There are two types of TUQTULI workshops: open and curated. Here you can find out where they have already taken place.
In tuqtuli workshops, the world is reflected as if in a dewdrop. As each culture and each sociotope has its own icons, comparing and discussing them has what it takes to raise awareness.
At first glance, tuqtuli workshops are clearly about creating something meaningful together: a visual world language. Articipants of tuqtuli workshops take an active part in making signs fiction a reality. Soon it becomes clear though that they are also about discovering commonalities and about emphasizing on what we share.
In tuqtuli workshops, articipants co-design and test visual vocabulary and a pictogrammar. They translate visual messages of others back into language. And they contribute signs from their personal environments to our ongoing collection of intangible cultural heritage. Results from previous tuqtuli workshops will be incorporated into future ones.
Tuqtuli workshops create a climate of we-are-in-this-togetherness. Here, people with equal rights learn from each other, question their own attitudes and work out solutions together. A dialogue of people with different views about and via tuqtuli – i.e. on visual representations of values – can reduce prejudices.
On an every day scale that everyone knows – visually and verbally – tuqtuli workshops bring forth what is needed on a much larger scale: self-efficacy, respect, openness. The will to refresh one’s own attitude, beliefs, and way of thinking.
open tuqtuli workshops
These are full-day formats at festivals, conferences, and other events. Anyone who can hold a pen can participate. An unlimited number of participants can drop in unannounced. They can stay as long as they like. The size of the space determines the size of the tuqtuli team. Team members include employees of cooperating companies and institutions as well as local artists, designers, translators, and linguists (to be). For languages other than English, French, and Italian, interpreters are also required in the team.
We ask our co-creators to translate abstract terms like »tomorrow«, »belonging« and »only« into icons, drawing with black pencils on plain white A4 sheets. We have them translate simple sentences like »Where can I find a bakery here, please?« and more difficult ones like »This task is tricky.«. Moreover, articipants translate visual messages of others back into language. This way, they become co-creators of a visual world language. We consider each of them an authority – for their own horizon of experience and communication style.
Depending on the context, our attendees can transfer their favorite pictographic messages onto bags, clothing, posters, invitation cards, and greeting cards, and carry them with them in their daily lives.
We will hang their new suggestions for visual vocabulary and a pictogrammar on the walls, thus gradually covering them with eye-catching pictographic messages that attract new attendees.
Nurturing everyone’s creativity is of high importance for us. Just as their diversity. Everyone’s views are wanted here! We encourage self-confidence to express their individual perceptions and ideas in (series of) icons. Thus, our attendees experience for themselves that we all know already how to tuqtuli – provided we are open to other people’s ways of seeing things.
You are interested in an open tuqtuli workshop?
curated tuqtuli workshops
These are formats at universities, schools, and other institutions, for companies, organizations, associations, public institutions, and other groups.
Curated tuqtuli workshops will be held by Juli. They can last from three hours to two weeks. We arrange dates accordingly for groups of up to 30 people. One or two employees from the respective companies and institutions are welcome to join as additional team members with complementary knowledge. For languages other than English, French, and Italian, interpreters are also required in the team.
Curated tuqtuli workshops are tailored to the respective context and needs.
- At universities in the fields of communication design, communication science, art, linguistics, philology, semiotics, medicine, ethnology, archaeology, social work, and social pedagogy, the focus is on research and further development of the tuqtuli communication principle.
- For language teachers, tuqtuli is an interesting teaching tool.
- For speech therapists, tuqtuli extends of their working methodology.
- Schools and other institutions book tuqtuli workshops as an innovative educational format that offers young people (from difficult backgrounds) a safe space where they can express their feelings and views non-verbally and explore learning material on a visual level.
- People who work with refugees and migrants are given an alternative means of communication with tuqtuli.
- Public institutions use it to open up a temporary think tank in which participants share their worldviews and perspectives.
- For doctors and pharmacists, tuqtuli is a great way to communicate with patients whose language is not covered by translation apps.
- Companies, institutions, and organizations book tuqtuli workshops as team-building incentives, for management conferences, and as a comparison tool for their international teams, allowing their members to connect on a different level than the verbal one in surprising ways.
In curated tuqtuli workshops we look at, appreciate, critically question, practise and develop pictographic communication in all its diversity. We translate words, sentences and texts. We discuss the new suggestions and what attendees of previous workshops created so far. We address specific topics via tuqtuli and apply tuqtuli to specific contexts.