Score ❷ Hat Mapping Exercise

Written by Samantha Hookway, Danielle Heath, Xavier Gorgol, with contributions by Nonto Tshabalala, Emmanuelle Nsunda, Sylvain Souklaye

• institutional body
• entering institutions
• scores
• pedagogy
• group work support
• methods

What it is

This score is a guided interaction in order to get to know each other when starting a collaboration. It entails the mapping of the various “hats” individuals wear when entering a group situation or collaboration.

Each group member creates an individual presentation of themselves in which they reveal the many hats (a.k.a. roles and representations) they might wear.

Collected screenshot of testing and performing the Hat-Mapping Exercise at an early stage of the “Institutional Body” working group’s collaboration. The image shows each group member sharing the different roles, positions, interests and lived and embodied experiences interacting within the arts institutions they each are part of. The participants also expressed any and all expectations each may have for the project we were about to embark upon.

Why it is

We found that the beginning of group work is often fraught with assumptions we make about each other. These are informed by the power dynamics created by the institutional framing of roles and responsibilities and by the various social norms and biases embodied by each group member.

In our small TTTT working group, we asked ourselves: Where do we start? How do we enter a collaboration? How might we create an exercise for sharing our lived experiences? How can we facilitate a moment where we each puts on the table the many roles, expectations, worries, boundaries and social positions to which we are subject so they can be addressed as starting points rather than becoming breaking points?

The “hat descriptions” created by each participant are intended to create a snapshot of the past, the present and the future, i.e., the inspiration and the desires of each individual inside group work.

How it works

Participants may include the hats they have worn in the past, that they wear now in the present (including in this project) and also the hats they want to wear in the future.

The hats include roles and representations such as the following:

1. within the institution i.e. formal, informal roles each participant may represent such as “Student Union Representative,” “Class Mom,” or “Mediator” etc.
   
2. within society i.e. social status, gender, race, economic status such as “cisgender grew up with married parents in a small town,” “private school educated with full scholarship along the way,” or “Black attended public school and first generation university student,” “queer and grew up in a large apartment in a city of 10 million people” etc.
   
3. within group work i.e. emotional-bearing, plan-making, and/or responsibility-bearing such as “project leader,” “peacemaker,” “the worrier about grades” etc.
   

Facilitation

The exercise can be used in student projects, coursework, staff development projects or projects such as TTTT, which is a mix of staff and student participants. It is meant to be a deepening tool for group members who have already begun group work, rather than an introductory tool. It can be a source of bonding and project-team-building, while also preparing participants to embark on a deeper institutional investigation together.

It is not recommended as an introductory exercise for the first day of group work, particularly because time for the individual reflection is needed to create productive discussions. We recommend you conduct it after the first few meetings – meeting three or after. The idea is to go deeper into the different roles individuals embody only once group members have already begun to get to know one another.

Preparation

• Arrange a time for everyone to meet. Agree upon the amount of time needed to prepare individually e.g., one week, overnight etc.
• For a group of five participants, allow no less than 15-20 minutes per person to present.
  
• Agree a presentation format , e.g., video, audio, small performance, drawings etc. We encourage an aesthetic mode of presentation, but this is not mandatory (see image showing that a range of visual/oral expression is all valuable). The important factor is that each participant feels safe to express themselves.
  

Sharing

• Facilitate group agreement on whether to record or not.
  
• Share individual presentations giving each other equal time (at least 15 minutes each). *Listeners are active, will give feedback, ask for clarifications when necessary and can say how they relate to presentations in full or in part.
  

Reflection

• Decide if the group as a whole wants to continue discussing anything that came up in the conversation and make arrangements as needed.
  
• Decide if the presentation will be shared further i.e. to more members of the project or institution.
  

What we learned – Practical tips to take elsewhere

• This exercise takes time and emotional bandwidth. Do not expect to get anything else done in this session.
  
• Be sensitive to creating a safe space for people to express their many positions. Each member is vulnerable when presenting and the safer one feels to express, the more fruitful the conversations is likely to be.
  
• If we did this again, we would create a procedure for the time between each presentation. This would be for reasons of both structure and pace. The structure would be about supporting the presenter who’s just finished and affirming what was heard by the rest of the group, using a dialogue prompt. From the point of view of pace, this discussion time also ensures you don’t jump too quickly to the next person’s presentation but also refrain from letting any “long talkers” hold the space unfairly.
  
• Do not forget to allow for prep time for each individual to prepare their personal presentation.
  

Background, Influences

This exercise takes inspiration from Elisabeth (Dori) Tunstall¹ and her work with the notion of respectful design. Tunstall, collaborating with Norm Sheehan, Deirdre Barron and Frank Fisher, created a framework that made “respect” central in the design (and education) process. Moreover, she uses this ethos to describe her individual and social positioning, stating:

There are truly polyvariant meanings and that’s actually part of being respectful, because what you need to understand or share or communicate respect might be different from what I am imagining, based on my position, based on my discipline, based on how I want to enact respect in the world. The thing we can agree about is the need for respect. (Tunstall 2021, 98).

This emphasis on respect towards the multiple positions we each enact, perhaps, could also be a way of describing other key elements needed for collaborative work such as expectations, time limitations, learning process needs, etc. All of these positions, roles, and imaginings are potentially helpful when communicated at the start of group project work.

References

• Tunstall, Elisabeth (Dori) and Grandoit-Sutko, Alice. “On Designing for Respect”, Deem Journal, W/S 21(two), 96-99, 2021.
• Tunstall, Elisabeth (Dori) and Kett, Robert J. “Respecting our Relations: Dori Tunstall on Decolonizing Design.” Jacobs Institute, 2019.