Sketchy

This drawing exercise is great for highlighting our diversity and how we have different perspectives. It helps unlock some of our unconscious assumptions and can move a group towards valuing difference by acknowledging what each person’s unique point of view can bring.

It’s fairly simple to do and doesn’t require more than 3 A4 pages of (recycled and recyclable) paper and a pen for each participant. In advance think of 3 words - It’s great to choose words you use in your community group already, so you know you all have an understanding of that word. This tool helps us to see that people can have a diverse understanding of the same word.

Example words: volunteering, community, climate action, collaboration, meeting, nature…

Group Size: 4-20+

Time frame: 30-60mins

• Step 1

  Choose one of your words. Let people know you will be asking them to draw the word. Ask people to take 1 minute to themself to relate to and reflect on what the word "looks like" for them in their mind's eye.

• Step 2

  Ask participants to first write the word on the top of the paper and then draw their understanding of the word, how they “see” it.

  Online Instructions: Use a virtual whiteboard of your choice. You could ask participants to take a picture of their drawing then upload it to your preferred platform so they are able to view each other’s drawings.

• Step 3

  Ask everyone to put their drawings on the wall next to each other in a cluster (if meeting in person you can prepare an area on the wall in advance, labelled with the word. If online ask people to upload and share their image) - wait until everyone has finished.

• Step 4

  Repeat Steps 1-3 for the remaining 2 words.
  

• Step 5

  Once all the drawings are up, ask people to take 2 minutes to view all of the drawings. Some drawings in the cluster will have similarities and others might be very different.

  What does this show us?

  That we all have a variety of understanding and experiences of things based on our backgrounds.

• Step 6

  Reflection

  Ask the group to consider following questions:

  What are the similarities you see?

  What are the differences you see?

  What has surprised you?

• Step 7

  Group Share

  Ask people to share any response to the reflection questions, or anything they found valuable from this exercise.

Created by Amity. Inspired by Hyper Island

For more tools and support with your volunteering work you can join the In Our Nature Learning Hub. The In Our Nature Learning Hub is an invitation to slow down, spend some time with yourself, and get a fresh perspective so that you can bring your best to your community and our planet. The Learning Hub is completely free for you to access at any point in your community (climate) volunteering journey and is open for everyone.