Introducing Ubele to the Art of Graphic Harvesting

In mid-April Mindful Maps spent a day with friends of The Ubele Initiative introducing them to the art of Graphic Harvesting as a creative process for capturing dialogue, experience and conversation.

We ran this small workshop at the wonderful Spring Project in Vauxhall. The Ubele Initiative is a new project working inter-generationally to secure the future of the African and Caribbean community, primarily in the UK.

The focus was not on becoming a professional visual facilitator, but on how anyone can use graphic harvesting to support their practice and thinking. One participant said she would use the techniques to facilitate workshops (especially with intellectually disabled individuals) and when note taking during research field work. Another person said he would use Graphic Harvesting to document the ideas shared in his various projects, to develop skills and a style. As well as learning practical skills, we did some creative exercises relating to observation, being present and mindfulness (indoors and out in the real world). As one of the participants said:

“I really appreciated the clearing of the mind exercises and the importance placed on being open fluid and present. The outside exercise was very useful too. I find it hard to find anything I did not find valuable.” - Drew

Mindful Maps has been supporting the project and contributing to it’s vision by documenting critical friends meetings and events such as the recent Sisters in Conversation workshop at The Women’s Resource Centre.

Communicating Biodiversity Creatively

In November 2010 I went on a workshop organised by Wildwise about communicating biodiversity creatively. The workshop was facilitated by an artist who has a lot of experience working in nature with children and community groups.

We spent the first half of the day outdoors at the beautiful Sharpham Trust learning about different ways groups can experience biodiversity. This included an exercise which involved collecting natural objects and making a map or message communicating something you’d like to say to a particular animal, which I think in this case were mice.

We then went back indoors for the remainder of the day to create an image about what we’d experienced in a medium of our choice. The slightly blurry image below shows a fabric painting of a bird, a seed head and a hand.

Personal learnings from the day included reminders that not all maps have to be made on paper, and that many subjects have to be experienced in context before they can be communicated. Our verbal language does not stretch far enough to fully communicate something as complex as our relationship with nature, but art and lived experience can go some of the distance towards helping us define and feel what these things mean to us.


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