VISUAL FACILITATION cookbook Visual Facilitation Cookbook, 2016 Contents 2 This book is the outcome of the work of many people. We want to thank Aija Auzina, Snezana Baclija Knoch, Tomas Bimbiris, Magdalena Chapter I. What is the Big Thing? Burtscher, Kristaps Butāns, Markus Engelberger, Alena Ignatyeva, Creative Learning Cookbook project 5 Mārtiņš Jaunpetrovičs, Yuliya Jefanova, Solvita Jirgensone, Vanda Kovács, Sarah Lebot-Toledo, Anne Madsen, Anna Mossolova, Melanie Training Course: Visual Facilitation+ 6 Pichler, Inese Priedīte, Coline Robin, Slavomíra Ondrušová, Tatjana Visual Facilitation Cookbook 6 Starodubova, Veronika Vanova, Uku Visnapuu, Marcus Vrecer and Lau- rita Źalimaite for their contribution, feedback and inspiration! The Idea Behind this Book 6 How This Book is Structured & What We Put into It 7 Authors: Torben Grocholl, Deniss Jershov and Kati Orav Layout: Deniss Jershov How to Use It 8 What is Visual Facilitation? 8 Published by Estonian UNESCO Youth Association in cooperation with Piepildīto Sapņu Istaba and Cooperativa Braccianti Why Do Visuals Work for Us? 10 [email protected] Chapter II. ABC creativelearningcookbook.tumblr.com Basic Shapes 15 ISBN 978-9949-81-261-5 (print) Playing Derrida 16 ISBN 978-9949-81-262-2 (pdf) Playing Picasso 18 ISBN 978-9949-81-263-9 (epub) Banners, Frames, Containers 18 Arrows, “Connectors” 20 Characters and Figures, Emotions 20 Lettering 22 This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the authors, CAPS vs Regular Handwriting 22 and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which Level 0 23 may be made of the information contained therein. Level 1 23 Level 2 25 Volume and Shading 25 Colours 27 Composition 28 Visual Vocabulary, Icons, Symbols 30 Chapter III. Toolbox Cases 66 3 Templates 38 The Value Machine 66 Template: Just an Example What It Could Look Like! 39 The 5 Pillars of Identity 67 Template: Preparing 40 Youthpass 68 Template: Harvesting 41 8 key competences 68 Template: Listening and Reflection 43 Patenting Process 69 Template: Thinking about the Context 47 Erasmus+ 69 Template: Thinking About the Content 48 Chapter IV. Visual Games Template: Manual for Designing the Visual/Template. 49 Free-hand 72 More Templates from Practitioners 53 Drawing in a Circle 73 Layouts 59 Drawing in the Air 75 Mind-map 59 Drawing on the Back 75 Thermometer 59 Telling the Picture 76 Timeline 60 Drawing Collaborative Characters 77 Road 61 Line by Line 77 Circle 61 Save the Bunny 78 Pie-chart 62 Analogue Social Network 79 Bulls Eye / Target 62 Picturising Words, Verbalising Pictures 81 Venn Diagram 62 Guess My Picture 81 Matrix 63 Collaborative Group Memory 82 Stairs 63 Chapter V. How to Move On? Tree 63 Materials 86 Landscape 64 Abyss 64 Bibliography 87 Iceberg 65 Authors 88 Feedback 89 Chapter I. WHAT IS THE BIG THING? Creative Learning Cookbook project educators from Austria, Estonia and Latvia. In the second stage, 5 participants of the trainings organised local follow-up activities This book has a story. It begins in spring 2014 when Estonian in their countries, shared their newly gained skills, tested new UNESCO Youth Association, Room of Fulfilled Dreams (Lat- methods in practice and gave their feedback, which, along with What is via) and Cooperativa Braccianti (Austria) decided to apply for a the Big Thing? the tools and techniques, set the basis for the third stage of the KA2 Strategic partnership project within the Erasmus+: Youth project: creating publications on each of topics which could be- in Action programme, which they named “Creative Learning come a handbook — or rather a cookbook of recipes — for ed- Cookbook” (CLC). The idea of the project was built around three ucators working with youth in a classroom or on a project. main topics: Creative writing, Storytelling and Visual Facilita- tion. This was because the partners felt interested in these top- What you will shortly see is the inventory of the training course ics, finding them very creative and powerful for the facilitation “Visual Facilitation+” which took place in Estonia during Sep- of learning. As such, they wanted to share their skills with col- tember 2015. It was compiled by Torben Grocholl and Deniss Jer- leagues, as well as to explore the potential of new creative learn- shov (trainers of VF+) and Kati Orav (visual practitioner) with ing techniques. But, above that interest there was also the in- inputs, real cases and examples from colleagues and participants. tention to structure this knowledge and make it accessible for This book was presented during the final event of the “Creative other educators. Learning Cookbook” project, which took place in Riga on the The main objective of the project was to help raise the quality 26th–28th of February 2016 and brought together 50 educators of educational and training activities within the contemporary from all over Europe. Apart from the presentation of the pub- system of formal and non-formal education. This aim was to lications, the programme of the event also included workshops be achieved by introducing and developing innovative teach- on Creative Writing, Visual Facilitation, Storytelling and other ing, as well as approaches and methods in both training and tools of creative learning. learning. Additionally, the project endeavoured to support the exchange and dissemination of best practices in the field of ed- The “Creative Learning Cookbook” project has been funded with ucation and learning. In order to reach these goals, the part- support from the European Commission. This publication re- ners organised three training courses and introduced the tools flects only the views of the authors and the Commission can- and methods of Creative Writing, Storytelling and Visual Fa- not be held responsible for any use which may be made of the cilitation to youth workers, teachers, trainers, youth leaders and information contained therein. Training Course: Visual Facilitation+ gained skills, from personal notes to graphic harvesting; and, 6 most importantly, developing visual tools for personal and The training course took place in Taevaskoja, Estonia on the professional use. 5th–13th September 2015 and brought together 19 youth work- What is ers, leaders, trainers, teachers and educators from Austria, Esto- After the training, participants carried out follow-up events in the Big Thing? nia and Latvia. The training team consisted of two main train- their home countries, where they shared their new skills with ers, Torben Grocholl (Austria) and Deniss Jershov (Estonia), two friends, colleagues and target groups, whilst they continued co-trainers, Inese Predite (Latvia) and Marcus Vrecer (Austria), developing visual tools, which you will be able to find in this and support staff Anna Mossolova (Estonia). A half-day of the cookbook and also on CLC online media. In total, the follow- programme was lead by visiting expert Kati Orav (Estonia), a up events have brought together over 160 participants from practicing visual facilitator, who joined us to share her experi- all three countries. ence of working with graphic templates with participants. Kati is also one of the three co-authors of this cookbook. Visual Facilitation Cookbook The training was aimed at developing participants’ skills in Vis- The Idea Behind this Book ual Facilitation, exploring a variety of visual tools and exchang- With this publication, we want to invite you to join us on a lit- ing best practices in the field. It was meant for absolute begin- tle journey through what we see and understand as Visual Fa- ners and “non-drawers”, or for participants familiar with the cilitation. It will hopefully include some fun and inspiring mo- basics of drawing. The only condition set by organisers was that ments for you and might even change a bit the way you work participants had to be connected to working with young people. and think. Possibly even the way you look at the world and The training programme, pretty much like this cookbook, con- yourself as a drawer. We want to encourage you to step out of sisted of an introduction into the essence of the training topic your adult and professional routines, connect with your inner and finding an answer to “What is Visual Facilitation?”; exp- child and (re)discover your natural ability to communicate loring the basics of drawing and lettering (shapes, containers, and express yourself in a more visual way. Together, we will characters, composition, colour, letterforms, etc.); getting ac- explore the potential of visual language and show you some quainted with the concept of graphic templates as a powerful first steps, tips and tricks to put ideas on paper and to start us- tool of Visual Facilitation; exploring and using different newly- ing visual tools in your life and educational work — at school, in seminars, during coaching sessions or while running pro- does it work? There we will also try to explain the difference 7 jects at the local youth club. between various ways of using visuals in the facilitation pro- cess, in addition to taking a look at the usage of visuals in dif- Our main idea was to make this book something easy to ac- ferent fields and the most common practices. Since we are talk- What is cess and very practical. It is not meant to be a comprehensive the Big Thing? ing about a cookbook, you can think of this part as an aperitif. A to Z compendium of “perfect” visual tools. We have put to- gether a number of tools, templates, exercises and games which The second chapter introduces some basic elements of what we we use in our training activities and which were proven to be call “visual language”, to prove that drawing is easier than you interesting, engaging and useful for facilitators and learners imagined.