It’s a revolutionary tool – did you know:
- Graphic recording builds trust and transparency, capturing workshop and conference proceedings visually and in real time.
- At the end of the session you have an executive summary of your proceedings in one neat visual – that’s remarkably efficient!
- Graphic recording is highly engaging and adds enormous value to your projects, conferences and workshops.
- Clients get to keep and re-use the graphics and can distribute these through their networks.
Summarising proceedings graphically builds trust because the recording of the conversation is visual and seen by all in real time.When there are varied stakeholders in a room with an unequal power differential, graphic recording becomes an essential proof, tracking process and words, literally keeping everyone on the same page.
Representing concepts visually can spark more creative thinking in your group. Dry topics become rich, difficult spaces become fluid. When people’s minds start to wander off topic and ‘away from the room’, they see the charts and return to the room.
Examples of recent work
My clients include corporate, government and community organisations and at all levels the feedback repeats high levels satisfaction with how useful the process and resultant charts are.
Beyond the corporate sphere, it has a huge role to help equalise the playing field. Graphic Recording strongly supports the participation of:
- visual thinkers (about 65% of the population)
- people who don’t have strong literacy skills. Australia’s functional literacy is quite low with the ABS indicating that 47% of Australian adults have trouble with literacy
- people from First Nations communities, where visual story telling has very ancient roots, and
- people from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse backgrounds where English proficiency may be varied and meanings may be contested (this occurs in visual meanings too, but it actually becomes easy to talk about and address). 49% of Australians were either born overseas or have parents who were born overseas and 21% of Australians speak another language at home.
Skills I bring: 
- Analogue and digital graphic recording for in-person and Zoom events.
- Professional membership with Graphic Recorders Australia
- IAP2 accreditation (International Association for Public Participation) – I have completed both the International and Australasian Certificates in Engagement
- Master in Gestalt Therapy – I am a deep listener and synthesise quickly
- I am part of the Australasian Facilitation Network community
- I worked as the Senior Program Officer for Brisbane City Council’s Community Engagement Centre of Excellence for six years
- I speak Spanish and have engaged in many intercultural spaces over the past 30 years
- I am a visual artist with a long trajectory. My first ‘proper job’ (last century!) was preparing learning materials in English language classes for newly arrived immigrants. That was a formative role, helping me hone my visual communication skills.
Testimonials
Natalie Baker Riversymposium Manager | INTERNATIONAL RIVERFOUNDATION
I’ve contracted Rachel on two occasions to use her graphic recorder and illustrator skills in the water science sector. In both projects, Rachel was an attentive listener and demonstrated a depth of understanding and responsiveness in her artwork, communicating key water themes exceptionally well. The most recent was at the 2019 International Riversymposium where Rachel captured keynote presentations and workshops digitally and on paper charts. The symposium delegates responded very well to her work and the graphic recordings were great keepsakes to give the keynotes. There was a high level of excitement around her charts and after seeing Rachel in action, many delegates were inspired to consider howthey could use graphic recording in their community educational contexts around the world. Presenters were also impressed with Rachel’s sensitive capturing of their key themes and how she highlighted aspects of the presentations that challenged stereotypical approaches. Embedding these themes in her imagery made them highly visible and obvious and this facilitated more conversations and connections among the delegates. Rachel’s professionalism is outstanding and she added value by looking closely at all aspects of the planning to ensure we obtained maximum benefit from her service. She was proactive and ahead of the game in many ways and responded to our very tight deadlines with grace and generosity.
More testimonials can be seen on my member profile at Graphic Recorders Australia
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