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.)
(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:
Body – going with the sag of gravity that accompanies aging.
Be among your people and a member of the family tree, including its twisted and rotten branches.
Live in a place that suits your soul that ties you down with duties and customs.
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.”
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:
iPad
iPad
ink on paper and mylar
iPad
iPad
iPad
iPad
acrylic on paper
acrylic on paper
acrylic on paper
acrylic on paper
acrylic on paper
Images that informed the GAIA drawing, last to first:
What a session! What a year. What a decade. What a partnership.
On the eve of the 2019 winter solstice (for the northern hemisphere) Otto Scharmer interviewed me regarding Generative Scribing and the Power of Social Arts. It was the last episode of the year for Dialogues on Transforming Society & Self, a series of monthly interactive online talks. “With a variety of guests, stories and breakout sessions, these dialogues provide a space for coming together and sensing into inspiring examples of societal renewal.” Find a recap of our episode here, as well as previous interviews, on the Presencing Institute website.
After Otto and I conversed for about 20 minutes, we guided the community through a resonance process, attending our collective awareness to a series of “footprint” images created over the last decade of our work together. Find the slides in the gallery below. The resonance process was followed by virtual break out spaces, and then some group reflections at the very end of the 75-minute session.
Of note was how the power in my home completely shut down for about 5 minutes through the image “pulsing”. It was as if the energy of the entire group, and the focus on the images, was high enough to cause an outage! That is probably not the real explanation. But as the team scrambled on the back end to find out what happened, and as i desperately tried to reconnect, Otto picked up the presentation and there seemed to be minimal disruption. A few slides which would have been in that gap are added below. The resonance process started with the u.lab images and ended with increased time on the final synthesized image, which we refer to as “Solstice”.
Recording of the Session
Images Shared
chalk on board
acrylic on paper
iPad
Chat Questions with Responses and Resources
Jerry Michalski: Kelvy, did you at one time see a graphic facilitator in action, or did you start taking visual notes spontaneously?
I started in 1995 by joining a team of MG Taylor knowledgeworkers, to support a DesignShop for NASA wind tunnels. Scribing was one facilitative role in support of “releasing group genius”. I had met Matt and Gail when they came to visit Chris Allen in San Francisco, CA. I was working for Chris, who had a company called Consensus (focused on groupware) as his office administrator. I’d also been working on a collaborative art project with architect friends from college. When Matt and Gail were visiting out west, they saw the artworks and thought I’d be a good fit in the highly-collaborative sessions they were running. You can read more here about Matt and Gail’s work here, and a graphic talk by Andrew Park (inventor of those RSA Animate videos) on their processes.
I was also very involved in theater in high school, which is another kind of social, collaborative art. Many streams probably fed into the eventual practice of scribing.
Jerry Michalski: Were you scribing before arriving at MG Taylor, or did you learn it there?
I learned it there! And it took a loooong time. Everyone thought I could start right away, but it took me about two years to get comfortable drawing in front of people. Also, I am a slow learner.
tori craig : Kelvy, how do you sort out what’s happening among the group vs. your own interpretation/mindset?
Scribing is a balancing act between intuitive and cognitive abilities. Perhaps it’s like running constant mini “U”s… where we observe, sense, presence, and then have a quick check in internally on what is “in here” and what is “out there” and discern if there is alignment between the two (which are also really the same, but split out for the purposes of drawing.) Then a very quick shift into crystallizing the content into the drawing. Good question – and i will give it more thought and come back. People ask this all the time…
Nancy White : “A gift to offer, not a gift to have.”
I really like this quote. I think it sums up the approach.
Lily Martens: Kelvy what other art forms do you see that we can use to do this? Do you experiment with that as well?
Gosh – i would say all. I write a lot, journalling, personally and also for almost every professional situation i’m in. It’s a helpful tool for reflection, also requires discipline to do (like all art forms I suppose!)
barbara: For those with no artistic skills, how could we personally use scribing? I like the visual models but could not possibly produce one.
You can use scribing in any context to help people see. The difference between scribing and other visual art forms is that it is social – the content comes from a context of a group of people, rather than representing only one person’s views (though it’s common to scribe for one presenter of content, there is still an audience that participates in the overall context of the speaking…). Therefore, I’d say try in a safe environment first, perhaps with family or friends who are trying to think something through, and experiment where you can.
April Doner: Re: People with no artistic skills… just wanted to share one resource I love from a friend in the disabilities justice movement (scribing is a massive tool for accessibility in that field)… https://inclusion.com/product/hints-for-graphic-facilitators/
See also this program page for capacity development offerings from a trusted ecosystem of practitioners. There are a number of in person and offline opportunities to learn at very beginning stages.
Jerry Michalski: good book on drawing simply: Dan Roam, Back of the Napkin
Yes! I very much admire Dam Roam and all his books. Other great resources: David Sibbet, Dave Gray, Mike Rohde, and Brandy Agerbeck. And this book is really a massive and thorough compilation: The World of Visual Facilitation. And please please please remember this practice is as much—or more—about listening and sense making than it is drawing beautiful pictures. You can draw in a very basic way and still get the essence of what is being said, and help a group see, as long as you have the inner skills that combine with the skills of the hand.
Maria Grette: I paint “from the future”. Paintings emerge from a meditative source and sometimes manifest in life up to years later. Is this related to scribing?
Yup! I can relate…
Hermann Funk: I see scribing as a valuable tool for prototyping, or am I wrong?
You are most definitely right. Especially system mapping, where you can clearly define places, stakeholders, processes of iteration over time…
Jerry Michalski: apropos other kinds of mapping, here’s ABCD in context: https://bra.in/2vmxPJ and Kelvy, in context: https://bra.in/8qa7AE
For the master of visual modeling, spend some time in Bryan Coffman’s website. He was one of my key early mentors in the field, and remains top of the charts for thinking and practicing scribing, especially in a strategic context.
Robert Wanalo: will the slides be available after this? 🙂
See above!
Nancy White: frozen Kelvy?
The computer in my home completely – yes, completely, went out! My computer went dark, internet down – all in an instant. While i scrambled to rejoin through my phone, the power came back on, but Otto had pick it all up and kept the process going, with barely a hiccup. Here is to team spirit!
Marilee Adams: If we consider an image like an answer, a visual answer, that makes me wonder from what questions/inquiries might a particular image/answer have emerged?
I love this question and need to sit with it.
Nancy White: The Ochre is a story that stays and stays with me
Emily Abramovich: Agree with April. I’m curious to know more about the physical process.
Oh wow – there is so much to share here. Scribing is quite physical. I’m not sure how to answer in a concise way. Maybe look at the program page to see the various pics and set up? I have been advocating lately that a great scribe can work on any surface in any condition: from room-surrounding white (dry erase) boards that wrap up to 40′ to a patch of sand on a beach – even to a Post-It note.
Jana, Deerfield OH WE, The World: why just these colors? why not purple or deep blue? Deb: How do you decide what colors to use? (Or is it just dependent on what you have available at the time?)
Well…… color is so critical in my mind, as it’s a subtle influencer and can say a great deal in relative silence. It’s a powerful medium. The colors i use with the Presencing Institute are distinct, as we chose the pallet at one point in time for the website, and then used more broadly in our design and communications. This translated over into my scribing for u.lab and key ecosystem gatherings. That is probably why they feel so uniform in the drawings above. There are a number of us in PI working on various products, independently, and color palette has helped with our consistency.
And, there is so much more on this. See the end of this post for some color coding info in relation to that one drawing. I will try to get permission to share a chapter I recently co-authored with Holger Nils Pohl called Using Color, in a recently published book: The World of Visual Facilitation.
barbara: I sense a groupthink that perhaps is blinding people to the actual difficulty of the current situation
I appreciate this comment. As i think you were experiencing in our process, the self-selected social field—as we had on the call—can sometimes create a series of “follows”, where there can be a snowballing effect of agreement, and a difficult condition in which to bring in an “oppose”. (See above relevant reference to William Isaac’s book on dialogue.) This happens in scribing too, where one mark can follow another, and we stop listening to the discord that ALSO has necessary information in it, as balance. It’s key to listen for the full range of inputs, regardless of proportion. It offers correction. As has your comment.
It’s easy for a scribe to get caught up in polite downloading Otto’s Conversation Field Level 1, because it’s a more comfortable place to be in, especially when immersed in the real-time pressure of live drawing. But it’s critical to be able to hold a steady container and support a social field shift into Level 2: Debate, which is where discord comes in. If you can’t handle this, and then also listen for shifts to Level 3: Dialogue, and the Level 4: Collective Creativity…. then you as a scribe, or facilitator, you will not really help balance out the stuck reinforcing feedback loop a group is experience.
I guess it boils down the overall maturity and strength of the container of the group itself…. (which would have been the 250 people on our call), and time together, to allow for field shifts that can enfold difference.
Sherrill Knezel: Another question that surfaced…what can we or are we willing to let go of in order to serve the social field?
Ego.
trishbroersma: Tips for planning visual space with a new topic or new group?
Hm. A LOT goes into planning. Perhaps read this post as a start to get the scope? I’m not sure, though, if this is what you meant by the question…
angele: are you also continuing your painting in the studio?
Well…. not really. I have a small studio that is ready and waiting. It’s one of my 2020 intents, to start up again – combined with an intent to travel less for work and stay more local.
sylvie: Maybe this is unrelated but would Kelvy want to share where her name comes from?
Ha! “Kelvy” comes from McKelvy, which was the maiden name of my grandmother, Margaret McKelvy Bird. It’s obviously then from her parents, Robert and Florence McKelvy.
Elizabeth Carney: Hoping the images can be shared? Susanne Maria Weber: Can we please have prints of those wonderful images?
You can see the images above, and click on them for a higher resolution version you can print.
Veronika: Are there any resources how to start learning gernerative scribing?
Each year the Presencing Institute offers u.lab, a free, online-offline program through MITx. Launched in Sept and running through Dec, it’s a self-directed learning experience, punctuated by monthly live broadcasts where the community comes together. It’s also part of a wider-scale Societal Transformation Lab that you can read about here.
Find below the final scribed image from each live session, as well as key content overviews. Hope you find this gallery useful. Enjoy!
For all pictures on this page… please share as you’d like, respecting the creative commons information here and linking back to this page. Also please consider donating to the Presencing Institute, which would not exist without individual donations, grants, and program revenues.
Visual Reviews, using iPadPro with Procreate app, Photoshop, and a Bird font.
