Take musical chairs, put some training content to it, and you have “The Big Wind Blows.” Click here for the facilitation guide from Training for Change.
Form a circle of chairs with one less than participants (and facilitators). The facilitator starts in the middle. The person in the middle makes a statement that is true about oneself beginning with the words, “The Big Wind Blows for everyone who…” Then everyone for whom that statement is true has to get up and find another seat, even as the one in the middle is trying to get a seat as well. The person left without a seat is the next one to say something true about themselves, “The Big Wind Blows for everyone who….”
Sometimes people will get shallow, so after a few trivial rounds the facilitator can ask participants to “peel the onion” and go a bit deeper about something relevant to the workshop topic.
This provides a fun and low-risk way to introduce some of the themes and get people to physically identify themselves with the issues being discussed.
An alternative is to prompt people in the middle by providing a stack of index cards with pre-written statements related to the workshop theme (i.e., “The Big Wind Blows for everyone who has been afraid in a conflict”).