Visual literacy as a tool for personal and social transformation

Abstract

This article examined visuality as a social construct that tacitly regulates perception and prospection. Building on Foster’s definition, it argues that visuality normalizes cultural frameworks, shaping interpretative habits and determining how individuals and communities envision possible futures. The article situated visuality within the broader field of visual literacy, where images – through repetition and normalization – operate as powerful vehicles of meaning. Drawing on five visual literacy workshops in Cyprus, Norway and Corsica, it demonstrates the pervasive influence of visuality on cognition and emotion and shows how images shape interpretative frameworks that both define identity and limit change and transformation individually and collectively. The article suggested that specifically designed tools can disrupt limiting anticipations. It proposes, as well, visual literacy workshops as a powerful educational and reflective tool to slow down automatisms, expand critical awareness and foster the capacity to imagine and embrace alternative realities, thereby enhancing personal and collective transformation.

Introduction

As humans, we constantly elaborate reality by envisioning future events and, as Kautsky (1892 [1910]) notes, we tend to live more there than in the present: ‘Not what is, but what will be, not existing conditions, but tendencies, determine the happiness both of individuals and of whole states’ (p. 147). In his book In the Long Run: The Future as a Political Idea, Jonathan White (2024) aptly noted that we live in an era of accelerating emergencies and crisis which concentrates on practicable, measurable, direct solutions, depriving the space of ‘imagined futures’, in the sense of ‘thinking big’. This deprivation happens because prospection, our thinking about the future, simulates contexts similar to those experienced in the past and perceived in the present, therefore influences our intentions (Brewer and Marsh, 2009; Gilbert and Wilson, 2007). It is true that being alert for the worst and dwelling on familiar patterns of thought and action are expressions of our species’ survival mechanism (Chun and Jiang, 1998; Schacter et al., 2007). Nevertheless, there is a specific condition that further solidifies it: the impact of our daily interaction with visual representations intensifies these simulations and intentions (Karaiskou, 2024). This article investigated the formative influence of images in shaping our cultural interpretative frames, our visuality, along with the resultant implications for prospection and anticipation. The term ‘visuality’ is understood here as Foster (1988) frames it: ‘how we see; how we are able, allowed, or made to see; and how we see this seeing or the unseen therein’ (p. ix).

Each segment of Foster’s definition implies the enactment of a tacit and automatic cultural and social ‘normalization’ (Foucault, 1982: 789) upon our seeing action. Due to the automation of the visuality process, we do not engage our cognition and critical thinking to consciously react upon the ‘normalization’ of our seeing, our seeing conditioning. As a consequence, we tend to embrace as normal and inevitable what looks familiar, no matter how ‘big’ or ‘small’ it is or how, and if, it serves our wellbeing, individually and collectively. Our seeing conditioning, though, constitutes a major implication precisely because it relates to the ways we sustain the reprise of fruitless situations or compromising solutions and anticipate in a limiting mode (Karaiskou, 2024). An additional reason that makes limiting anticipations critical and urgent to explore is the profound contradiction between the ‘seeing is no longer believing’ as Metros and Woolsey (2006: 81) aptly stated, referring to the need to judge the ‘accuracy, validity and worth’ of images in our digital age, and the core function of our brains where, indeed, ‘seeing-is-believing’ (Hausmann et al., 2008). This is especially true when relentless repetition of certain visuals occurs. How we see, how we are able, allowed or made to see, define our perspectives, perceptions and assumptions that result in the stories we iterate among us as societies. Our propensity to be vulnerable to these narratives is directly proportional to the significance of what is at stake: Ensuring the conditions of our belonging and the maintenance of our collective lives. The purpose of deconstructing Foster’s ‘hows’ of visuality, as this article proposes, is to draw attention to why we humans think and act the way we do, and, consequently, suggest paths for broadening the horizon of our prospections, of what we anticipate as possibilities in the future.

Shifting perception is intrinsically linked to shifting prospection and altering anticipations. Forced, gradual or revolutionary change, even more so transformation, happens regardless of our consent, as a necessary process of adaptation and survival. The challenge is to create the conditions where we humans embrace and support change, recognizing in it the potential that resides in possibility, instead of resisting it. This article suggested that genuine change and transformation happen when conscious ‘what if’ questions intervene and disturb the flow of mind-set automations. It proposes that, as humans, we can create the space for new ‘what if’ questions to arise under the condition that we become aware of how dominant narratives, notions and everyday social phenomena imbue our private spaces shaping our identities and our ‘imagined communities’ (Anderson, 1991). Narratives constitute the ‘basic source[s] of psychological and social stability’ and ‘form the basis for social organization and cohesion’ (Zajonc, 2001: 227). When we challenge the stories we reiterate as individuals and critically comprehend collective narratives, we intervene by slowing down our cognitive and emotional automations. We create space for different perspectives, perceptions and assumptions to emerge in ourselves and in our communities, and we allow prospection to expand the horizons of anticipations as well as the content and quality of our lives in the present. Concurrently, we challenge hegemonic narratives and alter notions, we gain awareness and agency to co-create the present and the future and we build resilience.

The article presents the experience of five visual literacy workshops with an aim to discuss how the powerful grip our visuality – our seeing conditioning – has on our thoughts, feelings and actions creates the challenging situation of limiting anticipations. Before discussing the experience of the five visual literacy workshops, the first section of this article, ‘The quest for visual literacy’, briefly provides the background of the field that grew out of the swelling power of images to convey a sense of reality and truth. It briefly indicates the different definitions and the respective areas of interest that the field studies and explores, as well as its relevance to a broad number of disciplines where images are involved. The intention of this first section is not to analyze existing theories of the visual literacy field but to prepare the path for the second section, the ‘Mind the gap’. This second section points to the impact images have on the way we think, feel and act which, in turn, uphold the limiting cultural interpretations of our ‘imagined communities’. It highlights foundational questions concerning the principles that govern our collective stories. It also comments on the different ways we assess the influence of images, distinguishing between those we consider ‘heritage’ and those from mass media, social media and advertising. Drawing on the premise that human memory is organized around visual and emotional inputs, the third section, ‘Beyond visual literacy frontiers’, investigates how this cognitive framework involves with our understanding of reality and our thinking about the future. It discusses the tacit and automatic processes that occur during our interaction with visuals and analyses the constitutive power of repetition, which, by cementing perceptions and directing attention, fundamentally shapes our visuality, thereby validating dominant narrators and narratives. The five forementioned visual literacy workshops are presented as case studies with an aim to provide tangible examples on how shared stories from the past are enacted in the present and determine how we anticipate the content and shape of our lives in the future. The workshops explored the topic of identity and took place in Cyprus, Norway and Corsica. The application of specifically designed tools shed light on the impact of respective cultural frameworks and societal conditioning, highlighted the pervasive influence of the visuality process on the awareness of the self and made apparent the ensuing need to challenge limiting beliefs by embracing alternative perspectives.

The quest for visual literacy

Since the twentieth century, and especially during the last decades, the increasing ubiquity of images and the proliferation of their sources proportionally escalated their role as social regulators. Until the late nineteenth century, the slow pace at which the world was changing, combined with the established patronage system that, since antiquity, produced works of art, had reassured, on a local level, homogeneous arrays of worldviews that kept societies together (Lukes, 1975). It took only a few decades for modern society to multiply the sources of representations, overturn the rules of their distribution, abolish the existing, broad categories of religious and secular art and flood our public and individual spaces. Today, our eagerness to consume, create and distribute visuals reaffirms their power to represent ideas, convey emotions, communicate meaning and create alignments. More than ever nowadays, they create ‘a powerful sense of ‘reality’, ‘truth’ and ‘evidence’’ (Newfield, 2011: 82).

This new condition sparked interest in the value of conscious interaction with images leading to the emergence of various literacies as indispensable necessities (Johnson, 2006). In the late 1960s, John Debes founded the International Visual Literacy Association (IVLA) and described visual literacy as ‘a group of vision-competences a human being can develop by seeing’. In 2011, the Association defined the field of visual literacy as

a set of abilities that enables an individual to effectively find, interpret, evaluate, use, and create images and visual media. Visual literacy skills equip a learner to understand and analyze the contextual, cultural, ethical, aesthetic, intellectual, and technical components involved in the production and use of visual materials. A visually literate individual is both a critical consumer of visual media and a competent contributor to a body of shared knowledge and culture (IVLA, 2024).

During the last 50 years, visual literacy became an official area for academic research and is considered central in a broad number of disciplines such as art history, visual arts, visual communication, semiotics, cultural studies, media studies, communication studies, psychology and sociology, to mention only a few (Bamford, 2003). All of them are, in some capacity, intrinsically linked by their engagement with imagery.

The plethora of definitions attributed to the term demonstrate our multifold interactions with visuals and their importance in our private, collective and professional lives (Avgerinou and Ericson, 1997). According to Avgerinou and Ericson (1997: 281), visual literacy aims to ‘discriminate and interpret the visible actions, objects, symbols, natural or man-made, that he encounters in his environment’. According to Felten (2008: 2), visual literacy ‘involves the ability to understand, produce and use culturally significant images, objects, and visible actions’. Discussing the power of images, Johnson (2006) reminds that ‘the ability to understand, recognize, manipulate, and put to use the power of images’ (p. 73) is part of the skills attributed to the field of visual literacy. Often, the emphasis on the connection between visual literacy and emerging technologies reverberates concerns about students’ ability to cognitively process visual information as effectively as textual, to produce new meaningful images and meet educational, and eventually professional, requirements (Avgerinou and Pettersson, 2011; Bamford, 2003; Hattwig et al., 2013; Lundy and Stephens, 2015; Metros and Woolsey, 2006). All definitions, despite their wide span and different focuses, meet in acknowledging the importance of interpreting, constructing and communicating meaning.

Mind the gap

Mastering various competencies such as comprehending diagrams, graphs or maps, recognizing symbols, attempting compositional analysis or producing images is indispensable for intellectual growth. It is also important for addressing the multifaceted demands of our personal, social and professional spheres. However, this is very different from becoming aware of the very existence and function of visuality. The aforementioned capacities do not address the core issue of visuality, our seeing conditioning, our subconscious ‘addiction’ to visual narratives that shape our identities and our ‘imagined communities’. While scholars already acknowledge the manipulative power of images and stress the need to ‘become aware of the structure and function of visual language’ (Avgerinou and Ericson, 1997: 286), this recognition does not extend to the profound formative effects of images. The outcomes of their purposeful use remain unacknowledged.

The deep impact images have on individuals’ thinking, feeling and acting patterns resembles the imprint of a fossil or a scar: life evolves uninterrupted around it, but always carries its shape and the experience of its intervention. Although we make sense and we build memory and identity only within cultural contexts (Bruner, 1991), for some reason, important questions slip in oblivion. Such questions could be ‘How we have been manipulated by the images that surround us?’, ‘Who manipulated and still manipulates us, and to what end?’, and, most importantly, ‘What are the implications of these manipulations?’. These questions and their answers are intertwined with our capacity to imagine prosperous and sustainable futures. For example, it is important to wonder how memorials, especially in conflict societies, exacerbate and spread feelings of victimhood, trauma, anger, fear, pain or identity and duty, preventing healing among and in communities (Karaiskou, 2017, 2020, 2022). Usually, scholars list memorials in special editions or catalogues, study them in terms of their aesthetics and discuss the conditions and historical context of their creation. During the commemorative ceremonies, though, participants focus on the values they involve. Their presence reaffirms the moral commitment to honour the bequeathed legacy. These rituals involve enormous repercussions for societies, including stereotyping, polarization and conflicts that limit the ability to imagine and anticipate beyond them. Deconstructing and demystifying such legacies are crucial to break the conditioning of the past in the present, enable alternative narratives to emerge and allow viable visions of and for the future.

There is a critical inconsistency in our engagement with imagery: While we acknowledge the significant impact of adverts, media and social media on our understanding of the world and the ways we interact with each other, we tend to disregard the effects and side-effects of our cultural ‘figures of memory’ (Assmann and Czaplicka, 1995: 129). Both these broad categories count on visuals to generate emotional stimulation and achieve their formative role. Somehow as societies we exculpate works of art from any intention other than serving ‘good’, ‘beauty’ or an abstract sense of ‘higher intentions’. For example, we feel familiar with advertisements’ long-standing relationship with the arts, that includes the use of artworks per se or of telling elements such as aesthetics, composition or iconography to effectively attribute symbolic value to the products they promote. Nevertheless, we resist to turn a wondrous eye towards the communicative purposes the broad and rich category of ‘arts’ served within the context of their time and was bequeathed to us through what we recognize and accept as heritage. All kinds of visual representations archaeology discovered to date, from rock paintings and decorations on pottery fοr private use to public art that gave shape to myths and allegories, or glorified gods, heroes and public figures; all religious representations across cultures; and all artworks from Renaissance and on until modernity are condensers of meaning, testimonies and regulators, at the same time, of collective values, worldviews and dispositions. They have been sources of knowledge and memory individually for humans as well as for their societies. While texts explore and elaborate concepts that govern life and death, and oral narratives spread them within and across communities and eras, it is representations that have always been ‘central to communication and meaning-making’ (Felten, 2008: 1), for the additional reason that they bypass the barrier of illiteracy. It is important to note, as well, that the main issue involving the head-on-collision between academic art and modernism since the nineteenth century was the rupture of dominant cultural interpretative frames. That collision indicated the limitations of the existing cosmologies, ideologies and other –ologies and the awakening call to the possibility and potential for alternative worldviews to bring transformation on a personal and social level.

Perhaps we are still rather reluctant to dig beyond culture’s exculpatory label of ‘heritage’ that we reverentially protect by institutions, often as a taboo, because of what is at stake: The change of the conditions of our sensemaking that will challenge our ‘imagined communities’. However, by insisting on them, we disregard our ‘imagined futures’ (White, 2024). By failing to examine and comprehend the indelible imprint our visuality has on our patterns of thoughts and actions, we deprive our lives and communities of the expanding and enriching potential our imagination has, and we reverberate our past into our present, inevitably into our future as well.

Beyond visual literacy frontiers: visual literacy as a visuality process

Images play a central role in the human learning experience because our memory is structured to work with images and emotion (Damasio, 1994 (2006) Zajonc, 1980). Warburg was the first to see images as ‘an organ of social memory’ and comment on their significance as such (Tamm, 2015: 9). Since then, it has been well established through neuroscience and psychology research that representations provide the building blocks of the stories we tell, and we define ourselves through them, by emotionally responding to them (Alexander and Breese, 2011; Amodio, 2013). In the same vein, the theory of ‘picture-superiority effect’ (Paivio, 1971; Weldon and Bellinger, 1997: 1162) points to the greater effectiveness of images, compared to words, in making abstract ideas concrete and in evoking strong emotional responses. This is precisely the reason why representations hold a prominent presence across all cultures and civilizations.

Individual experiences and memories, despite creating unique interpretative filters, do not diminish the formative power of public visual representations. What humans perceive as ‘reality’ is the mixture of culturally interpreted content and personal experiences. Mere contact with images triggers far quicker and more effectively tacit and automatic processes than any intentional cognitive interpretation and analysis (Schacter et al., 1993) and activates visuality. In addition, the emotional reactions that images activate leave their imprint in our subconscious, mainly without our awareness. Indeed, our unawareness is their ideal condition to communicate and cement their messages because cognitive mechanisms and critical thinking are inactive (Dillon et al., 2007; LeDoux, 1996). As a result, the already existing structures our memory holds not only reinforce perspectives and perceptions but also validate assumptions, corroborate dispositions and become the core reason for our limited anticipation. They prioritize, as well, the relations that match with what is already familiar or feels natural and right, disregarding what does not align with our belief systems (Chun and Jiang, 1998; Kristjánsson and Campana, 2010; Zajonc, 2001). In other words, our mind pays attention to what exists in accordance with our constantly fed visuality and, accordingly, generates the stories we tell and live by, individually and collectively. What is of utmost importance here is that, unless we deliberately challenge the ‘familiar’ and ‘right’ and choose to engage different, even odd or uncomfortable perspectives, we fail to react upon the ‘normalization’ of our seeing (Hutton, 1987).

Repetition of visuals and their narratives establish the sense of familiar, cement the ‘seeing-is-believing’ effect (Hausmann et al., 2008) and lure viewers into embracing all kinds of ‘realities’ (Kansteiner, 2002), especially when authority is involved (Elsner, 1994). Sources of authority are parents, relatives and peers, religion and educational systems, collective rituals and customs, arts, media and social media, to name a few. They become the dominant narrators (Cuc et al., 2006) that shape our beliefs, emotions and behaviours, they introduce long-standing cultural narratives and train us to make sense of the world around us (Heath and Nairn, 2005). We grow accustomed to their narratives and either accept them as rightful and truth or as the measurement to judge and assess to what extent our own beliefs and actions deviate from them. On a collective level, Billig (1995) described very aptly our seeing conditioning and the effects of visuality in his seminal work Banal Nationalism. Although he focuses on the phenomenon of curving national identities, the book enlightens as to how everyday repetitive visuals and rituals have an erosive effect on our thinking, feeling and acting patterns. On a broader perspective, this is why, when discussing fundamental political, religious or social ideas, values and policies, the repetitive use of stereotypical visual forms, language and symbols reinforces the message and cements understanding. A typical example is the care with which humans created and decorated their religious places, from ancient temples to Christian churches, cathedrals, chapels, mosques, synagogues, stupas, pagodas or shrines. They are all loaded with stereotypical representations and visual components that narrate, remind, insinuate and address the emotions of their attendees, praising the merits of a ‘normalized’ life, alleviating or reminding the fear of death and the uncertainties of life.

In the information era, the dominance of digital and printed images, the ‘democratization’ of arts and the elimination of distances, exacerbated on a massive scale the seamless reinforcement of what social ‘naturalness’ is, regarding self-perceptions, worldviews, value systems and social categorizations or stereotypes. In addition, ‘social contagion’ (Brown et al., 2009: 119; Cuc et al., 2006: 753), the ripple effect dominant narratives have on communities, further reinforces our illusive conviction on the naturalness of our certainties and ‘realities’, especially when they align with those of our social groups. Our addiction to certain mental forms that our visuality entails and dictates, arises as a direct outcome of the ‘normalization’ process and safeguards what is at stake: the conditions of our belonging and the maintenance of our collective lives.

Futures of the past: limitations in action

The impact of visuality becomes apparent during the visual literacy workshops that take place as the main activity of the UNESCO Chair on ‘Visual Anticipation and Futures Literacy towards Visual Literacy’. The workshops introduce an educational process beyond conventional teaching forms. Depending on the topic under exploration, the available time and the participants’ age, the facilitators apply sets of specifically designed tools that support active, experiential forms of learning. Regardless of the combination of tools, participants become aware of how they enact their past in the present and extrapolate it in the future through prospection. With an aim to create space for alternative realities to emerge, during the last phase of the workshops, the facilitators invite participants to imagine ideal futures, in the sense of ‘thinking big’, outside of what sounds expected, probable, possible or (rationally) doable.

Regarding the five workshops described here, participants explored the concept of identity and demonstrated how cultural frameworks and limiting imagination manifest in real life and with what consequences. The workshops run during 2024 and involved a total of 41 participants. Their ages varied from 16 to 50 years, and their background were diverse: high school and university students, academic professors and staff, businessmen and businesswomen. Although the workshops took place in Cyprus, Norway and Corsica, participants represented more cultures and nationalities.

The workshops began with the usual pre-workshop activity: applying the Babel tool (Karaiskou, 2025). This tool is designed to associate learners’ experiences with concrete images and, thus, support them to clarify blind spots, thoughts and feelings they have. It encourages them as well to raise awareness of the many different understandings that coexist and of their deriving consequences. When asked what identity means for them, participants spontaneously related their own concept of identity with images of landscapes and personal objects that implied habits and affective attachments. A very small minority among them identified themselves through family members and close friends. Equally diverse were the keywords they used: Among the words they shared was ‘isolation’, ‘only the locals’, ‘our country’, ‘religion’, ‘nation’, ‘past’, ‘heritage’, ‘confinement’, ‘region’, ‘category’, ‘island’, ‘language’, ‘fixation’. The words ‘language’, ‘isolation’ and ‘confinement’, showed up more than once.

When asked if the experience of their own identity could be associated with limiting words and, if yes, what would they be, answers such as ‘domination’, ‘close-minded’, ‘framed’, ‘restricted’, ‘normalized’, ‘need for consensus’, ‘imposed’, ‘limited’, ‘homogenized’, surfaced. As consequences, ‘loss of authenticity’, ‘lose control of ourselves’, ‘abuse’, ‘manipulation’, ‘frustration’, ‘passivity’, ‘introversion’, ‘tiredness’, ‘range’, ‘lack of possibilities and freedom’, ‘lack of love’ and ‘loss of imagination’ were brought up. Fear of discrimination, disconnection and exclusion was mentioned as well. At the same time, and on what they called ‘bright side’, participants responded that the enactment of their identity secures their unity with their community and the possibility to advance together, provides serenity, safeness and connection to customs and heritage. When prompted to imagine an ideal context of identity, they wished for ‘recognition’, ‘openness’, ‘connection, ‘freedom’, ‘love’, ‘heart-driven life’, ‘fulfilment’, ‘sharing’ and ‘inclusivity’. However, in every workshop, there was at least one participant to notice that this latter possibility is a ‘utopia’. Oddly enough, the rest of the participants agreed with the statement. A few might have kept a neutral stance, but there was none to support the opposite, the possibility of such a reality occurring.

During the workshops, the facilitator shared an image of a baby face with a barcode on its front and asked participants to describe how the socially imposed identity barcode affects them. Although such a question might sound simple and with an obvious response, it perplexed most of them. Their first reaction was to state that who or what they are has nothing to do with their society and is the outcome of their own choices and will. The true experience behind their spontaneous reactions and (illusive) convictions emerged after only a few probing questions and stirred rich conversations and vivid interactions. Long lists of behaviours, roles and traits were acknowledged. Stereotypes were recognized regarding the social expectations on how to be a ‘correct’ individual (independent, strong, law abiding, consenting, respectful, attractive), child (be good, be the pride for the parents), partner (marriage prevailed massively for women), parent (dedicated, caring, serving), professional and colleague (productive, successful, available, dedicated, team player, responsible, trustful) or friend (available, supportive, consenting). Many traits, such as being kind, humble, available, organized, effective, caring and consenting, among others, were gendered. As sources that feed these perceptions, participants named their working places, schools, religion, role models, media and social media, literature, cinema, arts, advertisements, cartoons, friends, family, relatives and collective rituals related to heritage, memory and religion. When asked to relate these roles and traits with specific images, they mentioned stereotypical images from social media, advertising, cartoons, cinema and the arts.

Of paramount importance, during these discovery processes, was the gradual awareness of, first, the limiting assumptions that relate with all perceptions. Second, how these assumptions govern their lives regardless of their age and professional background, and third, the deriving effect. Feelings of failing, inadequacy, shrinking and limitation, need to be apologetic, helplessness, disappointment, frustration, anger or confinement followed the ‘I have to [. . .], in order to.’. or “Unless I [. . .], I will not.”. labelling and, subsequently, deconstructing their assumptions. Regardless of the assumptions that emerged and were shared among the participants, all ‘have to’ conditions were aligning with the need to ‘be good and fit in’ and implied – it was explicitly stated in various cases – ‘pretending’. All ‘in order to’ consequences of the conditions ended up in the reward of ‘acceptance’. Within this context, it did not come as a surprise that all participants, with no exception, admitted that they do not feel, or did not feel in the past, comfortable and confident to make choices that breach social norms, even if that would fulfil their own needs and desires, because the price (‘loneliness’ due to ‘exclusion’, ‘marginalization’, ‘stigmatization’, ‘insecurity’ and ‘uselessness’) would be ‘too high’.

It was rather unexpected and truly heart-breaking, to realize that a concrete sense of emptiness, meaninglessness and helplessness prevailed especially among the high school students. Although when enacting the Polak game (Hayward and Candy, 2017) they actually positioned themselves as optimistic and sources of agency for societal change, during the workshops, and in all cases, they distinctively made the point that they would wish to be able to influence the course of events in their lives, but in reality, they feel powerless to do so and cannot envision themselves being able in the future, either. Past experiences were mentioned times and again as explanations and arguments to support their stances. Prevailing social narratives regarding values, hierarchies, notions, power relations or motivations were brought up, as well. Indifference, passive-aggressiveness and cynicism lurked behind the words they used, their body language and facial expressions. As a matter of fact, the ‘What can I do? I do not make the rules’ was expressed in diverse manners and the discussions focused on how and if individuals matter.

The difficulties participants face when asked to imagine the ideal version of any concept under examination were apparent during the White T-shirt activity, which is often used during the visual literacy workshops (Karaiskou, 2025). Experience shows that these difficulties are directly related to their conditioning. In the case of the five identity-related workshops, the numbness, reluctance in some cases and bewilderment were compatible with their inputs during the different stages of the workshops and were related to their self-image. The participants were asked to imagine wearing a white T-shirt and picture themselves as an empty canvas. The instructions were to visualize in very concrete words and images the traits of their new, ideal self and inscribe them on the T-shirt. Participants were explicitly told they could use any existing images from their public spaces or create new ones. They also had complete freedom to envision and construct a new identity that best aligned with their ideal version, whatever that might be. In comparison to other tools that support the deconstruction of visuality, such as the frame or the stage, the white T-shirt encourages the embodiment of the transformative experience instead of setting the participants in the disengaging observer’s role. In this T-shirt activity, the combination of words and images as building components of the ideal identity served two different needs. First, the need to make explicit what kind of images and emotions lie behind words, and second, to narrow down, through words, the broader interpretative spectrum of the images.

Only a very small minority among all 41 participants were really daring with their imagination. All the rest were very ‘realistically’ attempting to improve and compromise versions of what they already experience. They used logical explanations and arguments on ‘why it cannot’ and found it difficult to succumb to the facilitator’s nudging ‘it is just a game; imagine you have the power to become anything you want’. Most responses were hesitant, almost as if asking permission to, or feeling insolent in the thought to wholeheartedly follow the instruction. Concerns of becoming ‘selfish’ or ‘not serving the community’ came up especially among participants coming from central and northern Europe. Diverse participants stated that this was, indeed, a difficult and challenging activity and felt perplexed by their hindrance to responding to transformative change.

Other challenging, but at the end, intense thought-provoking activities involved the Visuality Iceberg and the Reframing concepts tools (Karaiskou, 2024, 2025). Both hold a core position during the visual literacy workshops. The Visuality Iceberg tool is practically a simplified version of the Causal Layered Analysis (CLA) method that Sohail Inayatullah introduced in the field of foresight (Inayatullah, 1998). Within the field that Inayatullah applies it, it supports the exploration of the deep-rooted collective narratives that myths carry in the form of metaphors. Likewise, the deconstruction of visuality supports the exploration of the immediate impact of collective myths – the shared perspectives, perceptions and assumptions of individuals and groups. The reframing concepts tool extracts main suppositions from any topic under examination and supports participants to engage different, even odd or uncomfortable perspectives. In the case of the five identity workshops, the Visuality Iceberg tool assisted participants to spot the values, dominant narratives and structures that support identity-related visuals in their daily lives. The Reframing concepts process, on the other hand, pushed them to approach ‘identity’ out of the familiar contexts and understandings. The discomfort with which participants reacted – and usually react – is indicative of the power assumptions exercised on our lives. Diverse ‘what if’ questions emerged – as they always do during the workshops – as part of the empowerment process. It is not the intention of this article to elaborate on them in a detailed manner, but it is important to note that they result in powerful ‘wow’ moments where participants recognize the potential of diverse possibilities.

So far, the experience of the workshops indicates that introspection always occurs; tacit and alternative narratives naturally appear and, most importantly, space for new realities to surface arises. By combining words and images and by insisting on making the participants’ thoughts as concrete as possible by digging again and again into their input, the deep-rooted mental patterns and their implications become apparent. Time and again, the visual literacy workshops showcase the many different realities that coexist depending on how we experience the events around us, and the many, differently imagined or anticipated futures these experiences are impregnated with. It is of paramount importance for the participants to realize that ‘an “event” does not exist independently of an observer’ (Inayatullah, 1990: 117). Especially regarding the choices we make at every step of our lives, we are those who shape and manifest the possible or impossible, depending on our subjective understandings.

Conclusions

Every single time we ‘make-sense’, we actively turn our perceptions into rigid stereotypes; we validate our assumptions; and endorse the naturalness that derives from the ‘seeing-is-believing’ effect (Hausmann et al., 2008). Although shared understandings are fundamental and indispensable to our lives, it is important to beware of the interpretative filters with which they are imbued and which we humans unobservedly internalize.

This article showcased how visuality works under the spectrum of consciousness defining perspectives, perceptions, assumptions and anticipations, and hushing up voices and alternative narratives from emerging. It underscored, as well, that the deliberate slowing down of mental and emotional automations, in the sense of observing and deconstructing them, is the antidote to ‘normalization’. The illusive perception that identity is the outcome of conscious choices and free will, as well as the difficulty of imagining outside our experience that defines what we consider as normal, doable and expected, extends beyond the five identity-related workshops described here. During the first two years of the UNESCO Chair on ‘Visual Anticipation and Futures Literacy towards Visual Literacy’ (2022–2024), more than 45 visual literacy workshops were implemented, involving approximately 650 participants and addressing a considerable variety of topics. Regardless of the concept under examination, all of them confirmed the blind spots of thought processes and the illusiveness of certainties we all carry. Certainties are rooted on what we experience as ‘powerful sense of “reality”, “truth” and “evidence”’ (Newfield, 2011: 82), while our blind spots highlight a fundamental truth: our relationship with the past and what is bestowed on us individually and collectively is far more intense than we imagine.

The feedback that participants provided during the five workshops indicated fear as the source of numbness and lack of empowered action. However, change and transformative change happens out of fear’s spell and involves empowerment as well. Indeed, empowerment is emphatically mentioned in diverse contexts and circumstances in the last years. It has been strategically positioned as a core tenet for achieving inclusion and sustainability across an array of contemporary discourses, particularly within the policy frameworks of international organizations and governmental initiatives. For empowerment to emerge, though, it is imperative to embrace change instead of clinging to the past. Cultural systems, as mechanisms that hold societies together (Lukes, 1975), literally write on stone the value of permanence and continuity shaping not only who we are or are expected to be but also what we are expected to care about and how we can foresee and effect change. Perhaps the prevailing perception of the past as a continuity, instead of a series of ruptures and changes, along with the need to fit in whatever community we consider important for our lives farther exacerbates the need to dwell on familiar patterns of thought and action although they do not necessarily always fulfil our lives. However, to envision a sustainable and prosperous future it is necessary to consider challenging the narratives that keep our societies anchored and disturbing the manipulations of power-driven intentions that instrumentalize the past to the point that it loses its autonomy (Tamm, 2015). The powerful insights that emerged during the five workshops outlined here demonstrated that by limiting the influence of ‘naturalness’, the sense of possibility alters. When participants slowed down and examined from a ‘deeper level’ (Inayatullah, 1990: 118) their core life definitions, they began to deconstruct established realities. This engagement initiated a process of empowerment and action, which is crucial for confronting the pressing challenges and looming dystopias faced by modern societies.