AW: AW: AW: Working with visual artists at an Open Space

Sat Aug 26 03:34:00 PDT 2006

yes, herman, what we like to capture, and sometimes succeed, is energy. And you know it emmediately, and the group sees it immediately, if that happens.

working with small cards is what we do in OS.

the starting vocabulary, mmmmh.... i am no friend of showing my stile to others before they start drawing. we do it on templates, so they look as if already someone has started and they can just continue, but there we use  very reduced shapes, people withoput faces ...    no , i would not show examples of others.

what i propose is to shift the view to the technique of listening. listening is maybe 80 % of our work. if someone really listens, he is out of the mind space of "i cannot draw... ".or "i want to reach this result...."  

and the drawings can be VERY simple! there are british colleagues, who work only in black and white , with figures like of a five year old child, and it works!

Concerning 20 standard pictures - well i checked how often we repeat a certain picture for the same (????) situation - and it was below 10 %. You listen, see the person, feel him, can his words be trusted? you see the body language, smell him, feel the context, and all that nearly never leeds to the same image.

the KuS-model - well, KuS is Kuchenmüller und Stifel. And the ancestors of it are the medicine wheels, Angeles Arrien, Harrison Owen, Birgitt Williams. you can see it in our website, right at the beginning, together with some texts and images.

it has seven steps, and can be used in many ways. recently i used it for coaching a lady searching for a new professional orientation. she drew, i drew, we used monologes, dialoges, interview, a metaphorical sculpture, ...

Or i used it for a new orientation of the leaders of Milano Metropoli and their organisation, where we went through the 7 steps in 2 days.

reinhard

VISUELLE PROTOKOLLE
Kuchenmüller & Stifel

tel +39-0566-88 929
www.visuelle-protokolle.de

________________________________

Von: OSLIST [mailto:OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU] Im Auftrag von Michael Herman
Gesendet: Freitag, 25. August 2006 15:40
An: OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
Betreff: Re: AW: AW: Working with visual artists at an Open Space

thank you, reinhard.  what caught me in birgitt's last message is twice, i think, saying about "capturing".  this word is important to me, because of the shape it describes.  i thnk first in shapes and textures and flows, and only later in pictures and finally words.  but i'm always working to make the words describe accurately the shapes that are my first thoughts and experiences.  so capture really fits for me, and lets me ask "what is being captured" and for me that is some energy of the group.  

now when i read your list, thanks for that, the part i really like is where you work with small cards, not the big sheets... you're in with people, not removed... and you talk about asking for corrections and additions.  for me, it's easy to imagine that the energy "captured" in such pictures is not stored up in some giant mural castle that any one individual participant would have trouble adding to or changing.  or deleting something... "this card is not right" where with a big wall, they could not say "this does not fit."  so the small card capturing seems more accessible and change-able and ultimately then own-able by the particpants.

i can imagine bringing some of these materials, depending on circumstances and purposes and client views and such, to make this sort of documentation table next to the table where text documenting happens... one big place of capturing (though it flies a bit in the face of 'one more thing to not do' which is a person favorite rule of mine, because i like to travel light!) ...but if i did this, the materials are easy enough... and it seems that there is one thing missing.  it seems that you have a bit of starting vocabulary, a foundational set of images, maybe?  

your felt marker sketches that you'd shared for the ost: user's non-guide for instance, have in them some similarities, a scope, a scale, a technique.  once a dozen of these are up on the wall, one can more easily imagine using similar, if more tentative and crude renditions of same, to capture other things.  one could imitate and eventually expand the alphabet you use, the style of simple capturing.  do you suppose that there is some set of 10-20 standard images that could be shared with the materials, maybe examples of several different 'alphabets' that you use, that would make these languages accessible to those who would dare to sketch or paint something?  i'm intrigued by your mention of foundational images... or maybe i've misunderstood?  if nothing else, how do we learn more about KuS 7-step process?

michael

On 8/25/06, Visuelle Protokolle <mail at visuelle-protokolle.de> wrote: 

	insider, outsider, addendum, we can play with definitions ad infinitum. important for me, and i feel likewise for you, is not a role we play, but the reponsibility we feel to be there for the people. To do, to be what fits, as you say. 

	If i see, that i can be of help for someone, i always jump. i don't care then for selforganization, i simply go. or draw. For me it is fine, that you and me are different.

	For me Open Space has some rules, which are made by humans, good ones, but i don't feel responsible for these rules. As i understood, Harrison when he definded those rules was influenced by visiting  african tribes organizing big festivals without organizing. If he had been visiting westafrican tribes with an old tradition of documenting their meeting in drawings (what i would always prefer to the external visual person!!!), maybe he would have defined that as principle number five, or he might have seen them dancing at the end and could have defined a law of two feet dancing.

	I like of course, what Birgitt is writing in her parallel mail. So i am glad, that we had this dialogue, and am open to continue it ore leave it like that, because the important things have been said. I would rather draw what i feel, but this listserve is textbased.

	You ask, how we work. 

	A. We accompany meetings and conferences and seminars of all kind and mirror them in drawings. we work with little formats, not like most of our American colleagues, who work on big wallpapers. So we can sit inbeteen the people and hear, see, feel what is going on. We use the 'Visual Language', a combination of images and words. we work with feltpens on cards, which we hang in rows of 6 to form a picture wall, where everybody can see, what was said, and also ask for corrections and additions. At the end mostly we transform these images into a slideshow of some minutes to let the day flow by, because almost everybody has forgotten more than 50 % of what he heard, saw and did during a day. 

	We would very much like a visual culture, where this service is fulfilled by some people who like that, and who got some training (mainly to forget their mind and prefixed ideas of what they should draw). Inbetween we go and do it.

	B. We  let people draw themselves. Either on templates, which we prepare with the client, and put an important question on it wich they answer with their drawings. We do that in groups of 8, and follow some rules which make people forget that they cannot draw. 
	Or we have "Storypainting sessions", were we split the group in story inventors, story drawers, a witness, and to show the result (a long strip of images with added sentences) a person like a medieval ballad-monger. 
	Or we let people draw their company, group ...as a human person on a flip chart in little groups.
	Or we develop maps together, land- and seamaps, full of metaphors and dragons ...

	C. We prepare sessions, conferences etc. with metaphorical maps, after gathering the content in interviews we document in drawings. That can take some months. 

	We develop gaims for companies, where the coworkers understand their company and the ideas of their bosses while they play.

	E. We offer coaching with images (where we and the coached person draw, and were we use our KuS-Model with 7 process steps). We offer introduction into visual facilitation in workshops.

	All this is what we produce, and i don't go into what background we have, how we always develop our services further, what images make with people, what we touch within people, how we help to sustain etc,....

	For Open Space it would be beautiful to always have paper and colors available, flipchartsize or bigger. Colors might be broad (!!!) felt pens, chalk, crayons (careful with carpet floors), water colors. Yes, a person to introduce and help is helpful, but not necessary. But you must show the possibilities of using these materials as something normal.

	And maybe you experiment with people documenting with drawings, on big or small paper!!!

	The drawing should not be the theme, but a byproduct. That is one reason i don't call me an artist. 

	And if you ever  find a client who asks for a visual person, there are beautiful people all over the place. You can look in the website of IFVP, our international organisation.

	Reinhard

	VISUELLE PROTOKOLLE
	Kuchenmüller & Stifel

-- 

Michael Herman
Michael Herman Associates
300 West North Ave #1105
Chicago IL 60610 USA
Phone: 312-280-7838
michael at michaelherman.com

skype: globalchicago

http://www.michaelherman.com
http://www.openspaceworld.org

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