This activity is a great way to introduce the concept of mediation to your group, develop a step-by-step model of mediation, to discuss what is important when mediating conflicts and think about how there are different narratives in a conflict.
Before you Start
Three people have to act out the mediation. They can be group leaders or participants, depending on their age. Give them the text beforehand to read through and understand the situation. Talk to the actors about their roles and think about a good stage setting in your workshop space.
Print the resources or send to everyone beforehand. Find resources here.
What to do
Ask the group if they know the fairytale ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. If they don’t know it, tell them the story.
Then explain that Goldilocks and Baby Bear would like to solve their dispute, and they go to a mediator to ask for help.
Act out the mediation scene.
Afterwards, ask the participants what happened in the play. What were the different sides to the story? What did they observe? Note down their answers in key words.
Form five small groups and give each a set of the five cards with the steps in a mediation process. Give them a few minutes to think about which order to put them in.
Come back together to compare. Then assign each group one of the steps, and ask them to remember what happened in the play during their phase of the mediation. Give them a few minutes to discuss.
Then they can either re-play their part of the story, or just tell the others what happens.
Summarise the steps. Have a look in the introduction section on page 12 for support.
Discussion Questions
- How realistic did you find the mediation between Goldilocks and Baby Bear?
- What can a mediator do to best help two conflict parties?
- Which part of the process do you think is the most difficult for the mediator? Why
- What skills do you think a mediator needs? (You can note down these ideas).
Tips for facilitators
- As a follow-up, participants could think about conflicts in other fairytales and prepare a play on another mediation.
- For younger groups, you can leave out steps 5-7