Drawing is not just production of ‘pretty pictures for illiterates’, or even for people who have little formal education.
Drawing is a way of freeing thoughts and clarifying and communicating very complex concepts.
GAMEChange empowerment action methodologies develop visual communication and creativity through drawing. The aim is simple symbolic representations, not fine art paintings.
Individual drawing can be both liberating and confidence-building. Within about 10 minutes, left alone with friends to gain confidence, most people will be happily drawing, even if they have never held a pen before or say they cannot draw.
Collective drawing can be great fun and very useful in team-building.
why drawing?
Drawing is useful for everyone: benefits
Communication through pictures is:
- a liberating activity: freeing thought from long wordy definitions and clarifying underlying assumptions and differences in understanding of complex concepts like empowerment, gender, wealth creation and leadership. Scientific research has shown that drawing uses a different part of the brain from normal linear thought, and promotes intelligence, creativity and even seems to counter some of the effects of dementia.
- a fun collective activity – bringing people from very different backgrounds together to explore ideas and clarify concepts, identify differences and reach some sort of consensus. The outputs can be extremely attractive murals and meaningful decoration in meeting places and workshops as a form of collective memory or training aid.
- an effective tool for learning, remembering and inspiring action. For that reason mind mapping and sketch-noting are an important part of modern higher education.
- a good way of promoting mutual understanding and respect between people with different levels of education – people who cannot read and write are often better at drawing concepts than those with higher levels of education. Drawing also reduces the need for translation in multilingual contexts.
- a very powerful communication of ideas and images for gender change – it is very difficult for donors and policy makers to dismiss graphic pictures of dreams and also constraints like violence drawn by women and men in poor communities as ‘feminist imperialism’.
But what do the pictures say? challenges
There are nevertheless some challenges to bear in mind when facilitating and interpreting drawings:
- ‘symbols may be context-specific’ or specific to particular individuals
- ‘ the medium may not be the message’ : Many of the drawings and role plays are very immediate and expressive – including drawings by people who never held a pen before. But the drawing style and content may be due to local availability of particular media (pencils/ biros/ markers, lined/blank/coloured paper, role play props). The participatory workshops are also very time-constrained where the aim is empowerment of participants, not ‘effective’ design. This means that the visual outputs may not do full justice to the messages and meanings they represent.
- Visual literacy to interprete drawings takes time and experience to notice the nuances of meaning.
- ‘Just pretty pictures by illiterates’: Visual outputs are rarely in a form that is easily communicated to people who were not participating in the process. A lot of the impact of the community-level imagery is lost because lack of visual literacy by people with formal education – ie those in power – mean they often miss the deeper meanings and sophisticated analysis behind the drawings.
The following posts on Linda Mayoux Visual Communications degree blog look at some of the issues of understanding, interpreting and communicating stories from community workshops in Uganda, India and Pakistan.
drawing is fun
Drawing starts with the Vision: individual activity
Vision Circle basics: Individual activity
All GAMEChange processes start with visions. These introduce the very basic drawing skills.
Step 1: Draw a large circle in the middle of the page – right to the edges. Enjoy the movement of your arm and hand.
Step 2: On the outside of the circle put short lines, like the rays of the sun.
The first circle should be quite large. Some peoples’ hand may shake. Reassure them that this is quite normal. Many other people have gone through this stage. But if they relax and persevere with drawing it will become much easier. Then it is even a short step to doing numbers and eventually learning to write. Many people have also done that.
Explain that now they have drawn circles and lines. That is drawing. Participants can no longer say they cannot draw. The rest is thinking what you are trying to say and practice over time.
Developing the first symbols to put in the circle : Individual activity
Now people can start to put symbols for different aspects of their vision inside the circle. Every other drawing is just made of different types of lines – short, long, straight, squiggly, curved. And circle shapes – round, squashed, like clouds, heads, bodies. But you need to think about why you are using that type of line. So that it is clear that a person is a child and not your mother-in-law, a cow and not a chicken. So that you will remember later what your drawing meant, and others may also understand even without your explanation.
You can draw how you like. Make other people laugh. And you can always change your drawing, adding things, crossing out. Above all, have fun.
Reinforcing drawing skills: Group charade Game
As soon as people are having fun, gained confidence and no longer embarrassed (usually after an hour) facilitation focuses on developing drawings that are more meaningful and deep in analysis. For example initially a pig may just be a circle, but it needs four legs, it also needs a curly tail so we know it’s a pig and not a goat, it also needs something to show whether it is a local or exotic pig, male or female, fat or thin etc.
Drawing Charades are a very useful way of starting participatory diagram activities, to free peoples’ thinking and increase energy, particularly for sensitive topics. See the photos below from GALS in Kyrgyzstan.
Charade Game process
Step 1: Start by asking everyone to think of a thing/concept relevant to the topic of the training and draw this on a piece of paper.
Step 2: Sharing Participants then volunteer in turn. Each person comes to the front to present their drawing. They hold it up and other participants have one question each to guess what the drawing means.
Step 3: Continual improvement Participants then give some suggestions on how to make the drawing clearer.
Facilitation
The facilitator can probe a little in a supportive way to encourage people to add clarity to their drawings. Maintaining confidence and motivation is the most important. But no one should ever be embarrassed, just encouraged to think more and more deeply. Particularly for more advanced exercises or people who think drawing is just for children and do not take the process seriously. It is the thinking and analysis that is important not the art.
If some drawings look really problematic, then people can be asked (in a supportive manner, stressing that tasks are not easy – no criticism) what they meant by their drawing. Often what they have drawn will make absolute sense in terms of their analysis and planning, even if they did not follow exactly instructions. But asking them to explain also enable the facilitator to identify any real misunderstandings and discuss why and how they can be addressed.
Underlying Facilitation principles
All GAMEChange trainings and workshops aim to develop the drawing and communication skills of ALL participants.
Key principles
- Drawings can be done individually, in groups, or in plenary.
- EVERYONE does their own drawing. NO ONE SHOULD EVER HOLD THE PEN OR MARKER FOR ANYONE ELSE. Even if asked or just trying to be helpful and considerate.
- Everyone tries their best to think and communicate their thoughts in a drawing – anyone can do it.
- Encourage people but do not lecture. Make sure everyone is engaged.
- Start with concrete things, they try more complex concepts later.
- The Facilitator never holds a pen. For plenaries place pens on a chair at the front. Participants come up in turn. The facilitator just askes questions from the back.
Above all: laugh together and have fun!
Adapting to Different participant needs
In many contexts people enjoy drawing right from the start and are very creative in their expression – particularly where participants do some sort of handicrafts – whether or not they have been to school.
But there are often two other levels of participant:
People who have never even held a pen and completely lack confidence: they should sit in small groups with other people who also lack drawing experience and confidence. The best thing the facilitator can do is to go completely away for 5-10 minutes. When left to themselves with no ‘teacher’ or watching over their shoulder, within about 10-20 minutes everyone in the group will be happily drawing, sharing and laughing at their efforts. (See videos from India above) For people who have never learned to read and write, drawing is not a substitute for literacy but a useful springboard to develop manual sensitivity, confidence and motivation to develop literacy skills much more quickly.
People with higher levels of formal education and literacy may have both difficulty and lack motivation. Drawing and visual communication uses different parts of the brain from writing. The education system often discourages drawing as soon as people can read, and focuses on linear thinking. So the visual and creative parts of the brain have often become weak and take time to re-activate. They may also think drawing is only for children or ‘illiterates’ and feel embarrassed. These people should also be in one group, but the facilitator will need to demonstrate how sophisticated pictorial communication can be and challenge these participants to brainstorm the most effective drawing for communication eg using the Drawing Charades exercise below for the particular topic of the training eg women’s empowerment, happy families etc. Once participants have reactivated the drawing part of the brain, they can decide when it is more efficient and useful to draw, and when to write.
