In come-and-go community builds, people come to build whatever challenge we’ve picked for the day—Build an animal that’s a combination of two animals, build the feeling you have when you [x], build what you’d buy if you had a million dollars, and so on, We take 2 pictures, 1 picture for the community board so everyone can see what everyone else built, 1 for people to take home to their fridges. Workshops are based on social science research on cooperation and conflict, focused on sense-making, emotional regulation, values and rules, and decision making and are described below. Our workshops are based on social science research—if you’re interested, check out some of what we used here on our Reading page.

2-in-1 Creatures

The challenge is to build a creature that combines characteristics of two animals. Above, we have the Piger (pig + tiger), the flying earthworm, and a firebird.

This activity explores ambiguity and uncertainty. When we learn new and contradictory information about events, persons, or things, we find ourselves facing ambiguity and uncertainty. We lack definitive answers because these new contradictory things don’t fit into our experience and expectations—which means they can alert us to gaps in what we know and believe. But our initial reactions to ambiguity can keep us from learning as much as we can from them. Those reactions are usually along these lines:

  • -feeling physically bad (because our brains are working overtime)

  • -feeling mentally bad (because of cognitive dissonance)

  • -trying to resolve any contradictions as quickly as possible (because of our “need for closure” psychologists talk about)

To learn from ambiguity and uncertainty requires handling discomfort and taking some care in how we resolve the contradictions, so we’re not rushing to judgement. A key is maintaining emotional and mental distance, not being swamped with fear or anger or confusion (check out our workshop on emotions below). This workshop provides that distance for practice. Participants control their choices as they build their own ambiguous creature. They display it, with their own explanation about how it works. Everyone is encouraged to GET CURIOUS and ask at least one question about any creature on display, because curiosity and asking questions support distance and control. And this is all in the larger context of play, which is freeing and fun.

The feeling when…

Here, the challenge is to build an emotion. Sometimes we do “50 shades of MAD,” sometimes we ask, “What do you call the feeling when..?” and provide a scenario. Above, we have anger, exhilaration (the “wheee!! of downhill skiing), and the warmth of gratitude in a campfire.

This activity is about emotional literacy. Being able to control your emotions is a fundamental skill in sense-making. We can’t think straight when we’re afraid, angry, anxious. At the same time, emotions provide us with important information—they’re alerting us to something before we’re aware of it. So you want to be able to recognize emotions but also be detached enough to evaluate them carefully. Research from psychologists and neuroscientists suggest we begin with the basics:

  • Vocabulary: have a lot of words to describe emotions

  • Granularity: have a lot of detail about your emotions

  • Concepts: collect more concepts than “happy,” “mad,” “sad”—go for “deliriously joyful,” “furious,” “ticked off,” “despair,” “anguish,” and of course '“torschlusspanik” (the agitated feeling we get when we think time is running out).

Building emotions with bricks encourages participants to talk about what words they’ll use, and the bricks allow them to illustrate in detail the differences between one kind of MAD and another.

If I had a million dollars

Here, the challenge is to build whatever you’d get if you had a million dollars to spend on not-necessities (no spending on mortgage payments, or setting aside for taxes, like grown-ups might do). It starts the conversation about “What is important to me? What is desirable?”—in short, getting to know your values. Above: I’d spend money on—spa experience with friends, travel and relaxing, and my dogs.

This activity is about knowing our values. We each have a toolbox of values that help us do different things. Values can motivate us to take action and make decisions. They can serve as a guide for our own actions and decisions. They can serve as a yardstick for evaluating persons, events, decisions. And we have more than one value—it’s not like “privacy” is going to work in every situation—and which one we use as a guide depends on the situation. But we don’t usually have values at top-of-mind—we can be prompted or reminded by a situation that “Oh, yes, I care about this and here’s what I think and what I’ll do.” So it’s useful to check what’s in your value toolbox.