Canny and Uncanny: creative collaboration to produce clay sculptures investigating the shared ground

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The workshop was made up of several oblique sections. By introducing the workshop with a physical task that would require participants to listen and watch each other, the hope was to ground the work produced in the figurative cannon, create a link between the contributors and their creations and ease collaboration. Ice-breaker tasks are awful. Often uniting the group against the facilitator in agreed hatred. This activity had no element of risk and was designed to minimize embarrassment. I asked the group to form a circle and raise a hand, mimicking the height the person next to them raised their hand to. I then asked them to move so they were touching arms and feel where their neighbour raised their arms. The idea behind this action was to create non-verbal connections to people that also weren’t based on eye contact (as the work they would be doing later would be side-by-side rather than face to face, eye contact may not play a part in their discussions). At this point, a participant felt uncomfortable. Two choices were available to me; create a task that would again include this person or allow them to sit out. If I altered the task (had them repeat the first action without touching) then that person would know that changing tact to include others was an option. If I continued with the exercise without them I risked alienating them and creating an environment where everyone must complete the same kind of task. I chose to let that person stand aside while we completed the second range of motions. This lasted less than a minute. In a workshop that was intended to provide agency and allow discomfort this felt like the correct path. In retrospect- it was unkind and alienating. A better approach would have been to include the participant in a different way. They could have chosen who started the chain reaction, walked around the circle and selected people. A solution rather than a discomfort. The intent to create independence instead created isolation.

Having completed this partially aborted introduction everyone was then sorted into smaller groups to create their work. Each person was given an envelope with a comics reference and a historical/sculptural/monumental reference. The comics reference was their team identity and the other reference was their individual ingredient. They could choose to ignore their ingredient, their team topic or incorporate everything. The combination was random but arranged thusly:

I didn't tell the participants about the classifications of their teams, I wanted them to bring their own ideas to the table rather than mine. The materials I gave them were tactile and easy to understand- wire, tin foil, clay, kebab stick. People jumped in. Different groups responded to different elements. Some worked silently- producing elements, talking them through and joining them. Others planned and operated simultaneously. Others constructed things then tried to figure out what they meant.

It was a great starting point and I should probably draw a comic about it...