An older image, but relevant today as the System Scribing Lab gets underway. This is information submitted for the publication in the book: Graphic Recording; Live Illustrations for Meetings, Conferences and Workshops. It helps describe the process better than i could now recall>

How would you complete the sentence “What’s really interesting about this graphic recording is…”?

… that the final picture reflects a highly integrated synthesis of four days’ worth of live content.

Is there a story about how you arrived at the visuals, style, or technique used in this graphic recording?

There is a certain freedom of expression that comes with the experience of working with familiar materials over time, in this case dry erase marker on a large, flat surface. Approaching this wall as an experiment with layered iteration, I gave myself full permission to add, subtract, expand, and relocate content as it made sense to the overall picture, even at the expense of completely eliminating information.

What’s the most interesting or effective or powerful technique that you used in this graphic recording (maybe it’s the one that you used the most, but maybe it’s one that you only used for a few details, but it really makes the connections come alive)—and why did you choose it?

The unique quality of this 14-foot image is that it represents a four full cycles of build, overnight pause, and reduction – where only the most essential content carried forward into the final picture. The drawing process itself mirrored the prototyping process in the room, offering an iterated and refined version of content each day. Though many phrases and sections met erasure throughout the program, the overall depth of the final integration demonstrates the power of this medium to reflect requisite change in idea maturation.

What are the standout features about the featured graphic recording that you would point out to a stranger who walked up and asked about it? Like, is it interesting because you used different shades of two colors to indicate a transition? Did you use a lot of cartoon elements this time? Etc.

The “secret sauce” of this image is the hand mixed dry-erase inks used to evoke potential (gold), grounding (olive), and source/spirit (blue grey). I start with an Neuland inks and squeeze them into Montana marker shells, meant for acrylic paint. This process is not recommended for those who are in any way apprehensive of drips and fumes! It’s not an everyday application, and can yield quite a mess if one is not confident with a very, very inky marker. But the combination also yields extraordinary serendipity in application, and very rich color.

Was there something about this graphic recording that was especially challenging (and that is somehow visibly reflected in the work itself)? How did you overcome that challenge in the graphic recording itself. (The talk was in English, but none of the audience spoke English, so you had to devise a system of pictographs on the spot and couldn’t include any words, and that’s why the GR looks the way it does.)

The challenge of this piece was the limit of space over four days, combined with a live broadcast to a global audience on the first day, requiring a full-scale drawing from the start. The program also needed a great deal of wall space for the presentations and participant work, leaving me tight in regards to real-estate. I know this seems like a crazy way to figure it out, but it helps with average budgeting: ~ 1” per minute (assuming a 4’ height), ~ 30” width per 30 minutes, ~ 8’ for 90 minutes, etc. The ~14 hours of scribing in this design would have called for ~75 linear feet. But I had 14 feet, bringing my ratio of room/time WAY down and forcing a ratio of synthesis/time way up.

Essentially I had to collapse the breadth into layers. In order to have impact, I wanted to go large and aim for depth. Embracing a daily, iterative approach seemed the only possible solution. This involved drawing, erasing, drawing, erasing, etc. each day – to represent four full cycles of work. I thoroughly documented each round, to not lose context and previous drawing.

Did you decide on or plan any elements in advance? Were there elements that came out of a flash of inspiration or that were improvised? In either case, what made them special?

I planned nothing about this in advance, even to address the wall space issue; it was not an easy solution to figure out, how to balance integrity with erasure.

The most exciting aspect to this piece was that the entire drawing ended up representing an unexpectedly coherent map of the topics in the room – not topics that were on the agenda at the onset of the program, as a more linear approach would have yielded, but instead related themes that unfolded through conversation, reflection, and learning in the room.

No key resulting sections could have existed without the others, and the relatedness of the content was particularly high: lenses for change (upper left), mind-matter split (base of the iceberg), questions of growth and scale (middle top), foundation of source and planet (bottom band), u.lab as an awakening organ of perception (upper right), and an unfolding heart-oriented future (right.)

 

For additional reference:

Wall Day One

(to come)

Wall Day Two

Wall Day Three

Wall Day Four

Final image with digital enhancement

Here are higher resolution images from the 4 live sessions of u.lab 2016:

For reuse of these images, please contact me via email: bird(at)kelvybird.com. Thanks!

Scribes need to stay open. It’s as simple as that. If we start to close down, we miss what is being said, get lost in our own heads, and disconnect from the flow. Staying open is a key skill to manage, and the challenge to do so – while listening and drawing – is constant.

Referring directly to Otto Scharmer’s Presencing work, there are three key capacities to cultivate:

• an Open Mind, where we Perceive clearly
• an Open Heart, where we Join others where they are
• an Open Will, where we Know what wants to be seen and made visible and from where we Draw

Yet quite often we encounter voices that block the path:

• Judgment restricts the Open Mind
• Cynicism restricts the Open Heart
• Fear restricts the Open Will

During one u.lab[i] session in 2015, the community further surfaced that to relax judgment, we inquire and become curious. To relax cynicism, we find compassion. To relax fear, we activate courage.

Sometimes these voices are sticky, though, and even if we’d prefer a more enlightened approach, we just need to figure out how to keep drawing. Shutting down is not an option when your back is to 10 or 1,000 people eagerly anticipating your images!

What’s at Stake?

Sometimes when I feel very stuck in any of these capacities, I refer back to a ShadowWork exercise learned from Barbara Cecil. When facing a dilemma, a coach will ask: “What’s at risk for you to do this?” And the coachee responds with all the reasons and voices, in body and mind, that feel the risk.

Then the coach asks: “What’s at risk if you do not do this?” Again, the coachee responds with all the perceived risk if nothing were to change. And in playing out the two sides of a stuck situation, the needed move – and appropriate risk – becomes clear.

Sometimes we can move through stuckness and engage a more adventuresome part of ourselves. And sometimes, when the risk feels too high, we need to choose a smaller level of risk on which to act. And either case is completely fine. What’s important is to be honest about how far we can go internally and just keep going, as openly as possible.

For example, if we want to stay open-minded, yet find ourselves in a room of overwhelming judgement – like a room of people with opposing political views who criticize our favorite politician – it might seem too challenging to neutrally represent their conversation. The risk might be between 1) holding firm to our beliefs, therefore somewhat censoring what we hear and write, and 2) suspending our own judgment, inquiring into where they might be coming from, and holding a thread of curiosity for the whole.

Another example… if we end up at a wall, poised to listen with an open heart, and we are deeply troubled by what we are hearing – like ex-sex workers advocating for victim’s rights in the face of perpetrators who are in the very same room – what is the risk? 1) Cynicism that the judiciary system could ever change, therefore our work is futile – why even draw? 2) Revealing bias for the victim and not accurately tracking all parts of the system in play? Considering the safety of the container, and what it can hold, would also be important to consider here.

And another… if we go numb on a stage – like with with a terrifying fear that our minds will blank as soon as someone starts speaking and we’ll lose the thread of meaning and not be able to draw – (no open will), then we can run the quick “What’s at stake?” question to figure out what we can handle to get us over the hump. 1) Draw whatever is understood, even if very little. 2) Don’t draw at all.

In all cases, whenever noise gets in the way of tangible progress, there will be multiple facets informing the eventual freeing up and movement on our path. Choosing between risks is just one option. What i try to remember, at the base of it all, is this:

By staying open we become a channel for what wants to come through. We scribe to be of service for something wanting to be seen. To overcome our inner voices enables that service.

 

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[i] u.lab: Leading From the Emerging Future is an online MOOC (Massive Online Open Courseware) offering through MIT’s edX platform, initiated in January 2015 in conjunction with the Presencing Institute’s u.school ecology, “a global action research platform, and an eco-system of online and offline communities, working to understand and transform the underlying causes of the ecological, social, and spiritual crises of our time.”

Have had the pleasure and challenge to scribe lightning talks (3-5 min each) for MIT’s Department of Urban Studies & Planning. The talks aim to showcase faculty project work. They usually seem to be over before they begin – such fast bursts! Yet the enduring quality of the work carries across time.