Hello and welcome to the
penultimate part of my workshop-blogs covering the basic skills of
graphic facilitation and recording. In the first four parts, I have
tried to outline each of the basic skills and techniques and I hope
you have found them useful enough for you have a go yourself and
practice using them. I expect you have already being putting them all
together by practising some basic recordings of conversations or
talks; some of you may have already attempted some facilitation work
or adapted the information into work you already do.
Nevertheless, let's have a look
at putting together all that I have covered so far so that you can
set out in your new role or career as a graphic facilitator/recorder.
I'm going to begin with the equipment you can use as I have already
been asked about this. The basic requirements, of course, are
something to write and draw with and something to write and draw on.
In the early days this was usually a large sheet of white paper taped
to a wall or board and any kind of felt-nibbed marker pen. While
there is a greater choices of pens now, this is as good a way to
start out as any.
Your
paper should be about 1.5 metres tall and at least 3 metres in length
and fixed at a comfortable height so that you can reach both the top
and bottom of the sheet easily. Much will depend on where you are
working and what you have to fix it on. Sometimes there is no
suitable wall space and you may end up working on a table, perhaps
laying it sideways on top of another. Alternatively, these days, many
scribes carry lightweight foam board to work on. Eventually, you may
invest in one of the portable board system. To fix the paper to a
wall use wide decorators masking tape or something similar that will
not damage the surface of the wall (always test it before you put up
the paper – you do not want a repair bill). The paper itself should
be suitable for writing on with your pens, but it must not bleed;
that is, the ink from your pens needs to stay stable and not spread
out. Medium weight hot pressed copy papers (150gsm) are usually okay.
Lighter paper is more likely to bleed. Some papers will bleed
through a little to the reverse side so be careful what you fix it
to; if necessary, put another layer of paper underneath.
There
are many different suitable pens available, some of them specifically
developed for this work. As you could be working with the pens all
day long, I would advise that you only use water based or non-toxic
markers rather than permanent markers, which often give off fumes
that could make you ill. Essentially, you need to have pens in a
basic range of colours with medium sized nibs (around 4 to 6 mm wide)
for general work. There are various shapes of nib that you can use,
each useful for different types of lines or shading.
Wedge-shaped
nibs are good all round tools useful for drawing both thick and thin
lines and for shading. When you are having to work quickly, having
one of these in your hand saves needing to swap pens to make
different types of mark. Bullet-shaped nibs make consistent lines and
I prefer them for writing. Brush nibs can be useful for filling in
and shading. You may also want fine-points for some detailed drawing
and wide nibbed pens for larger areas of colour, although some people
prefer chalks or crayons for this. There are many different pens on
the market. Some are the use and dispose type, while others are
refillable. If you read through some of the many GF/GR websites,
pages and blogs on the internet you will soon discover which are
favourites amongst the community. In the end you have to try a few
and see which you prefer.
So,
its the beginning of a meeting or event and you are standing in front
of a large blank sheet of paper. Where do you start? A lot depends on
what sort of meeting or event it is and what your role is. It is
important that this is clearly understood by yourself and the
organisers when you are contracted to do the job.
Let's
start with a basic graphic recording task. This is by far the most
flexible type of work in terms of what you can produce on paper. For
example, let's say you are watching and listening to a talk; there's
no direct involvement between you and the speaker, You are there to
interpret graphically what the speaker says and to give other people
listening something more to remember it by. You will probably start
with a headline title and then record in straightforward, more or
less linear fashion the information delivered. Or will you?
Well,
again, it depends.... If you have little or no idea what the speaker
is going to say, beforehand, then a linear approach makes sense. You
can do this in various ways; across the sheet in lines, left to
right, down the sheet, top to bottom or as a continuous path. Or any
combination of these that works for you.
Linear
recordings can range from simple line and text to creative works
employing icons, images and graphic metaphors.
However,
it can be really helpful to know a little more about the content of
the talk or discussion beforehand. For example, some topics lend
themselves to more of a mind mapping approach where links and
connections are required. One way to record this might be to start in
the centre or top centre of the sheet. Here you can have the
flexibility of working outwards from the main topic(s) and recording
connections graphically as they arise. It also gives you the
opportunity to do a bit of facilitation by identifying and recording
other connections.
Eventually
you will find that you can use a combination of the mind-mapping and
linear approaches to produce creative, easily readable recordings.
However, whatever approach you use, always make sure that you
regularly step back and look at what you are doing. You will be
working close to your chart and it can all too easily become
unbalanced and misrepresent the discussion or talk. You need to see
it from the participants' perspective as often as possible so that
you deliver as accurate a recording as you can.
Graphic
facilitation may employ all the same approaches as graphic recording,
but the difference is in the purpose and level of control. Whereas
graphic recording can be simply that - recording, facilitation
involves enhancing and giving meaning to the discussion and enabling
the participants to find new meanings and insights. The role of a
graphic facilitator is to help a group do its work and achieve its
aims by creating a large chart detailing their discussions as they
happen. The chart and the work of the facilitator allows the
participants to see the conversation take shape, to go back and
remember how it developed, to gain a deeper understanding of the
topics discussed, to find new connections, identify goals, plan
strategies and to work together more productively. It means having a
greater level of responsibility to the group and being able to direct
the conversation. There are also a number of additional tools and
approaches that the graphic facilitator may use.
The
graphic facilitator interacts directly with the group he/she is
working with, actively listening to their discussions, drawing images
and writing notes, and directly involving them in the the development
of the chart without distracting them from their topic. It's a
delicate balance, achieved by intervening, only when it's
appropriate, to check that the recorded information is correct and
the imagery is suitable and, sometimes, to ask for suggestions for
images and visual metaphors. These activities help to build trust
with the participants, particularly if they have never experienced
graphic facilitation before. Where the facilitator has been engaged
to have direct control of the conversation with specific goals for
the meeting in mind, it may be to ask questions relating to the
topic itself. Sometimes the graphic facilitator works in conjunction
with a group facilitator who will ask those types of questions and
direct the conversation.
There
is a range of additional skills and techniques that the graphic
facilitator can and eventually, must use. They are widely used by
professional facilitators and experienced managers in the context of
enabling meetings to work and be productive. Graphic facilitators
need to become familiar with these tools and approaches and be able
to interpret them in a graphic form. Fortunately, much of the work in
this area has already been done with the design of some common visual
templates, although there is always room for some creative
re-interpretation. Most of these were created for use with 'process
tools' such as visioning, goal setting, etc. Some process tools were
originally devised with a graphic element to them; for example, those
that employ matrix recording. A few well known graphic facilitation
companies sell printed or digital file versions of many of these
templates for use by managers and facilitators. However, I feel that
an original, drawn in the meeting version will always have more
impact. There are various arguments for and against using templates.
In the next part we'll have a look at a number of different templates
and some of the arguments about using them.
Another
technique that graphic facilitators can use, both for interpreting
processes or simply enhancing the content of a discussion, is the use
of visual metaphors. This involves basing the whole or a significant
part of the graphic around a single visual idea that represents and
interprets the content of the meeting. The idea may be something that
you prepare prior to the meeting or it may spring from something
contributed in the discussion. Again, in the next part we'll have a
look at some examples of how these visual metaphors may be used. I
will also include a number of exercises that you can have a go at.
In
the meantime, I want to finish this part with a group exercise. If
you are working alone on learning the skills of scribing, you will
need to find some friends or colleagues to help you out. If there are
several of you learning, you can rotate the facilitator role as you
do the exercise. This exercise is about planning a party and it
involves the use of a template. In reality you wouldn't go
to the lengths in this exercise in order to simply plan a party, but
you might use this same process for planning something much more
complex. The process of this exercise was borrowed from work with
people who have disabilities and in that context the precise steps
to be used is important.
Planning
a Party
This
is a group exercise (4 or more) with one person acting as graphic
facilitator; one person chairing/leading and others participating in
the planning meeting.
Stage
1
As
a group decide what ….
Stage
2
Based
on above, suggest and record 20 party games or activities to do.
Stage
3
Identify
the group’s 3 favourite ideas from above and complete the
following:
Stage
4
Do
an action plan:
