Trainers’ Toolkit – Culture codes

	Exercise nr 33:  Culture codes
Duration	15-20 min
Type of activity	Social / Body / Emotional / Cognitive
The goal of the exercise	The aim is to engage participants by sharing their stories using culture codes to help them open up and build bonds in the group.
Group size	3-8
Hashtags	#storytelling #metaphor #teambuilding #empowerment
Materials and tools necessary for the activities	No other materials needed
Exercise agenda	This exercise uses pop-culture archetypes and stories as a metaphor to express personal stories.  Ask participants to think of a fairy tale, story, novel, or a film or song they relate to as “their story”. Recommend them sticking to headlines of books or songs and point out that their story and the reflection in them are the most important to hear. Let them think about it for a while but encourage them not to overthink and take the first spontaneous thought that comes to their minds.     Each person will have two minutes to share their story with the group, as well as the way it reflects their own experience.  Use the timer set to 2 minutes with a buzzer to keep participants on schedule. In the end, depending on time, you can open a discussion on what surprised, touched or amused them and share in the group or the chatbox.
Possible modifications	You can send the task before the meeting and ask participants to prepare answers in advance.
Credits	Compiled by Fundacja Culture Shock for TRENDSS – Transnational Roadmap for Educators in Digital Soft Skills (https://trendss.eu/)Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0Co-funded by the Erasmus+Programme of the European Union