Northants Conference, Learning Dialogues.
‘What might we discover by drawing the spaces between us?’
In this paper I intend to address the question ‘What might we discover by drawing the spaces between us?’,
and to demonstrate what dialogic drawing can contribute to continuing professional development in higher
education. In this instance I will present the Drawing Encounter (an encounter using drawing rather than
speech) as an example. In a procedure similar to casual conversation i.e. a familiar one-to-one, face-to-face,
turn-taking experience, (Eggins and Slade, 1996) the Drawing Encounter uses collaborative drawing as a means
to facilitate a connection between two people, often strangers, and to elicit tacit aspects of one-to-one social
interaction (Rogers, 2007).
This method of collaborative drawing creates a novel space for play and exploration where the progress of a
social encounter, improvising the rules of engagement and negotiating shared territory, is made visible
through the emerging drawing. To put it another way, the paper becomes an arena for mutual reflection and
collaborative inquiry. It’s a journey into the unknown but the tools and the conversational framework are
familiar.
In this paper I will show particular Drawing Encounters and discuss participant commentaries. I will argue that
visual analogy, in this case dialogic drawing, can reveal much about our interaction with each other, by making
what we do in the spaces between us concrete and visible. Through analogy we can explore how in the real
world, we might be better able to communicate, collaborate and create together.
What is the process of a Drawing Encounter?
In essence, two people take it in turns to make a drawing together on the same sheet of paper. The content is
not discussed in advance and the encounter is largely silent, though often full of laughter. The image emerges
from whatever happens on the paper, not from verbal negotiation, and may be representational, abstract or a
mixture of both. The materials for the Drawing Encounters are un-intimidating and easily portable, A4 or A5
paper and felt tip or brush pens. At the start of the encounter each partner selects a colour from a choice of
two contrasting colours and they decide which of them will start. They continue taking it in turns to draw until
the drawing activity comes to a mutual end or the exercise is called to a halt. The person who did not start the
drawing is given the chance to make the last marks.
Drawing Encounter procedure and examples of materials (Author, 2008)
A particular Drawing Encounter
I will discuss the drawings below in detail as they illustrate the progress and tensions of drawing together. The drawing
partners were Edward, drawing in brown, and Clarence (female) drawing in green and the encounter took place at a recent
staff development conference at the University of Brighton. The drawing partners, Clarence and Edward worked in
different disciplines, on different university sites and had never met before.
Edward and Clarence, drawing 1, 13.4.2010
Edward began by drawing the house because he thought it offered a fairly broad opening to his partner. Clarence
responded with a giant teddy bear, she was testing to see if Edward would take offence or think it was playful’. She did
wonder if the teddy attacking the house was a bit aggressive, she would not do that in ordinary conversation. Edward was
surprised but not shocked by the giant teddy bear. ‘Ok,’ he thought, ‘I can respond to this, my mind can work on this level.’
The film King Kong came to mind and he drew the planes attacking the teddy bear. Clarence had at first thought Edward
seemed reserved, but as soon as he laughed at the attacking teddy bear that changed. ‘The silly attacking made me feel
relaxed with him, made me feel we were genuinely at ease with each other, more friendly’ she said. Clarence thought that
Edward would probably attack her again at some point. She drew in a mountainous background so that later on she could
draw a massive sea of teddy bears advancing from behind the mountains, ‘A strategy to win and be funny’, she said. The
drawing continued with the tanks and people running away. Clarence enjoyed the fact that Edward was building the scene
with her, it felt like they were collaborating. Then Edward wanted to shift the perspective to someone viewing the scene
from outside, so he drew the painter painting the scene. This threw Clarence, she was slightly dismayed, she felt Edward
had said goodbye to the picture they were building together by doing something completely different. Her interpretation
of the painter was that the scene was not ‘real’, it was all in the painter’s head. She wanted to put the scene back in her
world, so she placed the painter in the hand of a giant teddy bear. The Drawing Encounter was brought to a close at this
point, so Edward did not have a chance to respond.
Clarence and Edward make a second drawing together (see below). Edward remarked that by this time he felt they had
reached the point where they knew each other well enough to communicate on some intuitive level. In this drawing
Clarence started with an abstract sweep to see what Edward would do with it. Edward responded by drawing a line and a
small person. Clarence placed the ‘homunculus’ inside a bird. The drawing continued with the theme of good and bad
influences within the bird. Then Edward made the abstract marks in the bottom left hand corner and he was surprised that
Clarence responded with a picnic. Edward was unsure of where to go with the picnic and reverted back to the animal
theme by drawing a huge mouse making a gesture towards the picnickers. This continued with Edward drawing animals
and Clarence placing angels and devils inside their heads. When Edward drew the man’s head in the top right-hand corner,
Clarence was unsure how to how to respond. Was the head meant to be sitting on the bird or floating in space? She
wanted the whole picture to make sense for her, in its own weird way, and drew the man thinking about a sandwich from
the picnic in a loving way. Then Edward drew the bird in the man’s head. Clarence wondered if he had set up an invitation
for her to do that, to reverse the theme that they had developed. At the time she did not think of it and she felt a sense of
letting him down by not having taken up his invitation. (Edward and Clarence, personal communications, April 2010)
Clarence and Edward, drawing 2, 13.4.2010
Clarence said that she and Edward had tested each other out in a way that she felt could not have happened if
they had been talking about themselves in a normal way. She thought that because they were both put in the
same predicament and asked to do something baffling, they were at ease straight away. There were no
preconceived ideas about what they were meant to do (Clarence, personal communication, April 2010).
How can the encounters be conceptualised?
Participants have categorised the encounters in the following ways: a game of chess (at the start), cheeky
banter, polite sparring, revealing thinking, a playful interface, an expedition, improvisation, a duet, a playful
attempt to communicate, meditation, a task, a struggle, a trail of thought and open engagement. Phrases that
have been used to describe the behaviour during the encounters have included pioneering, reciprocating,
responding directly and indirectly, building on each other’s ideas, open-ended, call and response, dance-like,
tentative and ping pong. The ease with which participants identify correspondences with interactions in other
contexts and the range of their examples indicates that the encounters are able to enrich their understanding
of familiar events. I suggest that this is because Drawing Encounters reveal our tacit understanding of social
engagement through novel means.
During the development of the Drawing Encounter model I drew with approximately 75 partners. Many of
them spoke about how they felt to some extent that they knew me or had built a relationship with me through
how we behaved together on the paper. In an interview with Phillipa, she said 'I felt that in watching what you
did, I can't literally say I understand more about you but it made you more familiar to me in some way more
accessible for someone I haven't met before.’ (Phillipa, personal communication, 10 October 2006). Her
comment suggests an emergence of ‘impersonal fellowship’ (Bohm, 1987), a sense of warmth and connection
that does not depend on shared personal details or history, throughout the drawing encounter. She was clear
that in saying I was more familiar she was not making a psychological interpretation but that the familiarity
had come about 'just watching how you were with it' (Phillipa, personal communication, 10 October 2006). A
teaching participant drawing with colleagues, made a comment along similar lines, ‘I feel I know some people
better after two hours than after the previous two years.’ (Participant, personal communication, October
2007).
The idea of impersonal fellowship may be a useful notion for professionals who work with clients and students
where the balance of authority and intimacy can be delicate and negotiable. For example, in the
doctor/patient relationship, 'Mutual respect precludes rather than requires across-the-board openness
between doctor and patient, and disclosure of confidential information beyond the relationship is wholly
unacceptable' (O'Neil, 2002). There are limited ways for any professional in training to practice their personal
skills in one-to-one interaction and I would suggest that there is a role for dialogic drawing in this capacity.
It could be said that almost all drawing is an act of re-recognition and connection to whatever is being drawn
(Berger, 1996; Montgomery-Whicher, 2001). The crucial point here, is that the connection through drawing in
a Drawing Encounter encourages a subject to subject relationship, whereas the act of drawing each other
from observation can easily be a subject to object relationship. In Martin Buber's (1970) terms a Drawing
Encounter is more likely to be an equal and acknowledging I-You encounter rather than an instrumental I-It
encounter. I would argue that, to a large extent, the Drawing Encounter method creates a non-hierarchical site
within which to explore mutuality.
Negotiating the Rules of Engagement
In some sense embarking on this kind of encounter is similar to any venture into the unknown with a partner
in that the rules have to be negotiated. Using drawing to materialise the exchanges makes the tacit sensings
and understandings of negotiation visible. For example, the provisional nature of the drawn marks keeps the
process open-ended and the surprises that arise mean humour is usually free and easy:
‘The laughter was about the element of surprise. You genuinely don’t know what the other person is thinking.
You can’t anticipate what their next idea might be. ... We were each giggling at, ‘”Oh, we didn’t know that’s what
was coming”. It’s interesting about collaboration, minds come together and they’re not necessarily thinking the
same things, something different emerges from two minds working together than would ever emerge from one
mind.’ (Participant, personal communication, 27.1.2010)
We would probably all agree with the comment about something different emerging from two minds; that is
the recognised value of collaboration. What we are less good at recognising however, is the emotional and
intellectual challenge that co-operative innovation presents. By making the process of collaboration concrete,
a Drawing Encounter elicits our habitual behaviours around open-ended co-operation and reveals aspects that
we are not conscious of. Participants can explore the possibilities of collaboration, within the familiar
framework of casual conversation, by improvising rules for new situations. These situations include:
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Where can I start? Is OK to start on their side of the paper?
How do I know how to start if I don’t where I am going?
How soon can I touch the other person’s drawing and elaborate on it?
Can I take noticeably longer turns than the other person?
Can I develop the same image over several turns?
Do I need to balance the affirmatory and negatory responses?
Do I need to balance the direct and indirect responses?
Can I change the orientation of the drawing mid-way?
Can I introduce anything controversial, violent or sexual?
Can I scrub out something I have drawn?
Can I obliterate something my partner has drawn?
If my partner is drawing representationally can I make abstract marks?
How can I make sure they help me complete my picture?
How can I make sure they understand what I mean? Does it matter?
If there is an invitation to complete something can I ignore it?
It is not difficult to see the above situations as analogies for aspects of one-to-one verbal interactions and
negotiations in everyday personal and professional contexts. For example participants have identified the
effect of withholding rules and information, maintaining exclusive territory, using inaccessible vocabulary,
denying another's contribution and setting up protective boundaries, collaborating in invention, expressing
empathy, surrendering to where someone else can take you, connecting through humour, taking a risk in a
partnership and playing together. Participants were easily able to transfer the insights from these analogies to
their professional lives, such as, the power dynamics of teaching and learning, managing individuals,
relationships with clients or colleagues in a different discipline, feeling more confident about making
independent decisions, not needing to be so closely directed, making space for a different kind of contribution
when developing a project in partnership and risking goal-less activity in a creative collaboration.
Applications for continuing professional development
In organisational development and management training, drawing is often used as a tool with individuals in
coaching and with groups for visioning. Wendy Czogalik, University of Brighton, aptly summarised the role of
drawing in personal and professional development:
‘The value of drawing is that it aids distanced reflection; it helps distance people from the logical,
rational, norm of the workplace. We can put something on paper, step back see what strikes us, what
is behind it and what is beyond it. ... What is more unusual, is for drawing to be used a tool for
dialogue between two people, who can than step back and explore a relationship (Czogalik, personal
communication, 16.4.2010).
In an organisational context, issues about inter-personal/inter-departmental communication are difficult to
articulate and address directly. Studies have shown that drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, music,
creative writing, theatre etc. can give us an oblique or lateral access (Giles, 2003; Young, Lettuce and Leslie,
2003), because the aesthetic dimension may facilitate emotional projections and responses more easily
especially when there is no linguistic corollary.
The potential applications for dialogic drawing tools are many and various, as these kinds of methods can
usually be adapted to suit almost any context where the intra and interpersonal aspects of one- to-one
interaction are important. Feedback from workshops with different groups of students and professionals from
primary to higher education school has identified a range of possible applications. These range from particular
professional applications, for example, a participant who trained social workers in the area of child protection
commented:
‘Very interesting thinking about collaboration, different levels of collaboration, how people work
together. ... How people think differently. ... If you’re asking people to reflect and analyse, especially
in my context of safeguarding (children). Very often that’s where safeguarding falls down, people
forget to think.. ... Different approaches to thinking are worth exploring.’ (Participant, personal
communication 27.1.2010).
To more general staff development concerns, as a delegate at a recent staff development conference said:
‘I had no idea what to expect and chose it (the workshop) for that reason. Very interesting and enlightening and
quite strange in a way to communicate effectively with someone I hadn’t met before through drawing – will use
this with my staff for team-building’. (Participant, personal communication, 13.4.2010)
Others have mentioned the power dynamics of teaching and learning. These observations have included,
teachers realising that their rules and expectations may appear to be clear but can in fact be interpreted in different ways.
Others have been frustrated when the encounters have pushed them outside their own comfort zones, some felt they
were in a similar position to their students and felt more empathy for them. A participant teaching in the health
professions commented that the Drawing Encounters revealed so much about how we listen, see, hear and
assume. He made the following observation:
‘The exercises were thought provoking and suggest that learning is a complex phenomenon that we forget in
higher education. ... The amount of emotion involved, the fear, the uncertainty, the confusion, the control, the
powerlessness and the need to give and receive’. (Participant, personal communication, 26.10.2007)
Moving away from a learning and teaching focus, situations where participants have thought they could take insights from
Drawing Encounters have included, managing individuals, handling relationships with clients or colleagues in a
different discipline, feeling more confident about making independent decisions, not needing to be so closely
directed, making space for a different kind of contribution when developing a project in partnership and
risking goal-less activity.
The account of Edward and Clarence’s Drawing Encounter above, demonstrates the potential of a Drawing
Encounter to develop the skills of non-goal orientated interaction or play. As Tim Brown of the design
consultancy IDEO remarks, the ability to play is an essential attribute of creativity. As mentioned above,
collaborative creative endeavour means embarking on a journey to an unknown place often with a stranger or
unfamiliar colleague. A Drawing Encounter can reveal something about how one approaches this kind of
project. For instance when an MBA participant drew a leafy margin all around the paper because she thought
it would prepare the paper for her partner; he experienced it as taking control and setting the agenda for the
drawing. Another MBA student complained that each time he began to build a scene, a zoo for example; his
partner changed it, so he had to reconceive the scene, as a playground for instance. He found it very difficult
to surrender to an unknown outcome. Public health professionals are necessarily, bound by protocols, but are
also required to respond creatively in critical situations. Many of those attending a Drawing Dialogue
workshop were worried about embarking on an exchange with no rules and were surprised to find how much
they enjoyed the freedom and openness of such an encounter.
Teaching academics are often looking for ways to make their teaching more creative, and when I ask why they
do not use more visual methods, people regularly say that they are happy asking students to draw, paint,
collage etc., but they do not know how to reflect on the processes or the products. Apart from concerns about
confidentiality, teachers are reluctant to display the work because they feel they lack the strategies and
vocabulary to reflect on images. There is a need for visual arts processes to be made more accessible for those
working in higher education especially as they offer new ways to generate dialogue and share understanding.
The following comment is indicative:
‘I have never thought of myself as at all artistic. I’m very unconfident ... about using these things
(visual methods) in a training context. If people didn’t want to do it, I wouldn’t know how to help
them be comfortable with it. Working in these groups with people from different disciplines ... has
made me feel much more confident about just giving it a go and putting it to people as something to
explore and take a risk with.’ (Participant, personal communication, 27.1.2010).
There is a growing recognition of the importance of dialogue in building successful organisations and
communities (Gerard & Teurfs, 1995; Banathy & Jenlick, 2005) and supporting innovation (Leadbeater, 2007).
The same literature suggests that we need to find new ways to carry out dialogue, especially dialogue that can
cut across institutional hierarchies and cultural differences more effectively than conventional spoken and
written approaches. The Drawing Encounter method and dialogic drawing in general offer novel ways to
interact, interrogate relationships and explore creative collaboration.
References.
Banathy, B. and Jenlick, P. eds. (2005) Dialogue as a Means of Collective Communication. New York, Kluwer
Academic/Plenum.
Berger, J. (1996) An exchange on the subject of drawing between the critic John Berger and the artist Leon
Kosoff. In: Gayford, M. and Wright, K. eds. The probity of art: drawing (1999) The Penguin Book of Art Writing,
London, Penguin Press, pp. 419-424.
Bohm, D. (1987) Unfolding Meaning, London, Routledge.
Brown, T. (2008) TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) Serious Play conference
<http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/tim_brown_on_creativity_and_play.html>
Buber, M. (1970) I and Thou. Translated from the German by W. Kaufmann. Edinburgh. T. & T. Clark.
Eggins, S. and Slade, D. (1997) Analysing Casual Conversation. London, Cassell.
Gerard, G. and Teurfs, L. (1995) Dialogue and organisational transformation. In: Gozdz, K. ed. Community
Building: Renewing Spirit and Learning in Business. San Francisco, New Leaders Press.
Giles, L. (2003) Use of drawings and reflective comments in family construct development. Ph.D. thesis, Open
University.
Leadbeater, C. (2007) The Art of Partnership, inaugural conference of the London Centre for Arts and Cultural
Enterprise, 19 March 2007, Unicorn Theatre, London. Transcript available at:
<http://www.lcace.org.uk/docs/downloads/conferencetranscript2.pdf>
Montgomery-Whicher, R. (2001) Unframing vision. Engage, Issue 10, pp. 10-17.
O’Neill, O. (2002) Trust and Transparency [Internet], BBC. Available at:
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2002/lecture4.shtml>
Rogers, A. (2007) Drawing as Conversation: Visual Encounters with Strangers, Creative Approaches to
Research, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp54-61.
Young, K., Lettuce, L. and Leslie, A. (2004) Using Graphic Facilitation to Enhance Knowledge Transfer and
Communication within Clusters, [Internet], St Andrews University. Available at:
< http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/sas/index.jsp?id=redirect >