Mic Check

What is Mic Check?

It is a method to communicate with a large crowd without a PA system or megaphones.

How does it work?

If you hear someone shouting "MIC CHECK", also say "mic check" loudly, until everyone is quiet (or you can use the raised hand gesture to call for silence).

Then a person will ask a question or give direction. Everyone will call and respond (copy) so that a large crowd can hear. The message should be repeated until it reaches the edges of the group.

So if I said very slowly and clearly "we need to move from this site to site B, please follow the stewards" you would say in unison "we need to move from this site to site B, please follow the stewards" And the person next to you would say "we need to move from this site to site B, please follow the stewards".

It's not guaranteed stewards will always need to use mic checks, but it's a really useful tool to manage XR protest crowds 👍🏼 (and very cool when it happens as you realise it's a well oiled, connective collaborative collective - We are all crew 💚✊🏽).

Tips to make the technique effective

Speak in short sentences or phrases (the people around you need to hear the sentence, remember it and then repeat it).

Leave gaps between sentences so that the message can ripple out (don't speak the next sentence until you cannot hear the repeats in the crowd - this will tell you the message has spread far enough away).

If you had planned to give a speech, just go over the top key points (probably a maximum of 5 sentences).

Example

Greta giving an example of the Mic Check in 2018 Declaration of Rebellion.