Exhibition: Identifying your Issue

For the past week and a bit,  we have been preparing you for exhibition by showing you a whole lot of different ways that people express themselves.  This was to increase your understanding of our central idea:

Our next step is to identify your issue you feel some passion towards, so your teachers can place you into groups of 3.

To do this, we are going to carry out a silent discussion. What is a silent discussion? Around the Room are nine large sheets with a large idea on each:

• Children
• Economics
• Technology
• Environment
• Animals
• Cultural
• Health
• Religion/Beliefs
• People/Families
• Education
• Science

Students were divided around each sheet and had several minutes to write down local, national or international issues under that heading (eg. poverty under 'Economics'). The sheets were then swapped, and the group wrote on a new sheet. All this was to be done in silence.

Once the sheets were full, they were put up around the walls, and in silence, students went around reading the sheets. The purpose was to find issues they wanted to inquire into for exhibition. The purpose of the silence is so students wouldn't be influenced by others because they needed to choose something they were passionate about themselves.

The final step was for each student to write down a first choice topic area and then two issues under it, then the same with a second choice.

An example:

Economics

• poverty
• Cheating in professional sport

Technology

• Artificial Intelligence
• The gap between rich and poor countries' access to technology