In the beautiful small town of Cabra in Andalusia, southern Spain, the Let's draw together training for youth workers took place from 12 to 21 September 2022. It focused on graphic facilitation and increasing competences to use graphic elements in youth work.
The training was for youth workers who have no experience with graphic facilitation, as well as for artists who would like to send their knowledge and skills out into the world. So we started with the very basics of graphic facilitation, but during the project there was also a lot of opportunity to practice skills and share experiences with others through many creative tasks.
There was a lot that we learned in the extended week. First, we started with the visual alphabet and basic graphic elements. That is, how a square, triangle, circle and arc can be used to represent simple objects, and what basic elements of graphics exist (fonts and their typefaces, frames, arrows, separators, text bubbles, etc.). We each created our own visual vocabulary to make sure we knew which of these simple graphic elements were our own and which we wanted to continue using.
Later on, we progressed further to visual mind-mapping, where we tried to use the world café method to plot our associations to our chosen areas of youth work. So we created drawings and themes of outdoor education, international youth work, coworking and more, not only simple concepts but also categories and clusters. For example, how would you draw mental psychohygiene or motivation?
Because we found that our drawings were still very complex and therefore incomprehensible to the reader, we learned the art of simplification. This was done both by drawing objects from our surroundings, and through a game of pictionary, in which one person draws a given word and the rest of the team guesses what it is. It was fun and we practiced both our imagination and our artistic skills.
Another big topic was stencils and working with them. First we looked at examples of templates that already exist and tried to link them to concrete examples of use in youth work. And then we also created our own template for our personal reality of leisure work with young people. This resulted in very interesting and original ideas.
But the biggest challenge for everyone was certainly the method of graphic recording. It consists in recording the spoken word in real time. We were tasked with drawing a five-minute TEDtalk about the inner critic. Even though it was fairly clear and structured, many of us didn't know how to handle it. Which information to include on the poster and which to leave out? Should the result be in black and white or rather in colour? After receiving the necessary feedback, we thought back even further about how we could do it better and indeed we did. When we were faced a few days later with transcribing a less structured and twice as long video on staying calm in stressful situations, the result was much better. But I think we can all declare that we still have a lot of training ahead of us before we become true real-time graphic facilitators.
The visual message was an equally important topic, as we each tried to create a poster that met all the general rules (text structure, uniform font, matching colors, etc.) while still reflecting our personal style. I chose the theme of Mindfulness in Youth Work, but it didn't quite work. Drawing on large A1 paper is really different than on A5 or A4.
One full morning was devoted to workshops in schools, where we had everything we had learned to use in implementing a one-hour workshop on a given topic. My group focused on water scarcity. We prepared some supporting materials in the form of a large poster and pictures of things we wanted to use to illustrate water waste, but we also had the participants draw a lot because we felt it was different than just a verbal or written description of where water could be saved in everyday life. It's a pity that we started ten minutes early and didn't manage to finish the whole workshop, but I think we still got a lot of young people thinking about how they themselves can help solve the situation, which was our intention.
The evening of storytelling made us focus more on the logical structure of the graphics and the comic and simple handling of complex paradigms, because we had to illustrate in six pictures a story that we experienced during the training. Some told an adventure story of a lost Margaret, others a horror story of a trip to a castle or the mystery of a lost room card that subsequently opens all the doors. It was a fun evening that proved to us that even simple drawing can make a big difference in the process of taking in information.
The final days focused on how we can use the competencies we have gained in our work with young people back home. So, we both prepared workshops for the public or our organizations to transfer the knowledge and skills we gained here. So we split into action groups to use the time between this and the second training in April 2024 in Slovenia to refine and prepare further deliverables (methodology, interactive presentations, video, web and more, all about graphic facilitation).
Of course, it wouldn't be an Erasmus+ project if we didn't both talk about YouthPass, the certificate certifying our participation, and also have an international evening full of tasting goodies from the participating countries and mixing local customs with each other.
And as it was a cultural exchange, there was also an afternoon in the centre of Cabra, where we went to see the local castle and historical buildings, as well as visiting the local youth centre. A free day to relax was then spent with a trip to the three nearby picturesque towns of Iznájar, Priego and Zuheros. Here we were able to walk the flower-festooned narrow streets as well as take in the local fountains, castles and breathtaking views. I was surprised at how much of the influence of nearby Morocco was present here, even though we were still in the middle of Spanish Andalusia.
I am grateful to Sabine and Mojca for leading the training for us, to Sara for her logistical support, and to Kiko for the opportunity to be in his home region. And also to the Erasmus+ programme for making this training programme possible.
