What is an Extra Ordinary Experience?
Posted by Esther at 4.04pm on 28 October 2009
When we’re putting together the ingredients for an intervention (whatever that may be) our intention is to make it an Extra Ordinary Experience for those people taking part. What this looks like will differ in broad terms depending on whether we’re working with a small group in an intimate space or a group of 200 at a conference, or it’s a one off event or part of an extensive programme. However, the effect we want to create in the minds and bodies of those people remains the same.
An Extra-Ordinary Experience is one in which people are surprised, unsettled and challenged. It is also one that helps them create connections between their own unique experience and situation and the larger picture (of the organisation, or their community or of society as a whole and us as human beings within it). So how do we do this?
These are the main elements:
Involving people in the creation and telling of stories.
People get told what to do a lot. They get told what to think and how to behave. Knowledge in our culture is often seen in terms of transferring stuff from people who know things to others who are ignorant. For most people their educational experiences are of this kind. So if people walk into a space where they can follow their own interest and express themselves – well that in itself can be an Extra Ordinary Experience.
Through stories, people make personal connections with the issues we’re looking at and they pay attention to what’s important to them. They can share aspects of their own experience so reveal themselves to one another in a way that they have control over. Importantly, a story generates emotional connections which then helps the learning process (see the Story Postcard series).
The stories that people create together are meaningful to them. So when, for example, we work with small groups to create short plays based on their own experience, these can then become part of the language they use to talk about themselves (see A Place to Grow).
Involving people in actively experiencing the issue/theme rather than just talking about it.
Most of us are pretty good at talking about things. But when we do this we can only access those things we already know (or think we know); we observe from a safe distance and utilise ideas, assumptions and beliefs about ourselves and the world that may not be right. If, on the other hand, we are supported to actively experience the ’thing’ in a learning environment, then two important things happen a) we become more excited and energised b) we have evidence of how things actually are which we can use to reflect on and to learn from. (For an example of how this works in relation to handling violent and aggressive situations follow this link.
See also Learning Through Action: engagement and behavioural change through the use of drama.
Developing metaphors to create shared understanding
Folk tales endure because they offer us cultural metaphors to help us understand our experience as human beings. These metaphors – like “crying wolf”, “a wolf in sheep’s clothing” and “keeping the wolf from the door” – grew out of an experience that none of us now have (e.g. we no longer need to be afraid of wolves). And yet they are so deeply embedded in our culture and in our language that we immediately understand the behavioural reference.
We can develop our own metaphors to sum up complex ideas and experience. Their power lies in the ownership that everyone feels over them and their meaning. So if we can create an experience with you through which a useful metaphor emerges to which learning and action points can be attached, then the experience will be Extra Ordinary. A Place to Grow provides an example of how this can work.
Creating symbols to represent key messages or ideas
An experience becomes Extra Ordinary (and thus meaningful and memorable) when it involves emotions expressed communally. Our aim is always to move people emotionally (if people don’t feel anything in response to the work we do with them then we’ve failed). This experience can then be recollected and reflected on later if it is associated with a symbolic object.
For example, in Jim’s Story - part of a health & safety programme – a hair bobble is used to symbolise the human cost of breaches in health & safety. In the story the hair bobble symbolises the child who was killed in an accident. At the end, every delegate is given a hair bobble to do what they want with. In one train depot when Tess returned a year later, one of the train drivers she’d worked with raised his pen and on the top of his pen he’d tied the hair bobble – “I still remember that wee girl” he said.
If you want evidence of how effective this approach is in creating behavioural change, see Tony McNiff’s quote.
Revealing what is hidden behind the ordinary
This really is about the element of surprise. People think that they are looking at something familiar, they are relaxed and only half paying attention. Then something very unexpected happens. They realise that they made the wrong assumption. They sit up. They feel excitement. What’s going to happen next?
There is always something surprising to find in the ordinary if you have the heart and will to see it.
Contact us for further details.
Tags: Benefits, experiential, storytelling