduction given to us by Indigo Brave)
We all entered the room not quite knowing what to expect from this activity but to be greeted by Charlie and Lalia from Indigo Brave. We quickly sat in a circle on chairs and they quickly gave an introduction into what they do and emotional intelligence.
After the introduction the chairs had been dropped and we started to carry out different tasks or challenges given to us by Charlie and Lalia. It was all about learning not to be scared to make mistakes, make a fool of yourself, and find inner peace...
(Discussing on what to do next...)
We started with the activity of having to make scenes out of our bodies in groups, no more than 5/6. Some were just still movements, others moved, and others included sound. I mean at one point I was pretending to be a wave along the floor making gushing noises of the waves crashing in front of my course mates that I've known for a year. Okay yeah I would do that if I had a drink maybe, but not at 11am on a Thursday... this was to again show that you shouldn't be afraid to make mistakes, to open up, show off the skills you wouldn't normally do. When Ben Thomas (a member of WIN) did his, he was meant to be a wave but it sounded and got interpreted more like a seal (well done mate)! But that's the thing, no one really cared or thought anything of it, okay Ben probably felt a little bit embarrassed afterwards but it quickly went!
(Do you know what it is yet... It's Tower Bridge of course!)
We got asked to portray an emotion, which was quite hard. The group of people I was with at the time decided on happiness, which when you actually think about it, a happy emotion is a lot harder to show than a sad one, or at least I think so... Anyway to show it we started off in a circle and turned outwards (facing out), laughing and cheering, and funnily enough everyone else got it! Just from our body language.
This was another important point they were trying to get across, body language. The way we come across comes in three main ways (correct me if I'm wrong, this is from memory), but something like 7% was actually verbal, so telling someone how you are, the most was through body language which was a ridiculous 55% (again correct me if I'm wrong), and then the rest was made up of our tone. This goes to show just how strong our body language is and how important it is that we portray ourselves right because we can and are affecting other people without even realising.
After some more chat we did a I'm strong, I'm weak exercise... Believe it or not it actually worked!! This was where we basically had to try and push a partners arm down while they said I'm strong or I'm weak again and again while we tried to pull it down, when they said I'm strong it stayed up but when they said I'm weak it went straight away. So this meant apparently that we (as people) are what we tell ourselves, so if we're sad a lot of the time, there is a high chance this is because we are telling ourselves this is the case, and visa versa.
One of the last tasks was to tell everyone what we liked about ourselves, what we're good at and then what two others thought of us.
I personally loved the experience and as another course mate said to the group, felt more connected to everyone. It was a real eye opener for some I think and now we have to see how we can incorporate there practices into our designs.
Indigo Brave, I'd just like to say on behalf of Team WIN and all the people that went to your workshops, thank you, it was fantastic to be part of it and be part of this project with you.
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