Play the Paper Bin Game

Before you begin

• Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. There's also more guidance to help you carry out your risk assessment, including examples.
• Make sure all young people and adults involved in the activity know how to take part safely.
• Make sure you’ll have enough adult helpers. You may need some parents and carers to help if you’re short on helpers. 

 

Planning and setting up this activity

• On separate slips of paper, write out different characteristics people could have, or backgrounds and identities people could be from. Try to make them themed around the categories of ‘age’, ‘homeownership’, ‘nationality’, ‘ethnicity’. You may wish to add in some additional categories too, such as job status, gender, physical ability, number of children and so on. Make sure there’s only one category on each piece of paper. 
• Some examples are ‘white British’, ‘92 years old’, ‘34 years old’, ‘has a smartphone’, ‘no internet’, ‘parents never voted’, ‘wheelchair user’, ‘migrant’, ‘owns their own home’, ‘Black’, ‘rents or social housing’, ‘17 years old’, ‘has English as a second language’, ‘goes to university’, ‘unemployed’, ‘from the UK’, ‘are from a ethnic minority background’. You’ll need to make sure all the options are neutral and unbiased.
• Once you’ve written out different characteristic or backgrounds, fold the slips up and add them into a separate tub. You may want to separate them into different tubs by theme. 
• On the floor, mark a throwing line around 1m-2m away from the bucket. You could use masking tape, chalk or cones. 

Running the activity

1. Gather everyone together and ask if anyone knows what voting is. How much do they know about their rights to vote? Do they know what may stop a person from being able to vote? 
2. Explain that you’re going to play a game to  to learn more about the right to vote and the barriers people may face. 
3. Tell everyone that they’ll each pick a slip of paper that describes someone on it. They’ll then take a ball of paper and stand on the throwing line. They’ll then need to decide if the characteristic or background they chose would be a barrier to them voting. For example, someone who’s a wheelchair user may not e able to easily find an accessible venue or someone who’s older may not get out to vote. 
4. If someone decides their person has a barrier to voting, they should take a step or move back from the throwing line. If the person is seen to be easily able to vote, they should take a step or move forward from the line. 
5. When everyone’s chosen their position, ask people to think about or explain why they thought their chosen person would be advantaged or disadvantaged to vote.
6. Now, ask everyone to try to throw their ball of paper into the voting bucket. Some will be closer to the bucket, so will have an easier shot, others will be at the back and will have further to throw the paper.
7. Explain that, even though the task is the same, for some people it was harder to achieve because of how easily they could access the bucket. This is the same with voter registration, some people have more barriers to registering, engaging with and accessing voting. 
8. Once the four main categories of characteristics have been read and everyone has moved accordingly, ask the young people to throw paper into bin. Some will be closer to the bin, so will have an easier shot, others will be at the back and will have further to throw the paper.
9. To make the task easier, for those at the back of the room, those at the front could have helped them. Did anyone work together or do this? By working together, everyone could have made their shot at the bin. If you have time, you can replay this game with everyone working together.  

An example of moving forward and backwards based on different characteristics:

Forward: Over 45, Own their own home, are of white ethnicity, are from the UK.

Backwards: Under 45, Live in rental or social housing, are from an ethnics minority background, are an migrant.