As virtual working becomes increasingly prevalent, our global fellows are at the forefront of visual facilitation techniques critical to remote learning and collaboration. Over 20 Global Fellows from across the globe gathered for a Visual Collaboration workshop on November 10th led by our partners at Bigger Picture in Denmark using their groundbreaking approach called the Five Building Blocks of Visual Collaboration.

Visual collaboration is a powerful toolkit for improving meetings, projects, and processes. In her remarks during the workshop, Lisa Dush, the Associate Professor at DePaul university said, “It’s amazing to see it working!”

In line with the Goldin Institute grassroots leadership curriculum hosted on the GATHER platform, the visual collaboration workshop helped participants to come up with Visual Languages to bring clarity and momentum to projects they care about. It also allowed Fellows to zoom in and out from individual to collective actions in an engaging and productive fashion.

Fellows went through a fast paced and interactive workshop on Visual Thinking processes and wrestled together with how to visualize their processes to maximize clarity in a collaborative environment. It was so impressive to see just how participatory the workshop was through zoom and mural.

As we work to expand the GATHER curriculum base, the Global Alumni network will continue to learn, practice and adapt the Visual Collaboration toolkit to their grassroots initiatives. It was an honor to host the breakout sessions with fellow Visual Thinking team leaders including Jacquelyn Moore, Ana Źnidarec Čučković, Robin Cline, and Lissette Mateus Roa.  This global dream team had already completed the full certificate training on Visual Collaboration with Bigger Picture. Based on the positive feedback and interest from the Alumni Network, this team will continue to provide technical support to our peers in the Alumni Network as they incorporate visual thinking in aspects of their grassroots work.

A very special thank you to Ole Qvist-Sørensen and the team at Bigger Picture for designing and hosting this informative and interactive workshop!