Why inquire into the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and scribing? Because the relational loop between humans and technology is an interface that is here to stay, and our growth depends on comprehension and adaptability with this juncture.

AI is a current technology that: “leverages computers and machines to mimic the problem-solving and decision-making capabilities of the human mind… [AI algorithms seek] to create expert systems which make predictions or classifications based on input data.”¹ Scribing — visually representing ideas while people talk — is a practice that involves deep listening, sense-making, and drawing. It takes place within a social field — a felt space amongst humans that affects “the way we think, feel, and act.”²

Why now? Well, this is one of the hottest topics of the day. Everywhere we turn, regardless of country or sector or scale of conversation, it seems like people are trying to figure out what AI means to them, personally and professionally. It is timely and prudent to inquire into the technology and to understand how its amplification might have social and spiritual implications for generations to come.

Of course, many people are concerned about how AI will affect labor markets and will replace work that is currently dependent on human capacities. Robots moving products in an Amazon warehouse is one example, removing the human labor previously required in the distribution process. Self-driving cars are another example, replacing the need for taxi drivers and even ride-sharing services. Our practice and profession of scribing, also known as graphic recording or facilitation, is no exception. When will AI have the capacity to create a drawing that looks like the below image, based on a detailed request?

We guess that it will happen within ~6 months of today, certainly within a year. Will scribes become irrelevant? We think not. Yet, how we work with the knowledge of new technology will determine our orientation as we approach our craft, and thus how we evolve and thrive or become obsolete. How we approach our craft will influence the way we show up in rooms, attend within communal contexts, choose what to represent, and ultimately draw. How we draw will influence what a group sees and how they might, in turn, understand our emerging reality.

Some background… We (Kelvy and Emma) recently hosted two online calls to explore this topic in more depth, and the following thinking comes from those spaces.³ The calls were part of an 11-month series of conversations on “Scribing Applied To…” various subjects. To reach all time zones, the calls have been offered at 11 am and 8 pm Eastern Time, except for the third call, where special guest Danielle (Wella) Thurlow joined us to offer her unique perspective on the topic of decolonization. The other topics we discussed were climate change, education, and integration of the first three sessions. The structure of each 60-minute call has generally been: the framing of content, breakouts of ~3 people, then open dialogue. On average, ~30 people have joined each round (some live and some reviewing materials asynchronously), from ~4–12 countries around the world, ranging from the ages of ~20–70.

For this call on AI, we received several new registrations and inquiries, confirming that scribes not previously in the conversation series were curious to explore this intersection. To begin each call, we summarized four major themes that emerged rom the past four sessions. These topics helped us ground, and bring the collective knowledge forward, as we stepped into new territory. Our four main themes were:

1. Sitting with discomfort. How can we grow with creative tension, the gap between our capacity and aspiration? What do we do with unfamiliar or troubling content?
2. Orientation and posture. Where do we place ourselves physically and energetically in a room, with a group? How are we part of the change-making process?
3. Safety. How do we create spaces with psychological safety, where open curiosity and vulnerability are welcome?
4. Redefining our role. What would it be like to shift from pure witnesses/writers to active participants? How can we hold space for others to come in?

We slightly changed the format between the two calls. Since the second call typically has fewer participants due to the time zone, we seeded the container with inputs from the first, while still providing ample space for the group’s exploration. The following summary includes the voices from both calls, integrated thematically.

The Potential of AI for Scribing

Although the benefits of AI were not the first theme to arise from the conversation, several comments highlighted positive uses of this technology. AI can ease our work. Olivier mentioned, “AI can help alleviate gaps in capturing information,” specifically useful in the context of scribing. Dzvenyslava added, “It can do amazing analyses and filtering, including pointing out unexpected connections or choices that are hidden in ‘big data’.” These filing, filtering, and compiling capabilities expand the scale of what we can process as scribes. With the assistance of AI, there is potential to synthesize even more information from larger groups or across longer time spans. Michele expressed excitement “about feeding in observations to AI and receiving images” in initial experimentation and Kate added that using AI as a tool could “be freeing, like when digital scribing started, which opened the possibility to cross time zones and places.”

We also explored what it might mean to train AI to work alongside us as scribes, like Matisse orchestrating a room-sized collage, where “paper scraps were retrieved, pieced together and meticulously pinned in place according to the artist’s instructions.”⁴ Or “like the masters, who had a workshop of artists doing paintings, sculpture in their style,” suggested David. Returning to the four major themes from the conversation series, what can we teach AI about our “posture” as scribes and how can we train it to support us through our work? Would we listen as AI draws? Would we scribe while AI recognizes repeating themes in the conversation? If a scribe is a conductor, which instruments can AI learn to play, giving us more capacity to enrich the melody of the group?

Questions That Arise

Despite these benefits, the majority of our conversation time was spent talking about the current deficits of AI, especially related to inherently human capacities. AI cannot yet feel, forgive, or sense. Gabriel shared: “As facilitators we try to seek and foster spaces of silence and presence to listen not to what is said, but what is revealed… from the energy that you feel,” pointing to the uniquely human skills required to hold space for emergence. Jean-Baptiste asked: “How can AI interpret/feel the silence in the room? How can AI feel the spirit/emotion in the room?” What would it mean for AI to passively observe instead of interpreting from direct inputs? How will this technology evolve to mirror our listening and sensing skills? When will AI develop a sensitivity to the wide range of human emotions? Geisa and Kate agreed that “It just doesn’t have a heart.”

“AI is still based on 1’s and 0’s. As scribes, we listen to the tone and pitch, and energy; when they change and shift even so slightly from moment to moment, we can sense and notice the difference. AI is only learning through data,” Vivien stated. How humans attune allows us to notice micro shifts that may be lost in the methods AI uses to collect data. Gabriel extended the notion with: “AI is currently learning from what is above the surface of the iceberg,” meaning AI can only interpret the visible data, not the structures, thinking, and sources of inspiration behind the data.⁵ Yolanda added: “Sometimes as humans, we do not say what we think,” highlighting that scribes “can still observe the whole system, and AI cannot yet do that.” Scribes pull together spoken and unspoken signals to create a reflection of the whole. Will AI be able to use more than one sense? When we see someone shift uncomfortably in their seat, or when we notice a group relaxing over lunch, we interpret these behaviors through our own human experiences. We know what it is like to get distracted, to be unsettled, to eat a delicious meal. How will AI account for these embodied sensations?

Along with the positive human qualities, human error, and imperfection also rose to the surface. Olaf contributed: “What AI cannot [do] is ‘irrationally’ fail and get the concept of shame or ‘forgiveness.’” We mess up, work through challenges, reconcile, and that is what makes us more resilient as people. Without moments of conflict, we cannot figure out how our differences can help us come together. As humans, we can also more easily forgive one another with the knowledge that our mistakes arise from similar faults originating from our human nature. AI will never fail because of inherently human qualities, so what does it mean when AI makes a mistake? What does it look like to work through a process of forgiveness with technology?

One unsettling question about AI is the aspect of morality. Olivier asked, “What is its moral compass?” There are unknown elements in both human and machine learning; where they differ are their parameters and boundaries. Whereas humans have a moral center to anchor ourselves through changes, the parameters of AI cannot yet replicate the complicated web of culture, socialization, and experience that inform our moral compasses. This moral center informs how we learn and integrate new information, impacting the choices we make. Without this grounding, AI cannot fully participate in/contribute to our human social system because it cannot comprehend the unspoken influences that shape our world.

Without transparency into the inner workings of AI, it is also difficult to navigate the topic of authenticity. When AI generates a new piece of artwork or writes an essay or lyrics to a song, it pulls from thousands upon thousands of data points from the internet. Does this process constitute ownership of the work? Is AI now an artist? Or is AI-generated content just a conglomerated collage of all that currently exists? How is our art-making process as humans different? Do you need to see the hand of the artist for it to be considered art? As mentioned earlier, AI on a vast scale does what we scribes do on a smaller scale: listen to an array of information and synthesize it into a succinct output. The difference is, as scribes, we never pretend to own the information, we only craft the way it comes together. Can the same be said for AI?

Of particular note is the insight that as AI learns from online data, it will absorb both truth and falsehoods, light and shadow, well-being and wounding. Dzvenyslava observed that our collective awareness of AI coincides with a collective awakening around trauma. She asked, “Will we grow/evolve first? Or will AI first connect with our trauma?” The technology is “based on our human biases, and it still relies on human input” added Sofi. As general users (not the developers or early adopters) we probably don’t know the range of inputs AI is accessing, therefore the results that something like Chat GPT produces are not trustworthy and require perspective and judgment.⁶ What is the danger in trusting information based on imbalanced inputs of trauma?

Trust came up as a key element to cultivate while adapting to a world with AI — trust between humans and within society. Jayce offered: “We all need each other, to keep understanding one another.” Olaf added: “At a [factual level] I am not afraid of AI. My fear is for society as a whole,” voicing a concern others shared, that a line between truth and falsehood will only increase existing polarization and relational breakdown. He continued: “We need to trust humans more.” We might also consider slowly trusting the technology itself, maintaining an open attitude of cautious curiosity as it evolves as an inextricable part of our lives. However, we cannot rely on technology for reconciliation or collective healing. Our methods of untangling systemic oppression — like leveling power imbalances, for example — help us build trust in relation to one another.

While learning to enfold AI, we can still appreciate the mystery and imperfection of being human. Yolanda shared a story of a friend who scribed for an AI company where, during a panel, someone said that they “[cherished the imperfection of the scribing, as a quality of the human being.]” Yolanda went on to offer that Chinese calligraphy — with interconnected characters — becomes “dead” when transformed into a font. “In calligraphy, each character is not independent but rather part of an organic system” with the amount of space and thickness of the brush strokes adjusted to the qualities of each symbol. Sita added that“if you combine some of the algorithms, you might very well get some human-like hand in the images, or it could be trained to be imperfect—spelling things incorrectly to mimic human intervention.” Gabriel suggested that subtle qualities of variance convey an “essence of being” that scribing might preserve as digital landscapes expand.

Remaining Inquiries

What is our relationship with AI? The unspoken underpinning to our conversation was the question of how we approach our relationship with this emerging technology. Is it a confrontational and competitive one, or is it co-creative and collaborative? Maybe a bit of both, but it’s not yet clear what that might look like. There seems to be a lack of transparency to average users about how quickly AI is learning and growing. The data it collects is both intentional and unintentional; while a Chat GPT query provides answers for the user, it also gathers data about the user. For example, “Where can I find an outdoorsy Father’s Day gift?” indicates a consumer-related search, and identifies where in the world certain holidays are observed, when gifts are customary in which cultures, what types of gifts might be usual in those places, which device/browser a consumer asking this information would use, and much more. The point is that we do not entirely know what we are encountering; in a way, it’s alien. What is our approach to something that could drastically alter our lives?

How does this relationship evolve when humans largely live within boundaries of time and place, while AI is currently unbounded? AI can source data from anywhere online, from any hard-wired network and internet-connected machine. AI outputs information in every direction. Human scribes source data through a set of analog interdependencies. Even if we use a mobile phone to read an article online, we still hold a physical device. When drawing for a group of people — either in person or digitally — the data we receive and the information we generate are located in a 2-dimensional, visual plane. A drawing might convey a timeless feeling or energy, but at the end of the day, it’s a fixed artifact. AI has an ever-expanding spherical range, with fixed artifacts and unknown scope.

Can scribing play a role in the development of this relational intersection? Olivier spontaneously asked: “What’s the Chinese term for crisis and opportunity?” To which Jayce quickly responded: “There is a Chinese term for ‘Crisis is opportunity’ “危機就是轉機. Wei Ji = Crisis = 危機 Ji Yu = Opportunity =機遇. 危機就是轉機 Crisis is also an opportunity. Wei Ji = Crisis = 危機. zhuan ji= opportunity =轉機.”⁷ These are two sides of the same coin. As previously mentioned, how scribes draw — choosing what content to represent, highlighting patterns, emphasizing key points — influences the way the participant audience understands reality.⁸ If scribes consciously represent content anticipating that AI will access the drawing and learn from it, could they be part of some kind of awareness-based AI evolution?

Can scribing also encode and insulate shared human knowledge? Though this did not come up directly in either call, the line of thinking extends from our current inquiries. How can scribing help us to protect ourselves, given that our data is currently retrieved, stored, circulated, and leveraged without our consent? For example, designers have invented clothes that block technology from capturing facial recognition data. Kate Morales teaches in their programs how visual maps might not make sense to those in power but might hold sacred meaning for marginalized groups. Can scribing serve as a vehicle to ensure the safety of our communities from the malicious intentions of big tech?

What might an ecological approach look like? A subtle inquiry around AI’s comprehension came through Allie’s particularly deep, integrative lens. She reflected: “How we orient with it and attune to it informs how we relate to it and how it will learn from us — in a way like [how humans relate to and learn within] the social field, but now expanded to a socio-techno field.” She added: “We are human bodies and this is inviting us to be different; it’s like cultivating a new garden… How might an intentional, multi-dimensional, trans-contextual relationship with AI be evolved, so humans and AI can dance better together?” If we consider the spherical, almost octopus nature of AI, reaching and making connections in every direction, how can humans keep up? Can AI ever really be part of a social field, as we know it?

How can AI aggregate scribed information? Kate (Baxter) brought up the artist Refik Anadol, who “used artificial intelligence to reinterpret the metadata that comprises the online database of MoMA’s immense collection… The results are cool patterns that recall digitized versions of van Gogh paintings morphing into paintings that look like Monet’s, which then turn into de Koonings or Frankenthalers or Rothkos, into sandstorms and mashed potatoes and other things that sort of look like art.”⁹ Imagine what is possible through the metadata of thousands of digital records of scribed conversations from all over the world, from every sector, in dozens of languages, added online by a few thousand graphic recorders/scribes over the past 50 years, since the modern-day practice began? The data would be incredible, and the patterns…! It’s hard to fathom what might be revealed and what could be learned. Only a set of sophisticated algorithms could take on that kind of processing.

Lastly, what determines the quality of a scribed image generated by AI? Marie-Pascale posed: “Assume AI created an image that was ‘complete nonsense’ as it does sometimes. AI often ‘pretends’ to know; how do we know whether there is actual reasoning behind an abstract visual? Would we be able to distinguish ‘genuine scribing’ from ‘nonsense’ scribing? People would likely read meaning into either. Is it ‘bad,’ because it looks different then what humans produce? Is it ‘good’ when it looks similar to what we do? And if it sparks resonance with humans, is it even relevant?”

In conclusion, we wonder how can scribes reinforce the uniqueness of human experience in their images? What will be required on the part of each scribe to increasingly attune to spirit, to heart? And if our awareness can match this call, what will then shift in our tangible approach to drawing? Will we write fewer words and focus more on letting our imperfection shine? Perhaps that is a larger summons as AI weaves ever more deeply into our lives: be flawed, stay spacious, and celebrate the subtlety in each wavering mark.

Participants in the Conversations

Allie Middleton — USA
Crystal Huang -Taiwan
David Bennett — New Zealand
Dsvenyslava Novakivska — Ukraine
Emma Dulski — USA
Gabriel Tuan — USA
Geisa Paganini — Brazil
Jayce Pei Yu Lee — Taiwan
Jean-Baptiste Bonvalot — France
Kate Baxter — Australia
Kelvy Bird — USA
Michele Gauler — Germany
Mish Kinsella — USA
Olaf Baldini — Germany
Oliver Pesret — France
Sofi Donner — Uruguay
Vivien Leung — Germany
Yolanda Xu — China

With thanks for the additional thoughts that have been woven in from Lark Collective members: Kate Morales, Marie-Pascale Gafinen, and Sita Magnuson.

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — -

[1] IBM. (n.d.). What is Artificial Intelligence (AI) ? IBM. https://www.ibm.com/topics/artificial-intelligence

[2] Pomeroy, E. (2022, May 18). Social Fields: Shifting the quality of our collective being. Field of the Future Blog. https://medium.com/presencing-institute-blog/social-fields-shifting-the-quality-of-our-collective-being-6bfc8de3afac

[3] See the end of the article for a complete list of participants in the June conversation.

[4] Spurling, H. (2014, March 29). Henri Matisse: Drawing with scissors. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/mar/29/henri-matisse-cutouts-tate-modern-drawing-scissors

[5] Scharmer, O. (2018). The Essentials of Theory U: Core Principles and Applications. Berrett-Koehler Publisher.

[6] “Chat GPT stands for Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer and was developed by an AI research company, Open AI. It is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot technology that can process our natural human language and generate a response. Simply put — you can ask Chat GPT a question, and it will give you an answer.” Drue, J. (2023, March 31). What is chat GPT? Lighthouse Guild. https://lighthouseguild.org/what-is-chat-gpt/

[7] “轉機 Zhuan Ji means turning point when you read it stands alone, but when you put these two characters(轉機 Zhuan Ji) with WeiJi (crisis) then there is this Chinese slang/term ‘危機就是轉機 Crisis is opportunity. 轉機 Zhuan Ji also means transfer (like how you need to transfer to another flight),” from Jayce.

[8] The use of “participant audience” marks a shifting frame of reference from “viewers” of art to active players in an artwork’s creation, to coincide with the shift from movements of “fine art” to “social art”. This is of note when considering the extension of this participatory approach with AI.

Bird, K. (2018). In Generative Scribing: A Social Art of the 21st Century (p. 6). PI Press. https://kelvybird.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Bird_GenerativeScribing_Intro.pdf

[9] Saltz, J. (2023, February 22). Moma’s glorified lava lamp. Vulture. https://www.vulture.com/article/jerry-saltz-moma-refik-anadol-unsupervised.html

AI and Scribing: An Infinite Loop was originally published in Field of the Future Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This is a challenging time for many, so much so that it need not be restated. Yet through the distance, the disruption, and isolated bouts of desperation, life still calls on us to see the spots of brightness and engage with it the best we can. Developing a capacity to meet the day and to greet one another, let alone DO anything of any consequence, requires commitment to growth. In Presencing Institute’s language, we call this “Action-Confidence”.¹

Action-Confidence is “the courage and capacity to step into something new and bring it into being, or, in the words of the late cognitive scientist Francisco Varela, ‘to lay down a path in walking’, creating reality as we step into it.”² —Otto Scharmer & Eva Pomeroy

When considering scribing, action-confidence is an essential, required capacity. Scribing — a visual, social art of representing ideas while people talk, thus making the unknown known through marks — is a distinct social art form that facilitates group learning and cultural memory. Scribing serves a whole. It is not an artist painting alone in a studio (which I also do!) It is an art that comes to life in, and for, a social body. It exists only in a social context, where a drawing manifests meaning that wants to come through the gathered group.

I have written in Generative Scribing of inner capacity development, and would like to bring forward some key areas that seem especially relevant. Working in this profession — also known as graphic recording or graphic facilitation — for over 25 years, it’s been a long, slow build of my own action-confidence. Each time I stand at a wall, or hunch over an iPad connected to Zoom, it takes intentional commitment to show up, listen, and draw. A lot can get in the way, but ultimately does not serve what is trying to be seen and known through the drawing.

Key areas for developing action-confidence, then, that matter to a scribe’s practice (to anyone’s practice in any profession!) and ultimately to the evolution of our species would include:

1. Establishing safe containers
2. Cultivating awareness
3. Accepting “can’t” as a belief
4. Opening up to ourselves and others
5. Staying authentic
6. Taking risk

1. Establishing Safe Containers

Containers, energetic holding spaces for possibility, are an essential taproot for any facilitative practice.³ Without being able to hold ourselves steady in challenging situations, we cannot offer a holding space for others. If we are wanting to work with systems, the capacity to be able to both ground and open up will determine the level of complexity we can receive, process, and ultimately support in a room.

The weakness or strength of a container determines the likelihood for detrimental or successful conversation, for harmful or loving relations, for destructive or productive environments, for ill- or well-being. In a way, just as ice forms from and melts back into a pond, containers provide energetic ground for life and death, for growth and decay. We serve as containers for others, and they for us. The stronger a container, the stronger the trust, the stronger the safety, the more that can be nourished, tended, grown, realized.

Here’s an example: As my grandmother Margaret Bird was aging, we would occasionally lunch at a local diner in New York City. She would ask me things about my life and marvel at the complexity of the world in which I lived. (This was 1984, so we can only imagine what she would say today!) What I recall most poignantly is the way she paid attention, and the way she made me feel safe and loved — no matter what I said, no matter what I had to share. I never felt judged. No matter what she thought about the details of my escapades, she listened closely, looked me in the eye, and continued to pursue an understanding of my life. She provided a container, a space where I could see myself more clearly and grow as direct result of how she was holding me. I could be more vulnerable because I felt safe. She brought out the purest part of me by how gracefully she held me in her own heart.

Love, as a base note, is the ore, and order, of the container.

2. Cultivating Awareness

Scribes are reflective aids. Information filters through us on its way to a participant-audience⁴. Because it’s a live process, the filter needs regular tending to work effectively. If we do not take care of the inner landscape—our awareness—we might draw beautifully, but miss an unfolding reality, skating over the surface of deeper potential. I might, for example, not recognize the fineness of something new coming to light, like a very quiet voice in a room saying the one thing no one else wanted to say, the one thing that might reroute the path of a conversation.

A scribe’s medium is cultivating social awareness, which first requires intentional development of personal awareness.

To shape my own practice and grow, I have tried to locate my best self — the self that accepts, that chooses possibility over apprehension and frustration, the self that welcomes the new and even carves a path for it. With this orientation, I imagine serving as a microcosm of reorientation for every part of a system that my drawings might touch.

My first experience of this occurred sometime in 2006, when working with the Ashland Institute on a long-term project for the Girl Scouts of Arizona. My role was mostly to document and archive the output from multiple discussions among council staff, elders, and volunteers. My explicit purpose was to translate the group’s learning from verbal reflection into tangible form, to be shared with other councils and the national system.

During one session near Sedona, Arizona — in a cabin with fifteen other women nestled amongst forest and red rock and a nearby creek — I remember one pivotal conversation. Each person had gone into nature for an hour and a half to find her place in silence, to listen to her heart and “let come” a deeper wisdom. After they returned to the cabin I scribed while each woman shared her insights.

The drawing I produced was full of their revelations: “This is a hologram of the whole.” “Serve as a beacon; I am the organization.” “Guide the deliberate and allow for emergence.” And I recall the shift in me with each verbal sharing; some kind of larger participatory transition was also under way. I was standing at a wall in this small room, the women were in a circle, charts covered the walls. Each contribution (verbal, drawn, gestured, even pregnant pauses) extended and deepened the others. Each voice spoke for the whole.

I was not just a scribe on the periphery of the gathering, but belonged in this constellation that held a promise for more than 1.5 million girls. I was drawing for my colleagues and the clients in the room; and I was drawing to facilitate a cultural turning, the scope of which was beyond what any of us could have logically considered.

Scribes contribute to activating social fields by showing up from the inside out. As we cultivate our practice over time, health matters. Mental clarity matters. The state of the heart matters. If any of these aspects weaken or become stale, how can I stay ready, for myself, for others?

As my hand has matured and drawn increasingly refined lines, so has my inner attunement grown to guide my decisions. Learning to say no to certain work opportunities, for example, takes determination to clarify the yeses. Neither response comes lightly, and both require a clarity of mind I still seek to develop.

I can let my mind slip into habit and draw a picture from memory. That might help me on a day when I’m sleepy or lacking energy. But over the long term, my growth stagnates if I don’t absorb new information and experiment.

3. Accepting “Can’t” as a Belief

Almost every scribe I’ve talked with shares some apprehension when facing a blank wall or tablet at the start of a session. Many of us are introverts by nature and need to summon courage for this quasi-performance art. As we try to follow the cadence of voices and make sense of in the moment — and just as quickly choose what to draw — confidence can diminish, and questioning of oneself escalates: “Am I worthy? Why do they want me here? What on earth am I drawing? Will anyone notice if I crawl under this table and hide?!”

The thought “I can’t . . .” creeps in easily and perennially. And unless we learn how to notice this running tape in our heads and turn it off in favor of another thought, it’s really, really easy to get psyched out and freeze. And it’s a slippery downhill slope.

Years ago a friend said: “Once you decide you can’t, you’ve pretty much guaranteed you won’t.” Which can translate to “I can’t” is a belief.” The “can’t” belief festers in (some of) our psyches, ready to burst forth and take the stage at the slightest challenge. It’s a belief that “I am less than…”, “not smart enough to…”, “inexperienced at.…”, etc. You can fill in the blanks if this has ever been in your mind!

But these thoughts are all residue from past experience that have led to the formation of belief. Something happened, we felt embarrassed, rejected even. Shame might have set in, reinforcing future choice and outlook. For example, as a young girl, I played municipal softball with great enthusiasm. Then at some point when trying out for a basketball squad and — after falling flat on my face in attempting a layup — was the only girl of about 18 who did not make the team. My enthusiasm for sports quickly dwindled. And now, some forty years later, I still believe that I’m inherently unskilled at sports.

Maybe “I can’t” is a kind of stoplight, a temporary pause until we turn the light in our mind green. Maybe every “can’t” is a gift in disguise, a twisted offering to reframe within the present moment to a mindset of “what if?”

4. Opening Up to Ourselves and Others

Scribes need to stay open. It’s as simple as that. If we close down, we miss what is being said, get lost in our own heads, and disconnect from the flow of data and meaning that wants to be mapped. Staying open is a key skill to manage, and the challenge to do so — while listening and drawing — is constant.

There are three key capacities⁵ to cultivate:

• Open Mind — where with Curiosity, we Perceive
• Open Heart — where with Compassion, we Join
• Open Will — where with Courage, we Know and Draw

Yet quite often we encounter “Three Enemies”or voices that block the path:

• Judgment restricts the Open Mind
• Cynicism restricts the Open Heart
• Fear restricts the Open Will

Sometimes these voices are sticky and won’t go away. But shutting down is not an option when my back is to ten or a thousand people waiting for a picture to unfold. Shutting down is also not an option when you’re a professional coach trying to offer a coachee safety, or a chef who wants to combine just the right ingredients for a tasty seasonal stew. The option to avoid a situation that might feel dangerous, or open into it, inevitably presents a choice-point.

Where developing action-confidence is concerned, what’s important is to stay honest about discomfort, and just keep going, as openly as possible.

For example, once I wanted to stay open-minded, in a room of people with political views opposed to my own, which seemed extremely difficult. The choice was between (1) censoring what I heard and drawing to align with my own values, thus misrepresenting the client’s views, or (2) suspending my own judgment to inquire through their lens, thus opening my curiosity. Deciding that the risks of number 1 were too high, I chose #2.

Another example . . . I was at a wall, poised to listen with an open heart, and found myself deeply troubled by what I was hearing — sex workers sharing their powerful stories of living with structural abuse, advocating for victims’ rights. What was at risk? (1) Getting swallowed by cynicism that the judiciary system could ever change, thinking my work there was futile, or (2) revealing sympathy for the victims and not accurately tracking all parts of the system in play. I chose #2.

And another . . . I had momentarily gone numb on stage, with the pressure of being filmed and projected on a large screen in a conference hall. I had a terrifying fear that my mind would literally stop processing while someone was speaking. I had no open will, and I faced this choice: (1) draw what I did understand, even if it was very little, or (2) don’t draw at all. I chose #1.

In most cases, multiple factors inform the freeing up and movement of energy. What I try to remember is this: By staying open we become a channel for what wants to come through. We scribe to be of service to something that wants to be seen. By overcoming our inner voices we enable that service.

5. Staying Authentic

By acknowledging our limits and tapping into natural talents, we overcome deficits and find inner strength. When first learning to scribe, I was intimidated by colleagues who could draw pictures of people, animals, buildings, and objects from memory. Some people have this innate ability, but I don’t. Really! After one or two years of dedicated journaling, where I wrote words alongside sketches, I realized that my style — my true voice — was going to have to be something different. It would be a mix of what my hand could shape combined with a processing method unique to my brain.

What resulted was an organic approach that represented how I saw and made sense of the world. I stumbled quite a lot in private and in public while figuring this out. And my strength — bringing coherence to the surface — only became clear after many years of awkward and aching experimentation.

This leads to the point of authenticity. When learning to scribe, I emulated others. As part of a team facilitating collaborative workshops, I would literally “wall-copy” to document the work of others, which is an excellent way to learn scribing.⁶ But it required true diligence and time to uncover my own unique gifts and give them shape.

I grew by following curiosity. My view of things shifted with each new vantage point, like walking a route that I normally would drive, or flying above a field of grain I was used to seeing as cereal in a bowl. I settled into my more authentic self as I started to listen to that internal voice, the one that says: “This is true. Yes.” To the impulse in the gut: “Okay, go with it.” To the heat rising through the veins: “This matters.”

We learn by copying. We advance through integration. We master by tapping into our own, authentic source.

6. Taking Risk

Risk is not something I’ve written about publicly in detail. But I have over 40 years’ worth of journals that catalogue my long relationship with this safety-to-danger spectrum. Through writing privately, I’ve come to understand my tollerances and limits. Without going into great detail, there have been numerous personal choices I’ve made that, looking back, seem questionable. This includes: traveling as a woman alone at night in strange cities, spending money on investments that perhaps were out of reach, and not settling down with a family of my own. But none of that matters now, because I am healthy and stable (enough). What matters is that in having taken risk, I’ve learned.

Risk is an inextricable component of developing action-confidence.

To expand on this, let’s take the case of scribing for the live broadcasts of u.lab and where that has led. Colleague Julie Arts defines u.lab as “a platform that blends new tech tools, social change processes, and multi-local community building efforts aims to catalyze and scale societal renewal.” It’s an annual, online-offline course offered through MITx and Presencing Institute that specifically develops vertical literacy, “the capacity to lead transformative change”, to shift awareness and action from the place of one/me/ego to the place of many/us/eco.

As part of the core team that co-created u.lab, my role has included scribing the live sessions that complement volumes of online content and peer-to-peer offline practice. In 2015, we launched the 1st cycle in a record-breaking blizzard, with over 25,000 enrolled and an estimated 10,000 viewers, from 192 countries all around the globe. I was a nervous wreck, flooded with fear.

Yet. YET. The team was intact and caring, providing a solid container. I activated 360° perception and expanded my own field of awareness. I stepped into imaginary footsteps of “I Can”, adjusting my beliefs. I opened my mind to the content, my heart to the field of participation, and my will to the marker. I trusted in my experience and capacity. And I drew.

Here is the first u.lab drawing, and then the most recent. You can see for yourself the evolution.

What’s happening now? Six years later, the world seems like it is both exploding and collapsing inward. Personally, some days I struggle to stay focused enough to write or draw or even talk with friends. Other days I see evidence of collective action-confidence, on behalf the whole field of visual practice, rippling outward, and this brings tremendous joy and fulfillment. To name only a few examples: Thousands of scribes in every region now helping navigate these strange times… Colleagues crafting learning experiences for others to come into the field… Translators making it possible to share thinking across boundaries… An overall scaling of awareness-based action.

Together, with action-confidence, we evolve contexts for creation.

What will be your next steps on your—and our shared—journey?

Visual Sensemaking

If you are interested in exploring scribing as a visual practice and social technology, you might consider the upcoming Visual Sensemaking program, from Dec 1–3, 2021, offered through Presencing Institute.

Visit Kelvy’s website www.kelvybird.com and sign up for her newsletter.

[1] The term “action confidence” was first coined by Eva Pomeroy and Keira Oliver in their research with u.lab Scotland participants (see Pomeroy, E. & Oliver, K. (2021). Action confidence as an indicator of transformative change, Journal of Transformative Education, 19(1), pp. 68–86)

[2] C. Otto Scharmer and Eva Pomeroy, Action-Confidence: Laying Down the Path in Walking. (Field of the Future blog, 2020)

[3] “Containers” is a concept I first learned from William Isaacs. Find more in his book Dialogue and the Art of Thinking Together (New York: Currency, 1999)

[4] I often refer to those engaging with artwork as a “participant-audience” to intentionally help people think about an audience not as passive receivers of an artist’s expression but as active players in the artwork’s creation.

[5] C. Otto Scharmer, Theory U: Leading from the Future as It Emerges (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2009, p. 40–44)

[6] “Wall-copying” was a method of mimicking the handwriting and images from a drawing someone else had done on a dry-erase wall, onto an 8.5 x 11” sheet of paper. “Knowledge workers” would do dozens of these in one three-day DesignShop™, hundreds in a few months.

Developing Action-Confidence: Through the Lens of a Scribe was originally published in Field of the Future Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Containers, energetic holding spaces for possibility, are an essential taproot for any facilitative practice. Without being able to hold ourselves steady in challenging situations, we cannot offer a holding space for others. If we are wanting to work with systems, the capacity to be able to both ground and open up—firm like an early seedpod and delicate like its eventual blossom—will determine the level of complexity we can receive, process, and ultimately support in a room.

To note upfront, this thinking about containers is based on the work of William Isaacs as well as the Circle of Seven, including: Barbara Cecil, Glennifer Gillespie, and Beth Jandernoa. I learned from each of them in the context of deep dialogue and collective intelligence, where what is able to come “through” a group of people depends directly on the strength of their container. And I have applied the notion specifically to scribing, a visual practice that represents ideas while people talk to make sense of possibility.

It Starts Inside

If I’m brutally honest, a not-so-small part of me finds the world a battering place. It’s hard for me to comprehend the level of pain and suffering that exists all over the planet, let alone how to engage with it in a way that is constructive. This includes my own suffering, that of my loved ones, and that of billions of people I don’t personally know.

And, as expressed through my work, another larger part of me sees immense beauty in the world — in nature, in her living creatures, and in humans. I correlate fragility with possibility; every broken heart is an opportunity to love again, every splotch of ink on a wall is a chance to create new meaning out of a new shape, each rainy day offers a walk with bright green moss that comes fully into itself only with the wetness.

I am often challenged to hold myself “in”. Anxieties run rampant in my mind: Will I fit in? Will I seem happy enough for people to want to talk to me? Can I sustain my energy long enough to make it through the end of the day and keep up with my team? I am sensitive, too, and often flood internally with emotion that seems to have nowhere to go.

And, these kinds of concerns fill me too: What can I create that will induce reflection? How can I be a part of positive change? Will we be able to learn as a species and improve our conditions?

Writing this now is a kind of gesture of container expansion. My thinking on the topic has deepened recently, as I’ve struggled to make sense of current conditions. It’s also been a topic included as part of the of the Systems Scribing Lab, which my colleague Jessica Riehl and I have been prototyping over the past year. The work of the lab is to explore the intersection of scribing and systems thinking, and — regarding containers — relates particularly to “systems being”. This is when we start to consider systems not only as cognitive exercises, but as essential matters of the heart, with felt understanding of the interconnectedness of all things. This has possibly never been more needed on the planet than it is now.

Here is a clip I recently put together for the lab, the content of which is also summarized below.

Staying Steady

As visual practitioners, as artists, we aim with care and responsibility to reach people, to expand the boundaries of the assumed known. Any reach requires steadiness, and to ensure a stable core, we rely on support for our essential, creative selves.

Take the example of an apple tree: Weak branches yield little fruit. The
stronger the trunk, the stronger the branch. The stronger the roots, the
stronger the trunk. The richer the soil, the more nourishment for the
roots and the fruit. And so on.

Scribing with an eye toward the orchard and the village beyond — with
an intent to facilitate systems-level seeing — I experience a direct correlation
between the steadiness of one’s being and the range of insight
that visuals can summon.

This works in a reciprocal way, where we are both held in by others to
experience integrity and wholeness, and because of this, we generate
visuals as a holding device for learning within systems.

More attention, stronger tree, healthier orchard. Less attention, the
field goes fallow.

Container Relativity

Our range of attention is ours to define, and the relative properties of
containers give us a choice: stay within the accepted known or expand
to meet a not-yet-named reality.

An old Hindu parable, which I first heard through Peri Chickering, is paraphrased here and further explains the value of perspective in regards to containers:

An aging master grew tired of his apprentice complaining, and
so, one morning, sent him for some salt.
When the apprentice returned, the master instructed the young
man to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and drink it. “How
does it taste?” the master asked. “Bitter!” spit the apprentice.
The master chuckled.
The two walked in silence to a nearby lake, where the master
again asked the young man to put a handful of salt in the water.
“Now drink from the lake. How does it taste?” “Fresh!” remarked
the apprentice. “Do you taste the salt?” asked the master. “No,”
said the young man.
At this, the master sat beside the young man and offered:
“The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of
pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount
of bitterness we taste depends on the container into which we
put the pain.
So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge
your sense of things… Stop being a glass. Become a lake.”

We are both lake-makers and salt, depending on the context. At times,
we are held in by a person or group, and that enables us to show up more
securely. At other times, we expand to help a group in need meet their
challenge. It works both ways. And we expand or contract depending
on the need of the moment.

The Role of Love

The weakness or strength of a container determines the likelihood for detrimental or successful conversation, for harmful or loving relations, for destructive or productive environments, for ill- or well-being.

In a way, just as ice forms from and melts back into a pond, containers provide energetic ground for life and death, for growth and decay. We serve as containers for others, and they for us. The stronger a container, the stronger the trust, the stronger the safety, the more that can be nourished, tended, grown, realized.

Here’s an example. As my grandmother Margaret Bird was aging, at a point when she could only go outside with a walker and physical assistance, we would occasionally lunch at a local diner in New York City. She would ask me things about my life, about school, about my friends, about my studies, and she would marvel at the complexity of the world in which I lived. (This was 1984, so we can only imagine what she would say about our world today!)

What I recall most poignantly is the way she paid attention, seeming to hang on every word, and the way she made me feel safe and loved — loved no matter what I said, no matter what I had to share. I never felt judged. No matter what she thought about the details of my escapades, she listened closely, looked me in the eye, and continued to pursue an understanding of my life.

She provided a container, a space where I could see myself more clearly and grow as direct result of how she was holding me.

In my work as a scribe, I try to reinforce the container for the group. When a group heats up and fractures, the container needs to strengthen, to better support what wants to come to light. I don’t do this by adding a specific line or word to a page, but by enhancing my quality of listening and building the group’s trust in my very being. I turn around, and see the group, feel it, open my heart to the individuals, try to put myself in their seats, find human-to-human compassion, soften, expand.

Sometimes the container in the room is so strong that the scribe might be enveloped in its power. Our ability to “show up” increases because the room is holding us, in a way, as my grandmother held me so well, years ago. In this case, I notice the strength, thank the heaven and earth for the quality of the group, and draw with pure joy.

When my grandmother, somewhat hard of hearing and surely with many of her own personal concerns, was able to show up for me so completely, I was completely able to show up for her too. I could be more vulnerable because I felt safe. She brought out the purest part of me by how gracefully she held me in her own heart.

Love, as a base note, is the ore, and order, of the container.

Containers was originally published in Field of the Future Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This is about a destined encounter of visual practitioners, joining in a field of potential.

“Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase “each other”
doesn’t make any sense.
The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.” —Ruminator

The poem perfectly echoes my own conviction leaving EuViz—the annual, global conference for “scribes”— held at Rungstedgaard in Denmark in July 2018. Over 180 burgeoning social artists gathered in blazing summer heat to explore the bounds of our work. And this we discovered: no going back to sleep.

I was honored to deliver a 3-hour keynote session on generative scribing, and my heart was profoundly moved by what we experienced in the room together. My aim with this post is to share the session beyond the confines of a hotel ballroom, to convey the larger movement that was felt, and to keep us—a social body of practice—awake.

Many stories influence this one; these are the primary three, followed by the presentation, the experience, a sampling of photos, and a magical video encapsulating the whole day.

1. The birthing of an "engagement process": July 2018 with the Presencing Institute.
2. The Visual Practice Workshop that preceded the conference, where we howled at the blood moon from the beach and tried to stay awake for the eclipse. About half of the group stayed on as organizers, crew, and participants of the larger gathering.
3. Other workshops over the past year and half that seeded the field, so that when a container needed activation at the conference, there were over 25 people ready to energetically hold the larger group to help it see itself more clearly and grow.

The Main Presentation

Click here for a gallery of slides.

At this point, to convey the feeling of level four scribing, i played a video by Abby Johnson:

And then continued to describe generative scribing and the role of containers:

Click here for the continued presentation gallery.

Ripley Lin, from Taipei, had been scribing this whole time. Here is her stunning image. (Photo by Visual Facilitators)

The Experience

Here we shifted into the more experimental part of the session, diving into "source" and an exercise with resonance. I read a chapter from my book, everyone drew with black marker into an A3 sheet of cream colored paper. I then referred to Arthur Zajonc's framework of "Focused Attention" and "Open Awareness", rang a bowl three times, and asked everyone to practice attending and opening, in succession.

Participants hung their drawings on a wall of windows, stepped back in silence, absorbed the field of energy the images generated, then returned to small groups to converse about the "after image"—any impressions, feelings, gestures that arose as a result of the absorption.

From there, we began the third part of the session and shifted into a fishbowl dialogue. Participants from five previous workshops initially seeded the center chairs, and the incredibly poised Anna Siegel anchored the circle. People rotated in and out as they felt moved to be part of the unfolding conversation. It lasted about 40 minutes, and could have gone on much longer had we not needed to break for lunch!

Continued gallery….

Oh, and i scribed that final fishbowl—in part to give a demonstration of my "live" work, and also to synthesize the conversation of the conversation, the resonance of the resonance.

Remarkably, i barely remember the content. It was an immersive exchange, and I rely on others now to help recall what was expressed. Reflective highlights from fellow practitioners:

• Scribing as swimming. Not only swimming, but diving. Scribing as dancing. Art surfacing in the scribing (the kiss). Connecting to source and distilling the essence. In Finnish we say “päästä iholle” : get to the skin/ your skin/ someone’s skin. It is something to do with getting close & feeling—both as something emotional & tactile. Something to do with permission & trust. - Raquel Benmergui
• Generative Scribing brings us to a place where we have an opportunity to connect with parts of ourselves and with others like never before. Which explains emotions, feelings, resistance, and shifts. I’m always surprised by what it brings up and welcome it by remembering “let come/let go”. - Heather Martinez
• I felt an energy accumulate in the room and in me. Or resonate. I felt very emotional. So now the question is in my head, that Karolina Iwa expressed: "How do [we] become kung-fu jedis of and open heart & keep it open, being at the same not more protected than a shell-less snail??" - Laura Lagaaij
• Let‘s put the spirit into practice - let’s cross the pond together - Ben Fellis

And notes from the dialogue, tx to Marieke van der Velden:

• 'How far can we go in reflecting what wants to be seen - when clients aren't there yet?'
• 'In case you feel alone, as a scribe, trust that you are NOT. There is a sense of belonging. You are with your clients. And also: you are part of this bigger community.'
• 'Stop chasing. Lean back and trust what happens next. What wants to be seen will unfold.'

A Sampling of Photos

© Orest Tabaka

And last but certainly not least... a video encapsulating the whole day (by the Visual Facilitators team of Christian Rath, Tim Rath, Rico Reutimann, and Joep van der Laan).

It was a magical time. Thank you EuViz! “There is a field…”

AND...... this post would NOT be complete without mentioning the 2 other keynotes, by Martin Haussmann/Karina Antons and David Sibbet, which obviously fed the field. (Full schedule of the conference activities is here.) And and and - a HUGE shout out to the organizers, some of whom worked for years behind the scenes to pull this off: Coordinators Christina Hemmingsen and Mara Callaert; Stream Leads: Bea Broskova, Nicolas Gros, Olivier Pesret, and Sabine Soeder; MCs Karolina Iwa and Anna Siegel; Bookstore by Aušrinė Balkaitytė; Environment +++ by Mona Ebdrup; Branding and marketing by the team of Visuality; Support from the International Forum of Visual Practitioners; and crazy-generous Neuland - keeping us all with markers in hand and surfaces to drawn into.

Resonance at EuViz was originally published in Field of the Future Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

As Otto Scharmer aptly summed it up after the session, we used a drawing “as a meditative surface,” as a specific tool for resonance — like a ringing bell — to “transform our collective attention, and give rise to a new type of collective container,” opening space for presencing and generative flow.

The drawing was about 8×8 feet (2.4×2.4 meters) on paper, made with acrylic, chalk, and permanent inks, crafted mainly during breaks and evenings, alone, in much silence. The main sections of this post that map the making are: walkthrough, context, drawing, black, process, innovation, and literacy. (The original post is on my website, and this is only mildly reformated to match the Medium posting specs…)

WALKTHROUGH… Otto led the walkthrough of the drawing on the group’s final morning together. If you make it through the full ~17 minutes you will hear us each speak to essential parts: 1) Otto the cognitive aspects, the journey we had taken in the room that included key framings and a new process i write out at the end of the post; and 2) at about minute 10.20, my speaking to the inner aspects, the more intuitive or felt components that are suggestive of, but do not specify, meaning. It was hard to articulate, as i was still coming to understand what the drawing offered, not only what i had represented.

CONTEXT… Notes scrawled from the opening evening welcome. For anyone wondering how my “scribe” writing is so tidy, know that the process is a slow one: from listening, to gathering data, to sitting with what is most relevant, to writing on a wall. It starts out as a mess!

Before that opening, though, in a strategy meeting with the Presencing Institute (PI) that took place days before in Berlin, my friend and colleague Manish Srivastava drew the image on the bottom left. It was a midway mapping of a Social Presencing Theater (SPT) process from our smaller group. The details i carried most strongly into the large drawing were the placement of “aspiration” on top, balanced in a vertical axis with “earth” at the bottom. This axis seemed incredibly strong and held many other parts — such as infrastructure, conscious institutions, capacity building, and absencing (to name only some) — in relation. The axis carried through to the end of the sculpting, informing the direction of PI and the gathering.

Before the PI strategy meeting, even, there are other influences: 1) the drawing from a 2018 live broadcast for Transforming Capitalism, where i drew an activated, marginalized labor population as a texture, for lack of a more clear and dignified way to represent it (see image on left, and the area under “Value”, where my hesitancy is clear and the markings not…) 2) a 2017 u.lab session where the overarching theme was connecting with our deepest humanity and creativity, and where i used my hand and red chalk ink to represent reducing fear as a gateway to access the open will.

And one final, unavoidable reference… two painting series i worked on around 2007–09. Beats, on the left, made with only an index finger, channelling the small and intimate quality of a heartbeat. Another series, Pulses, placed masses of brushstrokes over each other, with a center form echoing the emergence or recession of our presence. These, as the images above, show the slow evolution of the “activation orbs”.

THE DRAWING… i’m aware this image suggests multiple interpretations, and that’s intentional, and i will leave it for you to find your own meaning. I’ve been wondering how abstract my scribing can be, especially given my love of abstraction in painting and my deep appreciation for Indigenous arts. How few marks can a scribe make to adequately convey wisdom and story? How many words are really necessary? What is the balance required to engage and communicate with both the rational and emotional aspects of our beings?

Here are some journal notes, trying to document the layout and order of how the parts came to be on the page. First to come out: the channel. Last: “basic bravery.”

Overall, this drawing turned out to be a perfect example of working WITH what does not come out the way we want. Notice the two lines on the lower left, coming down from the main orb… The one on the inside was the first. It felt immediately off, mis-drawn, out of balance with the upper arms. I then drew another line farther out. Neither would have worked well on their own, but together they worked with the leg on the right and held the overall shape in place, like legs of a stool, or like a 3-legged spider.

Also of note are the many smaller drawings to the right, on white, which each person in the room had created during a brief exercise on generative scribing while i read a section of my book on “Source“. These drawings were on the wall the entire time i drew, and you can observe the influence.

THE ROLE OF BLACK… Here’s a picture of the obsidian mentioned in the video, and an inspiration for letting the shiny black ink(covering mistakes) take on a positive role. Earlier in the week, a friend had given me the piece on the right from Mono Basin, CA. Thirty years ago, i had collected the piece on the left from a beach in Lipari. My fascination with this lava glass was brought right into the present moment.

Otto and i and others in PI have for years associated the black backgrounds we choose to use in branding, drawings, websites, etc with a few meanings. These include a reference to social art pioneer Joseph Beuys and his use of blackboards for note-taking, i.e.; in a 1977 installation on “improving the future of society”. When broadcasting from MIT during u.lab and other session, i scribe on old blackboards, too, ones we’ve been fortunate to have available as built-in features of the old classroom.

Black for me also represents space, the universe, places untouchable and large that situate us as specks. I think of the lines from Joni Mitchell’s 1969 song Woodstock: “We are stardust, We are golden, And we got to get ourselves back to the garden” — as relevant today as it was then.

Black has a lot of meaning. Kandinsky had a somewhat negative view: “A totally dead silence… a silence with no possibility, has the inner harmony of black… Outwardly black is the color with least harmony of all, a kind of neutral background against which the minutest shades of other colours stand clearly forward.” He continues about white, just for contrast: “It differs from white in this also, for with white nearly every color is in discord, or even mute altogether.”(1)

I have a more positive view, where black represents vast possibility. It’s introspective, rather than extroverted like yellow. Black to me is old, wise, even seductive in its quiet. White is new, young, innocent, almost drifty, like dandelion spores in a breeze. Black is the most challenging color for me to draw on, and Kandinsky is of course correct: other colors can easily take on a neon quality and appear falsely bright, insincere. It absorbs light and highlights contrast. It is the silent, if visual, dance partner that edges me to take risk.

In this drawing, i was confronted with a double challenge: how to draw into black as a space of possibility and how to work with this shinier black that seemed to have it’s own, new meaning; it had come to represent denial, my wanting to hide my wrong words and mis-drawn lines.

The shiny black started to represent absencing, an “architecture of separation” that “facilitates disconnects from the world around us and the word that is emerging… which results in blaming others and destruction.” (2) I have been experiencing absencing — especially in the US these days — as a fixed state of society, an inescapable, dominant reality plagued by polarized ideologies.

But then, as I was sitting with the two unresolved bottom left lines, Arawana Hayashi led us in an SPT “Stuck” exercise, and my thinking instantly shifted. In SPT, you essentially find one pose to embody the current reality, then sense what wants to move. Then you let a new pose that embodies a future reality slowly form.

I started to make a connection between the pain and discomfort experienced in absencing and the parts of the drawing that i felt had come out forced, lacking care. When Arawana spoke these lines: “Seeing is not about the eyes; it’s about the heart” I realized my own stuck seeing. I was looking at the lines, not yet seeing with my heart into the possibility they formed. I was seeing the shiny black as a problem, not yet as an opportunity. Likewise, i had been considering absencing purely as a destructive force, not yet relating to it’s transformative energy.

PROCESS INNOVATION… In the walkthrough video, when Otto asks: “How generative are we in using the scribing?” he was referring to a prompt by Katrin Kaeufer, who had inquired about how we actually engage with generative scribing. Earlier, during a fishbowl conversation about ecosystem leadership activation, Jayce Pei Yu Lee, Olaf Baldini, and I (top to bottom, at left) each scribed in stationary points that formed a dynamic triangle around the circle. Consistent with my experience of scribing, the drawings served the moment and then personal reflection, as individuals would walk by the posted sheets on a wall outside our main room. But it was more passive than active engagement. And Katrin must have caught this.

The result of her inquiry was that on the final morning, we slowed down to be with the larger, primary drawing; we settled into the image and let it’s energy — harnessed from and through the group — speak back. Hence Otto’s reference to Arthur Zajonc…

During a 2011 PI Masterclass, Arthur had spoken about the contemplative dimensions of presencing, and led us through a “focused attention” and “open awareness” practice while chiming a bell. He had us first focus on the sound and then relax into the silence, while letting go of the sound and the memory of sound to let come an afterimage. You can watch a video here where Arthur leads the practice (minute 29) “If I strike the bell, it’s a call to attention. Then sound the bell again, in memory, hear the onset, and the long quieting of the bell.” This image traces Arthur’s talk with us:

With this inspiration, using the drawing as a bell, Otto guided the following process:

1) He mapped out what i’ll now call “Four Levels of Engagement”:

• Level 1: Capture. The scribe records content, and those in the room get the image as an “after-artifact”.
• Level 2: Observe. People look at a drawing at the end of a workshop, as a final product.
• Level 3: Reflect. Participants have touch points with the drawing midway in their process, to allow for reflection.
• Level 4: Resonate. The social body opens up, shares stillness, absorbs the drawing, and contemplates any “afterimage”.

2) Otto and I each offered an orientation to the drawing, as a guide from observation into reflection.

3) Clustered at the wall, the group then attended to the image at level 4 for a few minutes, in silence, and then proceeded back to the circle.

4) Those in the room let go of the content of the drawing, stayed with the after-image, and tuned into the resonance. Then we payed attention to what was arising in terms of images, feelings, gestures.

5) We engaged in open, generative dialogue, with one comment building on another, and new meaning and understanding coming through the center of our circle.

One comment from someone in the group, shared after we had all parted ways: “The afterimage that came up this morning was how silently the large shadows of consequences (“black on black”) of absencing in our world had trickled through the entry points of the small groups [we’d shared through the session] as gateways into our container. How they had stretched out taking our heart into their grip like with loooong thin black fingers (for me particularly through stories) the pain, the anger, and sadness spreading out, partially into the larger circle later. Then a second image emerged: that of the introductory circle in the morning, where each of us had presented ourselves as an individual facet expression of the cracking global body we’re holding (“gold on gold” on upper right side of picture). It felt as if we’d all been speaking out of one force. Our words seemed to morph into a sparkling bowl of strength and confidence and hope, a sovereign collectiveness building to reside amongst us…”

LITERACY… In closing, and to sum up the relevancy of everything shared thus far, one key point in the main drawing, in the upper right corner, was around the concept of literacy.

The Presencing Institute has been clearly focused on these main areas: creating knowledge, convening innovation labs, and building capacity — all in service of activating social fields and civilizational renewal. The image on the left, the bubbles.

The next image, is Otto’s framing (if i understand it correctly) that layers over the top bubble “creating knowledge” and builds on peace researcher Johan Galtung‘s work. These are seven methods of literacy: “I”, “You”, “It”, “I-You”, “You-It”, “I-It”, and “Field/Presence”.

And our work now? Sharpening that literacy. This includes how we create, how we share, how we reflect, how we sit in silence together, how we are still, and how we come to new sense. As was spoken in this sacred circle, “We reconnect language with experience, as a way to rejoin self with our deeper humanity.”

Ecosystem Activation was originally published in Field of the Future Blog on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

To frame is to convey boundaries, limits, and openings, options. Frames help divide and compartmentalize and also define areas to bridge through relation. The framing of the physical and the framing of our thinking parallel each other, and understanding one can enhance our understanding of the other. Both are needed in visual practice, as scribes organize information in the mind as we organize words and shapes on a page.

the physical

One understanding of a frame is a protective edge of a 2-dimensional form, such as around a window or glasses. Drawn frames can look like boxes or circles that offer visual parameter. The most outer edge of the paper also represents a frame, as do the four walls of a room or lobby that contain a display of completed work.

We frame content to give it contextual coherence. We cluster like-ideas and enclose the grouping with a closed line. But framing is not only about boxing things in, or fitting things together in a way that’s merely convenient.

Framing is ultimately about setting up conditions for choice.

With the proportions and proximity of what we include and exclude, we provide a limit that informs the participant-viewer what is in, what is out. With that information, people can make decisions about how to place themselves relative to the meaning the picture conveys.

If we look back at some examples from 20th century art, we can see a variety of framing devices that each set up the viewer for different interpretive outcome. This is useful as a guide for how we can consider physical framing with increased intentionality.

The photographer Diane Arbus placed her subjects completely central to the picture, almost forcing our focus to one object, regardless of background. The painter Mark Rothko layered large floating rectangles of deep color, somewhat frame-less, as a means for transcendence. And then Sol LeWitt plays with the frame to break it; rather than complete drawings by his own hand, the artist created “rules” that an installer could use as instruction to draw directly onto the interior surface of any physical environment. One example is “All architectural points connected by straight lines.”[i] The wall is the frame, but the frame changes with every installation.

the conceptual

Framing is also about the lenses we use to organize what we hear and intuit.

I might be listening to a conversation on strategy, for example, and notice data that indicates a conservative approach, a leaning to stay close to existing conditions. People could be saying things like: “Why fix something that isn’t broken?” “I don’t know… things seem to be fine from where I sit…” “We don’t have the capacity to produce 100 additional widgets this year…” What do I interpret from that? An inclination towards safety, preservation. In my mind, I call this frame “current reality.”

And, based on experience, I make the attribution that there might also be low aspiration represented in the room. But there is not yet data to confirm that, so in my mind I prepare an empty frame called “vision” to hold a place for that to come in. It’s like setting out a plate for a meal that is still cooking — because the plate is there, the incentive to fill the dish might increase.

I often bring in models as scaffolds for my thinking. And in this case, Robert Fritz’s Creative Tension model comes immediately to mind.[ii] Often drawn with Current Reality on the bottom, Vision on top, and the middle section representing the creative — or structural — tension between the other two. Fritz states that “tension seeks resolution” and that “one major skill of the creative process is forming structures that resolve in favor of the creation.”

With this in mind, I confirm against the initial client calls and planning that there is actually a stated desire somewhere in the system for a creative outcome from this meeting. If so, in my mind I will hold this kind of framing as a backbone for how I listen:

I will choose within my physical frame to allot a certain amount of the board towards Current Reality, a certain amount towards Vision, the space between for any tensions that surface, and probably space for the New Reality as well as the Next Steps required to get there.

I will have additionally, almost unconsciously, made a quick call to up the ante on the group and place the strategy conversation within a larger cultural context, and listen with that attunement as well.

MG Taylor charted a model called Vantage Points[iii], where Strategy exists close to Culture. Upon hearing the initial leaning into safety from the first few comments, I might have also started to assume some cultural stuckness around vision. I might be asking myself, “Does this group even want to entertain a new reality, a new approach or way of being?” Again, I keep this in mind knowing it’s an attribution, and listen closely for confirming or disconfirming data, before drawing too much in any one direction.

So basically would I overlay two models to help me approach the conceptual framing. In my brain it looks like this:

Granted this is a more facilitative approach to scribing, where internal organizing explicitly influences tangible, visible output. And to pull it off takes some genuine sensing into the tolerance / appetite for growth of a group, combined with careful application of a scribe’s tacit knowledge.

The more sessions we scribe, the more models and theories we are exposed to. It’s a huge advantage in our profession, often traveling as we do between a wide variety of programs, to have this learning luxury built into our work. Take advantage of it and increase your knowledge base! Seek out those whose ideas you admire and do whatever you can to be in the same room. Sketch on a napkin if you have to while they talk. Absorb what you can, whenever possible.

Likewise, study the masters of two-dimensional art to further educate yourself about layout and physical framing options. My dearest college professor, Eleanore Mikus, once gave me the following advice: “Travel alone and get lost. You learn so much. Head for the museums and churches in every country, just keep on going.”

Our path, including how we approach it and how we organize it, is ours to define.

(But that is just my framing on the whole thing!)

[i] LeWitt, Sol. Wall Drawing #51, 1970. “LeWitt’s instructions for Wall Drawing 51 dictate, “All architectural points connected by straight lines.” Using the simplest and most technically precise means available, Wall Drawing 51 comprises hundreds of blue lines of varying length stretching from one architectural detail to another, including door frames, columns, fire alarms, etc. Employing a chalk snap line, a contractor’s tool that is used to create straight lines on flat surfaces, this drawing focuses the viewer’s attention on the architecture of the space.” http://massmoca.org/event/walldrawing51/

[ii] Fritz, Robert. The Path of Least Resistance. Chapter: “Tension Seeks Resolution.” Fawcett Books. 1984.

[iii] http://www.mgtaylor.com/mgtaylor/glasbead/vantgpts.htm

We trip and climb our way through the weeds of societal transformation, facing intertwining threads of sorrow and possibility, to ascend.

At a recent u.school ecology gathering outside Berlin — immersed in a community of global stewards of change — i faced an inner struggle to access true “will.” This was not caused by fear, but by despair; making a few inky marks over a small two-day span seemed like a futile effort to positively touch what was going on in the world.

I had landed with a heaviness from the current state of affairs in my country (the US) — mind-boggling inequality, a political circus, the Orlando massacre… among much else — to the morning news of Brexit and again-tumbling markets. A foggy, heated, 94°F landing.

Knowing these u-drawings have their own ripple effect, though, i also felt real responsibility to get out of my own way to open up, to be OF. i KNEW that the only way to honor the moment was to dive in, to scale down, to connect with the most internal and universal place i could access (a place some call Source) and from Source, make sense and draw.

Here’s the tale of the unfolding then… another drawing, another unravel. This will be in part about the actual content of the session, but more so about the drawing process itself, addressing the thinking that is behind/below the visual forms people receive as end results.

Inspiration

Earlier this year, I had seen an exhibit of Aboriginal art at the Museum of Civilization in Quebec City, and was stunned into silence at the communally derived, cultural storytelling. Large expanse of sequential dots, lines, pure earth-pigment hues. Natural. Raw. Direct. Pure.

Wolpa Wanambi painting Marrakulu Miny’tji, 1996

The marks pulsed with the integrity of nature, spirit straight through the application of paint, carefully applied shapes and patterns.

This prompted me to wonder: How abstract can we go with scribing? How far can we push the comprehensive limits of systems, and our own limits, to shift the place of understanding? Can scribing also generate a powerful vibrational field that transcends the literality of the words?

To date, i’ve aimed in my visual practice to synthesize threads of content into one, or a series of, encapsulating pictures. It’s been an integrative approach, to surface and reveal unnamed coherence, wholeness. In a way, it’s been the opposite of storytelling, which i have interpreted as the sharing of known, existing data, in linear flow. But what if scribing could embody, in straightforward terms, the dimensionality of past, present, and future into a larger timelessness, at once?

Arriving in Berlin with such sadness, though, I lacked courage to attempt this kind of breadth. “Why bother?” Hot air sat on my skin like current events crushed at my heart. My gloom held back the spirit to create, reinforcing my bleakness. I genuinely wondered: How can I rise the self, to rise the tone of our times?

I sat in the empty space, the circle arranged and waiting, wall large — larger than I remembered — with black folded paper carried from Boston on the floor, unfolded, map like. And then something shifted…

Mapping

I recalled a night sailing on the ocean with my dad and brother, with charts, but with no land in site — cold, rolling waters, impenetrable indigo through which the boat somehow cut. For a while we had no radio (or so i remember) and no clarity of a possible storm headed our way. But Dad could always navigate in fog (though that night skies were crisp) and he has always trusted his ability to accurately read conditions to guide the boat. Aside from a near-encounter with a fishing vessel, approached more out of curiosity than lost wandering, we were fine.

From my journal on that trip in August 2014:

Tack — alignment of a sailing vessel with respect to the currents below and wind above
On structures and mental models and on trends
we determine the most helpful facilitation TACK…

The role of a scribe is to craft maps that aid with tacking. Google defines the verb “tack” as to “change course by turning a boat’s head into and through the wind.” And further tack, the noun: “a small, sharp, broad-headed nail,” and “a long stitch used to fasten fabrics together temporarily, prior to permanent sewing.” All these meanings make sense!

So with this in mind, by leaving the creases of the paper intact, i sought to evoke a map. This would offer a reference to action (what to DO with information in a drawing) as informed by structure (the mental ordering and representation of things) derived from Source (deeper, natural dimensions like wind and currents.)

Diving

“We are growing together what belongs together,” said Otto (Scharmer) over our first dinner. He continued: “Matt Damon recently quoted Bill Clinton, ‘Turn towards the problem you see; you have to engage.’ This applies especially in moments of disruption. How do we engage with reality? We have to step in…” He proceeded through the arc of Absencing:

“Why is fear such a thriving business? Three unaddressed structural problems: 1) Inequity — drives desperation 2) Lack of democracy paired with dialogue / public debate, and 3) Inspiring purpose and vision in deeper levels of humanity.”

This, the fog we now face. The call for all visual practitioners working in the territory of Presencing? Create visual structures to aid in navigating disconnects. This thinking set in motion the theme of the main drawing, which was scaling down, quieting, going inside…. to scale up, to reorient.

After dinner i finally hung the paper (procrastinating, or waiting for what felt right, all day…) realizing it had to be fixed from above, trailing down, free at the bottom to crinkle in a breeze. The sober, looming verticality draped as an unintentional ode to Mikus, Martin, Rothko, and even the Holocaust Memorial, tombstones, and death. And, with this, genuine ending and beginning. It was not an arbitrary choice of material or hanging. It was the first gesture of the drawing itself.

Another initial gesture, choosing to extract and highlight the tree from the final December 2015 u.lab image. Each drawing ends with a lead into the next…

Headlines from the following Saturday morning’s session, linking back to that previous picture:

“What is our plow? Cultivating the quality of relationship in the social field. Without this, nothing significant can be accomplished… We turn the camera, the mirror, back on planet self, including our relationships, and back on planet earth… u.school is an aspiration, a “flip”, and activation of connection of seeds…” — OS

More time together, more insights from the group. A sampling of themes (in no order):

• Compassion “Nurture the great potential.”
• Structure “Bottom up…”
• Legacy “To transcend, connect internal journey to external work.”
• Place “How do i step in?”
• Impact “The impact is in the black space between the stars — in the space we cannot see.”
• Truth “Which are the hard truths that need to be said?”
• Despair “As if the sky is falling down…”
• Self “Who am i, truly, and what do i want to grow into that is unique?”
• Intergenerations “We become bigger together.”
• Ecology “What are supportive infrastructures to grow?”
• Seeing “Current reality from a different perspective…”

As the session continued, in gaps and from my notes, I fleshed things out from the earlier starting point of the rough tree and iceberg. I drew very little — almost nothing — live, while people were talking. At this point it was clarifying that the “more known” was on the left panel, the “less known” was in the center, and the “unknown” on the right panel. “Social field” on the bottom. The “call” in the middle. “Facing reality” on top.

Sunday morning we were guided in an awareness practice by Arawana Hayashi, set up with a quote from Gaylon Ferguson’s book Natural Bravery: “Here sacredness is another word for the good quality of our experience.” Arawana continued, “Seeing the goodness…. Every person wants a good life. Every person aspires…”

And with that, ascension seeded.

Our work, in the midst of it all, the “activation of the intelligence of the heart, in service of social change” and awakening, strengthening the trunk, enlivening the increasingly vibrant eco-system. “The gold of knowing is already in the soil and takes listening… Practice the listening to mine the gold of what we have, to make it more accessible.” — OS

Additional gems that did not make it into the wall but seem too good not to note:

• “Are we showing up for what we need to show up for, and how do we know?”
• “How do we thicken our narrative? Start bringing in stories from the edges.”
• “The minimal organizing structure is not yet clear.”
• “The absence of structure is still a decision about structure.”
• (As bells chimed in the distance) “So the fire can come in and it can come in with care.”
• “We can trust the heart to set the priorities.”
• “Look close in and expand outwards.”
• “We are what we measure. We are what we attend to.”
• “Help people bring about real change by making an interior journey towards a new understanding of who they are in this world.”
• And below, notes of a shared physical sculpture representing taking in, communicating out, and receiving back — a sort of breathing through the lungs/circulatory system. (This made it’s way to the far upper right of the drawing, the very final gesture.)

Overarching themes: turning the mirror back, the readiness for a stronger trunk (enabling conditions), the activation of the intelligence of the human heart, the difficulty of inversion of identity as we come to find a more current, appropriate form for ourselves, organizations, larger institutions, and even governments.

Random scribble to self: To not draw — to reserve the hand and the visuals — encourages group listening. (Less reliance on the scribe capturing everything…)

Letting Go

Once we had ended, i quickly pulled the paper off the walls, back to the floor, and folded them carefully, deciding each part needed to go home to a different region. The body, dispersed: left section to China, center to Brazil, and right section to Scotland. The blank? To Cambridge MA, for the next round. There is great relief in the removal of images and resetting of an environment — a staging for what’s to come — a cleansing of the palette.

Dream state: (Voice to text into phone in the dark) Monday morning 4:30 AM, in bed, thick, after the heated flow-through of past two days. I cannot sleep. I think this is a consequence of being plugged into the social field, the energy of this dynamic place and the people with whom I’ve shared the past three days. Tapping in to extract, I am swollen. There is a part of me that cannot deeply rest, which comes from a hesitancy of unplugging? Of course rest is required. I can no longer find order in my mind…

I woke. The team reflected. I made it home, wondering along the way (over three movies) about the non-necessity of this exhaustion. There has to be another way. But for now, this is as far as i have gotten on the “way”. Balance is faintly on the horizon, and elusive.

Generative Scribing

More than a mapping of the drawing itself, and more than the context that led up to the map, I am actually compelled to speak to generative scribing — scribing of and for the social body. My experience of this kind of work, where we operate from Source, is that it’s a process of heart-sensing into. Into.

It’s not circling, hovering over or about. It’s not counting the minutes until the person stops speaking and we can go home. It’s not staying comfortable with me-them. It’s not not caring.

It IS piercing through to something essential. Seeing clearly without fear of result or consequence of what comes forward. It requires trust in the complete blankness of things. It only can happen when the social body (a handful or thousands of people and energies) are committed to being together in place and time — and across place and time — to a joining.

It’s groping in the dark to find threads of hope, and coming back to the land of sense to get that out and up on a wall for others to witness.

It’s believing that any witness of the drawing is an active participant in the creation of the drawing. There is no “other”. There is a hand that holds a marker that arcs forward from an extended arm of an upright, physical body acting purely on behalf of the whole. I draw because we are.

It’s drawing to ease the challenge of societal inversion, in service of human awakening. As we fall, we rise. As we cascade, we ascend.

Artists reflect their times through lenses that influence insight and action, in themselves and in others. In the face of truly great art, we find our spirits lifted, our views challenged, and sometimes our very foundation of understanding tectonically shifted. Art moves us, and our species evolves with this kind of internal stirring.

As visual practitioners, as artists, we aim with care and responsibility to reach people, to expand the boundaries of the assumed known. Any reach requires steadiness, and to ensure a stable core, we rely on support for our essential, creative selves.

Take the example of an apple tree: Weak branches yield little fruit. The stronger the trunk, the stronger the branch. The stronger the roots, the stronger the trunk. The richer the soil, the more nourishment for the roots and the fruit. And so on.

Scribing with an eye towards the orchard and the village beyond–with an intent to facilitate systems-level seeing–I experience a direct correlation between the steadiness of one’s being and the range of insight that visuals can summon.

This works in a reciprocal way, where we are both held in by others to experience integrity and wholeness, and because of this, we generate visuals as a holding device for learning within systems.

This kind of support is what i’ll refer to as “containers”, which we can consciously form by considering how we hold ourselves, how we help others energetically through the use of images, and also how we let ourselves be held.

More attention, stronger tree, healthier orchard. Less attention, the field goes fallow.

To inhabit this kind of reciprocal zone of tending / flourishing / nourishing, I’ll try to map out my thinking in three main parts:

1. An explanation of containers,
2. Thoughts on quality of presence and inner cultivation
3. Two specific examples of practice where container intentionality directly influenced a scale of reach for the drawings and the content they carried.

Containers

As my grandmother was aging, at a point when she could really only go outside with a walker and physical assistance, I recall visits where we would lunch at a local NYC diner. She would ask me things about my life, about school, about my friends, about my studies, and she would marvel at the complexity of the world in which I lived. (This was 1984, so we can only imagine what she would say about our world today!)

What I recall most poignantly is the way she would pay attention, seeming to hang on every word, and the way she made me feel safe, and loved, loved no matter what I would say, no matter what I had to share. I never felt judged. No matter what she thought about the details of my escapades, she would listen closely, look me in the eye, and continue to pursue an understanding of my life.

She provided a container, a space where I could see myself more clearly and grow as direct result of how she was holding me.

When my grandmother, somewhat hard of hearing and surely with many of her own personal concerns, was completely able to show up for me, I was completely able to show up for her. I could be more vulnerable, because I felt safe. She brought out the purest part of me by how gracefully she held me in her own heart.

Drawing with Container Awareness

There exist depths, or phases, to containers that directly correlate with attention.

By listening with the following levels in mind, we can participate in a shift of awareness and possibility. Otto Scharmer [i] has described “Four Levels of Listening” that I apply here to the visual practice of scribing.

At Level One, quoting Otto, we “Download and listen to reconfirm what we already know. What we see is limited to our own projections, reflecting the past.”

In scribing, we draw what we hear, and it’s literal. Someone says “bird” and we draw a bird. I also refer to this as “object-oriented” scribing, where a focus on individual, named parts is the primary approach.

Level Two represents “Factual Listening. We notice difference, and we notice disconfirming data.”

We see what is being spoken from a broader vantage point, and still draw what we hear, but our lens expands to make sense of what is being spoken within a context, which we can map. “The bird is flying, then it reaches the coast and joins a flock,” and we enter the domain of storytelling.

Level Three shifts to “Empathic Listening, seeing the situation through the eyes of another, leading to emotional connection. Listening begins to happen from the Field, or from the other person with whom you are connecting.”

This is where containers start to really activate, where our own heart comes online as we step into the shoes of another–like my grandmother opened space to witness and feel out my shoes. We start to care, genuinely care, and we shift. What comes through us shifts. Our drawing shifts. (How can it not?!)

We realize the story in the room is coming from a cultural frame of reference beyond the room; the facts coming out have causal underpinning. No bird, no story, exists as an island. Something came before the lone bird flying, and something will come after. To get at the structural dynamic, we must activate our attunement to the negative space, what is going on between the notes or objects, the subtler, quieter envelope within which the parts form a whole. We shift from noticing moments in time to sensing movements over time. As we inquire, we start to inhabit the story and make sense of it with the company.

And Level Four, Generative Listening, “requires us to connect with a capacity to let go and let come, to connect with an emerging future possibility that helps us to connect more fully with who we are and who we want to be.”

This can be said also for Level Four scribing; we sense into and help surface the highest potentiality for the systems we serve. To do this requires a sensitivity with the energy of what is wanting to come through, an energy or vibe that has started to become tangible in Level Three. What is drawn is secondary to meeting the tone accurately and crafting gestures that evoke essential meaning.

I find here that time slows, the air quiets, and a kind of creative rupture takes place in the midst of sublime stillness, where something very fine and as-yet-unnamable is coming alive, and we, as scribes, witness it; in a way we are midwives facilitating, through our being and our hands, an emergence of some communal shift and knowing.

This could be described as Flow, or the Zone, and is rare. It takes a well-tended container–at tiers of the self, room and system–to reach this place, whether it be between two people or 70,000, in a window of an hour or decade. Numbers don’t even really matter.

What does matter is the qualitative listening behind the act of drawing, the listening that comes online by orienting within the context of a social body, with a core intent to join an invisible place and make manifest that which wants to be seen and witnessed.

Waking to Container Relativity

Our range of attention is ours to define, and the relative properties of containers give us choice: stay within the accepted known or expand to meet a not-yet-named-reality.

An old Hindu parable, first heard in a year-long program called Leadership for Collective Intelligence[ii] and paraphrased here, further explains the value of perspective in regards to holding capacity:

An aging master grew tired of his apprentice complaining, and so, one morning, sent him for some salt.

When the apprentice returned, the master instructed the young man to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and drink it. “How does it taste?” the master asked. “Bitter!” spit the apprentice. The master chuckled.

The two walked in silence to a nearby lake, where the master again asked the young man to put a handful of salt in the water.

“Now drink from the lake. How does it taste?” “Fresh!” remarked the apprentice. “Do you taste the salt?” asked the master. “No,” said the young man.

At this, the master sat beside the young man and offered:

“The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container into which we put the pain.

So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things… Stop being a glass. Become a lake.”

We are both lake-makers and salt, depending on the context. At times, we are held in by a person or group, and that enables us to show up more securely. At other times, we expand to help a group in need meet their challenge. It works both ways. And we expand or contract depending on the need of the moment.

Inner Cultivation

Towards forming these types of enlarging holding spaces for others, and before even making a mark on any wall, we must first learn to cultivate a container for ourselves, opening our stance, to stay clear for what wants to ‘move through.’

We start by locating our best self–the self that accepts, that chooses possibility over fear–the self that welcomes the new, and actually carves a path for it. In orienting with this self, we serve as a microcosm of reorientation for every part of a system that our drawings might touch.

This can be a conscious, enlightened, spiritual choice. It’s also simply a matter of relaxing into the fact that–through every gesture, every word, every silence even–we exist in a cascading ripple of touch. Our presence allows us to show up for others, joining individuals and groups precisely where they are in their process, poised in a receptive and steadying way.

A rigid stance blocks, separates, reinforces a dualistic mentality: you|them; you|content; imagined you|true you — the “you” with the most to actually offer any given situation. As we steel up we stand guarded, sectioned off. As we soften, we are inevitably moved. Moved, additional senses come online. Attunement amplifies. Range increases. Listening cascades down those Four Levels.

In this place we meet a “knowing” beyond literal understanding of words, concepts, and impressions. An intuitive muscle comes online, and it’s an absorbent place, where–because of our open stance–we can facilitate a group from monologic to dialogic interaction.

The range of our attention relates to that which is taken in, received, and then that which is turned outward, revealed, through the hand. It’s a mutual relation; the more open the scribe, the more received. The more received, the more revealed.

We are reflective aids and, as such, our attention to personal containers helps stabilize that of the room and systems we address. If the room feels rattled and we collapse into that, we echo rattledness. Yet if we are able to stabilize internally, we’re more likely to reveal cohesion.

Draw with crystal clear intention. To make a mark before a mark wants to be made risks destabilizing the container through misrepresentation or by being out-of-sync with the true tone of the room.

Scribing is a participatory art. There are consequences to over-stacking, to overdrawing — that the image indulges the artist’s needs to express and shifts away from the marks actually called for by the container.

Examples of Practice

To land these concepts in very real application, I can speak to two engagements that each fully tested the limits of my practice. The data might sound extreme; I include it as an objective reference point in regards to the tides of container-building and scale. The stories evolved between 2013–2015 and continue as this book goes to print.

u.lab

One example is of a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) called “u.lab: Transforming Business, Society, and Self” offered jointly through Edx and the Presencing Institute. The gist of u.lab is that, after seven years of ramp up with experiments in online broadcasts and community-building, our team live-streamed eight times in 2015, reaching 70,000 registered participants from 185 countries, a social body made of individuals, small teams, and over 500 self-organized hubs alike.

I am such a shy person, and the notion of thousands of people watching my back made me want to crawl in a hole until the next ice age was over. To prepare, I wore soothing blackboard-matching grey, extracted chalk ink from pens to paint large-arching arrows, imagined myself one trunk in the orchard, tuned into the notion of water–extending the lake metaphor–and drew. My approach over the year, across dozens of images generated live and staged across multiple web platforms, shifted from a logical representation of frameworks to a heated extraction of some intuited field essence, which seemed most appropriate to the container that had matured globally over time.

It would have been easy to consider the u.lab “we” as a body of “users” rather than as an alive eco-system, since my voice-to-voice or email communication had only been with ~.003% of the participants, and it was hard to tune into the reality of those I might never know. But without attentional inclusion, I would reinforce the very pattern of societal disconnect we were seeking to address and dissolve. The stance I chose to occupy, then, was one of unbounded connection, where rather than an “out there” viewership, I was surrounded by a sea of individuals helping to hold me to the wall. I was contained by the very eco-system for which I drew.

Figure X: One scribe, 60,000 dots in the container. (Therefore, not to scale)

A screenshot taken by a participant of U.Lab during the live broadcast, showing active use of the drawing for real-time sense-making of course content

Executive Education

The other practical example of container application is of a custom leadership program offered through MIT’s Executive Education (of the Sloan School of Management.) MIT, with a sequential academic design approach, offered an experiment in endurance and sense-making over long blocks of time and numerous sessions.

A highly skilled executive education team, working closely with top-level executives, customized a transformational program for senior managers from a global organization with 23,000 employees. There have been five cohorts to date–I worked with the last three–each going through a 9-month program that included an 8-day section of intensive classes, followed by a few months of applied project work, concluding with another 8-day section.

Most of the 8-day sections involved 4–6 hours of faculty presentation per day, with each section leading to ~45 total hours of scribing onto ~100+ linear feet of dry-erase walls and sometimes extra boards. This yielded 118 unique images over the 3 full cycles, including topics on: Systems Thinking, Leadership and Organizational Change, Strategy, Finance and Macro-Economics, and Operations–most of which I did not initially know well or at all.

What was unique here was not the volume of time or images, but was the necessary weaving of content over the educational arc. One approach could have been “one topic, one picture”. The more expansive value, though, was in the wrapping of heavily-related drawings around the group, stitched nest-like, providing a solid visual container for extended cultural learning.

A classroom at MIT, where drawings offered visual and content containment

As initially indicated, the extension of new experience directly relates to the depth and steadiness of the soil in which it grows.

Visual practice, as a key “seeing” and anchoring device within the containers we support, serves a foundational role in our understanding of, and the evolution of, social fields. Thus, a visual practitioner’s grasp of the correlation–between our role as scribes and the fields in which we draw–cannot be underrated; as artists participating in societal transformation, we are implicate [v] in both making apparent, and the expansion of, discovery.

Our times are riddled with disconnects, ideological entrenchment, crisis, fear. It is a time then, with open eyes[iii], to see. It is a time to expand, to scale, to facilitate societal sight. All inner preparation–and all holding spaces we reinforce–enable the very act of making that meets this call.

Each crooked nook, fault line, gorgeous arc, blotch of color, textured application in our drawing offers some structural integrity and some sense.

As artists, as visual practitioners of any kind, it is up to us to stretch “larger than the largest disturbance in the room”[iv]

Increasing our ability to embrace current discomfort, and simultaneously represent the possible, we participate in the engagement and ushering in of tentative, emergent, realities.

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[i] Otto Scharmer, Levels of Listening, as found in Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges, first edition, Society for Organizational Learning, 2007 and a video clip from u.lab here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLfXpRkVZaI

[ii] The Hindu Story and much of my understanding of containers comes from working with Dialogos (www.dialogos.com) and the Circle of Seven (www.ashlandinstitute.org)

[iii] Months after the official Bauhaus closing, Josef Albers was invited to teach at the newly-formed Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina. Despite knowing little English, he knew enough words to convey his purpose for teaching: “To open eyes.” Leap Before You Look: Black Mountain College, 1933–1957, Exhibit at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston MA, Oct 2015 — Jan 2016.

[iv] William Isaacs

[v] Here lies a subtle reference, honoring physicist David Bohm’s theory of the “Implicate Order” and undivided wholeness. Any interested reader can start to lean more via: http://www.david-bohm.net/

Steady, to Scale was originally published in Student Voices on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.