Neuland Facilitation Walls

In the every-burgeoning quest for the best (and lightest) solution to being a graphic facilitator, we are constantly searching for the Nirvana of portable wall systems.

These may not be the lightest, but they are pretty dang mobile. Last week, our new panels from Neuland arrived ahead of schedule for a local scribing gig.

Although we could have bought the GraphicWall Bundle at a 15% discount (valid thru 9/30/05), we opted for the more basement-friendly combo of a left and right including paper dispenser and carrying bags.

These facile boards have been used by facilitators for years.

Normally, we trundle in a 30" x 40" cardboard box of white foam core. When I asked Diane Durand, a facilitator in Pittsburgh (and also my wife) why she preferred the new walls, she listed the benefits:

• they are super, sleek and easy to assemble (even in heels!)
• they unzipped out of the bag and--zip! zoop!--they were up
• She did not feel restrained, because of a spacious 4' x 8' work surface
• she could work larger
• it saves on foam core (which is florocarbon-filled)
• the tools match the work
• the walls make a bold statement, they say: "I am here to work, to work big and to produce good things."  

Available from The Grove, Facilitator U or direct from Neuland.
Call 1-888-713-2333 to order

Comments

[Barney cunningham]

I can only agree with your wife on this Peter, I have been lucky enough to use the wall for about six months, it just takes away the head aches of turning up to a venue with no good graphicing walls.

Diane is so right about the presence one has in the room as a facilitator; I use 3 bits of the wall along with Neulands pinboards which are great individual pieces of kit which you can move around a room and give you great flexibility to bring our recordings to different spaces and create more intimate and interactive expierences for people when we need to focus them away from our big picture metaphors.

Recently, myself and a co- facilitator used the wall along with 4 pinboards over a 3 day Path and Map course and it gave us all the vertical space we needed, but provided us with four seperate creative working areas for participants leaving the wall to capture the large group activities such as "graphic jams" or working through the Path tools.

I have only praise for Neulands kit.