 Oh no, don't worry about it. It's totally fine. Yeah. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. Everyone is here. Thank you. Come on, everyone. I think bad is happening. That's my motto. Nothing bad is happening. And if Vijay and Matthew and I, Vijay, my colleague and I are just going to tag team. Vijay, Matthew, Jamie Galoon and I are really just one person. And primarily symbiotic in all the ways except that Jamie and Vijay spoke. And I'm publicly humiliating them now about that. But other than that... No, no, yeah. Don't let this slide. Okay, so... Okay, so Jordan Holler on the set. We called them their community source. So the community pitches the content or the community signs up to use Holler on TV or in the case of the new play map, in the same way that you upload... It's not the same system, but in the same way that you upload information on Wikipedia, you basically nominate yourself to participate. It's a peer-to-peer way of gathering resources. So there isn't somebody who, for say in charge, we curate the site that if somebody wanted to do damage to the site or if somebody wanted to put misinformation on the map, we would go in and correct that. But we would not interfere in people telling the stories that they want to tell, essentially. So this kind of peer-to-peer idea is something that we've been working on for about two... Well, we've had it for about three years, but we've had an online site for it for about two years. So the evolution of that is now what's happened over a course of a couple of years is that we have a ton of resources on the site. We have a lot of knowledge, and we've been starting to ask ourselves how to use that same idea of peer-to-peer producing of value and content, how to use that in a form of a kind of alternative currency. And really to take the resources that are now on and around and figure out is there a way to put some kind of value to them, some kind of practical value. I think part of the frustration sometimes with any kind of communications platform is you're archiving, you're gathering, but what's the kind of practical impact beyond people connect as a result of it, relationships should maybe... There's all kinds of good things, but can there be an economy created within this kind of commons-based sharing practice? That's the big question we've been asking, and the way that we ask questions always is we put them out there, and if nobody's interested in the question, then they tend to die. So we never push a question. So we were asked to apply for a grant, a small grant from Arts Forward, and in that, applying for the grant, we were supposed to pitch an idea that was half-baked. So this is a totally half-baked idea, and Mujia, do you want to talk about it from there? Yeah, and what we'll do is after this we're going to actually prototype it all together as a room. So this is basically about creating a new economy that we create, a community create, because currently we all operate this. We're all connected by the current economy that we all live in, Global Picture National, as well as in our arts not-for-pocket community where we just, in a way, force ourselves to live within this economy, and we structure our organizations around what the available resources are from mostly philanthropy foundations, and we have this real... Antigot sales. Antigot sales. And it's kind of a... It's very much a monofocus about where resources come from, what resources can sustain the creation of art, the creation of organizations, and sustain artistic practice in the communities. And now is the time, right now we have the internet, and so we're figuring out ways to actually use it in a way that unleash the power that peer-producing has, that the internet has enabled us to actually become all producers, and what we've discovered through the how-round platforms is that all of us are becoming producers of knowledge. How do we take this one step further into becoming producers of our own economy? And then just to quickly define economy, what we're saying that is that, is meeting unmet needs getting met by underutilized resources. So it's matching resources to needs. That's just fundamentally what an economy is. And we're just... We want to just say that we don't have to actually only live by the current economy that we have, and that we should start right now thinking about how to make this complementary economy or alternative economy. Jen, can you give one example of a complementary currency just so that people know kind of the ground that we're in? I do want to say one caveat. Matthew and I decided we would do this a couple of hours ago, and so I would have come with much more organization, but we'll rock and roll in our own timing. We're winging in love, so go ahead. The most well-known complementary currency out there is airline models, and that's very much on a corporate model where every airline has unsold seats for every flight that they pass, and it's something they can't sell ever. And so they give out miles so that... And what they're getting in exchange is customer loyalty. So people become focused on just using American airlines to fly because then they'll accumulate miles and eventually get a free seat. So that's the most common. There are other complementary currencies such as time banks, which is probably among the non-corporate areas. That's probably the most well-known time banks. There's also in Great Beringham, which is not too far from here, a local currency, a lot of work shares, so people like businesses will accept them instead of dollars and they're circulating. And it's a way to... Can you say what time bank is with Michael's answer? Yeah, time bank. So it's, for example, I babysit your kid and I get a credit or a coin or currency for maybe that one hour. And they're based on something called the mutual credit system. And then I get that credit that I can then maybe spend or exchange or maybe at a former market. And so the basic idea behind the complementary currency is that it creates a new form of wealth from a community of participants. It puts into circulation underutilized resources. For example, me, a resource babysit, that's a skill or a resource that I have that previous to that complementary currency of a time bank would have gone, would have languished and not been activated and not put into circulation. So the complementary currency is really about uncovering underutilized, unused resources and putting them into circulation to benefit an entire community. So it's very much a commons-based idea of resources that can benefit an entire community and never at the expense or the impoverishment of anyone else, which is a hugely different from our current national bank currency economy, which also affects our art sector, which is we get philanthropic foundation money and that's at the expense of some other organization who didn't get it. We're forced to be competitors even though we don't want to be competitors. And this is a way to break out of that entirely a community identity and really wealth that benefits as many people as possible. So one of the things we've been doing over the last, as we've been exploring this, is we've literally just been having people on a website provided by ours forward in this case, we've been having people just write down what their resources and needs are. And so what we want to do, we want, there's going to be two phases of this prototyping and so phase one is, we're just going to do the quickest dirty assault because we're going to be done in quarter to one prototyping. But the first thing to the prototyping we want to do is to talk about, to have each table talk about needs and resources. And we would like each table to identify three resources that you have at your table. So we're going to pretend like this is a city where the brochures accept that we're Ashfield. And so we're Ashfield and this is going to be our city and we're going to, so everybody in this room is a part of that city. And each table is going to identify three resources that you have right now and then three needs that you also have. And so you kind of decide on that for yourself of the ones that you want to share and that'll give us, I don't know, 18 to 21 needs and resources at the end. And then the real trick and the real difficulty as Jay and I have discussed, the difficulty of like the time-based system is that in the time-based system resources are, it's based solely on time and resources are essentially considered equal. So, you know, I guess if you were using the babysitting analogy, your one hour of babysitting might be equal to another person's one hour of plumbing. And so you would, or your one hour babysitting is equal to the dentist's one hour of dentistry. Now the issue there, of course, is the dentist is going to argue that his or her dentistry is more valuable than the Jay's babysitting. And so one of the, so part two of the prototype maybe just has us in the back of mind is how would you value these needs and resources based on, you know, how would you think about value? So because we honestly, we know the big trick of this will be that question. You know, and so how do we do that? And so we're going to, so you're going to help us think about that essentially. So the first thing is we're going to take five minutes and then we're going to take five minutes and you're going to do three needs. So there should be one note taker at each table who's writing down each person's three needs and three resources. I think you can do that. You know what I mean? So that's what I'm saying. And then three needs are the resources. I think that's a good thing. If you can do that, I think it's great. Yeah, I think that's great. I think you can do that. You can do that. I think that's great. I think you can do that. Yeah, I think it's great. There are two things I can do So we're just, you know, we got a minute left, so you should be able to do this. I'm going to take a picture of you, I'm going to take a picture of you, I'm going to take a picture of you. I'm going to take a picture of you, I'm going to take a picture of you. I'm going to take a picture of you, I'm going to take a picture of you, I'm going to take a picture of you. Hey, so everybody's back with Pauli. No, you have one minute, that was like, oh no, it was actually eight minutes, but... Can we start? I just want to say, I just want to say this was really an exhilarating little exchange here, because we started talking about what we could do and then what we needed and then we suddenly just said, yeah, we just do something together, we've got a great group here. We're autonomous now, so... Essentially they say see ya. Yeah, that's an example of, you know, the actual, you know, it mobilizes community in a way, or the creation of community, when you're just able to match resources. Can we just quickly do rapid fire listing off of resources and needs from each table? Sure, so three resources, providing rehearsal space, editing or writing, and teaching and writing things in improvisation, dance, theater, which are three resources that we have. Three needs that we might need would be rehearsal space. Somebody needs to document or work a camera, and specific collaborators, so whether that's, you know, I need more men in my chorus, or I need specific types of dancers for my work. And I just want to say, as I was over at that table for one second, which is that there was a moment when they were into, you know, dental work and plumbing and other things that I might have turned you into slightly artistic stuff. But to say that in the cross-sector world, all these things would be up for grabs, because our universe is probably going to be, at least to start the prototyping, we're talking about it within the arts. But, you know, you can begin to see how it's going to play out in a lot of the way. Table, are you guys ready to? Yeah, yes. Okay, okay. Stop me if I may. So we seem to have a really strong, in terms of advice on strategies, different types of strategies, diplomacy. We have several spaces, and we have digital equipment for films. We also have really strong cooking. That came great. We need administrative things like administrative assistance and health assistance. We need various contacts for different networks, and we need contacts for funding outside of the general visuals. Great. All right, I'll put this table. Okay, our needs. One, we need food. Two, we need, like, transferable technical skills, someone who knows stuff about stuff and wants to teach us about that stuff. Number three, access to also equipment, audio, sound, video, stuff like that. We had a lot more for that. Things that we have. One, we have space, artistic space available. Two, we have space, living space available. And three, we have the ability to teach and access to resources. Great. Great. This table. For our resources, we had artistic skill, organizing and caregiving, and then our needs, space, health and wellness, and transportation. Great. Great. And then that? Yeah. For needs, we need professional staff. We need time to think, and we need health slash care. Yeah. And for resources, we have access. We're connected to constituency and networks. One resource we have is meaning, or the ability to make meaning, and experiential wisdom. Great. And then this table here. Yes. For our needs, it's hard to narrow it down. I know, right? But here are three, administrative assistants, downtime, and cross-queening. We cross what? We cross downtime. Oh, we did? No, no, okay. Just kidding. We jokingly tried to cross it down. Downtime is the first to go. Great. In terms of resources, we have organizational infrastructure. We have an ability to deal with time management for people, teach time management, and also a car. Those are the needs. So I just want to quickly point out about the resources that have been mentioned here. Some of them, the ones that are intellectual, those can travel. They're not restricted by geography, whereas rehearsal space is. This idea of a culture coin can be local and global at the same time. So the economy can actually be in circulation in various places. So imagine now that we have on a website, not unlike people who are familiar with Airbnb or couch surfing or those kind of websites. So imagine a website sort of like that. Either you're going to a community or you're in a community and you have a need. So imagine you're on this website and you're looking for a need and you have resources and you're looking for what the exchange value would be. Now they're a real trick. Again, we really don't have any answers. These questions are not a set up question like we thought about it. We really haven't. Which is, how would you put a value, take your three needs, take your three resources, and try to figure out, like put culture coins to them and go, what are they worth in relationship to each other? And then we just want to report out the struggle of that because I feel certain that's an impossible question on the one hand, but I think it's important. One way to help this just to have something tangible is rip out pieces of paper and that represent coin. That'll be the medium for this exercise. And then let's work on this, on this idea of a mutual credit system. So for example, I have a reversal space and I'm going to exchange my car for that reversal space and so just play out what that exchange would be, how many coins I'm going to have to exchange for that and what we want to hear in terms of reporting out is how you came to the decision, how you would value the reversal space versus one hour of using a car. And are you going to use an hour as the way to value it or something else? With the dynamic criteria, I think my views are awesome. Thank you. Getting a name. This is so fun. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I know I gave you something that's going to take us five years to sort out, but what I love is that each group can just report out in a minute or less what if you came up with the exchange or if you're a student, why not, or what you came up with quickly, but quickly. How about we start at the table that's already succeeded from the nature? We can't work it out. And we had to assume that whoever we were working with that we were asking of was the ideal person for that. We just had to assume that they were... If they said that's what they were, they were perfect. They were perfect. They were exactly what we needed. They couldn't meet you deep. And we inflatable quickly. Yeah, core up those pieces of paper so we had more. Right. You had inflation, I love that. Awesome. How about you guys? Okay, now we have a sense on this. This is kind of a first draft. But I will go through it. So administrative help, an hour, one. Contacts net to networks. We have four because it's about giving a list. It's giving follow-up. It might be making introductions. So we had four, maybe five. Funding resources. Again, that was more. That was four. So those were needs, resources. At first we thought that we undervalued, that we had more value on our needs than our resources. But then we said, oh no, actually our resource was this kind of systemic strategic consulting, advice, drama, churchy. And we put that at five. Probably because we have several of those. Yes. Space, our space was one. And audio-visual, access to audio-visual is true because it was the access to the equipment, but also the access to the expertise. And we were teasing out this notion of time. We're trying to figure out time as duration. And then there's time as density of experience. That's right. And how does that, how do we, how do we do the time to make these decisions? Did your negotiation, or was it difficult, or was it still friendly? It was friendly. It was hard. Yeah, it was hard too. How many of you have come to the end of this? I don't know. Oh, so much. But you threw some stuff out there. Yeah. Yeah. It was very much fun. Are you guys curious? Yeah. So I think we kind of, we're at the same place these guys were. We came up with this kind of idea that I can't charge, you know, the same amount for 24 hours of housing and I came for 24 hours of teaching. Yeah. And that there may just be a different way of support, maintenance, and active activity that they kind of weigh differently. Yeah, that's great. Right. Super helpful. Yeah, go ahead. For us it was also the same question of time and how that is equated to value, which made it kind of confusing on where we would place the value. We also had issues of just like the hierarchy of position. And we didn't really want to create like a hierarchy to talk about how is one more important than another. So that creates a whole, another slew of questions. Therefore, all is in the center. Everything is in the center. You never got to, you never got so smart. How about a double-edged factor? We talked about the possibility of an exchange of professional staff and services for experiential wisdom. And we tried to talk about time and an hour just felt like impossible to negotiate on. So we then talked about six months to a year. Exchanges. But this question of like, I like that the whole piece around time is duration and time is density of experience. I think was something we were hitting up against even though we never resolved it and we didn't even actually ask that question. Are you guys? We totally figured it out. I'm not going to tell you, but we just figured it out. We're going to charge you guys. And we're not in good quality dollars. We're in advanced experience. The old way, the old way. We came up with some questions kind of for further, we didn't really figure it out. We just had people, sorry. But Marty had a great question. Do people attribute their own value? Is there a formula that culture can provide so that people who are engaged in the network can actively figure out how to attribute their own value so that we're learning about the way economies work so that we're building something that we all build together? Is that possible? Who prints the money was a big question. How did the culture point out in a minute? I just want to design the coin. That's all I learned. A follow-up question about contributing. Describing your own value. Is that just the individual does that? Or are you asking for the community to actually... Well, this is where we got into trouble territory because if the individual does it and I say, okay, I'm house cleaning and it will be five and then somebody else comes on and will do it for four then we're back in the market that we're trying to not be in. So we found it very hard to not enter a competitive capitalist system if we self-described but we still liked the idea of people self-defining value so we didn't completely get through that. And also self-defining thoughts. There are certain weekends when I would pay 20 for that house cleaning but it becomes this whole video thing. I'm missing the how it goes bad way to that idea. It just seems like people either agree to pay it or they don't, you know. And they've got reviews and as you go on... And you get reviews and you go, they're 98% accurate. Exactly. But then it's Angie's list and Greg's list just with a different system. So we were trying to figure out how to not adapt but maybe that's okay. Maybe that's exactly... Well, yeah, it's probably... Yeah, I mean, exactly. Yes. We don't know. And a question, really a question, a serious question because we're always trying to figure out where our time and energy and resources go. Keep moving ahead with exploring this. I mean, are you interested in the thought of going to a website and seeing... I mean, did it get you fired up with the thought of participating in a website like this? And I'm just curious, like, where people... Where do you go? This is an impossible... This is... You are so in that this can never happen. I just was... You know, I don't know. Yeah. Well, just to... Yeah. In the context of the conversation we've been having this weekend, you know, I think it's incredibly valuable to acknowledge our resources on our own terms and that's what this exercise is essentially about. If we can... If you can help all of us with this process, picking that out and then have a tool to quantify that, I think that's a pretty powerful mechanism. I actually want to say that the tool of exploring it actually, to me, feels the greater value than the actual system of currency that might develop in our field. Although I'm interested in that system of currency, it's the learning exchange that we just had a little bite of that I feel like what a great way to have conversations across the field and to make things that can see those. I am more energized by that than I am about actually using it, but I'm sure I would learn to love to use it as well. Yeah. I'm also curious about, like, our comments that we're responsible for and how that relates to these kinds of exchanges we might enter into. Some of the factors I think of there are like, if we're working from a comments framework, one of our interests would be in actually just kind of growing that pool of resources collectively. How do we manage it so that it's sustainable so that nobody falls off? There's ways that kind of brings us into a different conversation than, like, oh, well, I can, you know, I'm dentist, right, and so I can kind of exchange this skill to acquire other things, but I'm still like an individual unit, like an I. And maybe in a more interesting relationship to we, it's kind of, you know, I'm curious about what goes in a sort of collectively managed comments and what stays in a kind of transactional relationship, you know, because I actually do think that there are places where markets are dynamic. Yes. So what goes where? I think that's a key question and you're asking a key question, but even if there's worse, I'm kind of like, you know, who would be male, you know, who's managing that market transaction? The winter in the market. I mean, there are models that perhaps could be co-opted to make this. Useful things that, you know, Craigslist works if you, there's something that you want on it and you go looking for it and it's in the free. So like a materials for the arts, you need a castle, we have a castle, we don't know what to do with it. That kind of thing. But then there's also the community-based thing in which something like Grinder or manhunt works very well. Someone says, I need sex? I need sex. And then, like, two people are able to find each other in the same vicinity instantly and would that be any different if I was like, any child care in 45 minutes? Who can do it? You can't necessarily do that to the kid to take care of it. I see how you're breaking that down. I totally get how you're breaking that apart. You know, one being a flexor, the other being a magic cane. Yes, and the idea of community. Within community you can do that swap and say, I'll take this person's kid, which is different than manhunt. Maureen, you're good. Just sort of a devil's advocate kind of question is what prevents a system of tokens from turning into basically just another money system? Because I'm more excited about the idea of barter and exchange and finding out, actually identifying, like you said, identifying what our resources are and identifying what we need and matching that up. But trying to codify it already starts to smack, who's going to run this thing? And who's ultimately going to decide that. Yeah, right, exactly. Well, Maureen, you're back and then, yeah. Just that that's a good question and then it would seem that you're building community clearly and strengthening, you know, everything by a system like this compared to a monetary one. Sorry? You're building an identified community. You're building, you know, it's a conscious way of growing relationships and, you know, positive interdependency that adds strength and resiliency to us as a group. So I don't need to wrap up. Are you making a comment? Yeah, so why don't you go ahead? I just didn't know if you were wrapping this up because I was trying to know what it meant. Got it. I just, while I've been mulling over this, I've noticed a very distinct difference between my personal network when I start a project and the fact that I have friends and trusted people that I go to first rather than a sourced community and where does the line cross between I need something that I can't cultivate myself and how do you generate that value of my first question? The second one is I think it would be useful to find, if it's even possible, a constant. Like some sort of service that doesn't go into hyper-specialized and it doesn't go down to I don't really keep using babysitting as like the starting point. But like what is the middle ground that we can use to maybe establish a value that is fair in both spectrums? And I don't know if I would be the ideal to answer your initial question, the ideal candidate for this kind of a system because I actually value competition and like how do you keep the value that competition provides to like excellence and specialization in this sort of work? Yep, yep. Great, yeah. Yeah, I was right. I feel like I should go on orders. Do you have something to, Carlos? No. I just wanted to say that I think this is super exciting. I'm really glad that you guys are experimenting with an alternative currency because I think yesterday we were talking about how the current economic system isn't really serving many of us and the free market isn't really serving many of us but then the question is what do we do? And I think that we just have to experiment and there's a whole field of people working around solidarity economy sort of experiments and networks in the US and elsewhere and I think creating dialogue between those folks and this group would be really interesting to me and people who have been working for decades on like community land trust models for how we develop spaces and work our own businesses and how would that translate for arts organizations or artists collected so just throwing that up there. Yeah, go ahead. And this will make this a lot of traffic because we have to eat and people have to be in all those ways. I was just wondering if there's different communities like if there's the artistic community there's the scientific community each represents these different functioning communities that help within themselves and then we exchange with the other communities. So if like science embodies people who are technologically inclined or healthcare kind of falls into that area and then there's some that connect in between the two so if someone's in healthcare that has a science route that also has a caregiving route that bridges different communities that then provide that exchange as long as each different area is working together. Thank you. I can't thank you enough for engaging with this. It's enormously helpful to the kind of conversation we're having and to get a group of such incredibly rigorous and thoughtful things so thank you for that. Thank you very much. Great. Holly and Vijay, thank you so much for doing that in the way that we did it. I don't know where I'm walking to right now. In a good way. What can I say right now? I don't know. I've tried to multitask in such a way that I might have some way to tie this together or return it to something essential and I can't do it. All I can say is that I think being together is really important. I think sensitivity happens through and eroticism happens through being near each other. The question of sensitivity, you know, it's everywhere. It's not just in the theater, it's Aldo Leopold in talking about sensitivity to wildlife and agriculture. The Samurais talk about sensitivity to the sword. You're raising your hand? I just quickly think that the original Greek meaning of aesthetics is sensitivity. It's everywhere and I think the question of how we grow our sensitivity part of it is theoretical, part of it is language and part of it is the pure experience of exchange together. I think that's how we create instances of light and then that light grows and hopefully I really keep coming back to this constellation idea because I don't know what it is practically speaking. I do think there's some practical act that relates to the creating of constellations and what inspired me over the weekend and what inspired me before and looking with the people in the room and all this work is that there's incredible life-affirming, life-giving work that happens. Most of the messages we receive are more about direness. I am a firm believer in remedial optimism and that optimism is actually an engine of culture. Humans have the capability to project different possible outcomes. This might be arguable but from what I understand animals don't. The cheetah just is run. It's not imagining two different outcomes. We have the potential to project outcomes and to then work based on that information towards those outcomes. Being together in such a way increases the sensitivity and also for me it increases the energy what Schultz calls the perspicacity to work. So I hope some of you I'm not sure who will help me think about what constellations can be, what those maps would look like and also how to really write a mythology of this work in a way. Meaning is all. I think we all agree on this. It's all of our behavior, all of our optimism, all of our hope. Everything that we do is based on our relationship to meaning. The documentation is so important and everything and all the resources are so important. There's nothing to say about that but at the same time where's the energy or how do we make the act of making meaning out of this. So that's both spiritual but also very practical. I've been taught this by my son. His very existence is sort of what has forced me, luckily, you know, so luckily to have to marry those things. So I'm very grateful that we had this opportunity together. I hope that it can live in different ways. I don't want to propose a bunch of email lists but I don't want to continue the dialogue. I do want to continue the dialogue. I just don't want that to be my last word. My last word would be thank you. Again, to the people that have helped make this possible, I want to give a special thank you to Javier and Amritha who have been sent to me. And Paulie who is one of the first people and Vijay and Jamie who have I talked to about this idea and Michael and RJ and Morgan who have been in conversation about this gathering. So if I can just say thanks to them. I also want to acknowledge that there's been the company that I'm a part of that's been working. I wanted to say that Haley Brown and Jennifer Johnson and Sandy Timmerman have been leaving all this food work. If we can leave our applause for the end of this list. I want to thank our students, the interns, the apprentices and resident artists who have been doing all of this work on the cameras and everywhere. I want to double thanks again to Vijay and New Play TV for web streaming this. A very special thanks to Charles Starr Working Theater and QSAP Theater who have been very supportive of this as well in many different ways. This communications team of Brian on the sound and Milena and Gus and Maria who's also been documenting this and Jeff over there who's been documenting this and Evan, big thanks to them. And lastly I want to thank Stacey and Carlos who have really taught me about what it means to make exchange. Before we clap for them can we add you to the... Yeah! It's part of housekeeping and I didn't acknowledge Joanna who has been dealing with all of the hospitality. Housekeeping, we're going to have food now. Some people have to leave more quickly than others. So you should grab your food first and just let those people go first. And if you have any questions about transportation or logistics just talk to me. And then please help yourself and we will eat and enjoy nothing else.