A Record of a Story

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This map was created live in Austin Texas and it signifies new and exciting way of Recording for me: instead of capturing each word or idea, I only record the STORIES that the speaker shares. The woman who spoke at this particular event is a master storyteller, so the job of Recording her was easy and joyful. Regardless of the expertise of the teller, I believe that our stories contain the essence of our hopes and ideas, so, in focusing in on a story, we connect with the core of what we want to share or communicate. I'd love to keep Visually Recording in this way because we all love to hear a good story!

Childhood Obesity: Mapping the System

I am so happy to be working with the very talented Linda Booth Sweeney again - and this time - we're collaborating to develop what Linda calls 'system maps' that will visually describe and further a childhood obesity prevention program. Below are two images I created that depict the influences and that contribute to the alarming rates of obesity in American children. I am so grateful to work on this project, as Linda's work is so critical, and the system maps we create together have the potential to help people shift their thinking about how we can prevent obesity in future generations. Here's a excerpt from Linda's website where she describes systems thinking: "When we look closely, we see living systems on all scales, from the smallest plankton, to our own body, to the planet as a whole. When we understand what constitutes a living system, we also see that our watersheds, families, communities, organizations, and nations are all living systems." Check out Linda's informative and beautiful website to learn more: http://www.lindaboothsweeney.net/

I'm very happy to report that the Visual Records Nancy White and I created in response to the Inaugural National Symposium on Food Systems and Sustainability on March 24 and the follow-up Policy Round table on the March 25th, are featured on the current home page of the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences at UC Davis: http://www.caes.ucdavis.edu/

Envisioning Sustainability

Since my work at UC Davis, I've become very interested in exploring the intersection between the field of Sustainability and my work in Visual Recording/Visual Thinking. I'm curious about how we as individuals, communities, families, and organizations might envision Sustainability: What does Sustainability look like? How can it be mapped and charted? What needs do people have when they try to run their businesses and homes in more Sustainable ways? Said another way, are there visuals that could assist people as they strive to integrate the principles and practices of Sustainability into their lives and work? It's my belief that co-creating Visual Records, icons, maps and templates could serve as another tool to help Visual Thinkers align with the very complex and urgent need for action on the behalf of the environment. Visual Records can help people see both the practical day-to-day steps we can take as individuals, and see how to shift to or adopt a Systems Thinking view of Sustainability. I've started my exploration of envisioning Sustainability, so I wanted to share my first few images above. If you have ideas about how to visualize Sustainability, or know of books on this subject, or better yet, if you know people I could talk with about the alignment between Visuals & Sustainability, please get in touch!

Visual Recording at UC Davis

Here are the Visual Records Nancy White and I created during the Inaugural National Symposium on Food Systems & Sustainability: http://www.asi.ucdavis.edu/conferences/fss2009/graphic_recordings/

A New Way To Present Meeting Agendas

The Visual Records below were created as a way to share the 3 day agenda of Serve Wisconsin's North Central Cluster Meetings, affiliated with the wonderful AmeriCorps volunteer programs.

World Cafe Community Article: Youth Dialog Project at NCDD

Please take the time to read this article on The World Cafe Community Blog, written by Deborah Goldblatt and co-authored by yours truly. The article chronicals the Youth Dialog Project sessions that took place at last years NCDD conference (National Colition for Dilaog and Deliberation) in Austin, Texas. We learned a great deal about intergenerational work and how to create a space where voices can be heard.

Visual Recording on a Big and Small Scale

In my Visual Recording work I get to listen to and graphically capture a variety of events, conferences, and meetings. Not only is the content unique to each event, the scale of the conversations taking place also varies from job to job. Sometimes I record conversations between teams of people within a large organizations and other times I'm charting the ideas of hundreds of people at a national conference. When the number of participants in a conversation is small, I can record on paper while sitting at a table and blend in pretty seamlessly with the group. When meetings take place in conference centers, I'm Visually Recording in front of hundreds of people, capturing the content in large murals that are projected onto screens so the whole audience can watch the murals taking shape. While the size and scale of the conversation changes, the practice of listening to the core ideas and visually depicting the key points always remains the same.
Most recently, I had the opportunity to work on a very large scale with a fellow Visual Recorder, the lovely and extremely talented Michelle Boos Stone. Michelle and I worked together to capture the conversations of a manufacturing company interested in taking a new and empowered stance in their business. We created fifteen 4x8 murals while working on a stage in front of the audience of almost 750 people, seen below.

Here's a template I created that provides a space for
people to write in their visionary ideas and thoughts.
Instead of providing a linear document with
blank _____ spaces for clients to fill in, why not use a
template where they can write and draw in a drawing?

Mandalas

For many years now I've enjoyed drawing mandalas, as they portray relationships in a unique way; all the symbols, curves and lines are interconnected just as humans connected to one another and to nature. Creating mandalas is an organic process that develops as the conversation or my own thoughts emerge, most often using symbols and shapes instead of written words. I begin by making a small dot near the center of page, then I slowly draw other dots in a circular pattern that relates to the first dot. I continute to draw without a design in mind or the aid of a ruler. This drawing style came to me early one morning when I was visiting the holy city of Safed, Israel. While wandering around with my sketch book, I noticed a unusually artistic light fixture. I did my best to copy the fixture's intricate design and next thing I knew, a mandala took shape. I haven't been able to stop creating mandalas since that day, almost sixteen years ago. On several occasions I've drawn mandalas for corporate and non-profit organizations as way to represent their conversations, but most of the time, the mandalas live in my sketch books. Feel free to leave me a comment about what you see in the images or tell me how they speak to you.