exercise · all tools
Drawing Together
Depth · what it can open●●●○3 — emotional
Holding · facilitation2 — facilitator
Trust · group readiness★★some
Disclosure · what is sharedoptional
Participants tell the story of a challenge and their journey through it using only five symbols — circle, rectangle, triangle, spiral, star-person — drawn, not spoken. Drawings are shared and read together. Nonverbal expression routes around practiced verbal defenses and reveals knowledge people didn't know they had.
Prerequisites
- Frame drawing skill as irrelevant — stick figures welcome — or the confident artists dominate
Hold with care
- Symbolic self-disclosure runs deeper than people expect going in; let each person say only as much about their drawing as they choose
Practical
- Time
- 50 min
- Group
- 2–∞ · individual, pairs, large-group
- Settings
- in-person, online
- Materials
- Writing surface; paper and markers; the five symbols displayed
- Mechanisms
- creative-expression, narrative-identity
- Change scope
- state · repeatable
Instructions
- Where
- liberatingstructures.com/drawing-together — Liberating Structures, open
- Availability
- Open online — published at the link, free to read
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
Source link checked 29 Aug 2026 — unchanged since we recorded it on 28 Aug 2026
This directory describes and points home; the instructions stay with the people who made them.
Origin
Henri Lipmanowicz & Keith McCandless (drawing on Angeles Arrien's five universal shapes) — Liberating Structures
In this directory via Liberating Structures
Related: The Shield (alternative-to)
status: checked · added 2026-08-25