☀️ The Sunset Activity
An activity that helps warm up brains to consider other ways to ask and answer questions.
One of my absolute favorite activities is the Sunset activity. I have used this one for a while now, when I was inspired by an approach I first heard about through IDEO.
💜 Activity Name
The Sunset Activity
🤔 Why this activity?
This activity helps people get into the mindset of different perspectives — it helps showcase that when we ask questions in different ways, no matter how slight a difference, we change the qhole experiences of gathering view points. We help people access answers and thoughts they might not have been able to before.
By framing things in different ways, we gather different ideas and help people step away from the typical answers, that people believe to the the “right” answer. We go wider.
⚡️ What do you need?
📄 Two pieces of paper (or haf pieces of paper) per person
🖊️ A sharpie or marker per person (No pencils or pens, this helps people not focus on perfection)
💪 How do you do it?
→ STEP 1 — Make sure everyone has one of their two pieces of paper ready, along with a sharpie.
→ STEP 2 — Give instructions, “I’m going to give everyone 30 seconds to draw a sunset, don’t worry about creating a masterpiece that’s not what this is about!” — Don’t give any further details just, draw a sunset.
→ STEP 3 — Set a 30 second timer with a bit of instrumental music.
→ STEP 4 — Now ask your participants to use an emoji or raise their hand if their sunset includes any of the following: A horizon line, Palm trees or any tree, Water, Birds (maybe that look like the McDonalds arches)
→ STEP 5- Now, you can ask everyone to hold up their sunsets! What you’re looking for here is the fact that everyones looks relatively similar.
→ STEP 6 — Quickly move to the next 30 seconds and ask everyone to draw a sunset they remember. To think about where they were, what was around them, how they felt, and who was with them.
→ STEP 7 — Have everyone show their sunsets and maybe even compare to each otter’s and the first one. Ask what they notice? You can even ask someone to talk about the story behind their sunset, time permitting.
→ STEP 8 — Explain why we did this activity.
🔥 Tips for using this as a facilitator
→ Set expectations for the materials, in virtual environments. Before the workshop make sure everyone knows bring two pieces of paper and a sharpie. If in-person make sure you have all the materials on hand!
→ Don’t get example happy, let people draw from what they know. Don’t show examples of or explain a sunset.
→ Use this activity as a purposeful connection activity or a way to help people get in the right brain space for a session at the start, like a warm up!
→ You can also use this as am energizer at any more in a session or afer a break.
→ This is a great exercise to use as a lead-in to an ideation or creative brainstorming session.
Need more materials or inspiration for this activity?
Grab the Butter Template.
See it in action Here:
