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“This is not a workshop in how to draw,
this is a workshop in how to see.”
– Andrew Causey (Columbia College Chicago)
The Ethnography Workshop hosted anthropologist and artist Andrew Causey for a workshop in “Line Drawing as Research Method.” This workshop introduced participants to drawing as mode of learning, and not only documenting. To start the workshop, Andrew shared his own process of coming to this conceit and shared stories from his fieldwork in Sumatra (see Hard Bargaining in Sumatra (2003)).
He laid out three basic ground rules: 
* Don’t judge yourself
* Don’t assume anything
* Open yourself to fun
And three goals:
* Increasing your visual awareness
* Cultivating a new interest in perceiving the world around you
* Acknowledging that drawing can be useful as ethnographic method
We spent most of the three-hour workshop experimenting with various drawing exercises, including: (1) drawing an upside-down image just as we see it, (2) drawing from deep memory, (3) drawing from recent memory, (4) drawing an object from touch, (5) drawing with scribbles, (6) and drawing with our non-dominant hands.
Andrew Causey is Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology in the Department of Humanities, History, and Social Sciences at Columbia College Chicago, where he teaching courses ranging from “Visual Anthropology” “Ethnographic Films” and “Writing Anthropology.” For more on drawing-as-method, check out his 2016 book “Drawn to See: Drawing as Ethnographic Method” (University of Toronto Press).
