Essays
On art and coaching.
Working notes from building THE WALK: how a photograph asks a question, how a coach holds a silent room, and what the practice can and cannot do. Written by Iman Abrishamchi, curator.
A leadership team in front of one picture
The walk is a public practice. Its mechanics also work in a boardroom, with one image and ninety minutes, if the coach is willing to run it as coaching and not as an icebreaker.
ReadChoosing images for a walk
What makes a photograph work as a coaching instrument rather than a picture on a wall. The checklist we use, and the pictures it rejects.
ReadNotes from the tenth of October
Fourteen rooms, twelve countries, one day. What the format held, what strained, and what we are changing before January.
ReadWhat art cannot do, and why we say so out loud
Two days before fourteen rooms open, a note on the limits. A walk is prevention and community, not treatment, and the difference has to be visible to everyone in the room.
ReadFrom the wall to the circle
Forty minutes of silent looking, then forty minutes of group coaching. The second half only works if the first half is protected, and the hand-off is where most of the craft lives.
ReadSilence is the facilitation
New hosts ask what they should say during the walk. The answer is nothing, and it takes some training to be able to say nothing well.
ReadEpoché in the gallery
Husserl asked philosophers to bracket what they thought they knew. A coach standing beside someone in front of a picture has to do it in real time.
ReadThe question under the picture
Twenty words at most, no verb that tells the viewer what to feel, and nothing in it the coach would need to explain. How we wrote the twenty questions.
ReadSlow looking is a coaching skill
Visitors spend a few seconds in front of a painting. Coaches spend a few seconds in front of an answer. Both can learn to stay.
ReadWhat a photograph can ask that a coach cannot
The best question in a coaching session is often one the client would refuse if a person asked it. An image gets away with it.
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