Workshop - Drawing Research

The official term is 'Graphic Facilitator'. Being a graphic facilitator sounds super fancy and intimidating, however, it's just drawing while people talk at you.

And I say 'just' like having people watch you draw isn't terrifying...

Anyway, about a week ago S, asked our class if anyone would be interested in having a go at being a graphic facilitator for some researchers who were going to come in and discuss with us what they're doing. Now, my initial reaction to anything that's sprung on me is 'nO!', but instead of saying that I said I'd think about it. I spent some time looking at the examples that S had provided and read a little about what would be expected - we would basically be turning their spoken word into images and text in the form of a mindmap - and decided that it sounded like a nice opportunity to do something a little different.

The actual day did get off to a rocky start though.

Everyone has been super busy lately, all across the uni, and so us illustrators arrived in good time at 12:30 - but the researchers didn't arrive until 1:30, a little sigh-inducing but it was okay. The wait didn't matter so much since it gave us a little time to get to know the other staff involved in putting together the workshop, and learn a little more about what was going to happen. Once everyone had arrived, we sat in a circle and introduced ourselves. The researchers were all in different stages of researching their PhD thesis', and the subject varied massively between them.

We then escaped from the massively hot and humid conference room up to our illustration studio and discussed who should be paired with whom.

I was paired with a man who was researching the building of sustainable housing and off-grid estates, right up my street! We got to talking about his work and the aim of reducing our CO2 output to zero by 2050, we agreed that it was possible, but not necessarily probable. He helped by jotting down how he thought some elements of the mind map might look - since this was for his research I wanted it to make sense to him more than anyone else. And as we continued talking, the mind map grew.

Now honestly, I was quite nervous of having to draw in front of someone, but it was very fun and easy once I put pen to paper and it didn't take long once we got going.

I hope that he will find the mind map helpful - even if it just makes him grin when he looks up from his desk as he continues his research journey. It would definitely be fun to do something like this again.

My partner mentioned that he'd also be giving a talk in one of the uni's lecture halls about climate change next week. I think this would give me a good opportunity to take first-hand notes on a subject I'm aiming to apply to future artworks, and a subject I'm passionate about.

I hope my final year continues to throw interesting opportunities my way as this one has been super fun,

see you next time,

Mort.