Sarah Firth (she/her) is based on Wurundjeri Country, Melbourne, Australia. She is a neurodivergent artist, writer, cartoonist, graphic recorder and animator, originally trained as a classical sculptor. She has received a Talking Difference Fellowship from the Immigration Museum, was a finalist in the Incinerator Gallery Award For Social Change and her comics were part of Eisner Award-winning and Ignatz nominated comic anthologies. Her debut graphic novel “Eventually Everything Connects” won a Gold Ledger CAA Award, and was shortlisted for The Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, The Age’s Non-Fiction Pick of The Week, ALIA’s Notable Graphic Novels and listed as one of The Best Graphic Novels Ever by Refinery29.
In addition to delivering keynotes & workshops, Sarah’s superpower is graphic recording.
What is graphic recording?
“Graphic recording – also called visual notetaking, graphic facilitation, live illustration, sketch notes and visual notes – is a brilliant way to capture live, real-time conversation as it unfolds. Simply, you talk, I listen and draw, and MAGIC happens. At the end, you have a synthesised visual map of the key points and highlights. A perfect way to navigate complexity, gain clarity and alignment, visually share ideas, and leverage engagement during and after an event.”
The benefits of graphic recording
- Makes Content Accessible: For participants with ESL, visuals and words together make content more accessible.
- Increases Memory and Comprehension: creates a visual memory map and narrative that can increase retention of content.
- Supports the Facilitator: Graphic recording supports the facilitator by making ideas visible so the group can get on the same page.
- Validates Participants: The graphic recorder listens to the conversation and participants can actually see their input being captured.
- Surprise and Delight: by capturing content in unexpected ways it can help participants get new perspectives, gain insight and solve problems.
- Better Decision Making: Ideas are clarified and visible to everyone in the room. Once the facts are clear, decisions often reveal themselves.
- Helps the Group to Maintain Focus: Having a graphic recorder in the room helps participants bring their attention back, catch up and stay focused.
- Communicate Key Messages: It’s great for engaging people who did not attend, weaving a map of key messages that is engaging to read through.
- An Engaging Communication Tool: Participants feel proud and excited by the visual, and are motivated to share it afterwards which reinforces messages.
- Promotes Creativity: When people enter the room, they realise this is no ordinary meeting or conference. Graphic recording sets the stage for conversation and creativity.
- Assists Alignment with The Vision: Graphic recording helps multiple partners, projects and stakeholders clarify how they contribute to the bigger picture.
If you would like to find out more, Sarah is offering a FREE graphic recording skills course. This course covers graphic recording is, why is it useful, and some of the ways it can add value to your work, life and study.
FREE GRAPHIC RECORDING QUICK SKILLS COURSE
Testimonials
“Sarah recently delivered an incredible keynote address on creative and visual thinking, neurodivergence and the basics of graphic recording to our whole Student Development team. Her presentation opened up great conversations about how to further recognise, celebrate and nurture our students’ – and our own! – strengths. Thank you, Sarah, for sharing your limitless talents and personal story with us! We’re already making plans for Sarah to return to Carey at the end of the year to work with the whole school staff!”
“Sarah did a fantastic job of graphic recording the process, results and energy of the National Swimming and Water Safety Education Symposium. Participants from researchers, policy makers and practitioners, loved being engaged in this way, seeing their views reflected in art and discussing key points as the artwork was displayed throughout.
I highly recommend Sarah and the graphic recording technique. It is such a great way to drive engagement, momentum and positivity during and after the symposium. I am amazed by her ability to hit all the key discussion points, and illustrate all at once.”
“Sarah delivered an incredibly creative, sensitive and beautiful piece of graphic recording for a recent project I delivered in partnership with the City of Melbourne for National Youth Week.
As part of the project we delivered a two-day workshop with 40 at-risk young people from across the city to spark their ideas for community change. Sarah produced two pieces of live graphic recording: one about how the young people viewed their community and another on what their action plans where which we hung up at Parliament House, Victoria, when the young people presented their ideas for change.
I would highly recommend Sarah for any community orientated work as she brings skill and understanding in equal measure.”
“What a wonderful collaboration! We engaged with Sarah to run three virtual workshops with some of my ATO Design staff. Exploring visual thinking and graphic recording fundamentals, and how to bring systems thinking and complex systems to life with creativity, art, colour and splash.
And what happened in the workshops? Magic! Magic that helped us bring our whole selves to work, explored our experience as a team during these interesting times. The highs and lows; surprises and opportunities: lessons about how our system-led design approach we are pioneering helps us see the complexity of the world in new and vibrant ways.
Sarah is such an engaging, experienced and encouraging teacher. My staff adored her and what they learned. They didn’t want the workshops to end! One of my staff said ‘these were genuinely the best workshops I’ve attended’. What they learned gave them the skills and confidence to start using visuals in their design work straight away.
I highly recommend Sarah’s approach and the graphic recording synthesis, it is such a powerful asset and capability for us going forward as a team!”
“Sarah is an inspiring and teacher who has an abundance of knowledge to share and is more than happy to pass it on. I attended her graphic recording training and was very impressed at the content, presentations, activities and also enjoyed getting some insight into how it works by viewing some of Sarah’s examples.
All participants regardless of experience (or lack of it) were made to feel at ease, encouraged and couldn’t wait to get “stuck” in and give it a go! I felt we were given a good solid basis of information to get us started along with plenty of ideas for how to put our new skills into practice.
I happily recommend the course to everyone, drawers or non-drawers alike!”
“I have engaged Sarah in two different work events and highly recommend her! At one event she was the graphic recorder for a series of presentations, and at the other she was the event designer and facilitator on an in-depth two-day annual reflection workshop for a program I was managing.
As a graphic recorder, Sarah impressed me with her creativity, but also with her ability to understand complex issues quickly. She is able to communicate those messages in a fantastic visual way, showing the linkages and outputs clearly.
In terms of her workshop, Sarah designed, facilitated and managed the workshop with great care, attention to detail, and passion. Every detail was thought about. All the participants consistently said that the workshop was the best they had ever attended.”