Actionism

Description of the tool

Participants are divided in smaller groups, each group gets a background document (Situation card) describing:
- the kind of organisation they are
- the particular situation they need to react upon
Then they need to think of creative actions to plan and prepare a plan for it/them. They need to consider what kind of resources they need and what potential risks they are facing with public actionism.
They will make a short presentation of the outcomes.
At the end the trainers prepare a few examples of similar actions on different occasions (power point, video, flash mobs on you tube…)
Short debriefing will follow allowing the participants to reflect weather they see a potential in this kind of activities for their NGO and work; they will also reflect how they can involve/include the inclusion group within the activities.

Expected outcome: The participants will need to react quickly to a given situation, they will need to plan ad hoc an action on the street with limited resources to express the view of their organisation on a given situation and to attract a lot of media and public attention and reaction. Later they will be able to see some examples of actions done in reality and their results.
The exercise is meant to stimulate creativity, spontaneity, controversy and the experience of planning an action on the street – exposing oneself physically.