OEATA looks to 2024 at year-end AGM

 

It was my great honour to graphically record the year-end AGM of OEATA, looking forward into 2024. 

OEATA is an exciting and dynamic organization, with positive recognition growing for its work in organizations that serve communities across Ontario. There were attendees as well from other provinces, and people doing some of the most challenging work a person can do to draw others from their current state into a creative and self-possessed frame of mind. Often Expressive art therapists are working with people in institutions and people who are post-traumatic or survivors of recent crisis. Expressive Art is a therapeutic practice, and it is creating mental healing and meaning for those who pursue its benefits through many special techniques and approaches, a practice that brings freeing results. 

The meeting is always as lively and inspiring as are the registered psychotherapists and practitioners in attendance, who dedicate their professional lives to helping others with these specialized modalities. One of the things that is notable about OEATA is how much they care about enhancing the professional development of their other members, truly an organization that cares. 

2023 Fundraising Success

In the weeks that precede the departure of hundreds of fundraisers on bicycle travelling 600 k from Toronto to Montreal, there is always a huge amount of planning. Participants seldom see the work organizers do behind the scenes, and so at the arrival of the pre-departure "Big Meeting" event I am always honoured to be part of just a glimpse! The 2023 Friends for Life fundraising bike rally had many "uphill" challenges for organizers, greatest of all perhaps being concerns about the heat. As well, air quality issues had become a top concern. Consistently, leadership responded by hiring emergency crews to accompany the riders and designating a specialized volunteer vehicle to further support everyone particpating in the event. The implementation of these and many others measures resulted in a fun and successful rally with confident particpants and crew. I am always proud to do graphic recordings with the F4L Bike Rally. Graphically recording the 2023 "Big Meeting" event when so many concerns had to be addressed was a truly inspiring experience. The leadership at the foundation was unwilling to move forward until every contingency had been covered. Thankfully, they did an amazing job of this task and the fundraising journey was a success.

Forward to 2023 with another solid AGM!

Enjoyed creating this graphic recording for OEATA in December as the membership looks forward to 2023! These sessions always begin with a blessing and a land acknowledgement, and always wrap with a playful connection through dance and song! This lively meeting structure proves once again that OEATA leads the way in showing us all what organizations can do to do business and still energetically connect their many members- even by Zoom!
For the recording I used their new logo which has a strong splash of red and black, and beneath it blocks and circles of green-blue and blue. I chose to add extensive land acknowledgments for both Tkaronto and Ontario in uppercase letters, forming two large blocks of text that challenged the rest of the design. I then introduced contrasting blocks of colour to balance out the rest. When I graphically record for the Expressive Art Therapists, I always enjoy adding quite a bit of colour. In this case I included magenta, tangerine, baby blue and lime green, while other colours appear throughout the notes.
As usual the OEATA membership had a lot of awesome things to talk about! Thanks to a lot of effort by both committed long-term board members and several enthusiastic new ones, OEATA membership is on the rise once again and OEATA is both expanding in terms of membership services as well as gaining professional ground by making their presence known at conferences and to various organizations that require their services.
As different committees reported their progress it became clear for another year and the OEATA membership has reason to anticipate great things for 2023! It is always an honour to work with this group and I am grateful for the honorary associate membership granted to me for my efforts.

Big Meeting with mixed online and in person participants

The Toronto PWA Foundation is an organization I care very much about and every year I spend a week volunteering with them as the fundraising bicycle riders travel the road from Toronto to Montreal. It is always a powerful experience for me and so when I found myself yet again creating the Big Meeting graphic recording I knew I wanted to create an upbeat 2022 post-pandemic mood with a simple design that was also fun and inspiring to the riders before they set out. As the meeting was broadcast as well as there being many people seated behind me in the church where it was held, creating the live imagery required showpersonship and a steady hand. Fortunately, I was thrilled to be a part of it and I believe my recording caught the mood of pre-ride anticipation well.
These fundraising riders train for months before the event and the other logistics that go behind large scale fundraising campaigns are also extensive on the part of organizers.
I like to think I captured the enthusiasm and community gratitude for this special group of activists. It is always such an honour to work with Toronto PWA and I hope next year I will graphically record their Big Meeting event once again.

Scribed online A speedy AGM

I always look forward to the dynamic AGM's of the Ontario Expressive Art Therapist's Association, I'd just never done one on Zoom before! After the land acknowledgements, the meeting was opened with some powerful words from Elder Fyre Jean Graveline, a beautiful speaker who created a focused mood among participants regarding the importance of their gathering. At this AGM, there were around 35 attendees, including representatives from across Canada, making it a multi-province event. Several participants were still new to using Zoom, so I knew as their scribe I had to create good visuals that helped them remember the important moments. I had a ballpark idea of when the meeting was going to begin and end, but Expressive Art Therapists are a fairly irrepressible lot, and there were several spirited discussions that made things considerably more tricky to effectively time and scribe in sync. At break, a fabulous beat box session was performed by award-winning beatbox artist Sparx (Emilie Carrey), who also taught the expressive art therapists to beatbox along. Then, once the committee reports were in and administrative and business questions were ironed out, they were very excited to vote on the founding of a new national group representing their profession. They are also expanding their work to some of the more gritty therapy challenges Canadian society has to offer, including working with trauma survivors in hospitals and jails. Both these new features had been greatly facilitated by the tireless efforts of out-going OEATA President Terri Roberton. In the end the whole thing came together into a bright, cheerful graphic just in the nick of time, and one that was well-received as capturing the energy in the "room." I was so very glad they liked it, and of course, to keep standards high, I made sure they were each able to have copies of it (from the final photograph) within minutes of the meeting's conclusion! It made for a nice take-away from an information-packed and busy cross-Canada online AGM. A first and a grand success for OETA!

Working Live on Zoom for Meetings!

Here is a part of several quick 3x4' pieces that accompanied the online York University Post Script Sessions, which were held live on Zoom. http://www.publicjournal.ca/postscript-a-series-on-accessibility-disability-and-digital-publishing/ The coordinators had put together an impressive roster of cool people and great speakers. It is awesome to add some extra colour and energy to formal discussions meeting online. The sessions explored an array of topics themed around the issues of Accessbility, Disability and Digital Publishing. Keeping up with their snappy academic insights was at first daunting, but key themes were then explored deeply and I was able to track each discussion. I opted for large, poster-style fonts and listened intently for words and phrases that were becoming central points, which can be trickier than it sounds. After the sessions I sent in photos of the graphic scribe work within a few short minutes of the session's completion, so that they could have them immediately on their desk in digital form. Then I cleaned everything up in Photoshop and had the tidier versions printed off as posters for them to reference after-the-fact. Ideally a few of these posters will find their way to a shared office wall! In the meantime, the organizers have them at hand (four copies of each) to distribute and use as they please. Feedback was very positive and they were delighted to lively up their Zoom sessions with a graphic scribe. I very much look forward to working with York again in the future.

Gratitude to our Frontline Healthcare Workers

Another fresh blog for 2020! This time we are all in flatten-the-curve mode, wearing our masks and struggling to come up with the best way to support one another and keep our businesses afloat. It's been a time of sadness and deep self-reflection. While the planet is benefitting from the sudden reduction of human activity and pollution, we only have a short time to convince our politicians to follow a path that continues to reduce the burden on Mother Earth. Fighting for earth's environmental rights is something I will be putting my professional and volunteer energies towards with renewed vigour in 2020. Meanwhile, I felt it vital that I took the time out to say THANK YOU to those brave workers everywhere who are risking their very lives saving the lives of people during the pandemic. I felt at first I could not put it in words, but then the words came, and soon this GRATITUDE graphic recording-style poster took form. THANK YOU Front-Line Healthcare Workers! You are appreciated! Tu es apprécié!

2020 looks great!

I always enjoy the enthusiasm and energy at AGM's, because the Directors works so hard on their reports to round up the best points of the past year's progress while they look ahead. In the case of the Expressive Art Therapists, I find this amplified. In a nutshell, I am honoured to record for them and they are EXtra fun! Since all of them work as Psychotherapists and Counselors by day, they are also charming people in person. At these special AGM's, participants always find out there are things happening in the organization they belong to behind-the-scenes that are exciting to learn. Members get up-to-speed and the general spirit is one of lifting morale.
For the Expressive Art Therapist's AGM, I try to make it a bit more splashy than some Graphic Recordings, because I know that splashy art is their thing. I also added some lists of names, because they have new members, new leadership and new committees. It's cool to see an organization expanding with new talent. I'm trained as an Expressive Art Facilitator with a Diploma for Haliburton School of Art, so even though I am working as the AGM scribe, I listen for professional reasons as well. I also added a lot of trees and stars, since Expressive Art Therapists are superstars and they like nature.
The President of their organization particularly talked about the great strides they have been making in networking and gaining recognition for Expressive Art Therapy throughout Canada. This included special programming and new opportunities for members. New energy coming in to a group always makes me happy. Keep on the look-out for events, 2020 is looking extremely promising for Ex Art in a myriad of capacities.

Wow! Two recordings back to back!

Wow! A double recordings day! I promised the strategy session facilitator I would graphic record for their strategy session group. This was an unusually spirited session! Tons of input as we closed-in on developing a synthesized vision. The participants shared great ideas adding yet more input. The facilitation was awesome as things really shaped up. By wrap-time, a few hours had passed and the graphic recording paraphrased a lot of information! I packed up my gear and bid the facilitator adieu while I departed to unwind in a coffee shop. Then I glanced at my phone and realized I had another recording coming up in less than an hour, an AGM! I had promised the executive director, and I only had time to toss down my coffee and run to a nearby art supply store to replenish my gear before I was at it again! The second meeting had important new board members attending from major organizations. They were watching intently. I added a sun ray cut-out around the logo at the top and then concentrated on colours flowing outward towards the future. A graphic recorder always listens for key commentary and to my surprise, the meeting had lots of great moments and perfect input. It was more orderly than the first one. This allowed me to breathe and relax. At wrap-up, several people took photos and the mood in the room was positive and happy, just like the mood of the artwork! Wow! A double day! I was so glad I made it, and so honoured to serve these vital nonprofit sessions.

Corporate Work

This was a job I was looking forward to because an energy corporation was making big changes to the way we use the energy grid! They are upbeat folks and wanted me to document a board meeting while they discussed the early stages of a many-part process involving hybridizing regional electricity. I arrived a little early and these fine people were still assembling. Some more amazing people began to filter in the boardroom and things began to focus. I had chosen a sidewall and placed a long mural-sized paper on the wall that was over twenty feet! It was such an honour to graphically record the interesting discussion that followed. Rest assured, some amazing minds are hard at work devising alternatives to delivering power to Ontario to radically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and still keep homes heated and lights shining when you need them. I was wearing a nice suit and felt incredibly happy. My heart was racing and I almost dropped my markers a few times while I visually paraphrased what was going on. I just knew it had to be eye-pleasing and be up-to-pace with what they were saying, and at moments it was certainly a fairly quickly-paced meeting. Fortunately, discussion paused enough over certain ideas that I was able to jump back and create emphasis around key points. I chose to use a bit of negative space design for the recording and avoided the sweeping colours and ribbons of words that are sometimes used in visual scribing, opting instead for simple colourful clusters of ideas. The resulting work spanned all twenty feet, looked excellent, and the corporation ordered a poster-sized print. This is an option I offer all customers, and so I patched together twenty feet of photos into an attractive print and it was delivered almost overnight! I also offered as a courtesy to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement with them, even though there wasn't anything overly top-secret, and to my surprise, they took me up on it because who knows? NDA's are often a good idea. So I now must be careful not to really say who they were although I don't think they'd mind and careful not to display visual notes from the day without consultation. Fortunately, there really isn't anything of wild interest to competitors in the visual notes, but it is a good practice to sign these. Hopefully, since I became iron-clad with their lawyers, they'll have me back some time for another session. The entire experience was very good for me in terms of developing professional confidence in a highly-demanding situation, and I was thrilled it worked out to everyone's satisfaction. A good day well done!

More Strategy Sessions

Hiring a graphic recorder for a strategy session is not just a good idea, at certain successful organizations, it is a practice. This is the practice of the organization PWA Foundation, a nonprofit foundation that raised over $1.66 million this year through one event for its cause. If you are a nonprofit agency and have a good cause you are strategizing around, and are interested in implementing graphic recording, I am becoming quite seasoned in strategy sessions! I have been scribing well with both facilitators and consultants, and grown strong in these skills by doing strategy sessions with The PWA Foundation. Working with a facilitator is like being a silent partner. I pick up on the direction the facilitator is guiding the discussion in, but also must actively listen to every participant at the meeting. We also have a short preliminary, which is something I like to request, in order for me to get the gist of what needs to be covered. Obviously, a good facilitator does not lead the group but merely puts the agenda before them in a way that makes them find the most important discussion points and turn them into community input. And the PWA organization has some of the best people coordinating events like meetings. As a result, the strategy sessions are always a pleasure, with inspired input from each participant and a sense of hopeful direction for a challenging cause. The number of people potentially served by The PWA Foundation is ever-expanding, not because of HIV, but because the organization itself emphasizes outreach and expanding its services. This is not necessarily an easy task. There are many people who need help in the world, and in the immediate municipality, and the system is not meeting their needs. So the nonprofits must step in and do what they can. There are so many ways to make our society a better place, and helping the poor and advocating for people who have medication needs, along with all the secondary needs explored and discussed at these sessions, is surely one of the most important. It is an honour to work with these activists making society a better place.