From Taboos to Talk!
A first step towards action is deciding on long term goals and strategies. The goal of the project From Taboos to Talk is to improve sexuality education in Norway.
Tools for Turning Taboos to Talk is a free workshop toolkit designed to facilitate for organisations, stakeholders and individuals to contribute positively to this development.
The goal of the Taboos to Talk workshop is for you and your organisation to discuss and reflect on potential futures, and ultimately to strategize and take action!
Why use scenarios for strategizing?
Future scenarios provide a tangible way of visualising and discussing potential future development within an area of society, in this case, sexuality education. These scenarios provide a tool for you and your organisation to more easily explore and engage with complex issues and ideas. Through textual and visual narratives, each scenario explores different driving forces that might lead us in different directions.
The scenarios in this workshop are developed as a tool for sparking discussion, shaping opinions and strategizing around desirable and undesirable futures for sexuality education in Norway.
What is Tools for Turning Taboos to Talk?
Tools for turning Taboos to Talk is a printable kit for hosting workshops on how we might improve sexuality education in Norway. In this workshop you and your team will explore four future scenarios, that each reimagines different ways we might deal with sexuality education in the future.
About the four future scenarios for sexuality education
This tool kit has been developed through co-creation and iteration with teachers, parents, experts and interest organisations. The result is the four scenarios Help with Homework, Chatting around the Dinner Table, Rumours at the Playground, and The Classroom is a Safe Space - each depicting a plausible future development for sexuality education in Norway. These four immersive scenarios speculate around two main driving forces that might steer this development in different directions
We ask who might be the focus in sexual education:
A strong focus directed at the children or a cross generational focus?
We ask where it might take place:
Should it take place in the public sphere or in the comfort of the home?
By placing these driving forces in an axes diagram, we get a 2 by 2 matrix and the result is four future scenarios you will soon be able to experience. Turning Taboos to Talk.
Together, these four scenarios make up a tool for imagining, discussing and reflecting on different futures; the workshop toolkit Tools for Turning Taboos to Talk.
What does a Taboos to Talk workshop look like?
With this workshop toolkit you will imagine and discuss the future of sexuality education in Norway, and finally take action to improve it!
Imagine
The first step is imagining, where participants are taken through one scenario at a time through visual and textual storytelling. The intention is for decision makers, individuals and organisations to envision and visualise potential futures, including its opportunities and potential fallpits. This step allows for participants to empathise with different actors, and take multiple perspectives into consideration.
Discuss
After each scenario, the next step is to Discuss. At this point the participants discuss vulnerabilities and possibilities in the scenario, based on several prompts and questions. This step opens up a room for free and fruitful dialogue, while participants are in a mind space less focused on what is and more focused on what might be. After the discussions they write down key takeaways from the dialogue using the reflection tasks.
Call to Action
The final section of the workshop is a Call to Action. By comparing the different scenarios and their reflections from the discussions, this section works as a starting point for strategizing and planning. The goal of this phase is to ideate on potential first steps towards desired outcomes. Through a number of call to action prompts, workshop participants are pushed to bring their reflections on the future back to the here and now. Here we raise questions such as “What can your organisation do today, to achieve the future outcomes you deemed most desirable?”
How do I prepare a Taboos to Talk workshop?
Time:
We recommend setting aside 2-3 hours in total for the workshop. Around half an hour for preparations and around 1,5 to 2 hours for experiencing and discussing the future scenarios.
Participants:
Consider how many participants you will be. We recommend around 3-8 people, in total or in each group. This way you will have enough people to get interesting dialogues going, and few enough so that the discussion phase still feels like a safe space.
For each participant you will need to print:
1x Help With Homework scenario booklet
1x Chatting around the Dinner Table scenario booklet
1x Rumours at the Playground scenario booklet
1x The Classroom is a Safe Space scenario booklet
1x Help With Homework discussion pamphlet
1x Chatting around the Dinner Table discussion pamphlet
1x Rumours at the Playground discussion pamphlet
1x The Classroom is a Safe Space discussion pamphlet
1x Call to action pamphlet
What else do I need?
Pens/markers/pencils
Post its if you want
Optionally you can print one of each posters per group instead:
1 Help With Homework poster
1 Chatting around the Dinner Table poster
1 Rumours at the Playground poster
1 School is a Safe Space poster
Host your Taboos to Talk workshop!
Before exploring the futures (Around 30 min)
Before diving into the future scenarios, you should first introduce the Tools for Taboos to Talk workshop kit and explain the three phases. Explain what it is and why we are doing it. Introduce the scenarios to your group. Go through the axes diagram and the driving forces it stems from. How does the matrix work and what are the dimensions?
it’s a good idea to first discuss and make sure you agree on these areas:
What is the goal of this workshop? (Around 10 min)
This depends on the role of your group or organisation. If you are a group of individuals the goal might be the discussion itself; learning, getting new perspectives or challenging personal biases. If you are part of an interest organisation advocating for better sexuality education the goal might be internal ideation surrounding a future strategy. Or maybe you want to host this workshop as part of a meeting with politicians and decision makers to define common goals.
What are the limitations? (Around 10 min)
This is also a good thing to reflect around beforehand, as a workshop will only take you so far. Here you might consider what kind of mandate your group has, and what kind of actions you will realistically be able to take right now and later. However, do not let this limit your process until you reach the action phase. The imagine and discuss phase will be more rewarding if you try to leave all limitations behind for a little while!
This might also be a good starting point for ideating alternative ways your group or organisation might contribute and take action if your mandate is not already clear.
What is the output going to be used for? (Around 10 min)
At the end of the workshop you will have a renewed shared understanding of the complex issues affecting sexuality education and its development. You will also have filled out reflection cards documenting your group’s most important takeaways. From the call to action phase you will hopefully also have managed to get down a number of specific ideas and plans for how your group can take action. But how will you actually carry these out? This might be quite straight forward if your goal was to create a new set of principles for your business. More often than not, it’s probably a bit less clear. You might for instance have to somehow process or develop these results further at a later point. You should define this in advance.
Explore the futures of sexuality education in Norway (Around 2 hours)
1. Imagine the futures (Around 10 min)
Once you have established that the whole group is on the same page it’s time to explore the future. Start with the scenario Help With Homework. You can either read the scenario booklet individually, or choose a person in your group to read it out loud while the rest listens along and follow the story. Feel free to pause and take your time to explore the fictive news articles, images and the different future artefacts in the contrasting pages.
Tool in this step: The four scenario booklets
2. Discuss the futures (Around 15 min)
After reading and exploring the scenario Help With Homework it’s time to discuss what this means to you. Find the corresponding discussion pamphlet and go through the discussion prompts provided there. After discussing, fill out the finishing reflection tasks individually, in order to document your key takeaways from the discussion.
Tool in this step: Call to Action pamphlet
Repeat step 1 and 2 for each of the remaining future scenarios.
3. Call to Action (Around 30-50min)
Lastly, we enter the call to action phase. The goal of this section is to ideate on potential first steps towards your desired futures. For this step find your Call to Action pamphlets. You might start this phase by sharing immediate thoughts. Then you will reflect on your unique abilities to shape the future using the axis diagram task. The main part of this phase is the discussion prompts that follow. Finally you will use the results from this dialogue to define your personal strategies and plans to improve the state of sexuality education in Norway, right now!
Tool in this step: Call to Action pamphlet
Good luck!
Created through co-creation with teachers, parents, families, experts and interest organisations advocating for better sexuality education in Norway. We want to thank Sex og Samfunn, Unge Funksjonshemmede and Skeiv Ungdom, and all the other knowledgeable people who have contributed to this project.