Engaging with archetypes

In today’s guest blog Michael references his use of archetypes, values and themes in a current project. At the same time another of our practitioners, Sonja reports on a another project in South Africa. I elaborated the technique in an article last year with some other South Africa examples. As both Michael and Sonja point out, the value of the technique is as much the way people use the representations. The more you can allow people to see differences from another groups perspective, without the intervention of expert analysis, the more they learn. Instead of seeking to explain away the expert interpretation, they know that the material they are looking out came out of similar social processes to those in which they themselves have engaged.

They have to engage, they cannot explain away.