Content Search

There are many ways to facilitate content searches. The purpose is to search for specific content relevant to each individual and the project’s theme.

Discussions of the shared readings, and in The Envisioning the Future project the addition of a discussion of the lecture series all were expected to attend, began the content search.

After discussions of the content in the selected readings, the visualization strategy used with facilitators in The Envisioning the Future project elicited clear personal visions about issues related to the project focus of envisioning the future. This strategy allows time for the mind to wander, but also to soon latch on to one focus and go into one experience or issue in-depth making personal connections from exploration of a lived experience.

For an adaptation of the visualization process click here for one written by Susan Krieg, the painting facilitator. She describes the one used in the facilitators group as a psychological approach that elicits a specific personal response toward a disempowering situation and moves the person through the visualization to imagine a way to change the situation into an empowering one. She sought to embellish this visualization approach to one that would better connect the personal to global issues.

Kevin Stewart-Magee, the facilitator of the mural group, described that the purpose of the visualization is to have a shared experience with the group and to look at specific feelings. It’s a moment to quiet down one’s ego and to support one’s passion.

A participant proposed “a new age spiritual” visualization approach found on the Internet. It had the outcome, when the group used it, to generate a more generalized vision for positive change in the world, which did not provide the deep focus into one experience or event needed to develop powerful images for content-based art.

Video: Artist Judith Baca presents her model of community cultural development in the ETF lecture series. Karen Keifer-Boyd introduces the facilitators to the framework and versatility of using a visualization strategy for content search. Kevin Stewart-Magee guides the mural group to let go of ego. William Catling, sculpture facilitator, asks his group to search for new meanings of their proposed sculptures when visualized together. Drawings in the video by Lisa Dymkova-Fuchs.