What does perfection mean to you? In April we experienced this in beautiful Scanzano Jonico, Italy. Lovely sunny weather, seaside, sunsets and sunrises, amazing accommodation in a 4-star hotel with pool, tasty Italian food, unlimited amount of sweet juicy oranges, like-minded people around and learning something new every day on topics we were passionate about
What if I say that you can draw every phrase and word in the world? You probably wouldn’t believe that. First excuse would be that you have no idea about how to draw; second that it is just impossible to draw for example “social innovation” or “responsibility”. Our group of participants were also thinking the same in the beginning of the project, but during this week, magic happened. In the end we all left with new-found drawing skills (which we actually had, but didn’t know how to access), our own visual vocabulary that can be used in our fields of work and we had invented a social innovation idea, too. The two topics of visual facilitation and social innovation were seamlessly connected together to create a week full of eye-opening and horizon-widening sessions.
I had a lot of “wow” moments during the project, for example: shadowing can make from every drawing a piece of art, also just simple lines can have a very big impact. You can change a meaning of the text with a color.
After each day we’ve been making an individual reflection, and of course all the participants wanted to apply the just gained skills in the practice by drawing a summary of the day in their notebooks. We tried to visualize everything in every single free minute. Even after project on my first working day I took a chalk and started to visualize our department rules for the kids on the green board. I definitely know where else I can use this tool – everywhere.
Anna
This week was like a super productive dream holiday. We spent the days drawing, learning, gaining confidence in our own artistic abilities and learning the tools for visual facilitation. In the breaks we went swimming in the Mediterranean Sea and revived ourselves with wonderful Italian food, oranges, the lovely desserts and even lovelier people. We started our training sessions with meditation every day, to stay connected to ourselves during these busy working days. The hotel, the weather, the trainers; everything was really nice.
Maria