Thanks to Lyra Halprin at the Agricultural Sustainability Institute at the University of Davis, I was able to see this amazing young artist at work. link.
This young man has an extraordinary ability to see. While we all don’t have his gift, we all can see. We can all notice. What are you noticing? What are you choosing to pay attention to?
If you are a facilitator, what are you trying to help people notice or attend to? What brings attention? Focus?
Well, I guess it is time to walk my talk and declare I CAN DRAW. After doing it on the side, teaching it to others, I realized it was time to declare this part of my practice on my website.
Today I put up a page on the workshops I’ve been doing, as well as outing my own graphic practices page. I hope to more formally structure the visual online offerings I’ve been playing with as well. I say this also as I prepare to send in my registration to this years International Association of Visual Practitioners gathering in Montreal.
Here are the workshop offerings. They make nice additions to existing meetings, especially if you need to break up all the talk talk talk! What do you think?
Beyond doing graphic recording myself, I offer two kinds of workshops on the practice of graphic recording and facilitation. One focuses on the use of visuals associated with specific facilitation techniques and group processes, and the other is a simple, hands on introduction to graphic recording, also known as “I CAN DRAW.” I can also customize a workshop for your needs either alone or with one of my collaborators. (Image courtesy of Pen Machine)
Using Visuals With Group Processes & Facilitation Methods
This workshop originated at NexusU/Nexus for Change at Bowling Green State University in 2008. It offers an overview of how visuals can enhance group facilitation processes and methods such as World Cafe, Open Space, Appreciative Inquiry, and other methods, including interactive drawing methods that can be used to break the ice or open up thinking about an issue in a non-verbal manner. This workshop is part lecture, part conversation and a short hands on experience.
Description: Are you the kind of person who loves working with groups, who is interested in finding new ways to apply your listening and recording skills, and who learns best from doing and reflecting? Are you intrigued about the role of visuals in our group interactions and learning, especially in the context of whole systems change methods such as The World Cafe, Appreciative Inquiry and Open Space? This workshop is designed for a group of people to play and learn together to develop your their practice in graphic recording and facilitation in the context of group processes. (You can see some examples here ). Graphic recording at its most basic is capturing what is happening in a group or presentation. (To learn more, see http://www.visualpractitioner.org/education/whatis1.htm )
We’ll take a glimpse into the world of graphic recording, provide time to experiment and play with a range of tools and techniques, and explore how they can support a variety of whole systems change methods.
If you are looking for more of the “how to” part, pair it with the “I CAN DRAW” workshop.
Length: 2 hours minimum up to full day paired with “I CAN DRAW”
I CAN DRAW – Hands On Writing on Walls
This playful experiential workshop takes place almost entirely at the drawing surface, ideally in a room where we can hang large paper all around the room or use constructed 4×8 foot drawing boards. This workshop can start with very introductory level work for those who are reluctant to draw, and can be customized up to a full day graphic recording/facilitation workshop which includes not only the recording, but preparation and follow up with digital images. For those who want more in depth techniques, I usually bring in another artist to show the advanced work. Then people can see a range of styles and expertise. I’m still on the “newbee” side of the practice. This can help make the reluctant more comfortable. We can look silly together safely.
Description: Want to draw your notes instead of write them? Visually capture what is happening at a meeting or in a classroom? Engage people beyond words and text? Then come learn to write on walls, the practice of graphic recording and facilitation. Learn some basic techniques and tricks that enable any of us to draw as a way of capturing and communicating ideas with each other. This is a playful, hands-on experiential workshop. You do NOT need previous experience or have to consider yourself an artists. We can ALL draw. Come prepared to get your hands dirty. Bring a digital camera to record the fruits of your labor.
Length: 1 hour minimum, ideally 2-3 hours. Can be paired with “Using Visuals With Group Processes & Facilitation Methods”
For a sense of a very short “I CAN DRAW” session, here is 6 minutes from a lightening fast 45 “taste of” workshop at Northern Voice in 2009.
Nancy White, on Graphic Recording 101 from jmv on Vimeo.
Testimonials and Blogposts About My Work
Learning to Draw Perfect Circles and Starfish People: Capturing Collaborative Energy
Meg Whetung, Communications Designer
Nancy White’s session on graphic recording (or visual note taking) had an approachable mood and her exercises engaged participants in exploration. Standing up with markers and pastels in hand, there was laughter and the letting go of any preconceptions we carried about drawing. As a graphic designer, I draw every day, yet I left this session with many new ideas.
Observing Nancy’s approach, friendly tone, funny anecdotes, and her detailed yet simple explanations and the effect she had on the group taught me how to encourage people to relax and participate in an activity they may not ordinarily be comfortable with.
Collaboration has definitely been a buzzword in our office over the past few months, and as a designer I’m interested in opportunities to collaborate with non-designers (clients, editors, web programmers). Nancy’s session made me think about getting everyone together at the start of a project, equipping them all with pens and paper and generating initial ideas together visually – potentially a fun and effective way start to a project.
Check out Nancy’s Online Facilitation Wiki for tools and discussion of these visual methods. While explaining the benefits of taking a visual approach, she notes that visuals are “open and inviting to meaning-making (while text can be experienced as more declarative).”
I think this makes a great case for using graphic recording techniques during brainstorming meetings, where the goal is to explore possible meanings and outcomes together.
Sacha Chua’s The Gen Y Guide to Web 2.0 at Work has a few things going for it. First, it is a great use of simple visuals. See you CAN draw! Second, it has a sense of humor. Third, it does a great job of communicating key ideas in 14 simple slides about how to use social media usefully as one transitions from school to work. Finally, at the core, the slides are deeply embedded with that fabulous magic, common sense.
There are two things I want to draw out of this video. The identity thing and the common sense thing. First, take a look at the slides.
Identity
I have been in conversation with Shirley Williams of Reading University about identity (see her cool site here) and she has been tracking the shift in social media use of her students as they began to explore their identity beyond university and into the workplace. This is also a topic of the CPSquare Connected Futures workshop. David Armano also has a nice post (and visual!) about this topic. What Shirley, David and others are surfacing is a skill set that might very usefully be embedded in both our educational and business organizations. A couple of weeks ago this was a key point to a presentation I made to educators in Estonia. This is a system level change. How is your organization changing to recognize how identity shows up in the era of social media?
Common Sense
Why not make a blog post about two totally different things, eh? Back to common sense. What ever happened to common sense? What the heck IS common sense? How do you define it? How does it show up in your world?
Sometimes I think the most value I bring when consulting is common sense. At other times I think I’m stating the obvious, like the village idiot. There seems to be an interesting overlap that might make us dismiss common sense as boring, not innovative, old skool. Common sense can also be our ruts, our outdated mindsets, even our bad habits. Or good habits grown irrelevant.
So how do we make the most of common sense? When is the village idiot useful?
It took me a while to fully appreciate the work of Dave Snowden and his Cynefin framework, but now I find myself whipping out pencil and paper all the time to show it to others and use it in a variety of ways. So I was happy to see my pal Shawn Callahan’s nice little video giving a very clear explanation of the framework. Anecdote: A simple explanation of the Cynefin Framework
Thanks, Shawn!
Last month I had the pleasure of co-graphic-recording with the amazing Mariah Howard at the ASI Agriculture Sustainability Symposium in Davis, California. I have some of the pictures here and am attempting a slideshow embed below!
First, I’ve been doing some work for ASI for about a year now and deeply appreciate their systems view of our food systems. It isn’t just agriculture – it is all the steps between the sprouting of the seed and your plate, and it includes a hay wagon full of policy as well. The people who care about this stuff are bright, engaging and committed. So it is great work.
The ASI team led by Tom Tommich had an ambitious three days planned, with the work from one day cascading and driving the next day. When Tom said I could bring in a second person, I said “A Graphic Recorder!” I had done some recording as I facilitated last year, but this time the content would be so dense and coming so fast, there was no way I could do it alone, nor do it justice. I’m still too new at this. So I sent a query to the International Forum of Visual Practitioners email list and found Mariah. I’ve known and admired her mom for many years, but we had never met nor worked together. So after one phone call I said “let’s do it!”
Now for those of you who have never co-graphically recorded, I have to say, it is not something everyone can do. It requires a very interesting collaborative dance and a certain “letting go” of one’s own habits and expectations. This dance is both physical (not getting in each others way), mental (co-processing the information as it comes in and deciding what to do with it), and for me, emotional (caring about the other person, respect, negotiate, push, pull, back off, drive forward.) It is an exquisite form of improv and I LOVE it. In this case, Mariah was a far superior artist, and I had a grasp of the content.
Over the first day we did 5 charts. We had spent a few hours the day before pre-planning and sketching out frameworks for each of the panels we were going to record. After the first panel – which was by far the toughest for me, we started letting go of our plans. By the third one we had totally let go of our plans and for me, things started to click. We also allowed ourselves the evening to finish off the panels and I’m VERY glad we did. They were still fairly raw at the end of the program day, but after some time adding color, connecting ideas and plain old “sense making” I think they turned out well. But the decision to “let go” of any pre-planning turned out to be critical, as was the simple act of getting used to each other as we worked. As a consequence, Mariah did most of the heavy lifting of key images, I did a lot of the content synthesis, and then we both colored and wove things together. But the images you see are far more her work than mine.
The content was dense so as you look at these, they probably won’t make sense as stand alone products. But they add a richness and can be very complimentary to the videos .
Mariah was a total pro and a champ to put up with “crazy Nancy.” I work fast, I switch directions on a dime and get really involved. I think it could be overwhelming to many. Not Mariah!
If you have co-recorded, what have been your experiences?
