Trainers’ Toolkit – Reality filters

	Exercise nr 6: Reality filters
Duration	10-15 min
Type of activity	Social / Body / Emotional / Cognitive
The goal of the exercise	A simple way to test your participants’ beliefs,  assumptions about the world around them and the topics you want to explore with the group during the workshop
Group size	5-15 participants
Hashtags	#criticalthinking #checkingbeliefs
Materials and tools necessary for the activities	Prepare 2-3 photos that relate to the theme of your workshop. Make sure there are people in  the pictures
Exercise agenda	On the screen of the app you are working in, display one chosen photo, which relates in some way to the topic of your workshop (communication, work, cultural diversity, wellbeing etc.). Ask participants to describe the photo.  What do you see in the photo? Tell them to refer to facts only, and stop them if they start talking about emotions or other interpretations. The more details the better. Each person can describe one detail. Decide if it is one by one, if everyone will spontaneously speak or if participants will invite another person to speak. You can also ask participants to gain ideas as a team and write them down to get the profile of the group’s beliefs. In the next step, ask the participants to describe the same picture, adding interpretations, naming the emotions they notice in the picture. In the third step, ask the participants to describe the reality that can’t be seen in the picture, didn’t fit in the frame or happened a while before the picture was taken. They can add the social, political, historical context which is suggested by the facts you noticed, your knowledge and beliefs. Ask participants about their conclusions from this exercise – which was easier-describing facts or making interpretations?
Possible modifications	The exercise is a good introduction to the topic you want to cover in your workshop and is widely applicable. We suggest using it after the first integrative phase of the training, before the actual content part. The exercise can also be used to question the assumptions, different histories, culture, and beliefs of the individuals in the group, especially in steps 2 and 3.
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 4.0)Co-founded by the Erasmus+Programme of the European Union