Reflecting on a series of visual conversations at the University of Namibia, conducted as part of my role as Honorary Senior Research Fellow for Cardiff University/Phoenix. Processing recollections with the aid of notes, images, sounds, natural surroundings.
An illustrated version of this post can be viewed on my new blog: www.chrisglynn.uk
Listening to choreographer Akram Khan talking about his role in Peter Brook’s epic dramatisation of The Mahabharata. Khan describes art as the tension between two things.
Two metaphors collide in a conversation: a Garden of Ideas and the Body Politic. They travel in fragments at high speed down a rabbit hole, towards a feather falling into a clearing in a forest. It is dawn. We have arrived, ready to begin.
I was thrilled to be invited by Prof. Judith Hall to host a series of creative visual conversations with staff and students at UNAM’s Faculty of Health Sciences and Veterinary Medicine from 18-27 July 2022. Our workshop co-host and facilitator was Prof. Quenton Wessels, Head of the Department of Human, Biological & Translational Medical Sciences, accompanied by Dr. Anneli Poolman, Lecturer in Anatomy. The team kindly provided space, art materials, refreshments, tales of anatomical encounters and insights into life in and beyond the university, and a piano.
The main aim of the facilitation was to enhance well-being in the faculty, providing reflective space for staff and students to explore personal identity and self-expression. ’Anatomical Epiphanies’ took place at Hage Geingob Campus in Windhoek, starting in the Anatomy Resources Centre. The resulting visuals featured as part of a faculty research showcase.
Input was informed by previous work alongside David Hain of Transformation Partners, illustrating online leadership development sessions with UNAM staff prior a 5-year review, and facilitating workshops in Cardiff for visiting Commonwealth Fellows from Namibia in Spring 2022. This was my first visit to southern Africa, and I was curious to discover at first hand how physical landscape, economy and climate might shape conversations and working perspectives.
The following questions about identity, connection and personal growth ran through our exchanges:
What is my identity at work?
How might body metaphors help to interpret working identities and systems? How do staff and students engage with the idea of the anatomical self?
How to connect better after lock-down?
How can creative activities enhance communication, innovation, and wellbeing on campus?
Other questions arose:
How to develop research culture and capacity at UNAM?
How to change and adapt systems, structures and approaches which might inhibit research? Turn ladders into bridges?
When it is said there is not enough time and money, what else to use? Is self-help enough?
What agency and academic freedom do we have as staff/students?
What hidden talents and resources can I bring to work and wider wellbeing?
Contexts:
- an altered teaching and research landscape post-lockdown: staff and students meeting less often face-to-face, leaning on e-mail, accustomed to Zoom, working in silos, connecting mainly with immediate teams and peer groups;
- leadership grappling, like most, with issues of communication, change management, legal governance, bureaucracy; the challenge of achieving consensus in fast-moving situations; new brooms, old cupboards;
- a major curriculum planning deadline across faculty, coinciding with a live faculty showcase of research talks and papers focusing minds and bringing everyone together, in person;
Facilitation aims:
- to create a safe, creatively engaging space in which to host reflective conversations, drawing together a 3D visual record over a number of days;
- to listen carefully in the first phase, share personal perspectives in the latter phase, while continuing to listen, illustrate and reflect on conversations between participants;
- to encourage and host conversations and exchanges between staff and students, staff at different career levels, admin and teaching staff; help break down perceived silos;
- to enable participants to tell their story using ‘talkative’ images; fellow participants interpreting each other’s visuals;
- to amplify, extend and connect conversations, keeping` the process open, both conversationally and visually, avoiding a self-explanatory tableau or ‘product’ in the showcase event;
- to provoke, puzzle, and nudge (“First surprise, then fascinate, finally convince.” - Javier Mariscal).
Practice development aims:
- to test, develop and improve facilitation and making techniques in new and trusted combinations– audio, video, drawing, notes etc. building on methods explored in Self Help Show with Dr. Luca Paci;
- to show and tell in this blog, inviting further questions from interested audiences (University staff and students, occupational therapists, illustrators, facilitators, etc.);
- to provide further resources and inspiration via blog/website;
- inform the direction of my own academic/freelance pursuits.
What happened
I made visual notes at a senior leadership meeting, led conversational [link to blog] workshops with staff teams, hosted drop-in conversations with staff and students, and one-to-one appointments and ad hoc encounters with teaching, research and admin staff. Various musical encounters enhanced the conversations.
Visual fragments from the meetings were transferred to the faculty’s research showcase event on 26 July and choreographed in the auditorium foyer as an invitation to converse and reflect further. A ‘chatscape’ was added to throughout the day, with participants encouraged to contribute, prompted or ad lib. Prof. Quenton Wessels engaged students and staff in conversations around the table. Throughout the day, we were adeptly supported by physiotherapy student Maria Hainghumbi, whose excellent relief image of the brain anchored the display.
Theatre
Hon. Senior Research Fellow Tim Davies and I installed an open-ended construction from found materials (decorator’s ladder, apples, string, feather dusters) to intrigue and attract participants. A table with food and drink was added to invite people to settle in the space, alongside neighbouring stall-holder Prof Michael Knott (Assoc. Prof. Pharmaceutical Chemistry).
The Incomplete Human
Two main metaphors intersected: human anatomy and a narrative journey to altered perspectives. The metaphorical main frame echoed the campus layout, which includes a garden in the shape of the human body. Both garden and tabletop are unfinished, pointing to creative potential and the idea that personal identity and journeys through life are completed by, and with others.
Ballet of Moving Parts
The team’s initial interest in the theme of movement merged into the static visual fabric, but this re-surfaces in reviewing the work and its potential to travel further. I made several recordings of conversational interactions with materials to see how they move over time.
Lateral Flow
Reviewed progress through team conversations and orientation trips around the campus and its surroundings. Tim Davies led parallel Creative Writing workshops for academics, and we compared notes.
The piano
Music played an active supporting role, shaping mood and energy. Students interested in music gathered to improvise, Seth Nowaseb (Faculty Lecturer, Pharmaceutics) played trumpet solos with me, Prof. Hall and I played duets.
What Next?
Several participants returned to the conversation to take it further. I have been asked to explore OT potential of the work and to elaborate on methods and their provenance. Mapping the discussions afterwards will be fascinating. I hope that musical ‘seeds’ will promote inter-disciplinary culture, and at the very least enhance wellbeing and reflective practice.
Satellite conversations extended to related topics:
- the challenge of translating teaching materials and models into locally relevant idioms;
- divergent attitudes to the body after death, human dissection, resistance to talking about death and making wills; the anatomical self;
- addressing real and perceived disparities in staff motivation; balancing self-actualisation and community cohesion; hidden people, hidden stories; self-limiting beliefs;
- personal and institutional aspirations towards universal health care, tackling poverty and social exclusion through education and research;
- the use of rhetoric in times of economic decline; when do ideas speak louder than actions?
- the potential role of music-making in the faculty; conversation as sonic environment; frequencies;
- research potential of the medium: metacognition, adult ed, OT.
Diverse themes but the psychology of language and the body weaves through, leading back to philosophical questions about being and agency.
Follow-up
I will use this blog to reflect further upon the week’s themes and techniques. I hope to continue some of these conversations: the therapeutic value of visual facilitation; the illustrator as translator and interpreter; understanding the physical and metaphorical body through drawing and conversational mapping, and introducing musical approaches to science-based teaching and research. It’s an eclectic mix, linked by strange conduits. Audio and moving image may help to bring a more integrated picture to this linear account. Where possible I adopt the idea that form follows dialogue, rather than using any pre-determined reporting structure. Some threads may meander or tail off, others will grow. You are welcome to get in touch and contribute further here.
Key words: Illuminate, extrapolate, promulgate
Thanks to all other UNAM staff and students and guests who participated and contributed to the visual conversations, including Yaw Addae-Senyah, Denise Bouman, Dr. Arthur Chigova, Liam Drotshy, Theo Elias, Alois Fledersbacher, Dr. Rachel Freeman, Mark Jago, Abel Kanjou, Inken Kuehhirt, Joseph Lakanemo, Helena Louw, Tracey Manuel, Wilet Maritz, Julius Mtuleni, Katrina Niiteta, Seth Nowaseb, Fasti Oelofsen, Adèle du Plessis, Rusa Reinhord, Yvette Shaanika, Albertina Shatri, Libertina Shiweva, Boni Singu, Idel Terblanche, Dorothy Titus, Monique Truter, Jan van der Merwe, Marc van Niekerk, Kehan van Vuuren, Prof. Cilas Wilders.