workshop 8
Looking forwards
A collage of collected life paths from Be Her Lead students
overview
Having looked at the challenges the group are currently facing, we now look towards their futures.
In this workshop we’ll create imaginative maps of our futures, as a starting point for turning goals into reality, and tackling worries about the future.
YOU WILL NEED
Collaging materials – magazines, newspapers
Pens, felt tips, colours, stickers, etc.
check-in
If you could have 5 lives instead of one, with no limitations on what you could choose to do, which different versions of yourself would you be?
These could be:
different jobs (a dancer, a farmer, a teacher…)
different roles and relationships (a mother, a partner, a student, a mentor…)
different places you’d live (by a lake in Canada, at the top of a skyscraper in New York City, in a tent in the middle of a desert…)
Once everyone has come up with at least 2, go round and share thoughts and ideas. Silliness and wacky ideas are encouraged!
creative activity: life paths
On large sheets of paper, everyone draws a wiggly road, representing your life path.
“When I think about my future I see myself as an independent person running a business rather than working for someone”
Along the path, write some hopes, goals and dreams across the life path, in the rough order you imagine them happening. Include some short term, medium and long term ideas.
It is okay for the life path to contain multiple ideas at once, and it can be as abstract or concrete, imprecise or specific, as you wish.
Next, decorate the path with any images, letters or shapes that you feel like from the collaging materials, turning the life path into a mood board.
During this, play some music and chat, as you feel like.
Make a gallery of these, spreading them along the tables or pinning them up on the walls, and get everyone to wander round and absorb everyone’s work.
discussion prompts
Which areas of your life path do you feel most confident / most unsure about?
What feels easy or difficult about the activity, and how do you feel looking at your life path?
What do you need to make it a reality?
What will the challenges be?
What are the advantages and disadvantages, positive ways and negative ways, of planning our lives?
“When I think about my future I feel quite upset as time passes so fast and I don’t want to grow up”
“When I think about my future I hope that all my studying and hard work doesn’t go to waste”
check-out
Return to the imaginary lives from the check-in. For each of the lives you imagined, now come up with a way you could bring a tiny piece of this life into your own present this week.
For example, if one of your lives was being a dancer, you could have a let-it-all-out dance while nobody’s watching in your room to your favourite music. If you wanted to live in another country, you could try making a recipe from its traditional cuisine.
Share these commitments round the group, and plan to reflect on what happened at the start of the following week.
Further reading / thinking
This workshop is a useful tool for you to understand the students’ hopes and dreams, as well as the real-world pressures and limitations they face. We encourage you to use these creative life paths as the starting point for supporting the students to work confidently towards their futures.
You could use the life paths to help you plan future sessions, set goals with the students, and begin to think about what kind of Be Her Lead Champions or role models you could invite into your school. The important thing is that you are not imposing what they ‘should’ be aiming for, but that you are paying attention to what feels important for the students.
The check-in exercise is inspired by Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way, which is a great resource for igniting creativity.