Participants in a 3-day experience design training are gathered in the historic Funkaus building, an important cultural property symbolizing the former East Germany and former DDR radio station that was under the control of the Soviet Union. The night before, they receive a mysterious audio message in the whatsapp group that says: "In the Funkhaus building, 70,000 broadcasts were made. Only the approved voices were heard. Tomorrow we will remember the silenced ones". It is interrupted by static.

During a morning exercise in the classroom facilitators approach one person at each table and whisper in their ear, tell them not to let on to anyone else at the table, but that when they hear a loud knock on the door, to get everyone at the table to follow them up the stairs.

Facilitator meets everyone at the top of the stairs, but they can't see where they are going. They are asked to put on blindfolds and instructed: "You will enter in silence and darkness. When you hear your bell ring beside you, you may remove your blindfold." Participants are guided into the space one by one and placed in front of a window, where there is a bottle in front of them. They are invited to remove their blindfolds and are instructed: "This building was built to amplify certain voices and silence others. Today, every voice matters. Inside your bottle is a word that was once forbidden to speak freely in this place. You will give it sound."

Participants open their bottles and find a single word: FREIHEIT (Freedom), WAHRHEIT (Truth), HOFFNUNG (Hope), STIMME (Voice), TRÄUME (Dreams), LIEBE (Love) - repeated across the group. "You cannot speak your word. But you can make it resonate. Find its sound using only your bottle and this space. You have 3 minutes." Participants are guided to invent a sounds representing their word, and then to create a symphony of sounds with their bottles, finding their sound families and creating music as a group.

The facilitator then encourages them to really go for it. To hold nothing back. They play wildly for a minute or so, and then the sound naturally tapers off. The silence lingers for an uncomfortable amount of time. The facilitator closes the experience by brining it back to the original meaning. Participants are invited to silently leave together, each handed a card that says, “Every sound you made still exists somewhere.” There is a QR code on the back that takes them to a recording of the symphony they created.

This event embodies the pillars of Active Engagement, Belonging, Courage, and Intentional Friction.