Summary of Activities
This page provides a summary of activities included in the Land Education Dreambook, as well as some additional activities you may want to include in your programming.
Land Relations and Land Education
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Situating Ourselves in Place
Understanding that everything in creation holds memory and knowledge is a critical way to approach land education. It is not only people who are part of your programs, but also land itself.
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A Note on Human
As you work through this dreambook, and in other aspects of your day-to-day, pay close attention to how the word human is used and how it is positioned in relation to other beings. Carefully consider how you will unsettle hierarchies through the youth program you are developing.
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Understanding History of Place
Wherever you are situated in the world, there has likely been a long history of both human and more-than-human activity there. When we are thinking of land education programming, we should understand the specific places we are engaging with.
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Developing a Land Education Pedagogy
To some, natural environments can represent a blank slate upon which any program can be facilitated. While that may be true to a certain extent, developing a true land education program means situating land knowledge and our understanding of it at the core of our pedagogy.
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*New* Getting to Know Seeds
Before planting seeds, researching with them, or going forward in our engagement with them, it’s very important for us to get to know them and their particularities as a way of being in good relation with the land.
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*New* Seed Paper Dreams
Relationships to seeds can be deepened by writing letters to them, and integrating letters into soil and/or space building.
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*New* Storying Seeds
This storying exercise is a way of noticing various seed and human movements from one land to another. It’s also a way to notice how seeds have changed, sometimes by humans, for various reasons.
Working with Young People
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The "Youth" in Youth Programming
Before imagining how you will build a youth program, it’s important to think through your understanding of what “youth” means and who it includes.
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Safety
Safety protocols are important components to build into any programming. Often, safety refers to available first-aid kits, emergency contacts, food allergy lists, etc. We invite you to consider a fuller definition of safety
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Consent
One of the most significant aspects of safety is consent. Aside from seeking consent at the beginning stages of a youth program - through permission slips and consent forms - how can you build a culture of consent into your program?
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Planning for Individual and Collective Needs
Working with young people requires a continual balancing of collective and individual needs. Young people are diverse, with complex experiences and capacities which will impact the ways in which they access the programming offered.
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Mental Health, Trauma, and Grief
While your program may not be designed to address mental health issues, working with youth requires us to be prepared to support them where they are.
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Bringing Youth Into Programs
We might refer to the process of seeking youth participants to join a program as “recruitment”. However, recruitment signals particular kinds of relationships that are often hierarchical, eg. military recruitment.
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Planning Transitions
Some participants will move through a program from start to finish together. More often than not, however, participants might be leaving or joining a program at different points.
Understanding Your Role as Facilitator
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The Role of Host
When considering how to create welcoming spaces in our programs, we can think about what it means to be a host of the space.
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Understanding Different Roles within Groups
In this section, we look at the dynamics, beliefs, roles, and responsibilities when groups are led by a “facilitator” vs a “teacher”.
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Dealing with Conflict
Conflict is a common and expected part of working together or running a program. The truth is, however, that many of us are not practiced at moving through conflict well.
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Tools for Addressing Conflict
This section contains tools for moving through conflict and addressing harm.
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Case Stories
The practice of creating and using Case Stories gives facilitators the opportunity to think about conflict resolution strategies and to practice and implement decision-making rooted in program values and ethics.
Designing a Youth Program
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Participatory Design Qualities
Five key qualities to consider while designing a participatory youth program are that Everyone Holds Knowledge, Trust Takes Time, Clear the Way, We’re in this Together and There’s More than One Way.
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The Heart of Your Program
This activity asks you to imagine that you are observing a day in your program, and identify core program themes.
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Curriculum Spiral
A curriculum spiral is a way you can display your program themes or objectives.
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Program Flow
When planning your program it can be helpful to consider what the flow for a typical session will be. Having predictability in your program structure can help build assurance and trust, and make participants feel more comfortable.
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Program Evaluation
Centering youth-led evaluation takes seriously their desires for the program, experiences within the program, insights into the program’s shortcomings, and suggestions on strengthening it.
Activities to Include in Youth Programming
This section outlines several additional activities that you could include in your youth program. The activities vary in approaches, there are arts activities, sensory activities, photo activities, geospatial activities, and recording-based work. The activities fall under one or more of the following themes:
PROGRAM DESIGN: these activities involve participants in co-designing and reflecting on your program
MEANING-MAKING: these visual, participatory and mapping activities engage young people in theorizing, meaning-making and analysis activities
CONNECTIONS TO LAND: these activities are intended to deepen and reflect on relationships to land
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Purpose & Value Statements
PROGRAM DESIGN
In this activity, participants write purpose and value statements for the program.
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Opening Activities
PROGRAM DESIGN
By asking reflective and self-assessment questions, participants are invited to share a bit about how they’re feeling and how they’re coming into the space.
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Deciding How to Decide
PROGRAM DESIGN
In this activity, participants consider the different ways a group might make decisions.
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Problem Tree
MEANING-MAKING
This activity is an approach to identifying the everyday manifestations, assumptions, and ideologies of a given problem.
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Photo Challenges
MEANING-MAKING
Photo challenges are an opportunity for participants to address a question, tell a story, or convey meaning through an image they have created.
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Mapping Photographs
MEANING-MAKING
Mapping photographs is an activity to arrange the images created by the participants as photo challenges.
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Intervening on Images
MEANING-MAKING
This activity manipulates photographs in order to convey new meanings, aspirations, or desires.
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Visual Poetry
MEANING-MAKING
In this activity the group creates a collective poem, choosing a writing prompt based on photographs.
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Community Maps
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Mapping Relational Constellations
MEANING-MAKING
This activity will explore cosmic constellations, and participants will think about our webs of relations through personal constellation mapping.
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Routes and Roots
CONNECTIONS TO LAND
This exercise is a way of critiquing and complicating understandings of family history and migration patterns.
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Place Visualization
CONNECTIONS TO LAND
In this activity, participants think about a place that is important or special to them and share that with a partner.
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Place Sounds
CONNECTIONS TO LAND
This activity draws participants to pay attention to the sounds that fill their homes and communities.
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Taste Trail
CONNECTIONS TO LAND
Take an in-person or virtual taste tour through a local trail. Describe the flavors experienced and gather plants to make tea.
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Visiting Land Tours
CONNECTIONS TO LAND
In this activity, participants collaboratively create and lead visiting land tours.
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"We Are From" Poems
CONNECTIONS TO LAND
Participants will create introductory poems by describing where they are from.
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Scavenger Hunt
CONNECTIONS TO LAND
These photography-based scavenger hunt prompts are intended to get participants to engage in their surroundings and notice things around them in new ways.
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Podcards
CONNECTIONS TO LAND
Podcards are audio postcards from a particular place. This activity asks participants to respond to prompts by recording different sound clips to create an audio postcard.
