On a sunny late afternoon in April, the offices of Santropol Roulant are festooned with fresh murals. You would never suppose that the artists responsible – participants in a graphic-facilitation workshop led by Paul Messer – had started out in the morning with little or no drawing experience.
Graphic facilitation continues to rise in interest as a game-changer for defining and improving business strategy and growth. The article talks about ‘artists’ learning graphic facilitation, but that isn’t where graphic facilitation lives. It is the capacity of people to do visual thinking, often before logical or rational thinking comes into play, that makes employing visuals or visual patterning to drive more effective meetings or problem-solving work valuable for decision making.
The article discusses Paul Messer’s work as a graphic facilitator and workshop leader, teaching graphic facilitation for Montreal-based Percolab. He starts from the visual building blocks that are foundational for graphic facilitation: writing (yes, text counts!), capturing content, using icons to represent objects and ideas.
As the complexity of facilitation increases, so do the skills taught: mapping, illustrating processes and visualizing objectives and, one would assume, outcomes.
Read the article to hear the answer to the age-old question, “Do I have to draw you a picture?”
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Hi Dean,
Firstly thanks for sharing this article and to VizWorld for promoting visual practice.
Just to clarify as I feel its important: “artists”, referred to in the article, in the first paragraph: “the offices of Santropol Roulant are festooned with fresh murals. You would never suppose that the artists responsible – participants in a graphic-facilitation workshop led by Paul Messer – had started out in the morning with little or no drawing experience.”
The term “artists responsible” is referring to the participants who made the murals, whom come from a variety of backgrounds: students, facilitators, managers, leaders, professionals, teachers etc and not artists learning graphic facilitation (although artists are more than welcome of course).
Thanks for the opportunity to clarify. Paul Messer.
For those interested the next workshop in Montreal is the 19th June 2014. More information on http://www.percolab.com/en/workshop-graphic-facilitation/
Hi Paul,
Thanks for the clarification! As a fellow visual facilitator, the “artist” model is easy for people to grasp: I often hear myself introduced as “our illustrator here will draw what we’re talking about”. But how does that frame what I am really doing: listening, extracting content, synthesizing and, finally, recording using a combination of text and images. I don’t think we have the term “graphic” or “visual” facilitator well understood enough in the public’s mind, and so I try to make that distinction visible whenever possible. I also congratulate you on the success of your workshop program, and was glad to see it make the news, which is why I wanted to share it here on VizWorld.