Issue 47 - Jump-start your big dream
Drawing dreams, illustrated interviews and a bulletin board. Alliteration heaven.
Welcome back to the Visual Edit my creative friends. I love the winter, those hard frosts and crisp starry nights. What I don’t love is the stinking cold we came down with post xmas which made the rest of January feel like a frantic game of catch up. So I’m enjoying the fact that we’re here in February. Along with the optimistic bulbs starting to grow in the garden, I’m feeling energised and creative; how about you?
What do you want to see in the Visual Edit?
Drawing Exercise
Studio table
The dark evenings and slower days of winter here in the UK are a great time for creative thinking. Slowing down for me means more time for pondering, doodling and generally letting my mind wander, and that always triggers some new thoughts and ideas. All of that is what makes this time of year the perfect time for some focussed dreaming and this month I’m inviting you to dream with me.
If you’re wondering what I’m talking about, let me share with you some focussed dreaming I did some years ago… my own ‘back of the napkin’ moment.
Many moons ago (about 20 years) I worked for a national charity, delivering projects that supported marginalised young people. I met a friend for lunch one weekend and, as people do, we started to dream about the jobs we wished we had. We’re both creative people, so rather than just talk about it we decided to visualise our dreams.
Now there is evidence that shows visualising goals can actually increase the chance of achieving those goals, partly because in order to be able to DRAW something your brain has to go through some complex imagineering. To be able to draw the thing, it has to already experience (as an imaginary exercise) the steps and actions involved, or the feelings that would be invoked, if you were to actually do the thing in real life.
I had a pen in my bag (of course) and we grabbed a paper napkin each from the counter and spent a few minutes drawing our dream jobs.
My dream: I wanted to feel free. I’d been doing similar work for 15 years, and I was feeling stuck. I wanted to work for myself. I wanted my work to be creative, varied and earn me as much money as I got in my current employment.
Up to then I had given this no more than a passing wistful thought and certainly had no plan of how to achieve it. But, within the year of this fateful lunch I had quit my job, started my own business and had already started to build an exciting client list. I wasn’t earning as much as my salary yet, but that would come in time.
I’m telling you the dreaming worked. So, here’s my invitation to you: Dream along with me by doing this super simple visual exercise …
Grab some paper (or a napkin) and in the top right corner draw a star.
This is your guiding star. Your big dream. For me it was to have work that felt like freedom, or something expansive and poetic like that. Whatever your dream is, make it true and by that I mean don’t think about what it ‘should’ be, or what anyone else would think of it. It’s YOUR dream. Try to avoid compressing or limiting your dream because of self doubt. Your dream might already be there at the edge of your mind ready to be captured, or it might take a while. Don’t worry, take whatever time you need.
Once your dream has made itself clear, write your dream along the top of your page. Now in real life I didn’t write it down because I was, if you remember, chatting with my friend. In hindsight I wish I had written it down because the picture would have been so much better!
Now sit and ponder your dream for a short while. I want you to come up with 3 elements of your dream that would make it real. They are clarifications / detail / flavour …whatever you want to call them. So for me it was about Creativity, Variety and Money. Freedom to me, or my dream of freedom at that time, would need to contain those 3 elements in order for it to be successful. a) If it wasn’t creative I’d be leaving my dream life on the table. b) If it wasn’t variable I’d soon be bored again. c) If it didn’t earn enough I’d have to have another non-dreamy job to pay my bills.
Draw each of the 3 elements on your paper, one drawing to represent each element. Now if you have more than 3 don’t worry, the more the merrier.
I told you it was simple. Put your dream napkin somewhere you can see it often and every time you do see it let those images and thoughts run through your mind. Believe it or not, I think you’re already a step closer to making your dream a reality.
Graphic Recording examples
I’m sharing different types of work I’m doing each month to spark ideas for you to pursue in your own work. I started last month sharing some Person Centred Planning, and this month I thought I’d share a different type of work with you from my February bookings: Illustrated Interviews.
Here’s an example of a previous Illustrated Interview that took place in a care home. It was part of a series of interviews with residents to find out what would help improve the service. Later this month I’ll be heading off to a University to do some interviews with PhD students.
The example above was done on A3 biodegradable foamboard with Promarker pens. You can see it’s quite scrappy, and that is because it is a live conversation that is typically quite brief so the work is FAST. If I know I’m going to be wandering around talking to people at a service I’ll often work on board because there may not be a table where the person is sitting. If I’m going to be talking to people in a more organised way where I know I’ll have a table, then I might work on my iPad (example below). This work can be done 1-1 or as a duo working with someone doing the talking while you do the drawing (this is definitely the easiest option).
You’ll be forgiven for not knowing that this type of work exists, but it’s more common than you might think. Most organisations want, or are required, to listen to and learn from their service users, and many are looking for more engaging ways to do this than filling in a questionnaire. I’ve done Illustrated Interviews with young people using sports facilities, older people using community services, people running small community projects, people in housing projects, managers at a media company… the list could go on.
If you’re interested in doing Illustrated Interviews:
Go and interview someone (anyone) about a service they use. Do this a couple of different times and you’ve got some examples to show future clients what they’re missing. Remember this is usually LIVE work so don’t spend weeks making a glorious polished project if you can’t actually deliver that in a 20 minute interview.
Identify a range of projects in your area and think about what type of feedback they might find useful from their customers, service users or their staff.
Find out the contact details for the service manager and send them a proposal with your most relevant examples. Remember to say what you can offer them, and why they will find it useful.
See what happens. Don’t worry if you don’t get a booking straight away, these things can sit in a file (or in someone’s mind) waiting for months, (even years) until the time they do need some creative service user feedback.
Bulletin Board
If you have any relevant visual thinking news you’d like us to share, email Natasha at support@graphicchange.com
Here are some articles I’ve written this month that you might find interesting:
My latest Visual Journal page at The JOTT
Term opens on 17 February over at the Graphic Change Academy. If you want to join us now is a good time to check out our 12 week online supported courses:
To celebrate I’ve just got my new student notebook where I’ll keep track of each of our new students as they appear in their Class Community forum. This will really help me give everyone the most tailored support I can. Building confidence and seeing students make real progress is the best part of my training role.
Natasha is behind the scenes getting frustrated with Ai, you can follow her on substack here. And if you don’t want your work scraped to teach Ai how to draw like you without your permission, then make sure you check your platforms and devices to find out whether you can switch off the Ai learning that is now commonly being turned on as default.
Thank you! I love reading your posts.