… Distribute big sheets of paper to participants.
Ask them to draw a typical participant who might attend one of their trainings – if it helps, encourage them to remember past, real participants, and base this upon them.
Ask them to label the following areas of the body with the following topics:
On the ground: (ie. Getting context)
* where are they coming from?
* what are the problems weighing them down?
* chest area: fears, values, what's important to them?
* right hand: what skills are they bringing?
* left hand: what skills do they need?
* head: (left of head) what do they need to know? (inside the head) what do they want to know? (right of head) what do they know?
Once participants have drawn their 'typical participant', get them together in smaller groups of 3-4 people, and talk through the differences in their typical participants and how this might affect the structure and style of their workshop. (note: try to avoid 'content' for now).
After 15-20 minutes, bring the group back to plenary, and ask people to think through and discuss how they knew this information about participants, and how easy it is to get this understanding in time to help really design the workshop, when meeting a new group of workshop attendees.
Try and come up with a list of points of how to get this information, and how different data points about the attendees would inform various workshop style and strategy decisions.
ous workshop style and strategy decisions.