Maritzburg Varsity 18-09-2007: How Do We Stop HIV/AIDS in a Mine?

Maritzburg Varsity 18-09-2007: How Do We Stop HIV/AIDS in a Mine?, originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

Once the groups had grappled with the problem of what exactly makes something 'industrial theatre', I set up another topic.

I asked the groups to shuffle, and chat about this question: 'How do we stop HIV/AIDS in a mine?'

I asked the group to imagine they were a writer in a meeting with a producer. The producer told them that the job they had to come up with a solution for was this...

A particular mine is losing 30 employees per month to AIDS deaths. This is specifically linked to the presence of a compound of prostitutes on the perimeter of the mine. These prostitutes offer their services without condoms.

The brief is a real-world example of a brief I've been faced with.

The World Cafe discussions were really energizing for the groups. They were grappling with something that writers in my position have to solve in a day or so. And they were pretty deft in their thinking.

I also had a bag of goodies that my buddy Graham at Blue Moon provided for me. But the highlight of the day came when one of the students asked, 'If I were interested in DOING industrial theatre, in BECOMING a practitioner, what would I DO? How would I GO ABOUT IT???'

I had mentioned before that companies like Blue Moon are NOT industrial theatre companies anymore. Sure, they DO industrial theatre, but only as part of a MUCH bigger plan. The buzzword phrase is 'integrated communication'. But I'm doing a lot of intensive work with Blue Moon, and to them, it's not a buzzword. It's real.

So the highlight came when I pulled out a string of 'tickets' to stardom in the world of integrated communications...

The tickets were actually Graham's business cards. They're printed in the form of actual tickets. And they come in a perforated tear-off strip.

It was a feeding frenzy. I did mention that Graham MIGHT consider one or two of them for future internships. And I certainly did mention that Graham didn't want to get flooded with calls. Even so, the response was amazing.

So... uh... sorry, Graham... you're gonna get a bunch of calls, I think. Hehehehehehehehe.

As usual, I made this painting using ArtRage 2.5 on my Toshiba Tecra M4. Thanks to Veronica and Janet for arranging my flight, my accommodation, and my stipend. Huge appreciation! Thanks guys. And thanks to Graham at Blue Moon for his graft in getting a bag of goodies together for me.

Maritzburg Varsity 18-09-2007: What is Industrial Theatre?

Maritzburg Varsity 18-09-2007: What is Industrial Theatre, originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

Today I ran a workshop at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg campus. I had around 16 drama students, and two lecturers in the room.

I was there to talk about industrial theatre.

We kept things pretty informal, playing Augusto Boal's Forum Theatre warmup games, with me relating what I was doing to how I approach industrial theatre.

I broke the group into foursomes, and we ran a World Cafe discussion around the question, 'What IS industrial theatre?'

When the groups reported back, I did a quick visual facilitation. I noted that visual facilitation is in itself a form of industrial theatre, in that it's a performance aimed at educating.

This picture won't mean a hell of a lot to an outsider. Its primary purpose is to act as an anchor for the people in the workshop. Pictures allow people to access the right side of their brains for learning. So the ideas that came out of the World Cafe session become easy to recall and think about.

As usual, I made this painting using ArtRage 2.5 on my Toshiba Tecra M4. Thanks to Veronica and Janet for arranging my flight, my accommodation, and my stipend. Huge appreciation! Thanks guys.

Clarendon Condensed -- By Hand -- By Roy -- STENCIL

Clarendon Condensed -- By Hand -- By Roy -- STENCIL, originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

I made this 'by hand' stencil for use in ArtRage during my graphic facilitations.

It's basically a hand-drawn version of Clarendon Condensed, with one or two flourishes from me, and quite a lot of (to my mind) delightful mess.

Please feel free to use it for your own purposes. You'll notice that I've duplicated every letter, and I've given you both upper and lower case. And most of the other bits and pieces.

The two pangrams I found on Wikipedia. A pangram is a sentence that contains all of the letters of a particular language.

The way to use the stencil in ArtRage is to save it as a PNG file in your stencils folder. When you open your stencils menu, you'll see it there under the 'stencils' tab. You just size and drag the stencil where you want it. And Bob's your uncle.

I'm sure you can do stuff with this font in Photoshop too.

And if you have a font creation program, please lemme know, and tell me what other characters you need to complete the set. I'll gladly paint them up for you.

I made this stencil by typing out the pangrams in CorelDraw 10, setting up the way I wanted things to look, then exporting as a jpeg. I imported the jpeg into ArtRage 2.5, and spent around four hours mucking around with outlining, making stencils, painting more, making a stencil of the stencil, erasing some, then making the final stencil. I did this all on my Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet pc.

World Cafe Etiquette

Cafe Etiquette, originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

If you're at all familiar with the participative facilitation style known as 'World Cafe', this pic might be useful to you if you run sessions.

Please feel free to spread it around.

I painted it late late late last night for Louise van Rhyn to use in today's workshop. She ran a World Cafe session, and I did Visual Facilitation of everything, recording the processes and outcomes in real time as the day progressed.

It's my interpretation of one of the diagrams World Cafe uses. Their one is a little on the bald side, so I decided to busy it up, and fit it into the look and feel of the type of stuff I was producing today.

We printed out loads of copies for the delegates. But we ended up just showing it to them on Louise's projector.

My work-in-progress was shown on the rear wall of the room all day. And that was really interesting. People were really having fun with both the World Cafe part of the gig AND my presence as a live artist.

Unfortunately, I'm not allowed to divulge the name or details of the client, as the session was confidential. But I may be able to erase the details so I can show you the pics. We'll see.

Right now, I'm just emailing all the pics to the client so she can distribute them to all of the people who were present today. And then it's off to sleep I go.

This painting was made on my Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet pc, shuttling between CorelDraw 10, ArtRage 2.5, and Photoshop CS2.

Welcome to the Leadership Cafe

Welcome to the Leadership Cafe, originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

I'm doing a visual facilitation tomorrow, and this is one of the prep pics I've just made for the event.

It's going to be popped onto the front doors of the venue, so that participants get a sense of what's required of them.

I'll be doing a load of pics for the event itself, live, with a projector hooked up to my tablet pc so that delegates can turn around and look at what I'm up to.

This painting was made in ArtRage 2.5, and finished in Photoshop CS2, on my Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet pc.

Roy's Visual Facilitation -- a one-sheet of what's on offer

Roy's Visual Facilitation -- a one-sheet of what's on offer, originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

Having recently come across the field of 'visual facilitation', I'm striding headlong into this as a way of earning my living.

This is a quick read for people to get a sense of what it is I do. It's little more than a skim overview. But hopefully it arouses some curiosity.

From the top, the interventions I've used are:

o John Tschohl (www.johntschohl.com).

o Benjamin Zander (www.benjaminzander.com). He wrote to me and said...

I've been so busy [...] that i haven't written to acknowledge
your beautiful drawing/painting. It captured the spirit (and quite a
lot of the content) of the event and I will treasure it. In fact, it
is on my website.

Thanks so much for pouring your heart (and hand) into The Art of
Possibility. What a blast we had that day!

Warmest greetings

'till the next time we meet in SA

Ben

o Then the speaking buffalo is John Tschohl again.

o With Paul Macleish from Achieve Leadership representing the Disney Insitute in the bottom left corner (www.achieveleadership.net).

o And Mickey Mouse in STEAMBOAT WILLIE taking the bottom right corner by storm.

o Below the box is me, in a self-portrait.

I've already got three potential clients coming up soon, and I'm looking forward to this tremendously.

This sheet is designed to print clearly as an A4. Which means that you'll probably need to view it big to be able to make any kind of sense out of it.

This pic was made using paintings done in ArtRage on my Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet pc. I hacked things together using Photoshop CS2, CorelDraw 10, ArtRage 2.5, and my HP F380 Scanner/Printer.

Tags: visual facilitation, graphic facilitation, visual practitioner, graphic recording, illustration, art, drawing, painting, artrage, royblumenthal, roy blumenthal, blumenthal, coffeeshopschmuck, creativity, tabletpc, tablet pc

2007-09-04 Apologies -- a Monday Night at AACA

2007-09-04 Apologies -- a Monday Night at AACA, originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

Last night's AACA meeting was pretty cool for me. Rod talked about the tendency of Adult Children of Abuse to defend their right to be right at all costs.

I've found that I've been mellowing a lot in this respect since I started going to AACA meetings. My own tendency in the past has been to take extremely principled stands about stuff. Even to my detriment.

One of the ways this used to manifest was in perfectionism in my old career as an advertising copywriter. I would often get into fights with client service people because 'I was right and they were wrong'.

Nowadays, I recognise that sometimes certain clients are idiots with or without my help, and nothing I can do will change them from their idiocy. And this means I'm much less rigid about things. And I'll do the excellent, yet non-perfectionistic thing now.

This is a very tough thing for me to do. Cos I'm into excellence. And to let go control for the sake of a crap client goes against everything I'm used to in myself.

But hey... as the saying goes: 'Perfect is the enemy of the good.'

Thankfully, I have very few bad clients nowadays. I seem to have perfected the art of attracting bright, intelligent, capable clients into my world.

This painting was made in two stages... (1) I doodled it into my Moleskine at AACA last night. (2) I scanned it this morning, and coloured it in ArtRage 2.5 on my Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet pc. And I resisted perfectionism.

UPDATED Friday 7 Sept 2007: I added the bits in green text today, after Jennifer pointed out that I sound like a disgruntled fellow suffering through the burden of only having bad clients. I didn't intend that at all. The poor clients are a thing of the past. The last crap client I had was about two years ago. And since then, they've all been damn cool. My purpose in talking about this stuff is that the focus in the AACA meeting was on people who don't get on well with others, thanks to their background of being abused. I was trying to illustrate that everything can be overcome. I hope this clarifies things somewhat.

Tags: aaca, abuse, recovery, aa, twelve steps, 12 steps, adult children of abuse, royblumenthal, roy blumenthal, blumenthal, coffeeshopschmuck

Disney Institute -- Loyalty

Disney Institute -- Loyalty, originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

This pic is the sixth in a set of six visual facilitation pics covering the first day of an intensive seminar series on customer service.

How's this for an impressive reality about the economic value of customer-loyalty?

Disney has worked out that the average visitor to Disneyland in Orlando, Florida will spend US$50 000 over their lifetime.

I don't need to say a single word more, do I?

This painting was made live during the Disney Institute day of the Service Excellence Emporium 2007 seminar. I'm using ArtRage 2.5 on a Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet pc. No hearts or wallets were mutilated in the making of this painting.

Disney Institute -- Service

Disney Institute -- Service, originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

This pic is the fifth in a set of six visual facilitation pics covering the first day of an intensive seminar series on customer service.

What's YOUR answer to this common question Disney castmembers face every day of their lives?

'What time is the 3 o'clock parade?'

Hint: the answer is NOT: 'Uh... 3 o'clock, you dumbthwuck!'

The answer lies BEHIND the question. What's the person REALLLLLY asking? So the answer might be something like...

'Sir, the parade itself starts down in Main Street at 3pm, and that's about forty minutes away from where we're standing right now. Are you going to be heading down there, or would you prefer to watch from that juice kiosk over there? When the parade comes round this corner at 3:40pm, you'll be able to take some of the most impressive photos Disneyland has to offer, because the Magic Palace is directly behind that parade. And, as a bonus, you'll be in the shade, out of the sun at that time. Does that answer your question?'

This painting was made live during the Disney Institute day of the Service Excellence Emporium 2007 seminar. I'm using ArtRage 2.5 on a Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet pc. No ducks were mutilated in the making of this painting.

Disney Institute -- Culture Creation and Staffing

Disney Institute -- Culture Creation and Staffing, originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

This pic is the fourth in a set of six visual facilitation pics covering the first day of an intensive seminar series on customer service.

The key insights here are: hire the right people for your organisation (make sure they fit), and, design your culture very carefully and communicate it clearly and unambiguously.

If you treat EVERY employee as if they were valued customers, you'll be on the right road..

This painting was made live during the Disney Institute day of the Service Excellence Emporium 2007 seminar. I'm using ArtRage 2.5 on a Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet pc. No mice were mutilated in the making of this painting.