He liked my painting from the When Science and Art Dance post for the title slide, but asked me to put mathematical formulas on the left side instead of 1′s and 0′s.

I asked him to tell me what he liked about the painting, what details were saying something to him about his topic. We also spent several hours where he talked and took notes on a whiteboard about what he wanted to say. From there he went back to his office to outline his presentation and see what slides he had. I went to the studio to start painting the themes I heard.

A dialogue between slides and paint

The first rough cut was a mishmash of slides with pictures from a variety of places and styles, bullet lists and charts, with logos and different templates. The script had a lot of detail about what happened with who and when.

My paintings were more about the energy that emerges when words and pictures come together.

I’d talk a bit about what I was seeing as the essence of the story. He would take out a bunch of detail.

I saw a flow between the sides of science and art. He saw Design emerging from this energy in the middle. The essence of the story was coming together. Memories of other pieces that fed the core of the storyline began to emerge as the detail fell away.

Walk into your story

The story really began to shift when Skip printed out his slides and put them up on the wall. When you do that you can walk into it, toward it, and see other possibilities of sequence that are hard to discern when you are looking at them in a Powerpoint window. Once that story became clearer, I could paint to support it.

A transformed presentation

At the end of two weeks, there were few words left on the slides. The story had crystallized and focused. You can see the script and images with their headings at When Science and Art Dance- Business Results

How can you do this?

In this case, we had a scientist and an artist to play back and forth between the sides, which worked well. But you could also have two people decide to play those roles. One write a story, the other finds images that say something about the ideas. Start with really rough drafts. Talk about ideas at each stage. Allow each others work to influence you. See what emerges.

Don’t take a huge amount of time. We had to work quickly, so there wasn’t time to get attached to details or to pick on them. We kept moving, and the issues worked themselves out in the end.

Maria Popova shared one in her post, Systemic Wonder: A Definition that Accounts for Whimsy

When I saw this image, I liked the idea of wonder emerging from the intersection, but the overlap felt too contained. It seems to be a lot more energy emerges when you bring science and art together. Almost immediately, this image popped into my head.

When science and art come together it’s more like a dance. In it’s highest expression. It takes attitudes of curiosity and wonder, and a willingness to search for the best parts of each approach. This image started an interesting project, where it spawned a series of images about this topic. I collaborated with one of our customers, Skip Walter, to uncover then design a presentation for a conference. More about that soon.

This was created by scanning in pages from National Geographic magazine that had been dissolved with Citrasolv. The flowers and magpie were digitally painted in Photoshop. Lots of layers are merged together with the altered pages on the computer.

I enjoy working between traditional art media on paper and the computer. It would be really difficult to get the random patterns created with the citrasolv on the screen using digital tools. Here I’m able to use the tool that is best at each section of the image, by going back and forth. Digital to analog. Online to offline.

As our product offers have grown we thought it would be easier to break off our newest work and put it on a separate website. I post my artwork on my own blog.

The only way I can keep up with it is if nothing happens. No unexpected things that need attention. Those weeks are rare. So I end up working way too many hours trying to keep up.

What sucks up the time?

I need to redesign the way I relate to social media. While it might be ‘better’ to have separate parts of the business with it’s own special messages and branding, I am clear I can’t keep that up. We are too small a company to sustain it.

I enjoy searching out resources and pointing them out to my networks. It can be a slippery slope. I can justify aimless internet wandering as searching for content.

I think of myself as an artist, but in reality I spend most of my time writing. Is there a way I can get more balance between the visual and verbal?

Consolidating and Restructuring

I’m restructuring how our social media and communication happens. I’ve merged newsletter lists, so I am sending out one every two weeks to everybody. We are redesigning our webpages and consolidating our blogs.

We’re deep in the design cave, so you won’t see as many posts as usual.

I’ve found myself trying to follow advice of social media and marketing experts. Only thing is when I do there is no time to do all the other things I need to do to keep the whole business operating. I’m rethinking what sustainable practices look like for MY business. Looking at the metrics. What actually drives revenue? And what are things that might feel good, but don’t help move the business forward?

Hope we’ll uncover answers in the coming weeks……

Learning by participating

He was working with a group in his organization on planning a conference, and they needed to get a clear vision. The toolset was very useful, and the company’s Chief Operating Officer happened to be in the meeting.

So the next time an issue came up — in this case, a work team that wasn’t really a “team” at all — the COO decided VisualsSpeak was the answer. Now this COO had never done facilitation before, and had only used the toolset once before as a participant. But in she dove!

Results!

Our more experienced user (who was a participant in this team intervention) said that even though the COO made some newbie mistakes, the toolset worked beautifully. It yielded great bonding for the starting-to-be-a-team, and laid a strong foundation. Or, as he put it:

It’s amazing how robust a tool it is–you can’t mess it up even if you’re new at using it!

Using images in Africa

Mari reviewing the birth records

VizPeep Mari Alexander is a therapist, physician assistant, intercultural consultant and Mom to two teenage boys. She’s also the co-founder of a grassroots nonprofit, Safe Passages to Motherhood that has been working in a rural village in Kenya. They’ve been sharing Home Based Life Saving Skills with a group in the village, and that small group has reached out and shared the information with over fifteen thousand other people.The program teaches people to recognize the signs of childbirth emergencies and to get those women to help before it is too late. Since the program has started, none of the women in the village have died in childbirth. Pretty impressive in an area of the world where 1 in 16 women die having babies.

One of the challenges of working in the developing world is really knowing what is happening and if you are actually making a real difference. This program has assessment and information tracking built in, but Mari was interested in the impacts beyond just the number of births in the clinic or attendance at programs.

Mari knew how powerful using images was in her work as a therapist and consultant, but feared the photographic images would be difficult to relate to for the people in Africa. So we worked with her to develop a set of paintings she could use instead.

Stories of Empowerment

Bware woman sharing story about paintings with translator

The paintings worked exceedingly well. People easily found images to describe the impact the Safe Passage to Motherhood program had on their lives. The stories weren’t so much about saving the mothers lives as they were about how becoming a trainer and sharing this vital information was changing them. They were stories of discovering purpose, and becoming someone.

Increasing the feeling of empowerment

It was obvious this group had been changed by participating in the program. Now, to figure out how to make it sustainable after the five site visits of the Home Based Life Saving Skills program. Part of the training had been to get the community thinking about how to leverage the resources they had. The US group provided some limited funds, but wanted to make sure the group could carry on after the official part of the program ended.

The group was very motivated to find ways to keep the work going. They looked around the village for opportunities, and realized for most of the long gatherings, people sat on the ground and on benches that weren’t comfortable.

Mari with the SPM trainers in Kenya with their chairs

The group saved up money to buy chairs, which they rent out. From the money they made, they bought dishes. They knew they were great at feeding big groups because they did it every time they did a training. They were saving money to buy a tent to extend their new catering business into rainy season. The US based group made a donation to the tent fund, and it arrived the day after the US group left. They now have a way to support spreading their work to other villages.

They have requested their own set of images so they can use them in their training. Of course VisualsSpeak will provide them!

The last official visit

The Home Based Life Saving Skills program that Safe Passages to Motherhood uses has five visits to the community in the developing world. The last trip is focused on evaluation, and documenting the impact the program has had. We already know the group has reached over 15 thousand people, and women are being brought to the clinic in time for help to save their lives.

Safe Passages is a tiny grassroots organization. The health care workers and team who go to Africa take time off from work and volunteer their time. They are very resourceful and keep costs to a minimum. Still, it is very expensive to get them there. When they can, they purchase medical supplies to bring to the village. They have not raised all the money to fund the upcoming trip.

Can you help?

Make a donation

Any amount will help, it’s incredible how far our dollars can stretch in the developing world. Right now they are several thousand dollars away from just paying for transportation for the upcoming trip.

This program is powerful and effective. We’re seeing the impacts ripple out to make real differences.

For years I would go back and forth. Doing work as a facilitator for organizations that made a difference alternating with time in the studio. I would make bridges between them when I could. Using experiential creative techniques in training. Building websites or making posters for organizations.

One of the driving forces behind my starting my current business VisualsSpeak is to make a difference with my art. In a more integrated way.

Making a difference is collaborative

Some of the most powerful changes occur when a group of people come together, each with their unique gifts and offer what they can to the effort. I feel particularly blessed, because my customers are AMAZING. They make differences across different occupations, groups, organizations, cultures, and causes.

When I can create something, even a tiny thing, to help them do their work better, I can help make a difference that ripples out into the world.

 Collaborating with customers

Mari with the kids in Kenya

Here is one of my amazing customers, Mari Alexander. She is a therapist and physicians assistant who also does diversity and intercultural consulting. When she isn’t raising her two teenage sons, she is involved with running a non-profit Safe Passage to Motherhood. The goal of this org is to save the lives of mothers and babies in the developing world.

I’ve written about Mari and Safe Passage to Motherhood before. I’ve been working with her for several years. She uses our products in most of her various work roles.

Art Every Day work goes to Africa

When Mari saw the artwork I was doing for Art Every Day Month two years ago, she saw the potential it has for working cross-culturally. We began discussing some of the challenges she was trying to overcome working in Bware Kenya.

• trying to get people to tell them what was really going on
• Kenyan cultural norms about seeing talking about success as improper bragging
• difficulty getting people to talk about dreams or the future
• working across different languages
• working with the limited resources in a rural low income village

We knew VisualsSpeak worked to help many of these issues, but we needed to provide images that would work in the context. Moving away from photographs and toward paintings, allowed me to focus on sparking more general human ideas. I adjusted some of the images to darker skin tones, and sent them over to Kenya in 2010.

Stories of Feeling Empowered

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Bware women sharing stories about paintings

When people began sharing stories inspired by the images, there was a recurring theme about feeling empowered. The women had learned to identify birth emergencies and how to teach others to do the same. They had an important role and message. Those feelings weren’t the norm before. They kept hearing women saying they were becoming someone.

Using Empowerment to Encourage Resourcefulness

The Home Based Life Saving System that was being taught to the villagers is a series of five visits, ideally delivered in 18 months. In the past it has cost other groups hundreds of thousands of dollars to send trainers from the US into the developing world. Safe Passage to Motherhood has never had that kind of money. It has operated on donations from the family and friends of the group in Portland Oregon. Part of the work has been to show that you can effectively operate the program with far less money if you have volunteers and relationships to draw from. The limited resources has meant the work has been spread out over a longer timeframe. The final visit starts next week.

The group in Bware has been very successful. The small group trained by one midwife from Portland has now reached over 15 thousand other people to spread the word about how to identify birth emergencies and get those women to the help they need. As many as 1 in 16 women die in childbirth in Aftica.

There have been no maternal deaths in the village since the program started.

Mari has been reminding the group that they needed to think about how they were going to raise money to support the ongoing work into the future. Safe Passage to Motherhood has been providing training materials and subsidizing  ground transportation. It’s a tiny amount of money on US standards, but a lot in rural Kenya. She kept reminding them of the stories they told about how strong and resourceful they were becoming.

Supporting Spreading Home Based Life Saving Skills

The community center in Bware with the Safe Passage to Motherhood chairs

When Mari returned to Kenya in the spring, the women had been working on ways to raise money to support spreading their work to surrounding villages. They noticed when groups gathered in the village most people sat on the ground or on benches. Many of the meetings would go on for several hours, and it wasn’t comfortable.

They decided to buy chairs and rent them out. With the money they raised from the chairs, they bought dishes. After all, they were really good at cooking for the Safe Passage Training events. They were saving to add a tent for their new catering company. The Portland group was more than happy to contribute the rest of the funds they needed. The tent arrived the day after they returned to the US.

Lots of elements add up to make a difference

Did art make a difference here? Maybe. Most likely it has been a whole series of inputs from a huge network of people. What I know is I love watching my customers  make friends with others in the developing world, and use my images to help see how they can work together more effectively. I love helping this tiny group in Portland raise a couple of thousand dollars so they can fly to Kenya as medical volunteers and unleash an incredible passion for helping make others lives better.

Want to help?

The fifth trip to Bware Kenya is next week. Two midwives will be going to conduct an assessment of the effectiveness of the program. I know they are short several thousand dollars of their transportation costs. I also know they like to be able to buy medical supplies to leave in the village when they are there, and there are no funds for that this time.

I’ve watched this group do amazing things with tiny budgets. If you can, please join me and make a donation

Donate to Safe Passage to Motherhood

They want their own sets of images!

I’m really excited that the trainers in Bware have requested their own sets of images to use in future programs. So this year for Art Every Day Month, part of what I am doing is making those sets. It feels really good to be using my work this way. Just a small piece of trying to make a difference in others lives in some small way.

Spread the word

Grassroots efforts like this rely on sharing the stories of the good work. Can you share it with your networks using the buttons below? Thanks!

If you find yourself in the unfortunate situation where people just aren’t opening up to each other, work at engaging their curiosity. When people get curious, they naturally lower some of their barriers and dynamics change.

Ask questions like, “Could you tell me more about that image?” Or ask them how they approached the process with questions like, “What caught your attention about these images that caused you to select them?”

The trick is to start with questions that aren’t personal, so participants don’t immediately shut down. From that point, often people will allow you to open the door to a deeper conversation.

Present and Future

At the time I was testing images, so I was asking everyone to make images of their present and future. I gave them 2 pieces of paper to assemble their images. Using the space between the sections to describe the transition was optional.

Using Piles of Images

My Dad did something I hadn’t seen up to that point. He created piles of images. They were spaced across the pages. When I asked him to tell the story of his image, he told me about the images on the top of the piles.

I suspected there was something more, so I asked him what was in the piles underneath.

Animals, animals, and more animals

There were all sorts of pictures of animals underneath the top of the piles. Not just any animals, mostly Alaskan animals. Turns out, my Dad had this dream of going to Alaska.

I remember my Mom turning to me with a comment about being married to him for almost 50 years and not realizing this. I know it was the first time I heard about it.

With a clear goal things become possible

In the initial conversations, the obstacles to going to Alaska were much clearer to my Dad than the possibilities. Once the dream was revealed then the challenges could be worked on with help from others.

It took several years to put all the pieces together to make this dream come true. However, on the week he turned 80, he left with my Mom for the three week dream trip to Alaska.

 This is why I use visual tools

Secrets, insights, dreams, and new ways of looking at things come out all the time using visuals. While this is a story about something that is important to me personally, I have seen similar things happen in relationships, groups, and organizations.

• It’s not that the tools are magic. It is the conversations that happen as a result of using them.

• It’s the way the visuals activate and reveal other ways of looking at things.

• It’s the way they gently tug on the subconscious and unconscious aspects and reveal them to us.

• It’s the way I was able to see a part of my Dad that I didn’t know was there.

Painters Tape!

When facilitating VisualsSpeak processes we recommend
you carry a couple of rolls of painter’s tape with you. These are the blue rolls of tape you can find in most hardware stores.

Painter’s tape – Its versatile and won’t ruin your images or the surfaces the images are being stuck to. It doesn’t leave a sticky residue like masking tape, and you won’t have tape welded to your photographs.

On the walls

One very successful technique we use is to have clients create a group collage on the wall. In advance, we tape a large piece of wide (white) paper on the wall. Then, as a team, people place their images on the paper by applying a piece of doubled-over tape on the back of the photos. Doing a group collage on the wall also shifts the client’s visual perspective of the work, opening up further possibilities of gaining insights.

On the ceiling or window?

I facilitated a leadership development retreat with a group of high level government executives. This is a very creative bunch. One breakout group taped their collage to the ceiling. Another created a frame out of tape on the window. And another framed their collage with tape on the wall.

Use multiple senses

Remember – One reason VisualsSpeak is such a powerful tool for group work is because it involves multiple senses: visual, verbal and kinesthetic. Using tape adds another level to the kinesthetic sense. It is tactile.

Rebellion = Fun – Don’t forget the rebellious nature of taping things to the walls. After all, didn’t your mother tell you not to stick things on the walls?