Celebrity Dodgeball
Celebrity Dodgeball is a circle dialogue exercise for relationship mapping: it helps participants build useful connections and understand how people, roles, or ideas relate.
How to run it
- Choose two players to be in the middle of the circle, they must stay inside the circle until the end of the round
- One player is the “celebrity” and chooses who they would like to be.
- The second player is the celebrity’s “bodyguard”
- Remaining players circle up outside of the boundaries and have one dodgeball for the whole group. They must work together to pass the ball to each other and try to hit the celebrity from the shoulders down
- Players can choose to pass the dodgeball OR throw it at the celebrity at any time
- Players must not cross the cones, chalk, tape, etc
- The bodyguard is protecting the celebrity from the ball. The bodyguard may use any part of their body (except head) to block the ball from hitting the “celebrity”
- The round is over when the “celebrity” is hit with the ball (from the shoulders down)
Run this exercise live
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Prompts to use +
Choose two players to be in the middle of the circle, they must stay inside the circle until the end of the round
Remaining players circle up outside of the boundaries and have one dodgeball for the whole group. They must work together to pass the ball to each other and try to hit the celebrity from the shoulders down
Players can choose to pass the dodgeball OR throw it at the celebrity at any time
The bodyguard is protecting the celebrity from the ball. The bodyguard may use any part of their body (except head) to block the ball from hitting the “celebrity”
The round is over when the “celebrity” is hit with the ball (from the shoulders down)
Run this with your AI assistant +
Works with Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, or your own local model: paste this prompt and your AI will co-facilitate this exercise with you.
Adapt this exercise for my exact room. Exercise: Celebrity Dodgeball. Readiness: Publishable Draft. Core moves: Choose two players to be in the middle of the circle, they must stay inside the circle until the end of the round; Remaining players circle up outside of the boundaries and have one dodgeball for the whole group. They must work together to pass the ball to each other and try to hit the celebrity from the shoulders down; Players can choose to pass the dodgeball OR throw it at the celebrity at any time; The bodyguard is protecting the celebrity from the ball. The bodyguard may use any part of their body (except head) to block the ball from hitting the “celebrity”. Return a concise facilitator script with timing, wording, safety notes, and remote/in-person adjustments.
Origin unverified
- Where we observed it: The strongest current observations come from Playworks; aggregators are listed as additional observations, not origin proof. (1 source observed, including Playworks.)
- What that means: we track where an exercise has been observed in public sources. We do not claim to know who created it, or how popular it is.
- No efficacy claims: appearing in this library is not a claim that the exercise is proven effective. Facilitator judgment and context decide whether it works for a given room.
- Corrections: if you have evidence of an earlier or more accurate source, read our methodology and trust boundary and tell us.