The S-watch

Description of the tool

Room setting: Arrange room with chairs in circle (If the group is too numerous, divide participants into two groups). Use paper scotch tape to design a watch inside the circle, in front of the chairs. The theme of the watch aims at enhancing the dynamics of this exercise, to contribute at impregnating a rapid pace, as the results of the exercise depend on that.

Prepare sheets of A4 paper – as many as the number of participants – containing as headlines different categories (i.e artist, Muslim, politician, Roma/Gypsy, Japanese, priest) or suggestive images.

Ask participants to sit on chairs. Distribute the sheets of paper and explain that participants will have to associate the word/the image they see in headline with an adjective that comes first to their mind. They will have to write the adjective on the paper and then pass the paper to the neighbour. Explain rules of writing: from bottom to top and fold the paper over the adjective you wrote before handing the sheet of paper to the neighbour at left. The trainer stands in the middle and dictates the shift of paper (tic-tac-tic).

Stop the exercise when papers have made one round. Collect them and read them out briefly. Pick some categories and write them on flipchart (if two groups, when reading out, write down the identical categories you gave to the groups).

Debriefing ideas
• degree of accuracy of the image (stereotype) / the simplification by categorisation
• are stereotypes bad? / can stereotypes be avoided?
• stereotypes as shared image at society level
• how stereotypes are learnt in the process of socialisation and how are they perpetuated/transmitted?