Let´s draw together II., Slovenia

The second part of the Let's draw together project took place on April 29 - May 6, 2023 in Celje, Slovenia. After half a year, we met the participants from the first part in Cabra, Spain, and picked up where we left off. Although not exactly in the same place, as we have moved up a level in half a year, motivated and pushed by all sorts of online challenges. I am grateful to Sabina and Mojca for the facilitation, to the other participants for the great atmosphere and cooperation on various activities, and to the Erasmus+ program for their support.

Of the original three dozen participants, two-thirds of us gathered for the second part, the rest were newcomers. Therefore, we properly welcomed them into the process and into our group, and all got to know what awaits us in the coming days. Thanks to the Lithuanian team, we refreshed our graphic basics and elements so that we could immediately start creating the final outputs from the project in groups. These include video tutorials, a graphic manual, e-learning for practice, hand-drawn poster templates and a website. The work on them was interspersed throughout the week, and the final products literally astounded me.

During the week, we had the opportunity to learn about several other drawing techniques as well as to try out some specific processes. Therefore, thanks to the Romanian workshop, we focused on perspective, the golden section and composition. Miguel and the Spanish team showed us how to depict movement and moving objects and characters through drawing. With the Czech team, we introduced several techniques of meditative drawing to others. Moreover, our unique Slovenian guest Lara Kastelić showed us many examples from her own practice, as she makes a living from graphic harvesting (as she calls the process of graphic recording) and has many great tips and tricks up her sleeve. Due to the rain, we enjoyed a free afternoon in Celje in the small local ZOO, where both stingrays, armadillos and lemurs fascinated us.

A large part of the preparations and a source of stress and later enthusiasm was also taken up by graphic facilitation in three non-profit organizations and at one international conference in Ljubljana, where we went precisely for this purpose. Therefore, for two to three hours we just listened and converted everything essential that we wanted to preserve for the organizers and the audience into cartoon form. It was a challenging but creative and fun process that pushed the bar of our skills a little further. The rest of the day in Ljubljana, after or before our workshops, we went out to explore both the center and Tivoli Park, or the various events the city had to offer.

"It's been a long time since my creativity flowed as strongly as it did at this training, and to the same extent, I didn't feel as salivating 'among my own' as I did here. Although I have to admit that it was challenging and my mental comfort zone definitely showed some significant stretching," runs through my head. However, I am very grateful for it and it is clear to me that now graphic facilitation belongs to the rank of my competences, and I can't wait to be able to use it in practice again.