This storytelling icebreaker is great for classroom training and is both easy to run and manage. You can find all of our icebreakers here.
Duration and Cost
- Duration: 30 minutes
- FREE game
Ice Breaker Exercise
Participants: Participants at the training event are asked to be creative and to create a story by using a set of images that are presented to them.
Purpose: This storytelling game can be used either as an ice-breaker, to get the attendees to get to know each other and to have fun developing a story, or as a corporate team building activity that gives those participating the chance to work together as a team.
Activity Instructions
1. Before the training day, create a set of A4 print-outs, each with its own set of 4 images. Make the images interesting and different but ideally, there would be some potential connection that can be used to develop a narrative between the images.
2. On the training day, separate the participants into groups of 4 people and hand each group one of the print-outs with the photos.
3. Give the groups 10 minutes to look at the photos and to create their own narrative that creates a story that connects the four images.
Ask the groups to be as creative as possible but to develop a story that could potentially be realistic in everyday life, albeit an unusual story. Ask them to avoid space and time travel and aliens.
4. After 10 minutes, ask the groups to stop writing.
5. Next, ask 1 person from each group to pin their storyboard (their A4 images) onto the board at the front of the room and to spend up to three minutes telling the story of their images.
Allow other groups to then suggest how they might have developed the story if they would have used the images differently.
6. Depending on the available time and number of groups, you do not need to select every group to present their story.
Activity Benefits
The storytelling activity is a great corporate training activity in that it is a fun and very easy task for anyone to become involved
This activity also brings out the creative side of participants and some wonderful storytelling can evolve from this exercise.
When used for corporate training, this activity can be especially interesting in that you will often see participants who might not be natural leaders or who might sometimes be quiet, showing themselves to be highly creative and capable.
Dr Paul Symonds
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