Tiny Demons/Drawing Monsters
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Activity purpose
Use a creative way to help people express/face their fears and see them differently.
Useful for
Helping people through a stressful or anxiety-inducing experience that can benefit from naming, visualizing, and sharing.
Preparation
Minimal - the prompt people will use to draw their demons.
Instructions
Ask people to bring pen/cil and paper. First, ask participants to individually make a list on paper of their fears/anxieties around a particular topic (e.g. for students, about learning online, or about an upcoming assessment)
Drawing part:
- Ask them to divide the paper (fold or draw lines) into four (or six or eight, your choice!) pieces
- Ask participants to put in each box a round shape, a four sided shape, a three sided shape and a squiggle
- Ask participants to then convert each of the parts of the paper into monsters - abstract or realistic - invite them to go wild
- Next, ask participants to select fears they had written and connect them to one of the monsters they drew, naming the monsters
- In groups of 2-4 (breakout rooms), invite participants to share one or all of their monsters with each other, and think through which one of these they would like to see differently
- Do another round of discussing how participants want to look at one of the fears/anxieties differently
- Bring participants back to the main room and invite some to share
- Ask participants to re-draw one of their monsters, like dancing with them or something like that
- Debrief with participants how they felt doing the exercise and what it was enabled for them
Duration
About 30 minutes in all, with several pauses to draw and discussions in breakout rooms and a debrief.
Technical requirements
Depending on the size of your group you may wish to use breakout rooms.
Useful resources
Attribution: Draws on the work of Lynda Barry.
Sample slide deck from Nancy White.
