Collective Scribing: An Augmented Perspective of Experience

Hub: Collective Scribing Hub

Location: Meets monthly Online

Co-Hosted by: Aleksandra Harazin (Ola), Poland | Blair MacDonell, Canada | Mary Jo Neil, USA | Diane Jaggers, USA | Angèle Ruchti, Switzerland | Petra Borgmann Durrie, Germany | Andrea Fernández, Argentina | Margareta von Salisch, Netherlands | Cècile Masera, France | Rebecca Rohloff Plummer, Guatemala | Dzvenyslava Nobakivska, Ukraine

Started: 2020

Participants close a session of the Collective Scribing Hub.

Though the Collective Scribing Hub was officially created in September 2025, it was preceded by five years of weekly meetings as the Visual U Lovers hub. There are 27 members, many of whom are alumni of a generative scribing course offered by Kelvy Bird and participated in u-lab 2x together. The core co-hosts decided to open the group to the whole U community as a safe space for people to experience collective scribing.

The core idea behind collective scribing is to focus on listening and mirroring skills, as listening more fully and capturing what we feel are the key points for expanding our awareness, finding similarities and differences.

The way it works is that a participant talks about an inquiry they are holding, and people can draw freely while conversations go on. The harvesting is done for all the shared scribing pieces, not just one. All levels of skill are welcome.

Doing the mirroring on several drawings expands the focus and the way we understand with our head, and our mind and our soul. It gives the drawings, and the reality that is shown in the images, an augmented perspective. As the harvest is anchored in what’s been visually captured, it is easier for participants to stay open — holding different feelings and perspectives without taking them personally.

Addressing scribing as a collective practice provides a new level of reflection: The practice invites us to stay with an open mind, heart and will and remain respectful of each other. The individual moves forward in the collective. The future vision moves forward… This non-judgmental practice helps us deal with complexity.

In the drawings, we perceive each other’s values and biases made visual without naming them. What we can see in the drawings are more than words, making the reality that someone is experiencing more tangible. It helps us understand others’ reality, to be more empathetic, to make more space for each other.

One of the gifts of the practice is the possibility of scribing for different languages and cultural realities, like: bilingual scribing sessions with Ukrainian citizens; scribing about Argentina’s dictatorship and missing persons from the 1970’s period; a session on resilience during the COVID pandemic; among other challenges of our times.

Using English as a bridge language, participants have come to see the tools of drawing and listening as languages in themselves: Cultural diversity can make difficult conversations easier. We speak and listen with greater curiosity when encountering realities beyond our everyday lives — and that openness deepens the richness of the dialogue.

Scribing in challenging conversations creates space to process emotions through the hand and the intelligence of the body. For example, when we spoke about COVID restrictions, hearing how different countries were organizing and responding to fear helped us stay grounded, coherent, and with a sense of agency in navigating our own context.

Participants share their work during a collective scribing session.

Evolving the Practice

The hub also works as a support group for enhancing our skills: we are helping those of us who are taking the practice to in-person settings as a resonance space to give ideas and feedback.

As the hub evolves, the co-hosts are looking into new ways to learn and to improve the practice, for example:

• Doing joint sessions with other U-hubs to expand the practice.

• Developing different core practices for a variety of audiences and situations, both individual and collective.

• Co-writing articles and papers on the experience of the hub.

For now, the hub is offering an open session once a month for anyone interested in the practice.

Connecting Islands of Coherence

Each scribe is an island of coherence. Is this what takes precedence? No, it is not. Mirroring our attention and awareness shows us exactly the opposite. We are not lone islands. We can recognize the deep (soul) connection even though our cultures are seemingly very different. We go far beyond these defining barriers. We know and experience this when mirroring each other’s scribings, and seeing all the strong similarities in pattern, color, design, motif, shapes, symbols, composition.

Because of this practice, we have developed deep listening, connection and trust, even if it is online.

I submitted this story as co-host. Please visit the hub page to join.