TECHNIQUES

Fear in a Balloon

Fear is a primal emotion. We all experience it. This exercise asks participants to identify, share and act out their fears. The activity looks at how young people engage with their community, build empathy, and welcome fears.

Written by

Anna Wohlrab and Gioel Gioacchino

Edited by

Mattieu Ramsawak

Developed by

Stages:Community Building* Data Collection

Anna used this technique for conflict resolution facilitations with at-risk youth, while working with Global Majority at Rancho Cielo, Salinas, California. Through this exercise she realized that young people can have very particular fears because their experience is rooted in a very specific context. The exercise also pointed out the universality of fears. This helped to build empathy and spark new conversations within the group.

The technique allows the participants to reflect on their own and their peers’ fears. It also allows them to see how others interpret them. The content can be used to identify problem patterns in a community.

The exercise also builds empathy; by reading each other’s fears out loud, people are invited to empathize with the fears of others by embodying those fears.

Sometimes people don’t want to share their fears, so some people will only write down less intimate fears such as “spiders”. However, since they get to write down three fears there is usually enough for a meaningful debrief. Sometimes these fears can stir up a lot of emotions. For example, one student wrote: ‘I am afraid of myself’. Since everything was anonymous, it led to a great conversation on what this can mean, and how an individual, as well as other community members might support or contribute to such a fear.

Doing embodied work is hard and awkward if there isn’t the right kind of warm up. We’d recommend doing other community building exercises before arriving to this one.

Instead of using balloon, you can put the fears in a hat. You can also have participants crumple up the papers and throw them in a corner.

Tips and Traps

Make sure to have everyone read out the same number of fears. If there is a very large group just have them write two fears and have everyone only read one so as to increase the chances of at least one fear being read out loud of each participant.

Following this exercise, you might want to do the Community Mapping exercise. This will invite participants to locate their fear within a geographical space and increase the richness of your data.