On the road: training graphic recorders in the North

I went back to the North to train new graphic recorders in 2024, and it’s so powerful to see new visual practitioners blossom, uncover their gifts, bring their whole selves into graphic facilitation training – and help transform meetings one room at a time. 

This last teaching program was especially awesome because we built in mentorship to the program, and set up ways for people to support each other after. After the training, people had the opportunity to come back a couple of months later and do a paid project for a territory-wide health and wellness conference. Just enough time to not feel rusty, and being in a team hopefully made it so much more doable! Thanks to Neuland for the gifts of extra supplies for participants, and to Hotıì ts’eeda (the research support unit hosted by the Tłı̨chǫ Government) for bringing us all together.

Art is a way into healing and connection. Time and time again we know – and we feel – how graphic recording visuals help understanding, have capacity to hold emotion, enable people to feel heard.

As practitioners, with this art, we can help bring more wholeness into our meetings. We are helpers. From a systems perspective, we are inseparable from what we change and heal. We too are changed.  

Here’s a few photos from trainings in the North.

 

Over the years, I’ve led workshops in Yellowknife and also further North in the Arctic (Inuvik, and Cambridge Bay) – and there’s really a growing movement in the North for graphic recording.  I’m hearing how Indigenous practitioners are leading workshops on the land with graphic recording, planning business development, graphic recording with youth and Elders, and drawing out research – both with digital and graphic recording.

Lettering

Lettering is always a hit – to bring your flip charts and visuals to the next level. We do at least five kinds of lettering styles, to build up chart clarity, readability, and creativity.

Building in Appreciation

Do you recognize that tiny voice of Compar-itis, or the voice of Not Good Enough, when you try something new? At Drawing Change trainings, instead of inviting perfectionism, we practice appreciation and gratitude towards ourselves and others. We write zillions of post-it notes of appreciation on each other’s first graphic recordings, to notice what works. 

Listening might be even more important than drawing. To layer in this new skill, we scaffold success. We practice graphic recording in a variety of ways. One of the things that helps is setting an intention for ourselves, too – a little post-it note to help remind us!