Drawn Together Through Visual Practice

by Brandy Agerbeck

  It starts with me. Each of us has to do our inner work. Arrive with humility. Research and understand my own history in the context of colonization of this country and the impact colonization has on the indigenous people and cultures here in their own land.

  My relationships with others in the room. How I introduce myself in a culturally appropriate way, and how do I behave. Who are the leader in the room? For this engagement, have I established appropriate networks in advance?

  Understanding my biases and worldview. Start from an assumption that things are not equal, institutions are not neutral, and that at the same time, people inside them may be very well-intentioned.

  Review my body of work as a critic. Pull out a selection of my images, and examine my work with a lens of cultural humility. What patterns do I notice? What choices did I make?

  Become an anthropologist-about-myself. Make field notes during a session one day. Use reflection-in-action. Take time out of the work to reflect on it and write down in as much detail as I can.

  Go beyond multiculturalism on the surface, and don’t limit myself to drawing different skin tones. How do I avoid reinforcing stereotypes in my images?

  Listen for the paradigms of colonialism, systems of class, gender, privilege.

  Support traditional Indigenous knowledge, connect stories to land and place.

  Core competencies in cultural safety: Supporting organizations

  Graphic facilitation can help support an open type of discussion for challenging issues, bringing art and conversation together in a room. Organizations can adopt graphic facilitation as a change methodology to tackle tough issues such as cultural safety, while learning about First Nations cultures with the richness visuals can bring to group conversations.

  Here are some implementation ideas:

  Cultural safety depends on people understanding histories they likely weren’t taught in schools; graphic facilitation is an engaging way to explain histories.

  Encouraging people to learn—starting with self—is key to building cultural safety because competencies are not developed overnight. Information from keynotes or presentations is synthesized into smaller, bite-sized chunks.

  Graphic facilitation creates reflection tools that create a natural conversation or solo reflection area which can prompt people to examine their cultural identities.

  After the event, the visuals can be shared by email, newsletter, intranet, and in reports to continue to engage people emotionally and intellectually.

  Graphic recordings can support organizational change: saving time by quickly summarizing meetings, identifying next steps, and mapping out change processes such as assessment tools, trainings, and human resources policies.

  I believe each mark we make is an opportunity to reflect in the moment and adjust the course forward, together. In writing this, my intent was to share my personal learning with others, to ask for and gather feedback, and always consider how we can challenge our own work to go deeper.

  With gratitude to Cheryl Ward at the San’yas Indigenous Cultural Safety Training Program (British Columbia, Canada) and Harmony Johnson and Janene Erickson at the First Nations Health Authority (BC, Canada) for support and feedback on this draft and along my learning journey.

  Sam Bradd • Cultivating Cultural Safety

  SAM BRADD is a graphic facilitator and specialist in information design. He uses visuals for people that want to engage, solve problems, and lead. Together, we’re drawing change. In the last 15 years, Sam has collaborated with the World Health Organization, Google, indigenous organizations, and researchers on three continents. In 2016, his side project the Graphic History Collective published a new book of comics because how we tell histories can change the world. He has a Masters in Education (University of British Columbia). Contact: @sambradd and www.drawingchange.com.

  References

  OCAP™ principles: via the First Nations Information Governance Center

  Rockwood Institute, sketchnotes on triggers:

  drawingchange.com/new-rockwood-art-of-leadership-sketchnotes

  San’yas Indigenous Cultural Safety Training Program: www.sanyas.ca/home

  Schon, D. The Reflective Practitioner: How professionals think in action, London: Temple Smith, 1983.

  Smith, L.T. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples, London:

  Zed Books, 2006.

  Truth and Reconciliation Executive summary:

  www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=893

  Williams, R. (1999). “Cultural safety—what does it mean for our work practice?” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, 23(2), 213-214.

  The Use of Imagery in Conflict Engagement

  Aftab Erfan, PhD

  For the past decade I have lived a double life as a conflict resolution practitioner on the one hand, and as a visual facilitator on the other. The invitation to contribute this chapter was a call to bring the two sides of my work together and make an attempt at describing their often-productive and occasionally explosive intersection. These pages are a starting point for an exploration of the central question: how do we imagine an expanded role for imagery in service of productively addressing group conflicts?

  What is conflict?

  My work in conflict engagement has encompassed settling a fight between three colleagues who felt they could no longer work together, assisting a leadership team at a difficult crossroads regarding their organization’s future, and bringing Palestinian and Israeli students together to dialog about their coexistence on a Canadian university campus. Each conflict is unique and it is difficult to find a commonly accepted definition for what conflict is. What we know from the literature is this:

  Conflict hinges on real or perceived incompatibility between opinions, principles, objectives, interests, or desires of the parties involved. In other words, there is an element of difference at play.

  Conflict arises when the parties are not willing or able to settle their differences in a fully rational argumentative manner. Most people feel angry when they are in conflict. Others feel sad. And many feel afraid. Conflict is disagreement that has the potential to mobilize emotional resources in a way that can be destructive to people, relationships, properties, or systems.

  As shorthand: conflict is difference that matters enough to activate our emotions.

  How do we view conflict?

  There is no single view or perspective on the nature of conflict. The traditional view has been that aggressive conflict is part of human nature and therefore unavoidable, while the alternative view is that humans are naturally cooperative but caught in a historical narrative of hostility (Clark 2002). The dominant view is that conflict is generally a bad thing, that a group in conflict is a malfunctioning group; the alternative view is that conflict is inherently good as manifestation of diversity, and that it is the seat of a group’s creative potential (Lewis 2008). Finally, the traditional view is that conflict should be dealt with primarily at the rational level through discovery of mutually beneficial material solutions, while the alternative view is that engagement with the emotional and symbolic layers of conflict is essential (LeBaron 2003).

  How one views conflict is very important because it determines how one approaches engaging with conflict. The various methods of conflict resolution are pinned on implicit views on the nature of conflict, which in turn influence how imagery and visuals may or may not be helpful as companions to these methods.

  Aftab Erfan • The Use of Imagery in Conflict Engagement

  A warning: If you are going to use visuals in conflict resolution, it is important that you have clarity on the approach to conflict that informs the session. The imagery used needs to be consistent with the philosophy and aims of the approach. Visuals that are not well a
ligned—for example, a visual that makes everything look pretty and harmonious while a facilitator is trying to surface tensions, a chart that includes too much detail while the facilitator is drawing out a dominant dynamic or relationship, or a metaphor of building something new while a facilitator is working to dismantle the existing situation—might add to confusion in the room, and will likely become irrelevant to the process.

  The approach to conflict engagement that I am most fluent in, called the Lewis Method of Deep Democracy, takes the view that conflict is unavoidable, that it is fundamentally a good thing, and that it needs to be engaged at the emotional and symbolic levels. Within this view, conflict is seen as a doorway to wisdom and personal growth, so we speak about “mining the gold of conflict,” we search for it in the course of a meeting (any meeting—not only a conflict intervention), we bring it out as early as possible and explore it in the most personal and emotionally-engaged way available to us. We also acknowledge that conflict is uncomfortable for many people, and that conflict engagement processes can be unsafe unless people go into them with awareness and readiness. The job of the facilitator is to speed up or slow down a process at appropriate times, to give structure and to let go of structure at appropriate times, and to hold the group with a non-judgmental attitude that creates safety. What I describe below are some ideas for how imagery can be used to assist with this specific approach.

  How can imagery help as we work with conflict?

  I see two primary ways in which the use of imagery can be helpful in this work, addressing two primary difficulties we tend to have with conflict:

  Giving form: Most people are not big fans of conflicts and many people experience significant anxiety in conflict situations. One reason conflict is so difficult for most people is that it feels so disorganized: we just don’t know how to get our head around it, let alone what to do with it. Conflict is perhaps the most familiar form of chaos in the realm of human relationships. We know from the new sciences that chaos and transformation tend to be linked to each other—thus the amazing potential in conflict—but for most people chaos is uncomfortable because it is disorienting and unpredictable, making us feel vulnerable and on shaky ground. Visuals can help give us the forms, the language, and the structures we need to make sense of conflict, making it feel less chaotic and more approachable.

  Making visible: Since we are so uncomfortable with conflict, we usually tend not to want to look at it—or not be able to look at it—until we absolutely have to. What we know about the process of conflict development is that there is a typical progression (Mindell 1995). Generally conflicts begin as a small disagreement, but since we don’t see them and deal with them they tend to brew for a long time until they gain momentum and become explosive. It is usually not until they blow up that conflicts become visible to us, at which point they are already too big and scary to deal with. Visuals have the possibility of making conflict visible earlier in the process, making them available for working with before they grow too large.

  Another warning: Sometimes the people you are working with may not be happy with you for making a conflict visible. Sometimes they will accuse you of having “created” conflict when everything was fine. The accusation may not be true—you are in fact only reflecting the group’s existing issues to it—but if people are afraid or not ready to see a conflict, bringing attention to it may be unwelcome. If you’re going to make conflicts visible, you better have a way to make it safe to work with them. Visuals will often accelerate the process. That is their gift and their danger.

  How to use imagery to give form to conflict

  First things first, remember that imagery can appear in different forms: it can be literally and explicitly put on paper as a drawing, or it can be spoken in the form of metaphor and other verbal imagery. Imagery can be very potent when we are in the presence of conflict because people in conflict tend not to be fully in their rational mind and need instead to draw on imaginative resources which give access to the irrational mind (LeBaron 2003).

  Much work has been done on the power of metaphors as organizing structures that help create meaning and therefore help shape and shift our reality (Lakoff 2003). One of the advantages of metaphors (particularly when used verbally) is that they are understood not to be a literal representation of what you are talking about, so they tend to be flexible and intuitively clear. If I say to a group of people in conflict that we are going to “jump in the deep end” they will know what I mean and may even suggest that we instead “put our toes in first”. If the metaphor isn’t working I can change it on the spot and say “let’s start peeling back the layers of the onion,” and again people will immediately have a sense of what I mean.

  Aftab Erfan • The Use of Imagery in Conflict Engagement

  I use metaphors to frame what I am doing, explaining to people what is going on as I take them through a conflict resolution process. The following are the two most powerful metaphors I use, both central to the Lewis Method of Deep Democracy:

  1. The iceberg

  The metaphor of the iceberg is familiar to most people, indicating a reality that is only partially apparent. Freud used the metaphor of the iceberg to distinguish between an individual’s consciousness (top of the iceberg) and subconsciousness (below the water line) and suggested that an individual needs to “lower their waterline” (by going to psychotherapy, for example) to resolve their psychological issues and achieve their potential. Jung applied the metaphor of the iceberg to groups, suggesting that when two or more people gather there is a conscious part of the group (e.g. the meeting agenda, the materials and issues on the table, the relative positional power of people in the room) and an unconscious part of the group (e.g. the hidden agendas, the gossip before the meeting, the emotional state of people involved, issues seen as taboos in the group). I use Jung’s articulation of the iceberg to describe to people in a meeting that I am attempting to “lower the waterline” as a way to get to the hidden solutions, wisdom, and potential of the group. I may draw the iceberg on a flipchart and ask: “What do you think is in the consciousness of this group now? And what’s just below the waterline?” This simple imagery, which takes only a few minutes to present, often makes it easier for people to begin to talk about what is really going on for them. The difficult-to-talk-about realities often very quickly pop to the surface.

  2. Throwing all the arrows

  Various war metaphors are often used in talking about conflict. I use the metaphor of throwing one’s arrows: When we are in relationship with other people, things tend to happen that annoy us, but very often we don’t mention them because we prefer to keep the peace. However, we take our little annoyance, turn it into an arrow, and put it in our metaphorical quiver that we carry around until the next time we get into a fight with the person. When we fight we take out the arrows that we gathered over time and shoot them at the person (e.g. “You don’t respect me: You’re always late at meetings!”) We typically just shoot enough arrows to win a fight! That’s fine if we want to win fights, but if we want true peace we need disarmament. We have to throw not only our little arrows, but also our big ones. I invite participants to take turns throwing all their arrows, holding nothing back. Once everything has been thrown, I ask each person involved which arrows hit them and what insight, lessons, or truths those piercing arrows hold for the individual. The metaphor calls in bravery and invites an emotional release in a slightly more dramatic manner than most people are used to. The highly structured nature of the process makes it more safe and more likely that people walk away from the conflict having learned something new.

  Aftab Erfan • The Use of Imagery in Conflict Engagement

  How to use imagery to make conflict visible

  While the above examples illustrate how specific imagery can be used to give directions and help groups make sense of what we are doing, the following are some examples of more
subtle and fluid ways that we might use visuals to make conflicts visible. What typically happens to me is this: The discussion is going on, I may be taking visual notes, and suddenly I begin to pick up on a disagreement in the room, perhaps far before people in the group are aware of it. I use my lens on group dynamics (in my case the lens of Role Theory from Deep Democracy) to draw out and visually highlight what is emerging, then ask the group if they want to do anything about it.

  The elephant in the room

  It is often there and I very often draw it as I become aware of it. The elephant in the room is the issue that people tend to speak around but not go into directly because it is charged with conflict. We experience the presence of an elephant when it feels like we are cycling around something, saying the same things over and over again but not getting anywhere. We may also experience the elephant through our body symptoms, sometimes called “edge behavior” (e.g. I get a headache when a group is stuck around something they are not quite naming.) When working with a group I may not know exactly what the elephant is, but I can put a light outline of one on our chart as I am drawing, then ask people “If there was an elephant in the room, it feels to me like it would be right around here, around the word “finances”. Does that sound right?” If I haven’t got it right, then people usually point me to the actual elephant in the room instead. Either way, I now have the elephant to work with. If I have caught it early enough, hopefully it is a smallish elephant and easy to work with.