Pilot Workshop 1 – impressions and first insights

On 7 March 2024, we conducted our first pilot workshop for the Mobile Worlds project. This was a unique chance to see how effective, fun, and interesting the methods and set-up we planned for the workshops would be, as well as gain first insights on the theme of the project. So first and foremost, we would like to thank the participants again for showing up and going on this exploration with us!

In this post we’ll share some impressions and preliminary insights, though with the caveat that we need to wait with drawing any deeper conclusions until we had many more workshops and complementary interviews.

Regarding content:

You think it’s obvious what should be a child’s first mode of transport? Ha! We got so many different responses! I won’t give them all away here, since we might use this prompt in future, but let’s say it ranged from baby carriages, to feet, to (non-electric) scooters!

Third cultures were not an intuitive concept for most participants, though culture more generally came a bit more easily.
Talking about culture in terms of food is substantially easier than in terms of transport and mobility!

The cultural differences between urban and rural populations were considered crucial in this group. “Academic culture” was also frequently identified with. However, nationality also did play a big role in how participants interpreted culture.

Regarding methods:

Snacks are essential!
Most participants were very comfortable digging in with drawing and collage based on a series of prompts! Is this self-selection (i.e. those who accepted to participate in the workshop may already be inclined to be open to such activities), or are adults perhaps generally wrongly expected to be shy about drawing?
Poetry was less used, but did surface occasionally, and if I may, seems quite inspiring! 🙂 (see if you can spot the two poems in the pictures above and below)
Such a workshop definitely needs to have less talking, and more doing if we want children to feel involved throughout. And maybe this is also the case for adults, though the talking bits did seem to be interesting for most adult participants as well.
The workshop set-up will likely have to be adapted quite strongly to each audience rather than being streamlined, even if many of the methods used would be the same or very similar.