Category Lineup 

Instructions:

  • Separate everyone into evenly numbered teams (e.g. 10 v 10).

  • One person is the caller. 

    • They call out "Everyone please now line up ..." and fill in the blank with a statement such as the suggestions below:

      • Everyone please now line up in order of age, oldest at the front, youngest at the back

      • Everyone please now line up in first name alphabet order

      • Everyone please now line up by height, shortest first

      • Everyone please now line up according to your birthdays - first in the year goes first

      • Everyone please now line up according to who served themselves dinner first

      • How many cousins have you got? Line up with the least cousins in front

      • What color is your top? Line up in alphabetical order with the earliest letter first

      • Most hair at the back, least hair at the front

  • All the participants compete to find the correct order and sit down when they have completed their lineup 

Modifications:

Play the game without speaking.

Praxis (why + theory):

This game is another of my favorite organizing games. Largely, because participants are literally organizing themselves according to their personal information in order to meet a shared objective. 

I was taught by Amanda Gross, convener of the Pittsburgh Youth Undoing Institutional Racism (YUIR) group, that the first rule of organizing is to know who is in the room. That knowledge must fundamentally extend beyond a person’s name–we must understand what they are bringing to the collective, why they are present in the space, and what their relationship is to their communities and institutions so that we can better determine their role within the group and support their contributions to the broader movement.

As we arrange ourselves according to the information we are learning about each other, we develop an awareness of how our personal details are contextualized by other people on our team. We learn how we all exist within ever-shifting contexts, and a meaningful response to those shifts requires everyone to be attentive, participatory, and willing to extend new knowledge. 

Throughout the game, leaders emerge, communication systems form, and relationships are revealed as people learn commonalities, notice intricacies, and generate data.