The Challenges of Graphic Facilitation in a Different Culture

Woman from Nepal with her quilt panel. Image by The Advocacy Project

Graphic Facilitator Michelle Laurie

Graphic facilitator Michelle Laurie has posted a detailed account of preparing to graphifically facilitate a training session on building self-esteem and improving mental health for women who are sexually exploited in Nepal. Considering the highly-charged nature of not only exposing such a painful subject, there’s also the great challenge of changing both the conditions and outcomes for the victims of these acts. Using graphic facilitation to connect with and help these people is a brilliant approach, to apply not only the power of visuals to reach people emotionally, but also to get past the communications block created by widespread illiteracy among these women. Images can potentially communicate far more effectively and powerfully than the written word, and for those who cannot read it might be the only way to communicate when there is no one available to read the message to them.

Working from the wall-graphic facilitation for an NGO

Michelle’s blog post about preparing for the session goes into good detail about what many graphic facilitators must consider regardless of cultural circumstances: the size of the room, the availability of wall space or open areas to put up large sheets of paper to work on during the session so everyone can see the activity visualized, and the visual approach or methods that will most benefit the participants and others who may view visual artifacts that comes from the session. Visual artifacts or the documentation that follows the session may be visual reports to explain the proceedings, collections of outcomes or the synthesized decisions from the group, or a visual explanation of a strategy, perhaps in a large poster or shared as a visual on a web site or in a photo display.

Michelle and her working partner for the event, a visual artist, will be experimenting with how to document both the in-room process and then create final visuals that will come from each of the sessions.

Discussing and Interpreting images from graphic facilitation

Uncharted Outcomes

Michelle discovered during the pre-event trial run that there are important differences in not only the spoken language but in the visual language of other cultures as well. This became apparent while drawing through her own cultural lens and then examining with the group how her wordless images would be interpreted by the women from Nepal. One visual of an action she drew which, in Western culture, might be interpreted negatively by having one person apparently higher over the other in value and power, was perceived by the Nepalese women in the opposite way, as the “lower” person is, to them, receiving a blessing, therefore giving the visual a positive outcome.

Michelle also realized that she needed to use simpler, positive-outcome single images, rather than images in pairs, to make the imagery more effective for this culture.

More to come

Michelle’s post is a good disclosure of what a conscientious graphic facilitator will do when preparing to run a session, regardless of the type of client, or the proposed outcome. I would suggest reading her blog and following up to see what the final outcomes look like, as she explores this new landscape of visually facilitating in a different culture.

The link to the full initial post is here, or begin with http://michellelaurie.com/2014/01/12/applying-graphic-facilitation-in-new-contexts/

All images by Michelle Laurie, used by permission.