Thinking through drawing….
I’m a big fan of visual frameworks for aligning, problem-solving, and enabling different points of view, `I use them all the time in my practice workshops and designing consultancy projects
In a deliberate attempt to develop new skills, I attended the Thinking through Drawing workshop with Ilga Leimanis FHEA . From a teaching point of view I wanted to attend a workshop that is totally different to anything I currently teach myself to see what learnings I may have for my own practice.
Ilga’s view is that too often we think of an idea and try to draw it, this keeps our thinking in the rational side of our brains. To unlock alternative thinking she advised we need to try not to think.. just do (it all sounds very Jedi) and see what emerges
As you can see I’ll never have a career in illustration (!) but accessing a different part of my brain around one of my work topics on the future of work design was enlightening and indeed gave me alternative thoughts on how to talk about tackling it.
the workshop
The workshop was online with approx 12 attendees. The steps that Ilga took us through reduced my worries about being able to draw, she made it very clear that the workshop was not about drawing ‘skills’ but about thinking and unlocking thinking. We worked individually for an hour or so as she guided us through various stages which involved inputs of words to help us iterate and develop our thinking, laddering through ideas.
We then moved to Padlet where we shared content, talked through our work and how we found the experience, Ilga then offered ideas and thoughts on how to develop the work further, in my case that meant not using so many words but perhaps using shapes in their place.
reflections
- Ilga’s tone was measured, thoughtful and encouraging. This encouraged a relaxed learning environment where I felt confident to explore and less worried about comparing my output to the other attendees (all of whom seemed to be from either illustration or fine art courses!). I hope I deliver an encouraging learning context for my students but I do feel I sometimes rush through content, I would like to bring more ‘breathing space’ into the teaching I do, more reflection, and ‘ease’. This relates also to my other blog post on learning environments and time to think.
- Ilga runs this workshop often and her use of the technology and smoothness with which that worked was evident, this in turn ensured she was relaxed. Her expertise in this topic was clear – a reminder of the benefit of testing tech and smooth transitions between tools used
- At the end was a link to a very simple questionnaire to understand what value we had taken from the workshop – I would like to test using a simple Typeform survey at the end of some of my teaching sessions or perhaps a more engaging, playful way of getting feedback.
I’m keen to encourage my students to attend this workshop or perhaps use this technique when planning teaching to see what options it unlocks
