using maps and map making to deepen conversations with ourselves and others

Fri, 10th June, 2016 from 1:45 PM, in Lewes

“Using Maps and Map-making to Deepen our Conversations with Ourselves and others”

Led by Sue Holland & Val Davies

We all have our own unique ways of making sense of our reality;  and we are  familiar with maps in the conventional sense of showing us where we are.

This workshop offers you the opportunity to gain a new perspective on your own life and/or work, see ‘where you are’ in a different way. It is based on harnessing the immense creative power of representation , as opposed to using words, and can be very liberating, personal and connecting. It will offer you the opportunity to create your own map, using a variety of media, and can provide significant insights into your experience, your relationships, or an organisational system.

During this workshop,we will be using a very simple process that involves

• Appreciative enquiry and friendly consulting
• Creativity
• Making marks and mapping them

It is for you to decide how you wish to use this process. So for example, it may be to make sense of your own journey historically, or to look at it going forward; or you may wish to map a client system/organisation and use the insights to inform your work with them;   or you may just be interested in creative mapping for its own sake, and that’s fine too!   Whatever you choose to work with, we anticipate you will

• Find further creative resourcefulness for yourself
• Be open to crafting richer conversations with clients and others – using the tools in consulting with teams and / or 1:1 in coaching relationships
• See map-making as a possible way of narrating and capturing the memories of life (if that is of interest)

Sue met Val Davies about two years ago and they have been working together occasionally since then

Sue Holland 

is a retreat leader, change agent, executive coach, and facilitator.   She works both 1:1 with leaders and with groups to provide challenge, insight and support in the pursuit of personal and business results. In previous roles, she was a scientific botanist nerd and then a leader within a large multinational organisation.   She has been making maps all her life, some literal representations and some metaphoric and has found them to be powerful in providing insights into experiences, relationships, and client systems she has worked with.   Sue set up the Sadler Heath learning community in Devon in 2008 and is a leading figure in Sadler Heath. 

Val Davies 

After a variety of early work, Val achieved a combined arts degree and started her life as a textile artist in Exeter.     She makes amazing representations of journeys, real, geographic, metaphoric and imagined as ways of making sense of her own history and exploring her current reality.