Levels of Scribing: Methods

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There exist depths, or phases, of scribing that directly correlate with attention. Different “levels” of listening can help us participate in a shift of awareness and possibility. Otto Scharmer has described four levels of listening: (1) downloading; (2) factual; (3) empathic; and (4) generative. I apply each level of listening to the visual practice of scribing, as depicted below, and you can read more on each level here.

Methods of Scribing

Furthermore, there are various methods of scribing that fit within, and support, each level. Among these are:

Scribing

Scribing (also known as graphic recording/facilitation) is a visual practice that has increased in contemporary use since the 1970’s. An artist maps out ideas while people talk, and they can see a picture unfold right in front of their eyes. The drawing establishes connections within content, aids with insight, and supports decision-making. It’s essentially a language that weaves words and pictures to facilitate group learning and cultural memory, and is now embraced around the world as a popular social art and meeting tool.

Systems Scribing

Systems Scribing is an experimental visual practice that combines graphic facilitation with the science of systems thinking. Systems scribing can be done in the moment or it can be iterative, providing cycles of feedback while it uncovers dynamics and interdependencies. The method strives to produce visual artifacts that make implicit structures and behaviors explicit, supporting ongoing reflection and thinking over time. (Co-created with Jessica Riehl.)

Generative Scribing

Generative Scribing advances these practices by extending the range of the practitioner to an entire ecosystem, while drawing with an attunement to energy. A generative scribe calls particular attention to an emerging reality that is brought to life by, and for, the social field in which it’s created. Because of its interactive and co-creative nature, it serves as a device for social seeing, while offering a route to a sacred way of being, where the spirit of our humanity prevails over any individual agenda.

Visual Presencing

Visual Presencing is the act of two-dimensionally representing an experience of presencing. “Presencing, the blending of sensing and presence, means to connect from the Source of the highest future possibility and to bring it into the now”. (Otto Scharmer) Presencing also means “being with”, in order to access the potential of a moment, to open to a channel of spirit. Visual presencing aids with this attunement, both for the artist during the creative process, and for those engaging with life force through a picture. It can be practiced in private, or embedded as a method within the more social art of scribing.

Visual Sensemaking

Visual Sensemaking (as we now apply the term) is a method that uses two-dimensional language to “unpack” a current condition, inquire into its complexity, connect with source through presencing, and reveal an emergent, more coherent, possible future.

In Application

All methods are valuable in the right context, and can be combined in application at the same time, in conjunction, to enhance one another. Part of a visual practitioner’s skill is to quickly discern which approach is most useful when, and to be able to shift modalities in an instant.

For example, I might start scribing a session with a mindset that a systems method is most useful. I define parts, relationships, and feedback loops. But after drawing for just 20-minutes, I might realize that the group and system have a container strong enough to allow for deeper meaning to come through the experience, and I will slow down to pay finer attention to the tone and field, while starting to bypass more of the factual data.

It can go in the other direction, too, where I begin with a more generative approach, but realize the content calls for greater definition and clarity. The shift then would be to increase the inclusion of words and details, while suspending my inclination to attend to the energy.

Again, all levels of scribing are useful and necessary! None are better or worse than any other. And to note, there are dozens of other practices that fit within these levels (terms like graphic recording, graphic facilitation, sketch noting, mind mapping, etc….) The main thing to keep in mind is RANGE.

“Sneak Peek” Presentation

From a 30-minute zoom session, hosted on Jan 21, 2022 with Marie-Pascale Gafinen. See more context and examples for each method. (Eight seconds per slide, if not otherwise animated.)

 

 

Being Ordinary

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Photo from April 4, 2020, in Walden Woods, MA USA

(Bringing this old blog post forward from April 12, 2008.)

In recent class on Theory U and the process of Presencing, Otto Scharmer said something to the tune of “be as ordinary and real as possible.” And then I heard a piece on NPR about the Dalai Lama in regards to Olympic protests… amongst other things how NORMAL he considers himself to be.

This links back to “growing down” from Hillman’s The Soul’s Code: “Until the culture recognizes the legitimacy of growing down, each person in the culture struggles blindly to make sense of the darkenings and despairings that the soul requires to deepen into life.”

There are 4 ways he suggests to do this:

  1. Body – going with the sag of gravity that accompanies aging.
  2. Be among your people and a member of the family tree, including its twisted and rotten branches.
  3. Live in a place that suits your soul that ties you down with duties and customs.
  4. Give back what circumstances gave you by means of gestures that declare your full attachment to this world.

In a way, it’s rooting in the real – the ORDINARY, acknowledging place, family, our bodies, and present moments in our daily lives – recognizing being. It’s to say, “I am this tree, with its falling arm, with its budding leaves.”

Additionally, have been reading Josef & Anni Albers’ Designs for Living where Josef’s purpose in life was “to open eyes.” Their guiding principle: “aesthetics are not confined to a single area of life, but count immeasurable in all choices in life and, moreover, affect the way we breathe, the way we feel at every waking moment, our sense that all is right in the world or that something is painfully wrong.”

Every day moments. Wet earth. Relaxing into the real and a sense of being. Letting go of grand gestures, sweeping aspirations, idealized life – trying to love what IS.

Finally, on a recent trip to Kripalu, took notice of this quote on the wall, from Mother Teresa: “Do small things with great love. It’s not how much we do—but how much love we put in the doing, and it is not how much we give – but how much love we put in the giving.”

Summer Research Institute

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It was a great honor and pleasure to participate in Mind and Life‘s recent Summer Research Institute – as contemplative faculty offering scribing of key faculty talks, and as a member of the community integrating mindfulness into current daily life. The theme of the program was “Cultivating Prosocial Development Across the Lifespan: Contexts, Relationships, and Contemplative Practices”. The sessions offered a particular nest for healing, in a week thick with reckoning after the police murder of George Floyd, and during continual Black Lives Matter protesting and awareness-raising around the world.

Some process and technical info: I worked on an iPad Pro with the Procreate application, to draw out eight pre-recorded 45-minute talks. Then for the final closing remarks, i scribed using an IPEVO document camera to share the live drawing into the Zoom meeting room. I carefully picked one palette of ~12 elemental colors at the onset; the images below show a range of various combinations. As in life, art.

A deep bow of appreciation to the entire Mind & Life team – Bobbi, Josh, Juan, and Ryan – to all the faculty, and especially to my dear friend Robert Roeser, for including me in this transformative experience and the support along the way.

Developmental Contemplative Science: Framework for the Study of Prosocial Development, with Phil Zelazo
The Role of Contemplative Practice in Cultivating Cultural Humility and Inclusivity in Research and Education, with Kamilah Majied
Trust and Fairness in Development, with Philippe Rochat
Compassion-centered Spiritual Healthcare, with Jennifer Mascaro
Our Stories Are Our Medicine: Centering Culture and Healing through Story Work with Indigenous Communities, with Ramona Beltrán
No Place Like Home: Decolonizing Our American Dreams and the Necropolitics They Bury, with Jasmine Syedullah
Contemplating 400 Years of Inequality: A Mindfulness & Compassion Community Practice, Angel Acosta
School-Based Promotion of Children’s Empathy, Kindness, and Altruism: Emerging Research, Lingering Questions, and Future Directions, with Kimberly Schonert-Reichl
Closing Remarks – A Summation of Takeaways

Wilma Rising

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There is a story to tell, but for now, i will let the images do the talking. Each builds into the previous, conceptually for ten years, and literally now for 13 weeks through the GAIA Journey. Continual unfolding, enfolding, unfolding. See a reflective video of the final evolution here.

Images from GAIA, last to first:

Images that informed the GAIA drawing, last to first:

Containers (expanded)

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This is an expansion, a reemphasis, of the original post i wrote up on “containers” back in 2015. It’s offered to complement recent thinking around Systems Scribing, which explores the intersection of scribing and systems thinking, particularly when considering “systems being”. This is when we start to consider systems not only as cognitive exercises, but as essential matters of the heart, with felt understanding of the interconnectedness of all things. This has possibly never been more needed on the planet than it is now.

To note, this thinking is based on the work of William Isaacs as well as the Circle of Seven, including: Barbara Cecil, Glennifer Gillespie, and Beth Jandernoa.

With that…

Steady to Scale

Here is a relevant chapter called “Steady to Scale” from Drawn Together through Visual Practice.

In it, i write: As visual practitioners, as artists, we aim with care and responsibility to reach people, to expand the boundaries of the assumed known. Any reach requires steadiness, and to ensure a stable core, we rely on support for our essential, creative selves.

Love, as a base note…

And here is the full text from “Containers” (download chapter here) in my book Generative Scribing:

Around the diamond, the iceberg, and presencing —supporting these states of being and diagnostic methods— are what I’ve already referred to in this book as containers: holding spaces for places, people, and states of the heart.

The weakness or strength of a container determines the likelihood for detrimental or successful conversation, for harmful or loving relations, for destructive or productive environments, for ill- or well-being.

In a way, just as ice forms from and melts back into a pond, containers provide energetic ground for life and death, for growth and decay. We serve as containers for others, and they for us. The stronger a container, the stronger the trust, the stronger the safety, the more that can be nourished, tended, grown, realized.

Here’s an example. As my grandmother Margaret Bird was aging, at a point when she could only go outside with a walker and physical assistance, we would occasionally lunch at a local diner in New York City. She would ask me things about my life, about school, about my friends, about my studies, and she would marvel at the complexity of the world in which I lived. (This was 1984, so we can only imagine what she would say about our world today!)

What I recall most poignantly is the way she paid attention, seeming to hang on every word, and the way she made me feel safe and loved—loved no matter what I said, no matter what I had to share. I never felt judged. No matter what she thought about the details of my escapades, she listened closely, looked me in the eye, and continued to pursue an understanding of my life.

She provided a container, a space where I could see myself more clearly and grow as direct result of how she was holding me.

In my work as a scribe, I try to reinforce the container for the group. When a group heats up and fractures, the container needs to strengthen, to better support what wants to come to light. I don’t do this by adding a specific line or word to a page, but by enhancing my quality of listening and building the group’s trust in my very being. I turn around, and see the group, feel it, open my heart to the individuals, try to put myself in their seats, find human-to-human compassion, soften, expand.

Sometimes the container in the room is so strong that the scribe might be enveloped in its power. Our ability to “show up” increases because the room is holding us, in a way, as my grandmother held me so well, years ago. In this case, I notice the strength, thank the heaven and earth for the quality of the group, and draw with pure joy.

When my grandmother, somewhat hard of hearing and surely with many of her own personal concerns, was able to show up for me so completely, I was completely able to show up for her too. I could be more vulnerable because I felt safe. She brought out the purest part of me by how gracefully she held me in her own heart.

Love, as a base note, is the ore, and order, of the container.