A Cultural Mapping Exercise is a group activity meant to promote discussion and dialogue. It functions much like a "trust exercise" does in contemporary theater work, serving as a sort of ice-breaker for a group.

A group leader picks a topic and the group divides itself into subgroups. These groups can be arbitrary or they can be significant to the material at hand. For example, a group can be broken down by blood type (A, B, AB or O), or by birth order (oldest, middle, youngest, only child); or if the group is working on faith issues the group might be divided by some religious question or fact.

Members of sub-groups then talk together to come up with a short list of things they all have in common, and then the sub-groups report back to the main group.

The leader then poses a new question which (ideally) remixes the group in a completely different way. This process is usually repeated for 5 or 6 questions.

Here are three examples in which everyone is standing together in an open space:

1) Imagining that the room is a map, the leader determines where North is, and participants are asked to stand in their birthplace. They are then asked to engage in a conversation with the individuals they are standing next to and find out three things they have in common.

2) The leader gives each corner of the room a different criterion -- for example, family birth status as the oldest child, middle, youngest or only child. Participants are then asked to stand in the corner that correlates to them. Each group lists three things everyone in their corner has in common.

3) The leader creates a line that is used to delineate extremes. eg: class structure (working-upper), political spectrum (conservative-liberal), gun status (have fired, have not). Participants place themselves somewhere along the line, their positions determined by their beliefs or experience.