ANTHONY WEEKS, MSW, MFA

VISUAL STORYTELLER | ILLUSTRATOR | GRAPHIC FACILITATOR | PUBLIC LISTENER

anthony@thepubliclistener.com
tel: 415. 601. 0853

SERVICES

  • Graphic facilitation/visual scribing
  • Facilitation and process design
  • Story-building, design, and consultation
  • Listening training and coaching

“Listening is an intention and a choice. It is also a competency and a skill…We need a more sophisticated vocabulary to describe listening so that we can better understand the universe of listening and our place in it. Am I an empathic listener? A transactional listener? A social listener? A systemic listener? A synthetic listener? Do I even know what those listening modalities mean?” – Anthony Weeks

ABOUT PUBLIC LISTENING

In my careers as a social worker, a facilitator, a visual storyteller, and a documentary filmmaker, the consistent thread has been LISTENING. While I have listened and made my listening process manifest in different ways, the LISTENING has been my primary purpose, role, and responsibility throughout my adult life. I take it seriously—and I am continually trying to hone my practice and craft as a listener.

Listening is an intention and a choice. It is also a competency and a skill. I don’t believe that good listeners are just born that way.  I don’t believe that we are good listeners or we aren’t. However, I do believe that we have to want to become better at listening. We have to commit ourselves to understanding how we listen and how others listen. We need a more sophisticated vocabulary to describe listening so that we can better understand the universe of listening and our place in it. Am I an empathic listener? A transactional listener? A social listener? A systemic listener? A synthetic listener? Do I even know what those listening modalities mean?

I call myself a “public listener.” Just like there are public speakers who inspire, provoke, educate, and connect with others through speaking, I work with groups to help them inspire, provoke, educate, and connect with others through their listening.

As a GRAPHIC FACILITATOR, I listen deeply in group conversations for the themes, ideas, questions, points of convergence and divergence, and threads of continuity that emerge from those conversations. While graphic facilitation (also known as graphic recording, visual scribing, strategic illustration, or some combination of similar words) is a visual practice that is rich with imagery and text, it is primarily a listening function for me. I am listening on behalf of the group to help them see ideas come to life, identify the

bigger truths and stories within the conversation, and make the learning visible. Without the listening, the graphics and the text are just…graphics and text. The listening provides the connection between the group and the graphics on the wall.

As a FACILITATOR and PROCESS DESIGNER, I listen to groups and teams to find out what they want to do, what is important and meaningful to them, and how we can collaborate to bring those goals, values, and ethics together. I am listening to the details of what they want to accomplish, but I am also listening for “the capital letters” in what they tell me. “The capital letters” are the big ideas, the points of resonance, the call to action, the raison d’être. The details of the journey and the pathway are definitely important. The capital letters provide the “why” that makes the journey worthwhile.

As a STORY CONSULTANT, I listen for stories—and help groups to listen for stories, too. When we listen for stories, we aren’t just listening for data points. We are listening for the meaning and the energy in the spaces between the data. What does the data mean? Who should care? Why should I care? Stories have power because they transport us from one place to another. Good stories have tension, challenges, problems, emotion, characters, and verbs. They move and they cause us to feel something. When we become better storylisteners, we are able to hear each other with more depth, complexity, and empathy. We ask more questions—and better ones. The stories allow us to make sense of the data and connect with each other in ways that may have eluded us before. When I listen to your story, I see you, hear you, and understand you more completely.

BIO

Anthony began working as a public listener and graphic facilitator in 1998. Over the course of his career, he has worked nationally and internationally with leaders, product developers, and strategists to facilitate dialogue and ideation, think visually, and turn data into stories.

Anthony’s documentary films have been screened in the US and around the world. He was a 2009 grant recipient from the Princess Grace Foundation in New York/Monaco. He was honored with an Emmy and a student Academy Award for his 2010 documentary short entitled Imaginary Circumstances. In 2011, Anthony was one of several American film directors selected by the US State Department to travel to embassies and consulates abroad as part of the American Documentary Showcase, a cultural exchange program.

In addition to directing documentary media, Anthony has illustrated a number of books. Most recently, his illustrations were featured in the 2013 release Netsmart: How to Thrive Online (MIT Press) by social media scholar and expert Howard Rheingold. Anthony wrote a chapter entitled “Storytelling and Storylistening” that appears in the anthology of visual practice Drawn Together (2016). He has written two chapters on listening and story for the upcoming book The Visual Facilitation Field Guide (expected publish date in late 2018).

Anthony holds a Master in Fine Arts from Stanford University, a Master of Social Work from Augsburg College (MN), and a BA with honors from Grinnell College. He was a 1997-98 Coro Fellow in Public Affairs.

 

WORK SAMPLES

Telling Visual Stories
I created this graphic for a workshop I conducted in Berlin in 2014. The graphic, in lieu of PowerPoint, helped me to move from topic to topic while also keeping the whole of the conversation in view. With features such as different text size, texturing, and a sense of dynamism and playfulness, the graphic is more engaging and interesting than conventional digital presentation tools.

Headline the Future
I’ve worked with the Institute for the Future since 2000. I love working with them because they are always in the midst of provocative thinking. They also are committed to educating others about the art and science of forecasting. In this chart, created in real-time during a foresight practitioner training, I wanted to use a spare color palette of blacks and grays to evoke newspaper headlines. The text is amplified by the accompanying graphic, and the graphics pop with addition of brush and diluted ink.

 

Future of Communication
I like arrows. I like lines of connection. I use them to show relationships of ideas and thoughts as well as pathways of conversation. Well-placed arrows that connect ideas create meaning. Instead of a scattergram with various orphaned pieces of text and graphics, the arrows help to tell a story.

 

Culture and Innovation
I’ve always liked this chart, created live during an offsite for health care executives. The main things I like about it are the consistent use of color, the clear directionality, and the depiction of the anchor words “culture” and “innovation.” Those terms did drive the conversation and are prominently represented. The conversation eventually focused on an inventory of personal skills and leadership, and thus, the question “where are YOU?” is central.

 

John Seely Brown
What a privilege it was to graphically record for John Seely Brown! He always has stimulating content and ideas to share. For this conference of chief information officers, I didn’t have a lot of room—just a small board. While the graphic here is fairly “busy”, visually, I tried to use font size and shapes to differentiate the various points of JSB’s presentation. I was also careful to listen economically and with discernment to identify JSB’s main points. With limited space, I didn’t want to clutter the chart with unnecessary information.

Envisioning Alternative Future Scenarios
This was also created in real-time with the Institute for the Future in 2018. In contrast to the other chart with “Headline the Future”, I used color liberally to highlight main themes and ideas that emerged from the conversation. Color is the organizing tool. As long as there is a rationale for color, I love to use it. When it’s haphazard and used without consideration for color harmony, an excessively colorful chart is distracting, overwhelming, and unattractive.

 

The Ethics and Aesthetics of Visual Storytelling
This was another chart that I used as an information graphic and a presentation guide. It’s from 2015. The contours of the title, the arrows from the lower left to the upper right, and the use of font size and style help the viewer to navigate the chart. At first glance, it seems cluttered, but there is a definite visual logic to the graphic. The viewer is drawn to the question “What does story have to do with it?” which was exactly the focus of the presentation.

 

The Capital Group
Sometimes, clients just want me to help them organize information that already exists and create something that makes the information more accessible and engaging. I made this visual story during a day-long summit on aging and new perspectives on “old age.” The client wanted a story map that focused on planning for retirement. I wanted it to be human, dynamic, and easy to read. 

 

CONTACT

Thank you for your interest in public listening! Please let me know how I can be helpful to you. I’ll respond as soon as I can.

© The Public Listener