The Arrival Activity

The Arrival Activity is an ingenious and useful group opening to foster a climate of trust and promote empathy.

Search the internet for many pictures of emojis that represent different moods and emotions. As much as possible, choose images that have the same aesthetic to avoid some drawings attracting more attention for their appearance than for their emotion.

Make sure you have as many emotion cards as possible, and you’ll also need them to be repeated in case more than one person wants to collect the same emoji.

Lay all of the cards on a table or the ground, and gather your group around them. Take a moment to allow your group to survey their various caricatures.

Invite individuals to pick a card or cards which reflect how they are feeling as they enter the space, or start of your program. Invite people to find one or two others to share their thoughts.

Encourage people to share why they picked a particular card, and what was so significant about the emotion they experienced. Allow people to move freely around the room and invite them to have short dialogues with other people and share the chosen cards.

One of the most powerful benefits of these cards, when used in a conversation, is that the focus is on the cards, and not necessarily on the people. For some people, this makes sharing a lot more comfortable.

These cards clearly focus on emotions and feelings, hence this topic can make people quite vulnerable. To this end, consider your sequence, and the environment you have created to foster a safe place to share.

The topics of this publication: self, reflection, emotions, integration, interactions, foster relationships, empathy, wellbeing, mindfulness, resilience, trust