Scribing at the Ecosystem Leadership Program
How to begin
I was asked to shed some light on the process of scribing during the first module of the March 2019 Ecosystem Leadership Program (ELP) in Berlin. Before I can do so, however, I feel that some insight into my own understanding and approach to the scribing process itself is needed first. Only then can I try to find the right words to describe the image that emerged on the wall in Berlin.
I am fairly new to the field of scribing. Therefore, some of the aspects I write about here might feel like little “epiphanies” to me, while for others I might be stating the obvious — especially for those who have read Kelvy Bird’s book on Generative Scribing (GS) and/or are experienced scribes themselves. Nonetheless, I would like to share my personal experience and thoughts, because writing down the process and how I personally understand it, might help me describe the ELP image that eventually emerged.
A Shift in Perspective
When people ask me to describe an image — or in this case a piece made up of multiple images — during or right after the scribing session, I usually have a hard time finding the right words. This is partially due to my personality (I don’t necessarily like to speak in front of a big audience), but mostly because it feels to me like a shift in perspective: while I am scribing, I try to suspend any kind of judgement. This suspension concerns the content as well as the image that is being created. As soon as I start thinking actively about what I draw, I tend to lose track of what is going on in the room behind my back. When that happens, I end up concentrating on the wrong thing. My mind begins to ponder “Does it look nice?”, “Does it make sense?”, or even worse: “Am I failing or succeeding?” It is hard to suspend the ego when I find myself interpreting and/or judging the outcome of my work while I’m scribing. This process of suspension of judgment and trying to be fully present is at the heart of the first perspective.
The second perspective begins when I start to describe an image. This requires some distance — physically (step back) and, more importantly, psychologically. To create a visualization of spoken (and unspoken) words and the atmosphere in the room, I need to try to stay in a field of concentrated and non-judgmental listening. In that moment, the focus is less on the intellectual understanding of what is being said; the process is more an attempt to “feel” the quality of the spoken words and the state of the speaker(s). In any given conversation, words are only one facet of what is meant by the speaker. A significant part of understanding relies on the empathic ability of the listener, who (mainly unconsciously) takes the facial expression, the posture, and — above all — the sound of the voice into account. When it comes to scribing, this understanding relies on sound only. And sound is probably the most powerful tool for the scribe to empathize and connect with the speaker. I was greatly inspired to hear about Jacques Lusseyran, who founded a resistance group during the Second World War. As he was blind, Jacques relied (with his life) on his ability to listen in order to decide who could join this group and who could possibly be a traitor trying to blow their cover. It is said that his inability to see enabled him not to be misled by any kind of acting. He and his group were convinced that you cannot successfully hide your personality and intention in your voice.
Cognitive Noise and Ego
During a morning awareness practice led by Arawana Hayashi in the ELP, she described the practice with “100% in and 100% out”. I think this could also describe the process of GS: all the senses concentrate on an awareness of the external (the room) — noticing the voice, the words, perhaps sounds people make when they move on their chairs — and taking it in without trying to judge. To me this sounds like the first step of scribing. What follows is a process of trusting in my own instinct; trust that I will choose the right color and shapes (abstract or in the form of letters) to translate and transfer what I sense onto the wall. I personally try to avoid thinking about a concept for the drawing up front or even during the process, because it seems to create “cognitive noise” for me, which pulls my attention away from empathic listening.
Of course, as a scribe you will always make sense of what you perceive, and I am not trying to say that one should shut down the mind and lose oneself in feelings. It just describes a different quality of using the mind, keeping it wide awake without actively leading it in (or narrowing it down to) one direction or another, but instead trying to suspend any kind of opinion.
In this state of mind, the composition of the drawing happens on a different level, I feel. The decision on what shape to draw is a mixture of “feeling what shape fits with what I hear” and “what does this shape need in addition (if so) to reflect the atmosphere and the content best”. Esthetic choices are made on the basis of “does it feel right” more than “does it look good / does it fit a concept”. Not using a logical approach to find the right shapes, but following intuition/instinct instead is freeing and frightening at the same time. On the one side, there is space for surprises and creativity, and with that possibly for a visualization that really does justice to what is living in the room. On the other side, you as a scribe are moving in a field of uncertainty, where you act without a safety net.
Several times, I’ve found myself struggling for a brief moment, because I realized that what I had just drawn took up a lot of space or seemed ill-fitting at first. It is essential to recognize this feeling as the ego trying to kick in. In other words, “right” or “wrong” are categories which I feel are mainly triggered by my ego desperately looking for something to make sure “I” do not fail. What really helps me in those instances, is to first accept this ego as such and then let go of it again. What else could I possibly do? It’s done already. Then — later on — it often turns out that precisely these parts that triggered me turn out to be the most interesting sections of the image in the end — almost every time. They often add an aspect I had not been consciously aware of in the moment and force me to adjust and deal with it.
This might sound random, but I tend to believe it is exactly the opposite of random if it happens in a moment of crisp awareness and listening. Other people in the room surprisingly often mention exactly those triggering parts and pieces of the image when they share afterwards what resonates with them. Side note: this makes me wonder how strong my habit and desire usually is — in the life outside of scribing — to instantly find an explanation for what I hear and what could possibly evolve if I were able to suspend that in conversations.
Revealing and Reflecting on the Image
Coming back to the initial point of my difficulty in explaining the drawing right after a session, this process of unconscious decision-making described above somehow reveals to me that making sense of the image afterwards can and should not be an individual effort. The scribe can only describe parts of what happened during the process. Moreover, it may well take some time to recap, since the image wasn’t based on conscious decisions as such. When it comes to revealing the image and reflecting on the content, the scribe is in a similar position to that of every other participant in the room. Perhaps the really interesting and creative part of the whole process begins right there and is a group effort rather than a presentation of the so-called artist. The scribe owns what he/she did during the process, much like every other person in the room owns what he/she contributed by speaking, listening, acting and perhaps even thinking.
Scribing is just one way of contributing, which just might seem to result in a more tangible form than the contribution each one of the participants brings. That’s why I understand the image as a product of the whole room. This distinguishes the scribed image from a piece of art in a gallery, which is created with an intention and/or feeling of one artist, and where the question “what does the artist want to tell us” seems appropriate. A scribed image is nothing an artist would intentionally create, provoke or state. It is a piece which is bound to a certain moment in time and a certain group of individuals, who participated in this process, at that exact same time and place. What you see might seem the result of one art form — painting/writing (or whatever discipline is used) — whereas in reality it is the product of many art forms that are rarely referred to as such, and are rarely delineated as such: the art of listening, the art of speaking, the art of being present and, only then, the art of visualization.
Scribing as a Social Art
In my view, this qualifies the process of scribing as a social art. It might seem like a high aspiration — to capture each personality and their contribution in one image — and perhaps it is impossible to achieve. But I believe that the more the scribe manages to let go of a personal agenda, the closer the resulting image might approach this intention. In this sense, the scribe serves as an enabler among a group of fellow enablers. S/he enables art that occurs as a social process, rather than creating art by him-/herself.
Building on this might allow for a possible articulation of what it takes to be a scribe. For me it comes down to having the willingness to listen empathically and being prepared to let the process happen, whatever it might reveal. The biggest challenge in this, is to always realize that it’s not about my ego as the scribe. The result is what it is on its own; it doesn’t have to please anyone (although it’s beautiful if it does). It doesn’t have to provoke anything. A talent in visualization might help to the extent that it helps if a speaker is gifted with rhetorical skills. Bringing a gift for visualization as a scribe surely makes the result more accessible and easier to digest. However, I believe the essence of any matter is also transferred in other ways and it requires the speaker or scribe to suspend what I like to call their “presentation mode”.
The ELP Image
Circling back to the reason why I began to write all of this: providing a description of the piece created in the ELP early 2019.
It all started with an intention. During the kick-off meeting with the facilitators of the ELP, I was asked about my intention for this time together. I remember sitting in this circle feeling excited and at the same time a bit intimidated by my first chance to engage in live scribing over a period of four days. I didn’t feel prepared and while this is an uncomfortable feeling I realized that this is exactly what I was aiming for: not trying to plan “the emerging” in order to stay open. The words I thought of in order to describe this intention were “experiment”, “staying open to the unknown” and “daring to risk”. In fact, all of what I have written here are thoughts and insights that evolved from this intention-setting.
What I did to prepare in advance was setting up the wall. In the center of a huge, white wall I hung a big black canvas of a (for me) impressive size. A black square of approximately 5 to 2.5 meters stared back at me and felt inviting and intimidating at the same time. The program would start the next morning, so I had the night to mentally prepare and try to get into a space that would enable me to step into the process of scribing the next day. I had experienced Kelvy Bird’s wonderful scribing at this very wall before and could not completely help thinking that these shoes might be too big for me to fill. At the same time, I felt exited to find myself in this risky place. I woke up several times during the night, not sure if I could or should do something to prepare. Still, I kept feeling: I don’t want to prepare. At the same time, I also didn’t want to risk letting anyone down. After all, I felt a great sense of support and vote of confidence in having been invited to scribe during this meeting. I did not want to fail. In hindsight, this back and forth of thoughts probably was the preparation; it left me in this uncertain space and made me vulnerable and open for whatever was to come. Only shortly before breakfast an idea popped up: what if I didn’t start on the black canvas, but used sheets of brown paper to start with? After all, my intention had been to experiment and therefore it suddenly felt completely right to start like this. Moreover, this was a working meeting, and what says “working” more than sheets of brown paper with scribbles of what might end up on this beautiful black canvas.
Still humbled by the whole set-up, but a little more confident about having a starting point, I hung two sheets of brown paper up on the wall. It felt right to not perfectly align them, put arrange them in a gallery-like manner, but on different heights and partially overlapping the black canvas. I liked it! It didn’t say “artwork” so much as it did “Let’s start working”.
The morning started and with it came my first drawings. As always, my nervousness disappeared after the first shapes and words appeared on the wall and, luckily, my ego seemed to be okay with letting me do my work and leaving me alone.
The first little irritation came with the words “PUT THE FOUNDATIONS IN PLACE”. I placed it at the top of the page, which felt right as it looked like a headline. Moreover, it had been stated as the first step to do. Right after it found its place on the paper, I got stuck on the word “foundations” and how strange it looked hovering above, considering what it means. It seemed to call for a connection to the bottom of the canvas. I drew the red shape. It looked like something dripping/pouring down (or up?) and passing through (getting filtered by?) the word “ECOSYSTEMS”, which was already placed at the center of the page. (It looks like it’s filling the paper up from below — I don’t recall if I thought of that at the time). Two white arrows seem to indicate how the Ecosystems evolve from this foundation.
Looking at it now, a lot of different and even contradictory interpretations instantly cross my mind. It is difficult to determine what I was feeling then and what I am seeing now, possibly with the assumption that I must have thought of it at the time I was scribing. It is a very small part of the whole piece and perhaps not very profound, but writing about it now reveals something else, which I think is worth noticing: there is no right way to look at it. It happened to end up like this. I could elaborate on what I see in this, but it would just be my interpretation. The value of the image, I believe, is not that. It shows up only when people who participated in the process look at it and notice what comes up for them (together or on their own). In this process of reflection, the image might help to uncover how people processed the words spoken in the room and what was important for them. In the best case, the image might help individuals to access what they perhaps already unconsciously know.
Therefore, it doesn’t feel right to blur anyone’s perception through my personal interpretation. All I want to do is point out things that drew — or draw — my attention, looking at the image that is teasing me, in a way, saying: “Look, I’ve got something for you to think about”.
For example, the disturbingly oversized letters spelling out “FEEL IT”, which partially happened due to the simple fact that I picked up a very broad marker shortly before I wrote these words. They kept drawing my attention throughout the whole program. Sometimes they made me think: “Really, Olaf, this is what you took out as the most important part?” But then I would again remind myself to shut off my voices of cynicism and dive back in, trying to understand what was present on a different level than just on that of logic. Two days later, when the conversation in the room shifted into a rather uncomfortable space (I will get back to this later on) and I felt like leaving the room to take a breather, I remember unintentionally glimpsing the wall where these two words almost seemed to say: “Feel it! Don’t chicken out.” That is what these words were evoking in me at that time. Again, it would probably be more insightful to hear what resonated with the other participants, who were also involved with the content — the Eco-System Leadership — and whether it helped them gain a different perspective.
Multiple Layers
Something else turned out to be even more significant for me: when I started in the morning, I had assumed that I could potentially use the whole wall if I needed to. During the day, I realized that other practitioners were invited to draw as well. It seemed obvious that using the whole wall just for “my” creation would be selfish and potentially not supporting the overall process of the program. After a short inner struggle with realizing these boundaries (of drawing space) that I hadn’t anticipated, I decided to embrace this fact. I rearranged what I had drawn later that day to make space for other drawings to come in. In the past, I had already experienced that limitations of any kind during the scribing process often turn out to be the beginning of something unexpected and more exciting. Therefore, I was in quite a positive mood while rearranging the images. Because of the limited space, I allowed the images to overlap each other, as well as with the right part of the huge black canvas. Kelvy saw this and suggested to reveal parts of the overlapped images by tearing pieces away from the top ones — an iteration of an idea by another scribe, Raquel Benmergui, who we had both met shortly before in one of Kelvy’s courses. I thought about it, started lightly tearing one piece a bit, and then decided to leave it for that moment.
A little later, while setting up the chairs for the next morning, a strong gust of wind suddenly opened a window next to the wall, tearing down the images I had just hung up before. After I put them back on the wall, I suddenly thought to myself: “Why not take this as a hint to rethink the arrangement?” I tried to not think about it, but to sense what felt right in the moment. What I noticed was that these tears and openings started to feel exciting, and so I began tearing little parts away in order to reveal what was underneath. I started at a point where I could see only the end of the sentence, as most of it was covered by the overlapping paper. As I teared away a piece to see what was underneath, it struck me: the words I had just revealed were “Including multiple layers”! The paper I had torn rolled up and ended up right beside the word “playfulness”. I was excited and stepped back to take an overall look. Instantly, I saw that the word “SHIFT” was half-covered, which kind of annoyed me from a content perspective. Until I went on reading the whole line, which said “SHIFT IN THE INVISIBLE” — which was the exact description of what was there on the canvas!
I left the room in excitement. I felt that the scribing process had taken over and that I hadn’t disturbed it too much by overly involving my ego. My inner voice of cynicism might tell me that all of that is just the result of coincidence, but there are many of those around, so why not enjoy the magic without overloading it with meaning.
Another moment that impacted me was two days later, when Katie, one of the facilitators who lives in Australia, took me aside. She shared what she saw in a part of the drawing, which evolved, while a group of Australian practitioners were sharing their story about how their initiative had grown throughout the past years.
There is a story of Aboriginal origin (sadly, I only remember fractals of it, because I was very busy when she told me about this), which is about a mystic figure — a woman with long white hair, who walks through the land and shapes the landscape with her steps. If I recall correctly, she somehow interweaves the spirit with the land. What is fascinating to me is that this story, that I never heard of, clearly popped into her mind as soon as she saw the image. The scribed image evolved from a completely different story than that which Katie told me. What I heard in the room was the love for and the importance of the place, that particular continent of Australia, where their ecosystem grew and took shape. The image provided a connection between these two stories, which could not possibly have been planned for by me, the scribe.
Shadow
The final reflection that I want to share, happened at the end of the third day. In the morning, I took a walk through the nature in the vicinity of the resort. The sun was shining and as I walked down this path between the fields, I suddenly felt what I thought was missing in the image so far: space.
Until this morning, I had always arranged the brown papers over the black canvas, covering most of it. The result of this was a collage of images of different content held together by a black area behind it. I decided to create an area of space, the next time I rearranged the drawings. Up until then, I had used the time after dinner to rearrange the images, as that’s when I had the room to myself and didn’t have to worry about disturbing other practitioners with the sound of tearing paper. On the evening of the second day, I ended up doing this quite late, as the room had been used by others for longer. Therefore, I decided on the third day to rearrange the images before the close of the day, during a time when the practitioners were engaged in small group work. That would allow me to not interrupt participants later that day, nor would I have to wait until the middle of the night to get into the room.
By the time everybody met for a final circle that evening, I had already moved the images and hung up some blank paper to the left of the black canvas, leaving a blank, black space at the center, as I had thought of in the morning. As the conversation in the circle got going, strong tensions in the group emerged. Without going into detail, the word “shadow” was used several times throughout the conversation and the term “struggle” was voiced — in some cases related to the process itself, in others connected to very personal stories that had boiled up during the process. Somehow, I couldn’t find a way into my scribing and decided to take notes instead. Maybe they would make sense later and give me material to put something on the wall. I had never before taken notes to draw later, and was not sure whether this was something I would manage to do, since it is a completely different approach than live scribing, but it seemed the way to go at the time.
When the conversation reached its end, I hadn’t scribed a single stroke. The words “dark side” and “shadow” still seemed to be very present in the room. I happened to take a look at the wall and suddenly realized that my scribing had not been necessary. The main words I took out of the conversation were already there; not in form of words, but in the actual arrangement of the drawings. There was a huge black hole in the middle of the wall. Now that there were bright brown papers overlapping the black canvas from the left, right and bottom, you couldn’t see the straight sides of the canvas anymore and therefore the black part had gained its own shape. It looked less like an empty canvas waiting to be filled, but much more like an object in its own right, one that was trying to burst out from the middle.
Looking at it from this new angle made me realize that it had been the right choice to not start scribing this evening. It felt almost as if the mirroring had already happened in the rearranging of the brown papers before.
The purpose of these little anecdotes is to share some reflections and experiences that stood out for me in the process of scribing during the program. What ended up in this little summary are only fractals and there surely is much more that could be pointed out. I took these few highlights, mainly to underline my understanding of the process itself.
I am glad, humbled, and thankful to have been part of this process.
I want to thank my colleagues Katrin Kaeufer, Kelvy Bird and Angela Baldini for their helpful comments, Sarina Bouwhuis for her amazing help and effort in editing and Rachel Hentsch for helping me to post it here.
