What I’ve learned running visual thinking workshops

As a bit of a personal challenge, I agreed to run a sketching workshop where I work. Partnering up with our brilliant women’s network, Beyond Her, who I’d done some artwork for in the past, I designed a session for anyone feeling blank, stuck in a rut, or lacking creative confidence, to show them how drawing can help liberate the imagination, enhance your memory, and help you communicate with impact whether or not you have a “creative” role.

In the past I’d felt awkward about ‘marketing myself’ as a visual person in the office, because I don’t have a creative job title and I’d held onto a couple of offhanded comments from colleagues that I’d molded into something discouraging. But after seeing the potential of bringing my illustrating skills into my research work, I was feeling more confident in sharing sketching as a tiny superpower with the people I work with. The only thing I had to do was get over the discomfort of being in the spotlight.

I based the 90 minute session on four pillars, a brief bit of theory, simple tasks to get people drawing and build confidence, sharing the reasoning behind those tasks and how to practically put them into use, and offering some inspiration to show how far sketching has the power to go. I took the things I’d learned about group facilitation from co-design sessions like having clear task timings, offering a mix of listening, doing and discussing time to support all kinds of learners and doing a bit of my own arts and crafts before the session.

I produced custom worksheets for all of the tasks, which made the session feel more seamless. I prepped a couple of fun twists on bits that would have other wise just been me talking both to try and make them more engaging and to make me feel less awkward. But I think the thing I was proudest of was making a little sketchnoting booklet that people could add to as the session went on and take away as a reminder. 

Through all of that I learned that I like super hands on tasks that are short and pacey, because I don’t like to awkwardly wander around a room of other people doing things. That need for pace in the tasks I designed, led me to a solution (the second time I did the workshop) for the problem I have in all workshops – how do you call a task to an end. The answer I found was music. I made all of the doing like musical chairs, when the music stops you have to put the pen down. 

Those sessions also taught me to loosen up the reins a little. The best moments were where we discussed as a group, not where I was spouting off facts. That’s something I’m going to look to bring into future sessions. I’m going to have trust that if I have the bones in place the information that people want and need will come out in the end.

I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed running those sessions. Gone was the awkwardness I normally feel when I’m standing at the front of a workshop. I think the difference was this was content that I already implicitly knew and believed to be true. Plus there’s something kind of magical about being in a room of people drawing. 

It was brilliant to be confident presenting a workshop. But seeing the impact it had on the people who came along was a whole other level. 

I hadn’t expected such lovely feedback (I’m not sure I expected anyone to turn up in order to be able to give it, if I’m honest). I hadn’t expected to have lots of participants to ask to take extra handouts to practice with later, or to have people come up to me to proudly share how they’d started using sketchnoting just days or even hours later. I hadn’t expected to be asked to run the session again, and certainly not twice.

I’m so excited to hopefully run more sessions like this in the future and to see how this shift in my relationship to being more visual at the office changes my work for the better in the future.

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Natalie