Using drawings to understand civic engagement

The role that higher education institutions (HEIs) can play in developing civic engagement has been under increasing scrutiny in recent years, with most HEIs developing formal linkages to community and civic groups in the wider society through volunteering programmes, access programmes, and work placements. This paper will address how using student generated freehand drawings can create a learning environment where students develop a meaningful association with active engagement in society, and enables them to develop a better appreciation of how they might realise their full potential to contribute to wider society in more meaningful and holistic ways. Our study offers additional contributions to the literature on developing student capacity for independent and critical thought by applying their analytical skills outside of their chosen field of study and into a wider societal context. The technique of freehand drawing itself, in bypassing, or sidestepping, our cognitive, verbal processing routes, tends to lead students to produce clearer, more holistic images than they do with words.