Collaboration vs. Consultation

Procrastination–or “just in time planning,” as I prefer to think of it–led me to coming up with a visual to set the scene for last night’s PEI Home and School Federation semi-annual meeting in the late afternoon. What I needed was a way of conveying what we were hoping to achieve: a transition from “consultation” (where government comes up with plans and then asks people for feedback) to “collaboration” (where people are involved in the making of the plan from the very beginning).

I gave designing something a go on my computer, but found it hard to do the concepts justice by assembling bits of other people’s clip art, so I set the keyboard and mouse aside, pulled out a piece of paper and my sketching markers, and drew up something on the fly.

This is what resulted.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International

I showed this to Oliver on the way to the meeting, and he immediately understood (which is not surprising, given what he’s taught me about collaboration); this was a good sign.

I hope it worked.