 I have the pleasure of doing two things. One is I get to stand in for Susan Fader of the Mellon Foundation, who, if she was here, would be doing this introduction. But through the Mellon Foundation, I got to know an extraordinary set of colleagues who originally began, when I got to know them, they were working at Arena Stage in Washington, DC. And since then, they've moved to Emerson in Boston, Massachusetts. But they're the colleagues who are behind HowlRound TV, which is how we are broadcasting this to everyone who's at home. And they've also been some really important thought partners to me as I was handed the strategic plan for Art Place and told to sort of think about how to operationalize this. So I'm deeply indebted to David Dower and to Polly Carl, who are about to come up and lead us through the next session, just in terms of sort of opening up my eyes to a new way of thinking and helping me into a new way of working. So please join me in welcoming David Dower and Polly Carl from Arts Emerson and HowlRound. So I'm not sure what you thought was promised, but I had an idea once the deputy mayor's guy was here that I would lead a yoga session. Now that would be bad for everybody. Jamie had asked us to first start with a kind of ice breaker. And clearly, because of the sort of lack of energy in the break, you guys really need that. But we're going to go ahead and start it just to give everybody a kind of mix it all up for everybody. For the next about 20 minutes, 25 minutes, we're going to shape and reshape this room. We're going to do some creative place making in this room. And then we're going to go into a study of what it is that we've done at HowlRound and how it might relate to the stuff that Jamie's just laid out. Very powerfully thought through. It's been really an honor and exciting for us to work with you, Jamie, as you're thinking and Liz, as you're thinking has grown on this work that you're about to embark on. And we're very honored to be here to share what we've been doing in the hopes that it helps you guys think about how you are becoming a community, a commons, if you will, of creative place making. So we'll do a little bit of that. And then we'll have time for questions and answers. And we're going to do some exercises in the middle that help you understand, actually get into the mechanics of what it is that we do. So we're going to begin by getting up. And before you do that, we're going to use that open spot of the room for a minute. And then we're going to use the whole room in a minute. And then we're going to go back to the open spot. And then we're going to go back to the whole room. And so you're going to have to listen up. And then the way we're going to end it is that we're going to end by grabbing chairs. And we're going to break up into groups of 11, I think, is the number that we need to use. We've got to get about 20 groups all together. So we're going to break up into 11 groups. And each group is going to take your chair to wherever it is you want to meet for your breakout and then come right back in here. And we'll keep going with the session. So some of those groups can be in here. Some of the groups can be out in the lobby. That's the last step. And I'll explain how it works when we get there. But you're going to want to follow along and follow closely. And for you who are watching at home, this part's going to make you very dizzy. You should just get up and run around your house for 25 minutes. Great. So before we get up, we're going to use that open square at the back as a map of the United States. And let's say that that's the east coast. That partition over there is actually Chicago, Minneapolis, Midwest, North Midwest over there. And that's like, yeah, OK, that's going to be the best way. That's the North Midwest. This is the south. This is the west coast. And that's the east coast. So if you could just get up and go put yourselves on the map of the United States. We're going to use. Can I get my mic? Can I get my mic, please? So we're going to use this whole area here, this big square. This big square is the map. The partition, that's the north. Middle north. That's the west coast. That's the east coast. Here's the south. There's the southwest. I'm on the east coast. There's the southeast. I mean, I'm supposed to sort of, but we're just doing east coast. Yeah, east coast, west coast, yeah. These aren't specific plots. No, I'm on the map. No, that's right. That's right. I'm just on my coast. Where are you? Kentucky's right here. Yes, oh yeah, Caroline. Yeah, good to see you, yes. Where are you? Only David can do this exercise because you have to be tall enough and long, long enough. Chicago, who else is here? Milwaukee. OK, you got it. Milwaukee, Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis. Can't hear him. Who's here? Hello, Missouri. Welcome. You guys in the same project? Do you all know? OK, good. Where are you? We're just introducing our coast. Great, welcome. Just to report also. He's going next. We're going to go into Bob. He's introducing himself. You see, I can see. There's some very precise geographers here. Los Angeles, I take it. All right, you got it. Oh, Pacific Northwest. All right. Pacific Northwest, OK. Where are you? Oh my god, Alaska over here. Look, we had to leave a little moat. All right. OK, could I have your attention for a second? Could I have your attention for a second? Could I have your attention for a second? All right, just take a look around the room now. I think everybody is wearing. Anybody feel like you maybe didn't understand this map? We got Alaska way over there. Is Hawaii in the room? No, I don't see Hawaii over there. Maybe we wouldn't be able to see them. Is this Florida over here? Excellent. Chicago, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Shreveport, Louisiana. Missouri, Kentucky. There you go. Where are you guys? Pittsburgh. And where are you guys? Detroit. OK, all right. So take a look around the room. This is going to become important in this little exercise over the next 15 minutes. Look around this room and see who you don't already know and nipped. Look at this map and see who you don't already know in it. Look at your own community and see if there's anybody you don't yet know. And back to me. Back to me. Back to me, please. Thank you. All right, so for the next thing, I'm going to stand on a chair. Jamie Bennett, there's no ice in this group. I just got to say. All right, hey, Chicago, Minneapolis, St. Paul, if you guys could come back to me. All right, for this next thing, we're going to use the whole room. And we're going to make a circle around the perimeter of the whole room. Could you guys pull those chairs, make an alley there where people can get around the whole room in one circle? And this circle is based on length of time you have been at work in this field. Now, if I were to walk up to you, not knowing you at all, if I were to walk up to you, not knowing you at all, and I were to say to you, oh, how long have you been doing this? You would give me some number. That's as accurate as it needs to be. And that number can mean whatever you need it to mean. Doesn't have to be about your project. Doesn't have to be about the job you're in now. How long have you personally been at work in this work? You have a question? Creative place making, I guess, in this conversation. If I walked up to you, OK, so excuse me, how long have you been involved in the work that got you here today? Yeah, there you go. So your number's 20. OK? So we're going to go around this circle here. And one year is at that partition right at the back there, and it goes clockwise the way I'm facing. It goes clockwise around the room, and it comes back to the longest practitioner who will stand right next to the shortest-time practitioner. OK? So you have five minutes to organize a circle that's around this room with the number that's in your head. Let's say that that's 0, 10, 20, 30, 70. 30's probably going to be about there. Can we turn my mic off? Five is probably over. What number are you guys? What number would you give me? I think you would start over there by the screen and make your way from there. What number? So what number, if I were to say, four years? So one is up there, so you're going to be up in this group right here. So you find somebody who's less than you and the person who's more than you, and you put yourself between them. OK, let's tighten up this circle here. How many years are we at here? 30-ish, good. How many years are you at? So that's 30 there, so you want to keep going around there to get to the 18s, the 19s, and the 20s. The 18s, 19s, and 20s are probably in there. Hey, 30-ish, could you guys come this way, 30-ish? These guys are 30s, too. Keep coming this way. Keep the circle spreading that way. There you go. Keep it going clockwise. You're going to run out of room. What number are you? 30-ish? Yeah, 30-ish. 30-ish is all the way over here. Keep coming, 30-ish. What number are you? 40, what number are you? All right, this is it, 40 and 1. 1, 1, 1, 1, 1. OK, great. Keep going. Keep going. So you probably want to keep coming just because we're all bunched up there. Keep going that way. Keep going that way. What numbers are you? Keep going that way. 20s in the 20s, keep it going around. In the 20s, keep it going around. You want to keep going around and close that up. Close up that gap. Are you guys in the 20s also? 17. 17, good. So if you could spread that one out so you're one line, that'd be great. How many, look at this. Mass, 15-ish. Is this all 15? 20 is, but now it's probably, are you 20? Yeah, Jamie Bennett said 20. What, you're 15? Is this all 15? 11, 12. Yeah, Rocco, why don't you go stand at year one? That way it won't look like you're at year 40. Yeah, all right. So can I get you back for a second, please? Could I get you back? Can I get you back? Thank you. All right, so take a look at the circle. Take a look at this circle. And why don't we give the 15s a break and spread it a little further along you guys and get a little more further up into this group. See how much room all the longest-term experience people in the field take for themselves? Push them a little, push them a little. Those are all the big offices over there. Go ahead and push it. Let's spread it out a bit. What I want you to do is take just a minute and introduce yourself to somebody who's standing near you in this circle who you don't know yet. And take a minute, introduce yourself to someone you don't know. Anybody standing by themselves? Looks like everybody's got a conversation. OK. I'm going to start to get you back now. If I can get you back now, if I could get you back now, if you can hear me, ask your people next to you to come back. Thank you. Did you find somebody you don't know? Great. Did you guys find somebody you don't know? Great. All right, if I could have you all back now. So only two more to go. And if you hear me asking for people to come back, go ahead and let the people around you know that I'm asking for that. And that might shorten that part for us. I don't want to up the volume and blast you guys out. So there's two more. And for this one, I want you all to come back to the center of the room here. Just stand in one big crowd. So let's get in this open part of the room here. And I want you to think about, I'm sure there will be questions about this one as well. I want you to think about the size community that you're doing your work in. And for those of you who are funders, you might actually just want to observe this part of it or go with the community that you're based in. Either way is fine with me. You take your own path through that. But if you're working in a context with a million or more people, go to that corner. And you could go there now. It's a good corner. Wow. Such shame about urban centers. There wasn't the point, but it surfaced, OK? Million is where all those people are headed. All the way over in that corner. Yeah, the size of the population where you are doing your work. I really mean the center, like the region in which your projects are located, but you could decide. You could just, yeah. That's what I really mean. So that's the million dollars. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's the million people. Sorry. If you are working in a context that involves a population of 500,000 people, go to that corner. Between 500 and a million, go to that corner. Yeah, yeah. Go to the urban part of that. And then, yeah, the urban. All right. If you're in a context of between 250,000 people and 500,000 people, go to that corner over there, please. By the screen. That's a million. 500,000 to a million. 250,000 to 500,000. And then, if you're in a context between 100,000 and 250,000, go to that corner over there. 100,000 and 250,000. I want to break it down even a little more for you guys. Yeah. If you're in the context of between 50,000 and 100,000 people, go to this corner right over here. And if you're in a context between 150,000 right over here. So this is, which one? You can walk around and introduce yourself to everybody. OK. So this is one. One second, you guys. Let's just take a look. Can we come back for a second? Major urban centers. All right. So take a look at what our place is already doing. What's that group? A million or more. 250,000 to 500,000 to a million back in that corner. In this group. And in this group. Under 50,000. So that's the distribution of the people in the room at this point in terms of where your projects are. OK. So now last exercise. This is going to be a little harder. I want you to form the circle again where you're standing between two people you don't yet know. Start. How am I doing for time? Am I doing all right for time? Keep going. Reform the circle, please. Can I get you guys to move along a little bit? I'm going to pull some other people in here. Can you guys kind of spread this out a little bit so we connect it as a circle? Can you guys spread this out a little bit so we connect it as a circle? OK. Did we get there? OK. So come back. Come back to me. Come back to me, please. Come back to me, please. Thank you. Come back to me, please. OK. All right, now this is the part where we have to all listen. Because this is where now you thought this was chaos. It's actually going to turn into actual chaos for just a moment and then it will be resolved. OK. These chairs, we need to leave these chairs alone because we're all going to sit now and watch a presentation in a moment. But all of these chairs are the chairs I'm talking about when I tell you what I want you to do next. I'm going to take groups of 11 people. And those are going to be your breakout groups and what you're going to do is you're going to grab a chair and you as your group are going to decide where you want to do your breaking out. You'll get your number from Jamie or Liz and you will make your circle for where you're going to go after the presentation for your breakout. You're going to go make it now so you all know where it is and then you're going to come back in here and you're going to sit down. Questions? What? OK, good. Thank you. Because I'm sure at least half the room was thinking that. I'm going to show you. I'm going to do it right now. Where's one? You have one? All right. So you guys put yourselves around people you didn't know, right? For the most part? OK, so I'm going to take one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, and eleven. And you guys are one. Grab a chair and you're going to put that in a circle anywhere either here or out on the veranda there. Each of you are going to bring your chair to the circle for number one. You're going to grab your chair and go. Ready? Here we go. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. Jamie, that's two. One, two, three, four, five. You all don't know each other already, right? One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. Number three. Get your chairs and go wherever you want. So did somebody got three already? Yep. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. And you're going group five. You can make it wherever you want. Okay. That group four, sorry, they're group four. You got, you understand what I'm doing? Okay, I'm going to get it done in like lickety-split. So start thinking about where you want your group to sit. Five. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. Wait, I want you guys to split up. You guys already know each other? Okay, good. Good. No, I'm not splitting you up. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Hi. Ten and eleven. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven. Thank you. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Oh, I'm going to break this group up. 10 and 11. You're in the next group. One, two. Yeah, you're in that group. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, and 11. Hello, you're going in this group with a breakout? Sorry. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11. Thank you. So leave these chairs, but go get those chairs. Yeah, you're in this group. Were you 11? Okay, yeah. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11. Right here. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Are you in a group yet? 10, 11. So you're coming into this group here and you're in this group here. Are you guys in groups yet? One, two, three. Who doesn't have a group yet? 15. You guys are small for the moment because I'm going to find the people who aren't in groups yet. So take your 15 and let me know where you go. We'll take 16. We're self-organized. So in the back end. That's what happened. Okay, 16 already. All right. Don't take it. All right. Anybody not have a breakout group? Anybody not have a breakout group? And then once you're done, now you know where you're going to meet for the breakout, but come back to the center, come back to the theater seating now. Anybody not have a breakout group? Yeah, thank you. Are you, yeah, leave the chairs. Well, maybe they're going to bring them back again. You can leave your chairs for your breakout group in place and go back and sit in the theater seating. Leave your number at your group spot and come back to the theater seating. So once you've got your spot, come back into the theater. Once you know where you're sitting, come back into the theater. You guys are very, very well organized, but now we need you in there and then you're going to come back here for your breakout. When we do our breakout, number seven comes here. Thank you all. We're going to go ahead and get started on this presentation part. Okay, thank you for indulging us. We just wanted to make sure you're up in some way that you could find them when it was time to get there. We're going to go ahead and start, and if people are still out in the hallway, perhaps somebody can let them know. Thank you. How many of you were actually able to meet people that you didn't know coming in here? Pretty much everybody? Great. That was part of the point. You're going to have lots of time to follow up on those conversations. I appreciate you're all playing along. So, Jamie had asked us, boy, second or third day that you were, second day that Jamie was in this job, he and Liz came to Boston and mentioned the plans that he had and he and Liz were formulating around this art place, sunsetting notion and how to rethink some of the basic assumptions under what art place was. At least in my mind, I was surprised to hear Jamie's thinking about it and delighted. We have been for the last four years, working myself, Paulie Carl, Vijay Mathew, who's on the camera and where did Jamie Galungo, Jamie Galung back there, we're largely the staff of HowlRound and the people who created it together and we've been working in something of a conceptual vacuum for a lot of that time. Our goal was to try to create what we call a head tilt in the nonprofit theater in this country that would look at the resources of the nonprofit theater and think about them as the resources of a community rather than resources of individual institutions within that community and look at the actors in that field as a commons. It's been a long road conceptually, a lot of evolving of that thinking and we're going to show you where we are today and no doubt with the work that Jamie's going to put you guys through in the coming years, we're hoping that we'll learn a lot from art place as art place tries to do what it's about to do in this new strategic plan. So we wanted to show you today some of what it is that HowlRound actually is, what it's become and spend less time on where it came from. Happy to talk about that over drinks, it's a story to tell over drinks. No, it's been a great journey but it's really more important about how does what Jamie just laid out play out in a context like what we're doing at HowlRound. Our focus being the nonprofit American theater, yours being created place making in the U.S. Okay, so Polly and I are going to start a tag team this part of the presentation and Polly if you want to just kick it off, is that enough of a setup? That sounds great. It's great, yep. I'm Polly Carl and I just will say one thing, I'm standing in a ballroom behind a thing and I am one of the 1% of theater practitioners who had never any interest at all in being on the stage and so I just leave you with that as I get started. So I was telling my colleagues this morning at breakfast that I used to live in Los Angeles for just one year from 1988 to 1989. I used to live in Silver Lake and I used to ride my bike every morning to Griffith Park as exercise and I'd get up at like 5 a.m., 5 30 a.m. I'd ride my bike and then I would go to work. And one morning I got up on my bike and I'm riding full steam ahead to Griffith Park and coming at me full speed ahead on the other side of the street is a unicorn. And it's 5 30 in the morning I see this unicorn and I think, well I'm having a hallucination. I'm up too early. I haven't slept well. So I finished my bike ride. I go around Griffith Park. I'm now coming this way back from Griffith Park and heading full speed ahead at me is a unicorn. And so I see this double moment of unicorn and I think of trying to think about living in a theater commons a lot like seeing an early morning unicorn. It's one of those things that requires this kind of creative and conceptual head tilt and if you kind of roll with it even though you don't know what it means for a long time it can be really quite magical. What I learned was it wasn't actually a unicorn. Of course it was an African gazelle. It actually had two horns but I could only see one going each way and so I thought it was a unicorn. So, but that said I want to just so what we're going to do is I'm going to spend just a few minutes laying out the kind of conceptual philosophical framework of Hollround. We're actually going to do another exercise that will give you a hope and deeper sense of what it is to begin to be making a commons. We're going to do like an exercise of commons making and then we're going to come back and talk a little bit more about some of the key ideas and learnings that we've had that we hope will be useful to you as you begin to think about this field wide commitment to sharing the work that you're doing. So, I'm going to try to talk and click simultaneously. Our purpose, we essentially build, manage online communications platforms and we host in-person gatherings and the idea really for Hollround came because it seemed like the theater and the arts more generally required a kind of secret key for entry and as somebody, David and I when we started talking about a commons and Jamie and Vijay, we were struck by how many artists were what we called standing at the gates of opportunity trying to figure out how you open the gate and so the idea of Hollround was really to figure out how we could open those gates and take away the mythology of how one activates and becomes a participant in the arts. The other reason that we came into being, our other purpose was to really demonstrate learning in real time. So, we had the experience, I had 15 years of practice that there was actually a lot of resources in our field and that there was a lot of initiatives happening but often the initiatives were done. We learned about the initiatives in final reports that went into a file cabinet and 20 years later somebody would say, oh, we did that 20 years ago and so this idea of Hollround is really learning in real time and sharing in real time so that we can actually activate learning as it's happening. Slide two, so the approach we use is that we've been using this word commons and I'm going to say a little bit more about it but it's really the idea of democratizing access to the arts and trying to use our resources effectively. The philosophy we have is one of that if we just think of this room that there's an abundance of resources in this room that aren't just money. And so what we're trying to do is unlock that abundance of resources and for any of you who spent much time in any profession probably but particularly the arts, the tendency is to talk a lot about scarcity, about there's not enough, how do you make a living, how do you survive and so we wondered if we started to reconceptualize what resources actually mean and what they actually are that we would be able to unlock an abundance of resources and that was kind of the philosophy. And you know in the arts in particular there are a lot of highly participatory, highly educated, really committed people and what would it be to take those energies and start talking about how we could share what we have with each other. So it's really a kind of sharing mentality and we use this notion of the commons which is a really simple notion. You probably know it from like the environmental movement, the idea that air belongs or should belong to everyone, that there are national parks that we can all access, a knowledge commons for example like a public library, that anybody can access a knowledge commons like a library. It's for the good of, you know it's resources that are for the good of the benefit of the entire community. And the key concept here is which we talked about, I think Jamie mentioned is this concept of I to we. And I think this is, it's something that's kind of a buzzword now from I to we but I actually think it's a really hard concept to get your head around because it really means moving away from simply thinking about the eye of perpetuating your individual artistic practice, the eye of perpetuating your individual organization, the eye even of perpetuating your individual community and really thinking in the broadest way possible about what your work means to, you know, to the national conversation, to an international conversation. And I think this is, you know, really the kind of the head tilt that we talk about this movement from I to we and I ran an organization for many years and I spent most of my time thinking about how that organization would survive and the real conceptual shift has been to think less about how the organization will survive and to be really thinking more about what am I doing that is a benefit to the entire community and how can I share that. And it actually means a kind of significant change of practice. The doing this would be impossible if we didn't use a notion that we call peer production. So the whole staff of HowlRound is essentially here. We have two other people who work with us and do editing but you're seeing the whole group of us. We manage a conversation every month with around 30,000 people and the way we're able to do that is through this concept called peer production. And it's really the idea of people nominate themselves to participate. And so this is a very unusual thing in the arts. The arts is very much about waiting to be nominated, waiting to be selected, waiting for somebody to pick you and say you're good enough. Peer production, you pick yourself, you say you're good enough, you say you have something to contribute and you say you have something to offer. And so all of our communications platforms which we're going to share with you after we do our little exercise, all of those platforms are co-created with the community that engages them. And so we use a co-curator model and what we find is that there's a real sense of stakeholdership with people nominating themselves that they take it seriously and that they feel a kind of investment because they pick themselves to participate. And so, and again, this kind of goes back to how many resources we have in our community. Peer production allows us to really access all those resources. And, you know, many times it's resources that people give for free because they're just committed. And so it's not, you know, we're not always having conversations about money. We're really having conversations about what do you care about? And what do you want to contribute to the whole? I think that's the first part. Now, David is going to do, David's got the worst part of this particular job because he has to keep maneuvering you. So you go, David. I got the joy of the logistics part of this presentation but I'm happy to do it. A couple of quick things to think about before you go into this breakout. What we're talking about, I was so struck by how well you guys are already thinking about this when Josephine, where are you? I mean, has talked right away about delegates. That was like the third word out of her mouth. And that's actually one of the hardest things to convey is that we are not the winners of some sort of grant process and we are not the people who deem who wins. We are actually a community of delegates to this idea, right? And the other thing that's very important to think about is the word resources. We're so conditioned to think of resources as money. But in fact, the abundance is actually coming from a broad definition of resources. Everything from space to expertise to training programs to dollars to, you name it, you could go on and on, think broadly. Start thinking right now what resources are under your control, both personally and in your organization. What resources? And think of them broadly. The exercise that we're about to do, it's really quick, it's very simple and it's just one of saying these are the resources I have that I could make available to the Commons. And then at the same time, these are the resources that I need that I would love to find in the Commons. That's it. You start a conversation based on those and you're starting to build a library of you're starting to move from scarcity to abundance, basically, in a matter of moments. So when you go back to your groups, what we're going to have you do now, this is why we wanted you to set them up early, you're going to go back to wherever that crazy breakout circle happened into that group and you're going to sit and each of you share the answers to two of these. One of each, you want one of each, I think is what we're trying to get at. Yeah, well, each group will do one. You can talk more about it, but then in the end you want to come back and offer one thing that you have and one thing that you need. What we're going to end up doing is tweeting it to that hashtag and we're going to ask for volunteer in each breakout, cp4c. We're going to tweet to that hashtag and by the end of the session, we'll be able to see in this room what are some of the resources that are actually available to the group already and what are some of the things this group actually needs, right? And you start to see the commonalities of your situation. Doesn't matter what your role is in this field, it doesn't matter what your place is in the country or in the relative size of your population, what do you have and what do you need? We'll start to connect you as a community. So what we want you to do, that's all I have to do right now, right? That's all you have to do. Great, so right now go to your breakout groups, sit for 15 minutes, have a conversation about what we mean by resources, what you have to share and then decide which thing you want to, you have and which thing you need. We'll come around and help. So we're going to wrap up. I hope everyone's had a chance to introduce their projects. We're going to wrap up and tweet. If your group doesn't have someone comfortable to tweet it, let us know, we can help. It's too hard to tweet one of each, so two or three of each is all right. And you have the hashtag. Go ahead and tweet those. And we're going to come back to the presentation in a moment. We're tweeting now, so tweeting. Or two, if you have two or three, that's okay. And do you have a tweeter? Great, all right, terrific. Thank you. One thing I'd recommend if you're tweeting it is that you let your followers know at some point what it is all of a sudden that you're tweeting. We're at tweet time, so you have a designated tweeter. You guys are somebody to do it? Yes? You need our help? You got it. Yeah, one person can tweet one or two have the need. So is there someone who has an account? You do, you can do it. And did you get the art place C3? It's C, hold on, let me make sure I get it right. The hashtag is C-P, the number four, and C. Yeah, C3, no. C-P, creative place making four commons. C-P, four C. C-P, four C. Hashtag, art place, hashtag, C-P, four C. Four C. Yeah, it's so hard to say I can't. I remember it. Okay, get it. So it's tweet time. You guys are good? You guys are good? Oh, you got tweet, oh yeah, tweeter. Tweeter exploring there. You already did it? Sorry that I interrupted. Sorry that I interrupted. When I would recommend before you start tweeting these things, I would recommend before you start tweeting these things that you let your followers know that you're about to tweet an exercise so that they don't think you're asking them for things. Come on, Mike, yeah. She's spotting things. Yeah, I'm on Mike's side. Oh, that's a good idea. Tweet a picture of your breakout group, too. Okay, so you should be tweeting at this point and coming back to the center. Thank you for those of you who finished. You should be tweeting at this point and coming back to the center. Done? Great. Good work, you guys. Yeah, the hashtag is hashtag C, P, the number four, the letter C. Connector's a full sucker. Yeah, I think Holly's been out there, but I'll go do it. So we're going to gather again in the theater seating. You can do it in multiple tweets. When you're done, we'll just go back into the theater seating. It's going all right. The tweeting part? Great, thank you. Good work, you guys. That's a good list. Good list. So when you're done with the tweeting, come on back in and we'll keep going. Have need. We're going to gather back in here when you're done with that part of the story. Did you tweet it? Did you tweet it? That's a good enough list. Oh, here, you have your Wi-Fi password? The Wi-Fi password, yeah. Oh, for the meeting? Yeah, for the meeting. It's just for people involved in the organizing. Yeah, so I'm covering my life. People take it up there with me. The army guest and then the art place with the login. Yeah, is it taking way too long? Is it telling you what it is? It's the art place? It's the login and the army. Yep, so we're coming back to the theater seating now. Out of the breakouts, back into the conversation, the theater style part of the room. Holly? This is going to be talking while we do this part. All right, come on back. Thank you. Let's get back. All right, come on back. All right, come on back. That's all right. We're just going to the theater seating. You can be here. Oh, okay. I'll go back and get them. We're coming back in. Oh, good to see you. Yes. I want Mike, but I'll go like this. Exactly. You guys are crazy. I'm so glad you're here. It's so great. I know. You've done this exercise. I just lost Holly. She went somewhere else to aggregate because Liz was going to talk. I'm coming to retrieve you. We're back. All right, thank you. Good. How are you? So Liz, I'm going to hand it over to you. Oh, terrific. Yeah, nice to meet you too. Really a pleasure. She's out here. How'd that go? Oh, good. I got them back there. So they're going to do some logistics, housekeeping stuff for a second, and we're going to aggregate the tweets. So how many tweets was it? No, how do you count? Jake and Kelly. Yeah, that many. So, can we off Mike? I'm going to stand up here and do my oh so subtle job of getting people to move back into the theater portion of the seating. I'll give a minute before we start, but we don't want to take too much time. So if you can just keep on walking back in and take your seat, that'd be great. I'll stare at you until you finish. I think if the folks outside can hear me and start making their way back in as well, that'd be great. And the folks in the back too, now that you've all made friends with people that you don't know, you can sit next to each other without the requisite seat in between. We can all huddle up and sit next to each other. If you're one of the early people, you get the joy of introducing yourself to the person next to you. In that circle? Exactly. And again, if you're standing in the back, we would love to have you sit down, sit back down in the theater style. We want to get back started and so we can keep the program moving. I'm starting to feel like there's a critical mass here. So I'm going to start saying things that aren't, find your seat again. So if everyone who's talking could close out your conversation. Yes, yes, yes. That didn't work at all. I might have seen you. Are we there yet? We're at the club? Okay, I just want to tell you a little bit about what we have in store tonight. It's going to be a great evening. And then I'm also going to tell you a little bit about tomorrow. So I'm actually going to start with tomorrow real fast. We do have a series of plenaries and breakouts tomorrow. We are watching from home still. We are going to be broadcasting all of those plenaries and breakouts throughout the day similarly to today. So we're going to start at 8.30 Pacific time. I really love it if everybody was sort of here and ready to go right at 8.30. We have a really dense session to start the day that I think is going to be really stimulating. But particularly because we have some exciting guests coming, I want to make sure that we're all ready to go right away in the morning. There is going to be breakfast out here. There is a hot breakfast option, so more than just pastries. So please come and enjoy breakfast. There will be some tables that you can sit out in the back. Then another thing as far as meals tomorrow, we have lunch. Lunch will be out on the plaza. For lunch, we're also going to set up some meetups. And we want you guys to come up with some of the meetup topics. We do have two topics already, I think that have been mentioned. One is a rural meetup that I think Chris Beck, whether or not he's in the room, I think he agreed to host a rural meetup at lunch tomorrow. And Golgun Kayam from the city of Minneapolis has agreed to host a meetup on city government. So if you're in city government or you have an interest in city government, please find her. There will be table tops that will tell you where to go for that. If you have another idea for a meetup, you can tell the registration table. He'll write it down and we'll make sure to have a table set aside for that. And I'll announce those in the morning. So just make sure to tell registration tomorrow or tonight if you want to do a meetup. Oh, and additionally, so on Wednesday, as you may have seen in your program, we're doing a tour of the arts district in L.A. Really interesting point in development that it's in. There's a lot going on. For anybody who's gone outside at all, I think downtown L.A. is just there's so much interesting stuff happening. And this tour is going to be led by a really dynamic guy, Tyler Stonebreaker, who's with a real estate company called Creative Space. And it's also going to involve a stop at the Southern California Institute of Architecture. I know Allison is here and I think Ming is here as well from Syark. And I think so. It's going to be a really great tour. If you want to come on the tour, please also just let us know so we know for numbers. You can come even if you don't let us know, but we'd love if you let us know so that we make sure that we're accommodating everybody. But on Wednesday, if you are going back to the airport and you haven't yet set your return, just keep in mind we still have the super shuttle options. There's going to be a lot of people going at the same time. So if you order a super shuttle around that time, I'm guessing you will be with other people from the event. We'll also make sure that there's some cabs outside if you need to catch it quickly. I'll mention that again tomorrow. So then we get back to today and at the end of this session where we're going to be going on a walking tour through some of the historic theaters in downtown L.A. and we're going to end up at the Ace Hotel. This is really exciting because the Ace Hotel just opened a few weeks ago. It's brand new. It's super hot. Everybody wants to be there. It's going to be a really fun reception. And I'm actually going to have Hilsman, right, who's with the L.A. Historic Theater Foundation come up and tell us just a couple of things about the theaters that we're going to see and the Ace Hotel at the end. So I'm going to turn this over to Hilsman quickly. Thank you. Welcome to L.A. It might be of interest to note that I'm appearing to you live today to make this welcome. I want to thank our place for giving us this opportunity to show you something wonderful and for giving us a seat at the table for the next few days. We're going to get a lot of benefit out of this. If you haven't already picked up a brochure, it has pretty much the story of the theater district, what we think needs to happen, and if it looks suspiciously like a pitch, it is. A couple of things we're going to surprise you in the next hour or so. We're going to tell you that beyond this fortress exists a real downtown. And we're going to take you through the second largest theater district in the United States, which is the Broadway Historic Theater District. But we need your help to do it. You have conducted tours. You have been on tours. You know some of the issues involved. The main thing is that we want to get you down to the Ace Hotel to enjoy the reception as soon as we possibly can. We'll be covering about a mile between here and the Ace. And we have docents in the lobby ready to depart as soon as this session is over. We do not want to be any later than 6.30 or 6.40 leaving the lobby for the tour. And please don't everybody come and show up at the same time. I think that's it. I'll be around for the next couple of days to answer any questions you might have about the theater district. And we're looking forward to showing you our hidden treasure. As has been said, we're going to do the tour from out of here. At the end of the night, we have the reception from the Ace, which goes until 8 p.m. and then followed by a dine around. There's a number of restaurants in your program at the end that will be some good options. There's some options near the Ace. There's some options near and at the Omni. We are planning to walk the mile to the Ace. And then at the end of the night, we'll depart as a group for those of you who want to come back to the hotel. We can all walk back together. If you have any concerns about walking, let me know and we'll take care of you. And otherwise, I think we're ready to turn it back over. If there's any questions about tomorrow, you can come and find me. And hopefully everybody who's doing something tomorrow knows what they're doing, but again, come and find me if there isn't. And I give you back to our esteemed leaders here David and Polly. Thank you, Liz. Thank you. Your tweets are up there. And we did a quick look at them, and immediately you're starting to build a kind of knowledge common. And what we thought we'd do, we were going to put them all together for you. And there are some interesting synergies. There's things like we need somebody who can talk across sectors and then there's somebody who wrote, we have cross sector language skills. So you get a lot of that one-on-one hits of needs and haves. But we thought it would be great for you all just to maybe identify from a need or a have, and just talk. Just reflect back a little bit about the conversation you just had on this front. So the point of that exercise is to start to get into this notion of comments and that these resources are shared. Any resources come up that surprised you on the things that you have in your group? Anybody? No surprises. We all know what you had already. Really? What do you have? Space. There was a lot of space. Yeah, a lot of people had space. What else? A lot of experience in this group. A lot of experience. A lot of different ways. You can grab a mic if you have something that you'd like to feedback. What besides money did you need in your group? Materials? Say more about that. Take the microphone. I'm working on the BEIS gathering place for the Makah tribe. And traditionally their totem poles were large diameter ancient cedar and there are none left in the U.S. That's very sad. Okay, that's going to be... We're going to all have to work on that one. What other needs surprises? Raise your hand and we'll get a mic to you. Trust. Trust, say more about that. That's the currency that I use to access departments and department heads to introduce them to artists and arts organizations because unless they have trust they're not going to be interested in the conversation. So I need it and that's what I also have. That's a resource you can offer. Yes. Other observations from that? We had pretty unanimously wanted more time for planning and then something that probably would actually be impacted by more time for planning, creating, having a broader base and fewer silos. Even about the exercise stuff. So we'll start here and go there. Let's go here while we get that mic working. One of the needs we all kind of agreed on was expertise and knowledge about community development without displacement or alienation. Community development without displacement. So the place making that has people already in it and knows that from the beginning. How many people are dealing with challenges in your project? How many people have tools for dealing with displacement problems in your project? Can I ask you guys a question also? So there is a kind of sharing space on the website of our place right now. A lot of you are recording in your work. How many of you are in the habit of reading the updates on those other projects? And do you find, and talk about the value of that if you have a sense of how that's working. I'll say you have it. It excites me about this field and it's just the most wonderful thing. It excites me about the field and everybody knowing it about place making. Let's give this one back. Tracy, go ahead. Our group really voted on curated partnering or matchmaking. So we got the point that the resources are here. But if there could be a way, a website, whatever. Yeah. And just to be clear, our point here today, it's not that you guys are going to become part of the HowlRound world. We're looking at we're making this thing and it has value to a huge group of our colleagues who are working on these things as well. And our hope is that you find in the tools, the keys for how to move where you're going now. So we're actually trying to cross a translation bridge here rather than recruit you off of the HowlRound world. Okay. So there's a microphone back here. I think one of the unique both needs and halves that came out of the group that I was in is that there's a willingness to learn from failures or mistakes. So that I think was the have and the need was to really cultivate a space to be able to talk about those learnings. So you just asked about and mentioned the website. Sometimes those online websites end up being places where we share successes and not so much failures. And I think our group really talked about wanting to have the space to talk about what wasn't working, what went wrong and what can we learn from that. That's a challenge. That's a challenge in this world because it is sort of open to the world. But people are finding a way to share their learning both the successes and the failures in a way that we had not anticipated when we began. So to me one of the biggest challenges in creative place making as a whole is the issue of sustainability and the fact that players change so much in the systems. And so you're constantly having to build new allies and bring new people to the table and build coalitions and then something happens and you have to start all over again. So that's hard enough to deal with an individual project but when you're talking about building a field if you don't grapple with that issue from the get go it's going to I think not going to in the long run really become part of the way people do business. And I think that we need, I really love the fact that Jamie is really casting this conversation as to not just individual grantees but how do we join forces and create a movement. This is really what it is. It's a movement. How do you sustain that movement? How do you grow it? How do you keep it real? One of the words that we talked about in our group was authenticity and the fact that there are a number of people in this room who have built projects in their own communities that really feel about here in Providence New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival obviously in New Orleans how do you scale that up so that again it becomes a movement that is a national movement. One of the things is trying to figure out how to get the quality of authenticity how to identify it as something that people can learn and adapt as they're building their projects over here. I think related but also I already mentioned to a certain extent it was really striking in our group how almost everyone felt like no matter the scale of the organization they were having trouble either building trust with connecting with or communicating to a particular group and that at those different scales on one hand all the needs or the haves were represented it was really striking that everyone felt like they had some issue of communication whether that was with government officials or building trust with the local community and how the scale of the organization you were often working in really really impacted often that ability to communicate and the language that you were using and that these other tiers really need access to that in some way or another way. How many people are in projects where you feel like that communication trust building is actually a challenge that is probably pretty widely shared. How many people feel like you've got tools for that that you can share? Good. One more and then we're going to get I want to show you some of the tools. Over here we can get the microphone. Thanks. In our group there was a lot of discussion around data and common collection of data so that we would all be sort of on the same page when we're communicating that and again there was that whole issue about common ways to and very clear communications about who we are and what we do and the impact we have on the field because if we're going to convince others that we have value and that we should be a real serious player we need to have a really strong communications plan around that. Yeah. You're using that word we and that word we is so key and making sure that as you're communicating who the we is it's not just the winners it's actually the we who are in the movement. Let's go look a little bit at this. One of the things that we want to show you is that we're actually working using a set of tools at HowlRound that have been developed to find and evolve by the field that we're serving and so we're going to take you through these tools and as a way to trigger the ideas about what could be of value in your world as you're trying to build this movement so do you want to go through it? Yeah sure I'll go through. So the communication platforms that we have most of them are online but not all of them. We have a journal we have a television channel, a new play map Twitter discussions as you've witnessed. We do in-person convenings and we are tracking residencies using a thing called commons producers so we're just going to kind of run through these and leave you some time for questions as we go through it. The first and one of our most public facing parts of what we do is an online journal. We have blog posts, we have theater criticism and then we have more in-depth essays and the way that we get material is people pitch ideas to us. They pitch ideas for curating a whole week on HowlRound so we do sometimes we do weeks on cities where we've covered Minneapolis for example had a very lively conversation about theater in their city. We recently did a week on race and representation who gets to speak for whom and we had one person curate that whole week and so we have the way people always say well if you're community sourcing your content how do you manage to maintain a level of excellence and the way we do that is really through a rigorous editing process with all of our contributors and so that's really where the work comes in. We're stewarding the tool for people to use it and that's sort of our contribution is that rigorous editing. So next oh yeah and Art Place did a blog series this week and you can find all of the blogs under that a little address there at Art Place 2014 and so anybody can sort of come to us and say we want to have a conversation about this and generally we'll say yes how do you want to do it and then we work with you to figure out the best way for you to have the dialogue that matters to you. So for us content urgency comes up from the community rather than from us as the curators deciding what is urgent to be talked about. So we also have been involving this thing called the new play map and I think this take a little bit of conceptually for you guys to understand whether or not there's a value to a different but similar approach. What we were facing was a sense in the nonprofit theater field particularly around new work that nobody understood how it came to be. New work really emanated from New York and then got blessed by the New York Times and then went out into the world and was done by theaters all over the country which was not how it was happening I worked in San Francisco, Polly worked in Minneapolis we knew that wasn't the case but there was nothing to prove it. So this map was actually about to show the history of where work came from and how it moved in the world. Now it's turned into the world. It started out just to be in the U.S. This is actually a project called Metamorphosis by Best Report in Iceland that we did at ArtsEmerson and you can see where it started where it's been and how it's gone and what that does is it creates a picture of the infrastructure of interdependent relationship it's actually immediately clear that we're common we're all relying on each other to get this work to happen and if you look at any number of plays that's a static snapshot but you could look at any number of plays and you'll start to see very clearly the infrastructure for new work in this country and how distributed it is. When we did that cultural mapping earlier, when we talked about so yeah there was the geographic mapping but then there was also the what size community are you in? That kind of visibility you can't, it's very hard to convince people who don't believe it that actually our place is already having that kind of an impact in that range of settings but a visual does it in a minute. So this map has been doing that, now there's thousands of plays mapped in this and the important thing about it is it's community source the playwrights, people supporting playwrights put themselves on the map and so if I'm an organization that wants to show up in the infrastructure I go on that map and I put in all of the relationships with writers that I've had and all the work that I've done for them if I'm a playwright and I want to appear on the map I put all my plays in and everywhere they've gone by doing that myself we're creating this thing maps doing that on its own and it's creating the sense of the interdependence of our relationships just because people are driven to put themselves on the map. How around TV you're already getting a first-hand experience with we've had on average today 50 to 60 unique devices watching us which could be more than one person but immediately you take a room of 200 and then you're able to add 50 or 60 or 100 or 200 depending on how big those watch parties are so immediately you take a closed session and it's something that only some people were able to access and you allow a much larger group to access it this is Susan Laurie Parks who every oh about once a month or every other week or so she does a thing called Watch Me Work as a way of inspiring playwrights to write plays and people tweeting questions to her and it really creates a sense of for people who are sitting in geographically isolated playwriting communities it's a real sense of inspiration for them to be able to access Susan Laurie Parks and have a conversation and just make a time that they write every other week or so People put themselves on TV as well and one of the things that I think is important about this that we did not know when we started out it's creating an archive of this moment in new plays in nonprofit American theater you could go on there, there's thousands of hours in fact one of the biggest moments we ever had was one of the first convenings when the then chair of the National Endowment for the Arts who shall remain nameless made a speech about supply and demand that we were broadcasting on New Play TV and it wound up within hours on the art feed blog of the New York Times and you went all over the world yeah so we have that moment if you want to go watch it it's pretty cool but it's like that now there's this enormous archive of people who have said I'm doing something that matters and they've shared it and it exists in this library We also hold weekly Twitter conversations and it's just people curate the conversation they want to have every Thursday we spend an hour 100 people come join us and we instantly have community around areas of concern in the field or things that people are decided to share we have a theme every week and again the community curates the theme and the conversation super simple all of this is just there's four of us you don't need a huge infrastructure to get any of this stuff to happen and the convening world we regularly gather people around issues of concern and I feel like the most recent convening that we had is really an example of how commons can work around people letting their own energy bubble up and then the way that we're able to provide infrastructure so we have a certain set of tools in this case we gathered in October, November the largest group of Latino theater makers since 1986 came to Boston and the way that convening happened was a playwright named Karen Zacharias came to us and said we need a dialogue around Latino theater makers in this country we're a growing population and we're not adequately represented on our stages could we have a dialogue and we said sure we can provide a space for a dialogue that's pretty easy and I think eight people joined that original dialogue they decided that they wanted to have a national conversation and we said well there's a thing called the national sector's grant that the Duke foundation has and we could provide the infrastructure for you to apply for that we wrote that grant, we provided the infrastructure, they got the grant we provided another space for them to bring a steering committee together the steering committee came together and over a two year time span they activated the largest this large gathering since 1986 that group is still going they're having another event here at LA Theater Company they're doing another event in Chicago next summer and so this whole momentum has arisen and it really started from one person saying let's get in the room and howl around the role and that has simply been to keep providing little pieces of infrastructure and producing expertise and we have some skills interestingly this group they had a steering committee that planned that first convening and it was kind of the usual suspects in some ways you would think of as the leaders in the field and then coming out of that convening they recast the steering committee they decided to themselves they have a new steering committee that's now working on the LA event they have ten plays in it so it's going to also work in the art and then there will be a new group of people who leads toward Chicago and in Chicago there's going to be a new play Carnival that takes place around this whole thing and this is all just bubbling up out of this community they've raised some money for staff person now for the work of the Commons work so it just keeps bubbling up and one of the coolest things that happened during that convening so of course there's always a big question about who gets to attend and so there was a lot of conversation about that and who was invited and then what the group did was create these watch parties and there were watch parties in five cities and then the five cities got to have an hour of the convening where they presented what they were doing in their communities and again it was this incredible opportunity it was really quite moving to see the energy of these various communities and we were able to live stream them and Skype them in and then they were able to share and so the idea of broader and the idea of delegate or ambassadorship is really something that is critical to all the convenings that we have and I think one thing and actually it's also true for this this is a picture of the resident playwrights that we're tracking and they come from the national playwright residency program I think that's key is that those are the people who got those grants that's the 14 of them those would be the winners if it wasn't a Commons based approach those are actually now delegates to the whole idea of resident playwrights and there are theaters all over the country who are now working on how do we make these in our organization for resident playwrights so those are people who are working as delegates to the field one would think of them as people who want to grant and the role that HowlRound is playing in that is that we have provided a Commons producer for every one of those residencies and that's a local person in the community who's thinking about how can the impact of those residencies be shared beyond just the individual institution and so again the Commons producer is a person who is thinking about the whole of the community not just the playwright getting a grant and the theater getting a grant so again how do we keep spreading the circle wider and wider to make the theater feel like it's for everybody and then yeah so the numbers this is the month of February 30,000 unique visitors to HowlRound from 20 countries 178 new events added to the new play map 14 HowlRound TV events with 12 partner organizations around the country 2,000 hours of it watched and 5,800 tweets on our little hashtag that's just all from nothing and it's bubbled up and we had the same idea that you guys are having in this room right now is that there's probably more people than us who are doing this work who could contribute to the work that we're doing and to whom we could be contributing and that's what's happening is it's blowing up in that way so the idea is a powerful one that you're contemplating in this conference and that's our hope is that you take energy from that we have a couple more things that we want to put out and then I'd love to have a conversation quickly the key ideas which we kind of said the community sets the agenda so we don't set the agenda we don't decide oh we should talk about Latino theater makers the community helps us set the agenda and we provide tools and infrastructure and stewardship every participant is a stakeholder they're responsible for being an ambassador to their community and sharing the information and finding a way to make the information accessible and again our role is steward and we design infrastructure and then we talk a lot about this we unlock abundance and we really try to avoid talking about what we don't have and focus on what we do have and then I think the key benefit and this is one that I talk about all the time which is that it's revelatory you think I was a person who was working nationally in the field for many years I thought I knew what was happening in the field about this much of what was happening in the field when we started doing howl around there was a world of activity that opened up that we could have never imagined and it really it tells you that the key sort of the key our key work is listening and listening to what's out there and what people are already doing and trying not to recreate I think on this point just really quickly Jamie hit the nail on the head we have 97 finalists 100 or 1,000 projects that had value that were in that list this unlocks the value of that it gets it into the conversation coming at it in this way like a commons way and it allows the people who get the money to be delegates toward a larger event it's an efficient use of resources so again the only way that four people can manage a conversation with 30,000 every month is that the community steps in and works with us on these projects so for us one of the things we saw in the field was that there was all of this money for administrative infrastructure and overhead and was there a way that we could free up more resources for artists by using and sharing our resources more efficiently yes so howl around TV we pay one license for the whole field and it's a license that's in it's in the $5,000 range but that allows the entire sector to have a live stream channel it galvanizes a community the dialogue the conversation people are engaged and there's a kind of energy when you have almost 6,000 tweets in a single month people are in dialogue having conversation energized and then one of the things that we're really doing is we're keeping an accessible archive of current practice so everything that we do we archive and make available when we're done with this howl around TV session it will immediately be archived and people will be able to access it so the hardest things about this making the head tilt, making the shift from I to we, making the shift from scarcity to abundance, that's challenging it takes everybody to be talking about it all the time the people who were talking here earlier today really already have it down I was quite impressed and delighted and we're going to learn from you guys then communicating head tilt to the field right now you are already talking about there's a couple of challenges that this field has in terms of perception one of them being that creative place making and art place have created this community of privileged people that has to be dealt with and you have to be able to talk about this shift to delegates the other is this whole notion of making projects with people in place or not and turning back toward your communities and saying I'm here and you're there sharing our resources and our knowledge it's hard to communicate reversing the scarcity mindset that moving from I to we is a challenge developing comfort and clarity around the curatorial role someone has to curate we do curate to a degree and we edit the content in the journal and we also decide what convenings we can have you have to get comfortable curating but curating from the mindset of a commons is very different than curating from a space of picking winners and losers and then tuning the infrastructure to the needs we've been evolving this thing it's going to continue to evolve it's a big part of what Jamie and Vijay do all day every day is tuning this thing but it's a small staff and tuning it allows it to have huge impact I'm focusing on the small staff thing so that you guys don't feel like oh my god art place is going to be like now we're going to create this whole other beast in the field you don't need a beast you just need the concepts we're going to stop there and let you ask questions about all of this if you have any or comment did we lose you we went fast at the end we're a separate entity so we have to do our own fundraising we're in the emerson college so we get some administrative and infrastructure support from emerson college but we're not a part of the college budget per se so we operate very much kind of like a not-for-profit within an educational institution so howl around is in the office of the arts which reports to the president and we're working we've only been there for two years and we are still developing the integration between ourselves and the actual business of the rest of the college there's also arts emerson is in the office of the arts there and that's a presenting organization that puts the international presenting in three venues in downtown boston so all that stuff is growing and we're evolving with it the idea is that our home will matter to us somehow we'll be fully integrated with the emerson college community as well as with this national community right now we're much more integrated nationally than we are in the academic business of the college yeah question about how this relates to cultural place making so you're saying that for $5,000 there could be a channel so there could be a national cultural place making channel where all the ideas and work and platform flowed through it is that an annual fee but it's just one per field and I don't know if that's the number right now but it's in that range but what that fee does is it allows everybody to use it without commercials and then the work that we have to do and vijay spends a great deal of his time doing it is training the people on the other end how to create an effective stream you know one little iphone in the back of a room full of 300 people not going to be something anybody could watch so there is a bit of training that we do and those skills then go out into the communities and you watch over time the lives can get stronger and stronger in terms of how it's produced and also people are learning what to put on there and what not to put on there so are you actively looking to expand from theater to media to cultural place making so where you're not but we're suggesting that this tool is actually something that you guys might think about in terms of your own future as you sunset as art plays sunsets as a funding organization and moves into something that's more of a movement and a knowledge commons it's been a very effective tool I have I guess more of a comment than a question I understand the non-profits theater world is a field and sort of the work that you're doing but I think there's a question for the room which is it seems that the basis of we all come from such different kinds of organizations that the sort of premise of creative place making is that you're part of a larger conversation that if you focus our energy on defining it as a field I think it's what Jamie said at the outset you know someone's willing to take a meeting you've sort of already won them and really what I think the bigger opportunity that there's an enormous need always for knowledge exchange whether it's interpersonal or conferences like this but the bigger opportunity is how in the worlds of economic development in parks and public spaces and museum directors and you name it how the ideas that we're all working on become part of their conversation rather than you know is this becoming a field because I think that by definition we're you know if you look at the organizations that pay all of us we're not really in a field the way that non-profit theater is a field and so I just sort of pose that question to the room because while we love learning from other places I learn the most from going to visit other places and similarly welcoming them what I view as the bigger opportunity is how to move the conversation in lots of fields and bureaucracies that you know don't normally think of themselves as part of this conversation so I'm just curious what other people think about that yeah I was sitting here thinking about the same thing it strikes me that we have you know if you look at this historically you know we have had a lot of movements that have at the heart the same goal we've had the community engagement movement and the community based commissioned work kind of trend was that really serves community and brings community together we have creative place making right now in our community we're also working with the maker movement and the way that models also models that commune that commons and that communal activity and it seems to me that the biggest need we have is for people to recognize the places where the common ground exists and how we have that bigger conversation about what we're all trying to do together and make sure that we don't I mean that seems to me the really big need that communities have is and it really speaks to those silos we mentioned earlier how do we get away from people looking at it as their niche and understanding that what they're doing is part of a larger community need and that there are a lot of different people trying to do the same thing and that we have a lot more clout together did you want to well I would just say I don't think we need to take it so literally like you guys have a theater commons and it's very specific but I think if we had a really exciting conversation whether it was on one channel or one new social media source or one new location like if all of us brought the fields that we represent it would be bigger than that you know so I don't think we need to say are we trying to be one field I think it is what's powerful is that we're from different fields but we could still think about some of these tools that you guys are using so thanks conceptually more than tool based the tools came out of having communicated conceptually that where you're moving to or where we were moving to was the world of the knowledge common and a tilt of the head that said that these resources belong to the commons not to the individual organization we're going to stop you've been very patient with us and thank you for your energy and I'm delighted to be part of that we're around if you have questions since I thought I had since I have the mic just you know we're going to move out here if you need to like take a moment and everything but we will start sending groups out essentially