Visual collaboration journey

I’ve always been fascinated when I see graphic facilitators and recorders in workshops - making sense of complex ideas and conversations in succinct and often beautiful ways.

In August last year (2025), I participated in the UNLOCK Peer Exchange - a gathering of change managers working in the UN system. Ole Qvist-Sørensen from Bigger Picture was there and, when he was introduced as a “graphic facilitator”, he responded “actually I’m a democratiser of visual collaboration”.

I got hooked. During the workshop, he introduced us to simple ways to capture key concepts through drawing. We were all involved as co-creators in documenting the conversations. Drawing in gatherings went from something I admired from a distance and thought “I’ll never be good enough to do that” to something I was actively practicing. I bought the book, set up a mini workshop to share skills for others to learn at the Beyond Lab and then committed to a Masterclass with Olé to learn more. Here’s my summary from session 1.