What
is a Visual Practitioner?
( page 2 - continued)
by
Christina Merkley
WHAT DO WE ACTUALLY 'DO'?
Ahhhh,
perhaps you are scratching your head a bit over that general explanation.
Maybe a bit perplexed and wondering "geez, what do these practitioners
actually do?" Well, the answer is, we DO a lot of different things,
but there is always some sort of common denominator in terms of
using a visual approach.
In
our ranks we have facilitators, trainers, scribes, consultants
of many types, community leaders, artists, designers and different
kinds of performers. Generally we work with groups or in some
setting where groups of people are coming together to do talk,
think and collaborate. We assist people in thinking, or as one
of the early pioneers in our field likes to say, we "help
people SEE what they mean".
As
Visual Practitioners we weave a graphic component into our work.
We literally draw information out of people, functioning as facilitators
and scribes to get the wisdom of groups into a tangible form.
Some of us use visual presentations to "PUSH" information to people.
Other use a "PULL" approach, gathering the information that is
pulled out of people, into graphic displays or renderings. Whatever
approach is used, the artifacts that are created have a very graphic
or visual nature.
  
Some
of these materials are very large (such as when graphic recorders
or graphic facilitators use large wall size sheets of poster paper
to capture the thinking of groups). Other materials are smaller
in scope (such as the poster board displays that the information
architects and designers in our midst use).
Many
of these materials are later formatted into handy digital versions
(the arrival of digital cameras has made the reproduction end
of our work easier, faster and more cost effective than methods
of even a few years ago).
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