Meetings often begin with agendas, updates and practical information. But sometimes, before people can work well together, they need a moment to loosen up, listen to each other and enter the room not only as professionals, but as people.
That is where storytelling dice can help.
What are Europeana Story Dice?
Europeana Story Dice are a simple, creative tool that uses images from cultural heritage collections to inspire stories, conversations and ideas. Each dice has six images on its sides. These images might show people, objects, places, artworks, animals, landscapes or mysterious little details from the past.
The idea is easy: roll the dice, look at the image, and use it as a prompt. You can write a sentence, continue a story, start a discussion, draw something, or simply say what the image makes you think of. The activity is open-ended, playful and accessible. It does not require specialist knowledge, and it can work in any language.
Europeana’s guide explains how to make your own story dice by choosing images from Europeana, saving them, adding them to a template, printing, cutting, folding and then playing. Because the images come from cultural heritage collections, the dice also create a small bridge between creativity and Europe’s shared cultural memory.
In other words, they are tiny cubes of imagination.
Why use storytelling dice for team building?
Storytelling dice are especially useful before a meeting because they change the atmosphere in the room. They invite people to participate without putting them under pressure. There is no single correct answer, no formal expertise required, and no need to be perfectly logical.
That freedom is valuable.
In a team-building context, storytelling dice can help participants:
- warm up before a formal meeting;
- listen actively to one another;
- build on each other’s ideas;
- practise creativity and improvisation;
- create a shared experience;
- laugh together before moving into more structured work.
The best part is that the story does not need to make perfect sense. In fact, the strange turns are often what make the activity memorable. A detective may appear. A ghostly rider may arrive in a storm. A missing skate may become the most important object in the room. The dice give permission for unexpected ideas to enter.
And sometimes, those unexpected ideas are exactly what a group needs.
Our Members’ Council icebreaker in Helsinki
We used Europeana Story Dice during our Europeana Network Association Members’ Council meeting in Helsinki as an icebreaker activity before the meeting began.
The aim was simple: to bring people into the room, encourage collaboration and create a playful shared moment. Each person contributed to the story, following the images that appeared on the dice. The result was strange, funny, chaotic and surprisingly charming.
The story began in Helsinki, with twenty-five people arriving at the Members’ Council. Soon, a mysterious young Black woman entered the room and announced that a carriage was waiting outside to take everyone on a tour of the city. From there, the story wandered through soup parties, libraries, detectives, Paris, storms, ghostly riders, police lights, castles, wooden spoons, northern lights and a missing skate from the National Library.
It did not always make sense, but that was exactly the point.
The activity created a light and imaginative start to the day. People listened, reacted, added details and built something together. Before the formal meeting began, the group had already collaborated on a shared piece of storytelling. The dice helped turn a room full of meeting participants into a temporary company of co-authors.
What the activity showed us
Using the story dice reminded us that creativity does not need to be polished to be useful. Sometimes, the first step in working together is simply allowing the unexpected to appear.
The story we created was not a traditional narrative. It had sudden twists, mysterious characters and several moments that felt as if they had wandered in from different books. But it was readable, joyful and full of the group’s collective energy.
As an icebreaker, the exercise worked because it was:
- low-pressure;
- inclusive;
- multilingual-friendly;
- quick to understand;
- open to humour;
- rooted in cultural heritage;
- easy to adapt to different groups.
For a Members’ Council meeting, this was particularly fitting. The activity reflected many of the values that sit at the heart of participatory cultural work: collaboration, imagination, shared ownership and curiosity.
A story made together
With a few dice, a table of people and the permission to be a little strange, a meeting can begin not with minutes and motions, but with imagination.