 Michael Rhodes' work isn't just about theater, at least not to me. It's about policy and community and discourse. And Roberto mentioned the term deliberative democracy yesterday, and I think it's very much about supporting deliberative democracy through theater. So I'm delighted to welcome Michael Rhodes, artistic founder and artistic director of theater in the Center for Civic Practice. Hey everyone. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Hi. Hi camera. Hi. So I'm really happy to be here because it seems to me that really exciting and interesting things are happening in this city, in these cities, and on this campus. So it's really nice to be with you. I feel like the first thing to find out, because I might have missed this yesterday, but I don't know if we've actually taken a moment to figure out who's in the room. So I'm really curious who's in the room. So the first thing I'd like to do is, I'd like to know, maybe we can just do a, oh yeah, wait a minute, so you do a sense of how this is going to go. That's how this is going to go. So I basically got some ideas, some stuff I want to show, some stuff I want to talk about, some things I want to invite you to talk about. We have a bunch of time together. This is a terrible space for a workshoppy thing. So we're really going to do less of a workshop and more of like, we've been talking for a while, and then me asking you in small groups to sort of chat a little bit, and then we'll reflect out. We'll see how that goes. But who in this room, we're going to do like the self-defining thing. Who's self-defined currently in your life, among other things. You can put your hand up as many times as you want, as a student. Who are students in this room right now? Okay, great. Who self-defines in this room, and again your hand goes as many times as you want, as a teacher. Alright. Who self-defines as an artist? Okay, great. Who self-defines as an entrepreneur? Who is that? Who self-defines, and I'm just, I'm making categories up, right. Who self-defines, among other things, as an administrator, for whom is that a part of your, alright. Who self-defines as a, I'm going to use the word, it's an awful word, the word walk, meaning like you're super interested in policy and acidic things, like that's interesting and juicy to you. There are some walks in the room, alright. Alright. Who self-defines as a community worker, whatever that means to you. Who self-defines as an activist, alright. I want you to help me, help me with a couple other categories that would be for you related to why you're in this room today. So I, for instance, am a father, which of course in the larger sense is related to like why I am wherever I am these days. But in this moment is not necessarily the category that is related to what brought me to this room, perhaps karmically, but I don't know. So I want to know like in what ways would you sort of self-define that are related to why you're here now that I have not hit? Dramatur. Dramatur, hands up if you self-define as a dramatur. You get to a big point of mind where you're going to hear me talk about dramaturgy broadly later, awesome. Other categories, great parent, who would say parent is a part of the, yes, great, great. What else, what else sort of encompasses a part of your life, yes? Researcher. Researcher, hand up if you're a researcher. If you don't think you're a researcher, Laura, we have to talk about these categories. Because that is, you don't know what you're doing then because you're doing a lot of research and you're sharing it. So that's a researcher right there. What else, how else would you self-define? I will call no one else out like that, I promise. How else would you self-define in this room? Yes? Art's activist. Art's activist. Hands up, again as many times as you want. All right, all right. Others, any others? Yeah? New work generator. Hands up, new work generator. What about new practices generator? Ooh, that sounded sexy. Yes, practices generator, good. All right, okay, so no one said placemaker. Super interesting to me. I don't self-define as a placemaker. I have a lot of issues with the term with a lot of this stuff, so I'm excited to talk about that. But nobody said that, nobody said, I self-define as a placemaker and that's why I'm here. So I just note that, interesting to me. So we are going to do a little bit throughout our morning of like checking in with each other and I'm thinking you are either sitting alone right now or amidst some people you know, which is lovely to be with people you know, but here's what I'd like to ask if you are willing. I would like to ask in this moment if you would be willing to help me remake the place that we are going to make together this morning in this space by standing and finding a person that you do not know and sitting in a chair next to them. So you are basically going to be a part of a pair for the morning. I will not make you do a lot of stuff together other than talk to each other, but I think it would be beneficial if you found someone new to chat with this morning and you can refuse me by ignoring me. And come closer as you do that. And it would be nice to maybe be a little closer. So if you are in the back, which I respect, come closer. So you are moving around, oh my gosh. Those of you watching at home, it's chaos. It's chaos. Great, so you are finding a partner. Alright. Once you find them, sit with them please. Find a partner. It's exciting. Great, look at that. It's nice. Alright, finding someone. Yes. Yes, we are mixing. We are mixing. Oh my gosh, this is great. This is great. We are sitting down. Sonia, what we just did is, we just found a partner. Maybe your partner is right there. Alright. Bring your focus back this way, if I may. Bring your focus back this way. And the starting conversation is quiet. It gets quieter. It gets quieter. It gets quieter. That's so nice, thank you. So two things. One, sitting in the back, that side or that side, I am certain that we will have people wander in who didn't quite make the 10 a.m. So I will ask, as we get started, if those of you sitting there or sitting there, would tell folks when they come in that they welcome to join us, but that they should partner up with someone or join a trio rather than sit in the back alone. Because they'll need to be with someone to participate as we go forward. So you are on task, and you are on task. That is awesome, thank you. You got it. So the first thing, you might have already done this, but I just want to give you a moment formally to not only sort of say hello to your partner by name, but I'm just going to give you literally like 30 seconds, I'll name where you're from, I'll give you 60 seconds, where you're from and why you're here today, which might be, I took a class, I was told I had to come and this story. Totally fine, totally fine. It might be somebody brought me here, that's why I'm here. Like whatever it is, 60 seconds, name where you're from, why you're here right now, I will interrupt you in 60 seconds, go. Plenty of time to talk with your partner over the next bit of time we're going to share together. I want to do one more group thing before we go forward. So I want to know, if this is true for you, just put your hand up. I'm going to do a couple of statements, and if they're true for you, just put your hand up. I currently live in a place that is like the place I grew up. I currently live in a place that is like the place I grew up. Great. I currently live in a place that is quite different from the place I grew up. I currently live in the actual place where I grew up. So just look around, as we're doing this, just get a sense of the conversation, where people are coming from as we're having this conversation. So I have moved around a lot. Yeah? I wish I had moved around more so far. I look forward to a lot of moving around in my future. Okay? I feel like I am currently in the place that feels like a place I want to be in for quite a while. I am aware that I am actively seeking the place that I will want to be in for a while. So, this is how this is going to go. So, here's the thing about having a conversation about place in place making. Given a lot of pros, I want to make sure that also in the conversation is the notion that place is well, I'll put it this way. So, there's a camera right there that's feeding into a computer that's sending out a signal. So, we're here together, right? But, like, I asked some company members of mine this morning to jump on and watch to be with us some, like, especially right now, right? So, these are people who I've spent over the last 13 years of my life with Sojourn Theater a lot of time and energy with. These people are one way I define place for myself. And they're right there right now. Maybe there's a five-second lag. But they're, like, with me right now. Not just sort of in spirit. They can hear me. And they can text me. Because that's how the world works. They can call me. They can tweet me. And if I had a phone like a lot of you do, I can look at it right now. Like, we are sharing time, if not physical space. My wife and my daughter, are watching right now. Not because they are particularly interested in what I have to say. But because I asked them to watch for a little bit right now. So I can look at that camera. And I can say, hi Nina. Maybe you're watching. Hello. Have a good nap. I love you. I'll see you late tonight. So my daughter's hearing that right now if she's watching. I am certainly in a place with her right now more than I am with you. In that moment of saying that I just want to make sure that we continue to complicate the idea of place as we think about making place. That it is not just geography. That it is not just the area which has an economic impact around it. That it is not just indexes. Now all those things are important and related to work when we are being intentional and when we are working on projects collaboratively that need goals and that need to be in conversation with entities outside our own personal experience. Geography is also place. Share values are place. History is place. But I think particularly when we are mixing the arts and any kind of activity that anyone chooses to identify as creative and imaginative if we are not talking about the potential for blurry boundaries and broken barriers and things that aren't easily measurable, we are reducing something. So I just want to know technology is only one way. Just like a cheap, clever parlor trick to sort of note place in relation to time in this moment. So I have something I would like to ask you to do. I would like to ask you to turn to your partner and I am going to give you like a minute, maybe 90 seconds. I just want to ask you to talk to your partner about your own personal experience of place. What does it mean to you? We have been hearing stories and conversations about the making of place in relation to trends and funding and national definitions. What does place mean to you? Just you and your partner. Talk about that for like a minute and a half or so. A few more moments. Can I ask you to pause please? And could I could I ask just words, maybe like a short phrase, just give me a sense of what some of the ways you talked about place were just now. Not asking for stories or repeats of whole conversations. Just words or like short phrases. Place meant to you. Culture, place means community, place means home, place means familiarity, place means something that's gone. Something that's gone, place means belonging, place means fluidity, place means borrowed, place means learning, place means comfort, place means impact, place means civic engagement, place means consciousness, place means light, place means environment, place means mind, mind visual aesthetic, place means sense of rootedness, place means mooditness, place means aesthetics. Okay, thank you, thank you for that. I got text from two company members just then saying, we're right here in place. So two of them, two of them are watching but it's nice. And with us. Thank you guys. Alright, so we're gonna the answer to this is here we are. But let's talk about practice and process. So I've got some ideas I want to move through and I also want to share some examples of work and talk about some projects but we have some time here together and I want to make sure we keep sort of having conversations as a whole group and in small. So these are three core questions that I'm about to share with you that I feel like are sort of at the center of what I'm interested in right now. So I'm the artistic director of Sojourn Theater a 13 year old ensemble based company that works around the country on a variety of projects and I'll talk about some as we go. And I am also the founding director of the Center for Performance and Civic Practice which is a two and a half year old what I call a resource that is involved with programs, projects, research, initiatives and supporting artists and models in the field. And I'll talk about some of that stuff as well. These three questions I'm about to share with you feel like they're at the heart of both those endemors currently and I want to see if these questions are interesting or resonate with you. How do we develop partnerships and for what reasons? So here's what we're going to do. I'm going to put a question up and I'm going to invite you and your partner just for 60 seconds to just reflect on the question and how it lands with you. Because probably the question is or isn't interesting to you or makes you think about one thing and by make your partner think about a different thing. So I'm not so much saying at this moment tell a story about this question although you can if that's your way into this prompt I'm giving you but I'm also just saying how do we develop partnerships and for what reasons is that a part of something you think about? Is that a part of your work? Is that a part of things of interest to you? So for 60 seconds you and your partner just to help land these questions in this place we are building just chat about that for a minute. Time is yours. 30 seconds! I'm going to say hold please. So I'm going to I'm going to ask for your focus up this way again. I think hopefully each of these questions as a prompt is maybe starting a conversation that I'm definitely not giving you time to finish. And these are questions that I'm going to spend time me sharing and asking us to share together so this question is not going to disappear. I'm going to go on to another one now but then I'm going to be working on unpacking this with you throughout our time together this morning. Because this comes through a lot of the project examples I'm going to talk about and some ideas I'm going to share. Here's the next question how do we translate our role our work and our assets in non-arts context? How do we translate? Translation is a big at the center for performance and civic practice translation big big big mission. Big mission. How do we translate our role our work in our assets in non-arts context? 60 seconds with your partner just to talk about how that question lands for you. It's interesting what it makes you think about. 60 seconds. 30 seconds and I'm going to interrupt and ask to pause you again. So I'm going to go on to the third and last question in this grouping although it's a bit in the I think this is the right way to use this phrase feels to me like the language is a bit in the weed so I've actually got two versions of this question because I was like well this is what I talk about but I think I need to clarify it a little bit. First version is what process tools do artists possess that can allow us to broaden the way we and our non-arts partners conceptualize arts based activity, interventions and collaborations. How do we get expert at making and translating proposals that don't look like the traditional output product result of our respective disciplines? Laura gave great examples of this when she was talking yesterday about 180 projects and artists working with partners and developing all kinds of things that were focused on their discipline but that were really just expansive right in terms of the ways they approached creatively exploring those relationships and some kind of expression. So just this is the question to give you 60 seconds on how do we get expert at making and translating proposals that don't look like the traditional output product result of our respective disciplines. I'm not asking you to answer that in 60 seconds. I'm asking you to just think about what does that question raise for you? Is it a familiar question? Do you think about it a lot? Is it interesting to you? So it's giving you a minute to think about that because it's certainly something I'm going to talk about as we go through this morning. 60 seconds are yours. 30 seconds, last moments. And I'm going to bring you back up this way. So I'm so appreciative that you are so game this morning to dive into these conversations and I'm hoping that they feel like an active way to be in conversation together in a space where that's sort of challenging. So now I'm going to actually go through a couple of these slides and sort of set up a frame for some ideas that I want to talk about before we go back into a pair. So I'm just going to take a couple minutes on that. And then we'll do a little more talking and then we'll get to projects. I really wrestled with whether I should put the projects on the front end and then go into sort of some framing ideas, but I decided that just, you know, there's I've been really enjoying and interested in the conversation we've been having and I wanted to start with some ideas and frames and then move into examples. So if you seem awake that will have been the right choice. If you do not, so we'll see how that goes. So this is what I think about. This is what's interesting to me. What's important to me, theater is a form of civic activity, making performance as the practice of encounters, intervening, participating in public process. Particularly when I'm going to talk about civic practice of you because we go down the path of this conversation a little bit, but this is this is where I think about the kind of work that for me is the most closely related to the conversations happening around placenating. So let me get into that a little. First of all, public process. Oh, I should say this. I really like language and vocabulary. I find it incredibly difficult in our field as we are moving forward and we have more and more cross-disciplinary activity and conversation and cross sector work. The fact that we have been so siloed for so long, both within the arts in different disciplines and then of course between the arts and other sectors means that we have language we are comfortable with that makes it very hard for us to be in conversation with others very often. So I feel like I spent a bunch of time waiting for the fields to do the language work of carving out the shared definitions and a few years ago I started to feel like I am not seeing it happen in a way that I am satisfied with so I am going to start doing that. Consciously, I am going to try to create language that I can define my own work and interests in. I am going to share that, not in a belief that if people don't frame their things in the way I am saying that they are wrong people can frame things however they want to frame things but this helps me be in conversation with colleagues and particularly with people in other fields and in different places where I work and I will talk about stuff and finding some of these distinctions useful when bringing artists and non-artistic partners to tables together. Finding some of these distinctions is very useful. So that's the idea I am working with. So for instance public process this is one of the wordiest slides there is not a lot of this word but encounters where people intentionally gather to wrestle with issues that impact lives inside and outside the room that's for me a way to think about public process yeah encounters where people intentionally gather to wrestle with issues that impact lives inside and outside the room it's broad it's general but it's a framework for what we are going to talk about here government, health, education, business, community development, social services, policy planning all environments there is many more where public process happens but public process doesn't always refer to the inclusion of all voices it is in fact sometimes and often exclusive so how can artists impact the representation values and functionality of and within public process in a variety of settings does that make sense, that question okay I'm assuming if I get something and it's like I don't know what the hell he's talking about that someone will be like I don't know what the hell you're talking about or like could you please clarify that a little bit yeah so we know we're going to go forward from that a little bit and I'm going to say this this is a big part of the conversation today for me in theater and in public process are our models of encounter examples of monologue or dialogue that for me frames all the work and the work in response to other work are our models of encounter examples of monologue or dialogue what is the exchange what is the experience certainly this room this space is set up in a monological way right I'm up here doing this I'm talking at you this is a monologue I'm inviting moments of dialogue we're going to have some dialogue but the structure of this event and presentation is monological, why? because I'm on a stage where theater happens which is traditionally a monological form we can have a conversation about we share a breath together but we're in a monological presentation form I would suggest framework wise so I want to suggest that monologue form us to them a presentation a witness and an agent of action the delivery of content I want to suggest a dialogue form us becomes we an exchange, an experience of comaking a partnership based event I'm going to go back for a moment before I go forward what is the exchange what is the relationship what is the experience I'd love to ask you and your partner to talk about your experience both of the art that you make and are interested in and of public experiences you might define as public process and I'd like you to talk I'm going to give you two minutes talk about this idea of monologue or dialogue and I'm not saying that monologue is sometimes really useful as a frame as a form of expression dialogue sometimes not the most useful way for a particular thing so I'm not trying to lay a values judgment on it but I'm interested in the conversation about intentionality and purpose in relation to form and what often happens around the making of place I think often is monological activity that is discussing its intentions as a bus becoming we so I want to ask right now if you and your partner would just talk a little bit about this idea of when are you in public spaces for art and public process where you kind of go this is monological that's good that's bad this is dialogical that's good that bad just talking about your own experience of this idea and if you're going he's throwing these words around I'm asking you to talk for a couple of minutes about the exchange that occurs that has built the experience you have yeah? two minutes to talk with your partner about events art events public events monologue and dialogue experiences two minutes about 30 seconds alright I'm going to interrupt my front pair has told me they're ready so I'm going to I'm going to step sideways just before I go forward and just sort of mention something about this monologue dialogue framework this has come up a couple of times over the last 24 hours I hear at the symposium and Ann talked about it a little bit last night this idea that we have we are in a moment when people want to engage and interact with art in different ways than they have before and our our dome our wonder dome this morning kind of got at this a little bit and we talked about it in terms of opera revolution it comes up right people want to participate these are the big big buzzwords in the field now engagement participation they're framed in in ways that are sometimes muddled and confused but there's people sort of barreling in Irvine Foundation giant study impacting a lot of work happening out in California and Mellon putting a lot of money into engagement Duke putting a lot of money into building demand is another way of thinking about engagement so I want to sort of maybe articulate for you what being in a lot of conversations in different places sort of clarified for me in the past couple years which is that to talk about those words and then talk about policies and practices you also have to talk about values and intentions and form and what I see happening a lot is institutions often larger but not exclusively institutions that are attempting to understand changes in the demographics of their communities and changes in their audience constituencies in terms of decreasing in terms of challenges connecting with people and often assuming that by creating more engaged and participatory programming they can gather in the people who they want to reach and are not necessarily reaching but I think one of the challenges there is that when an institution exists in a larger frame of a monological relationship to its community meaning that it chooses and curates what to present how to present it and where to present it none of these things I think are bad but when an institution is working from that framework then adding ancillary activities that are engaged and participatory that they are indeed expanding the possibilities of how their audiences relate to them but the thing they're really trying to address is a deeper dialogical impulse in the larger world particularly generationally and particularly neighborhood by neighborhood that this movement towards co-making co-authorship collaboration is not necessarily satisfied in deeply meaningful ways by ancillary programs that deepen the dramaturgical impact of pre-chosen content that it is actually about how work and experiences are made together and how place is made together and the reason that I sort of start with this monologue and dialogue framework to go into, as I start to get to examples a little is I think that if I just think about the pitches this morning and I think about the wonder dome I just like saying wonder dome it's a good phrase, it's really fun think about the wonder dome it is wonder dome, right? it is wonder dome, yeah it would be embarrassing if I was saying the wrong thing like thunder dome, it's wonder dome wonder dome is either something that is an interactive experience but somebody sort of shapes what the experience is this kind of gets to what Sarah was asking about or is an experience that somebody participates in the co-making of content and experience and even the choosing of how it's deployed in a community like in a monological or dialogical kind of approach wonder dome can go both ways who are you trying to engage and why similarly with opera revolution I love music and musicals I'm not a particularly large opera fan but I'm up for opera revolution making me an opera lover, that's exciting I'm going to be most invested in that if I feel like opera revolution isn't commissioning somebody to write something and then figuring out how to get me in a bar to see it but there's actually something going on in relation to place and story that I can invest in and feel connected to and I'm trying not to leave collab act out where's collab act yeah collab acts? collab arts, I'm sorry because collab arts has at the center of it already on impulse for collaboration it's for collaboration for artists from different disciplines so it's interesting do those artists come together and choose what to make and then other people are invited in or does collab arts actually exist as something that invites potential stakeholders from all over the community and into a part of the generation of material or the strategies for how the material lands through a variety of distribution and engagement opportunities so what are we trying to do why are we trying to do it how are we trying to do it I feel super related so I want to say dig deeper into dialogue because I'm interested in the dialogue side of things sometimes I make shows in the monological framework I get asked to but in general I'm really interested in the dialogue in dialogue focused on encounters in the field of time based arts I propose we have two modalities of practice I am doing this now I'm going to jump sideways this way you guys have heard of the term social practice it's used a lot and here even socially engaged practice and social practice comes out of the visual art world but is now being used more and more expansively to represent not sure exactly what know the history of it but today lots of people claim it as a way to think about anything that has artists working with non-artists and then people will tell you that there are different kind of ways of framing that I am sort of finding that that particular frame is a little messy when artists deal with community partners because the question becomes what is the purpose that the artist is connecting with community for is it the realization of the vision that the artist has conceived or is it a response to a conversation and needs in a community I don't think those things have to be mutually exclusive but I do think there are different impulses and intentions and I asked a lot of this question yesterday which he was talking about those 180 projects and naturally the variety of projects and where they fall so something that I've been thinking a lot about is it's reductive but I find it useful perhaps useful social practice and civic practice so I'm going to sort of talk about each of these briefly and then get to some pictures pictures are nicer than words so are we doing okay are you doing okay question Laura yeah I'm leaning into performance in this moment just because although I'm interested in buckets that open up across discipline I certainly feel like my expertise is speaking about time-based theater and performance and so when I'm trying to sort of lay definitions out that are useful I don't quite feel appropriate in saying although I do feel and I'm in conversation with people in design and visual arts a lot about this but I put that up there so I don't seem more presumptuous than I'm probably already seeing so yeah so social practice wow okay so I'm going to read that but I just said it but I just put it up here initiates with an artist's desire to explore, create a conceptual event or moment of their design the design and or execution may engage non-artists in many ways and here's where it gets interesting and important to me and I'm you know I've been really excited to be in this conversation with all of you and with Laura and Roberto and Anne because of these outcomes that I think different artists approach projects through so a social practice project may engage non-artists in many ways it may leverage non-arts partners and community resources it may intend to specifically impact the social or civic life of the context in which it occurs in measurable ways yeah it may intend to exist as an aesthetic interruption from which impacts is to be derived in an open interpretive manner a moment of delight stained glass on a chain link fence yeah perhaps but whatever social or civic needs the project addresses the leading impulse and guiding origin energy is from the artist in a social practice project in a civic practice project it's activity where an artist employs the assets of his or her craft in response to the needs of non-arts partners the impulse of what to make comes out of the relationship not an artist driven proposal on the front end which does not mean that the artist does not make the proposal and bring their expertise and lead the work because I believe they do but it is a difference of relationship partnership collaborative design and desired outcome so does that make sense so now I'm going to look at some different projects Laura please you're asking me if I see it that way no it's a great question for me the desired outcome of social practice could be a process does not have to be like an object or a one time event or a show I'll show some examples of it but I'm trying to think through what you shared yesterday so flipping through some of those examples black dog chain McFence I'm trying to think of a process one well for instance the performance is happening at the Vietnamese restaurant yes there were performance moments but it seems like there's a process a practice that's resulting out of that that is in an ongoing way serving desired outcomes both for the business owner and a venue for artists to sort of be seen and bring audiences but it's not a one time thing and I would even suggest that the social capital of it is a product as well as the actual performative moments so to me all of that is outcome not just the thing and in civic practice yes relationship but also like a thing or an event or a moment when Suzanne was here right did some of you guys get to meet or hear Suzanne yeah okay you guys can hear Elizabeth yeah it's a great it's a great it's a great question and like such a great example I mean in my mind first of all I think social practice projects are awesome and important and not like it's not like a one is more sort of relevant I feel like most projects that happen with artists in community fall under this lens and I am interested in expanding the potential of civic practice projects not instead of but in addition to so that's really important I would also say that in response to your question I'm thinking about that a lot these days I don't know the story at all of what you're describing but I would say one way to get a non-arts partner to think about sustainability is to go to them with an idea for sustainability project as you did to share how your tools could be useful to them super great another way is to go to a non-arts partner and learn about what they do in relation to sustainability over some time and then in listening to that figure out what assets you have that could make a conceptually surprising proposal that might be surprising to you as well as to them and what would result out of that would be a project that might be exactly what you did or might be something that neither of you could imagine at the beginning yes because a relationship is developing absolutely yes yes no no it's a great question and you know how you know how that works I believe it's the difference between well first of all it's hugely relevant for a lot of artists who are in school building their work as entrepreneurs and certainly like I can say for myself like in the early 90s when I started Hope is Vital an organization I started doing work with homeless men and women living with HIV and AIDS like I didn't get paid to build those relationships like I built those relationships because I was interested in those relationships and what art space work could come out of it that led to funding that actually nobody knew was available for the arts because of that cross sector relationship it's very hard to get funding on the front and to build a relationship it's not hard actually to develop a relationship that's cross sector and then together come up with an idea and then get that funded so granted like if every hour of your day in your early struggling years needs to be a paid hour to pay the rent it's hard to find the time to build relationships but on the other hand you got to do it I mean that's the definition of being entrepreneurial it's starting doing work that you're not getting paid for because you believe it's going to lead to something you're growing yourself but I totally hear that and I can say that the very question you're asking is the reason that at the center I've been working to fund this thing called the catalyst initiative which is actually going to fund artists to build relationships with partners in five pilot cities around the country to find a time to develop a conceptually surprising proposal and I hit on that again because this is also I saw some of you said new work makers right I also want to say that I think that the future of new work there's a place called people's light and theater outside Philadelphia am I saying the name right people's light and theater super interesting theater and they just started this really interesting residence they got a lot of money for I don't remember from where but basically they're exploring this idea that by embedding an artist in a community that does not have relationships with artists and giving that artist time to build relationships the work that gets made will look different than the work the artist would have made without that relationship and will look different contextually than work that theater would have presented in their building because it's going to be outside in a public space so I actually think that part of the future of new work development is in relationships that are cross sector because we have to make proposals that are conceptually different than what we are used to offering we talked about this yesterday if you are a theater practitioner and all you know about what your process can lead to is a play then a play is your hammer and everything you encounter is a nail am I saying that right meaning that you think a play is the answer to everything a play is not the answer to everything we're going to look at that as well love plays lots of things theater artists timetable artists bring to the table that results in product process that does not necessarily look like a play and that's a big part of thinking about this work as well so I had a hand here and then come right here and then I'll keep going this is exciting look we're talking about this stuff this is really exciting well I'm not even saying that I think there are artists who do both I just think that this is a field of work that offers kinds of projects employability and community utility that we don't take advantage of and don't offer well you know what I think where it lends to potential hierarchy is it gives a community partner the possibility of being informed and actually in an authentic power relationship with an artist because what happens often is artists will start a project and a community partner hears this and what they get is this and that hierarchy which is reversed and puts the community partner at disadvantage is a real problem because what it leads to all over the country are community partners who have been burned by arts projects where actually their desired outcomes and their interests were not primary but the way the partnership was developed they thought their outcome was primary so I actually feel like I hear you and I think there are partners who would be like oh I'm understanding this distinction this is what I'm interested in that's great for the artist to know because that's going to lead to a better honest project and it's also going to lead to finding the partners that are going to be more interested in this it's a very challenging point you bring up I'm glad you bring it up I have a response to it one is yes I hear you and yes but the other is I think in some contexts that perspective is used as a way to prevent artists from having to actually A be aware of who they are and aren't in conversation with be able to remain sort of elites and have a voice that is protected because they need to comment from the outside yes I believe artists should be able to comment from outside but in terms of their utility like we need artists we need artists to speak things that aren't being spoken in other ways and forms of resistance yes I think a lot of that work in this country is very often aimed at people who already share that perspective and isn't actually received by many people who don't already share that perspective and there's often a stridencier didacticism to it so I agree with what you're saying and also sort of awarely just want to acknowledge that I think that can also be a way to sometimes avoid conversations between artists and community it's the thing about authorship as well when you use the word pander which I think is a really tricky word because it sort of states an assumption that if I am partnering in community authentically that I'm actually not able to A. speak truthfully and B. make work that is challenging because I have to satisfy and dilute and I think that's a perspective on what happens during collaboration and partnership but actually not what happens in good practice of collaboration and partnership so but I hear you and I really appreciate that point yeah, thanks yeah, Julie in relationship building maximizing your relationships that are already in your world and you're not working at them with the potential for creative work with them versus reaching outside of your world or the people who most commonly relate to yeah I know what you're saying but it relates to the notion of imitation and charge that Laura talked about yesterday I feel like I want to answer that with a story that acknowledges my own personal pathology which maybe some of you share which is one of the projects you'll see me deal with here is a really great project we were involved in and continued work on the Penelope Project where we worked with the long-term care facility and created an adaptation outside Milwaukee of the Odyssey called Finding Penelope where we worked with men and women living with Alzheimer's and dementia and their caregivers and families and created this giant site-specific performance and so I was in and out along with my company members and doing a lot of learning about working in senior facilities and I had never put the energy I don't have any grandparents left now my last grandmother grandparent died about four years ago maybe five years ago never put the energy into the elders in my family that I have put into working with elders on projects I don't know if other people have that experience in terms of partnerships and work you've done where you realize that you are putting a tremendous amount of your time and energy and heart into something that you have actually not done in your backyard and I don't think it's bad because I feel really good about that work but I certainly try to reflect occasionally on what has kept me from doing that work in my own household and I try to learn from it and be better with my parents who are older and on that they're getting up there so that's one response and my second response is I'm someone who spent literally most of the 90s living out of a suitcase working in different communities invited in to do work around community issues so was an outside artist for years and years in urban, suburban, rural communities and had to spend energy figuring out the ethics of that how I felt about that what the practice of that when to give that energy and when to not give that energy and do the work and how to learn through it so that's the long answer the short answer is I think it's really great and significant to look in our own backyard I think the model working in neighborhoods that Springboard does where the start is there it's a wonderful and great way to both map assets and maximize capacity I also think that there's a tremendous role for the artist in places that they are not of or from whether it's one mile away or a hundred miles away or a thousand miles away or ten thousand miles away but I think that that is a set of practices that adds on a layer of complexity and intentionality and awareness that is different than when you work maybe the last one and then I'll go on to project stuff the word dramaturge in relation to this work is so important to me we were talking about this a little bit yesterday I'm just someone who firmly believes and I guess I'll get to this a little but just the idea that city we're such a mess in terms of governance in this country we're just such a mess on so many levels and every city council every state legislature everybody engaged in public process with decision making responsibility desperately needs a dramaturge I mean desperately desperately needs a dramaturge as do the artists but I'm literally saying the artist in residence as dramaturgical presence around process and content and I'm going to talk about some of those tools is something that we have not moved into with confidence and force and will in a way that would serve our communities so healthily but anyway I'm going to go on so naming some artist assets and this starts to get at this a little bit talking about like how do we talk about what we have when we're in conversation so this is a couple that I talk about and use sometimes collaboration and this is not just time based art this is artists but particularly theater artists actually in terms of this first one stakeholders that is what happens in a rehearsal room or a classroom or a teaching artists setting or many community settings design this is like a whole another day that we could and should have but the idea that we need to share the term design with those who self define this designers because you design problem solving through highly imaginative and collaborative action you do that, we do that designers is not just a visual field there are people coming out of Pratt and Parsons every year with a concentration in experience design who are getting hired by major firms mostly in New York DC, London, Chicago Los Angeles to work on teams that are designing housing for 100 million people in China, public transit in Russia better city systems in Philadelphia, Detroit and Cleveland they are hiring people that are defined as experienced designers do you know what they specialize in they specialize in bodies in space they specialize in narrative and framing they specialize in time and understanding systems they do what you do and they are being invited to tables that we are not invited to because we do not define our assets in relation to those kinds of processes expression, synthesizing complex data and articulating it in ways that can be comprehended and interrogated so these are just three assets I just kind of want to name in that way so this is a quite, I'm going to go back to you in pairs, I'm almost at pictures but I just want to ask you guys to talk two minutes with the partner but here's what I'm interested in maybe it's one of these, maybe it's something else you define as an asset you bring to the table as an artist was used in a surprising moment or context so I'm going to say not in the rehearsal room not in the studio maybe this is a moment when you feel like you used it maybe it's a moment when you were aware of someone else bringing it, maybe you were a part of a public process where someone creatively was a part of an accomplishment maybe this is around the Thanksgiving dinner table and it's literally that definition of collaboration I wish I was better at that definition of collaboration at my family's Thanksgiving table my larger family's Thanksgiving dinner not my home family so two minutes with your partner can you think of, and if you can't think of an exact example that's okay, just talking about the assets artists bring to the table outside the traditional usages we put them to two minutes with your partner remind yourself who your partner is about 30 seconds I'm going to interrupt if that's okay and what I'd like to ask is again, not asking you to repeat the conversation you just had but just like phrase or words in response to what were you talking about in terms of artist assets or interesting usage anybody sort of pop for me just like a phrase a couple words smart room say that again attention getters being able to say yes Anne feasibility feasibility ready mission statements engaging with the physical body reframing a non-artistic problem in an artistic sense persuasiveness and the use of artistic energy when presented shared vision team leadership and communication yes sir kinetic learning I want to see kinetic learning in the wonder dome I just want to say what else that could happen other others okay so now we're super close to actually looking at other than words so I'm going to give some examples of social practice projects so the deal is I'm just going to like show pictures of a couple projects and give tiny descriptions of them and then the same with a couple civic practice projects and then I'm going to go back through them with more pictures and I'm going to sort of note here's a way to think about these projects in terms of engagement strategies participation strategies relationship to intention yeah so we'll go through and see if this is interesting see if this stays interesting so first one witness our schools oh it's like what Ann said is right it does look kind of can you see it oh okay it's John O founding company member at Sojourn so this is a project we did that we spent three years on so again this is a social practice projects in my mind now when we made these projects I was not thinking about these distinctions or definitions we were making projects witness our schools piece about public education in America in Oregon where we were based we interviewed about 500 people around the state over a year and a half I don't know if you know this but Oregon has terrible public education issues like many states but at the time we started work on this in 2003 it was 49th in terms of it was the bottom of public head in the country and we actually had a situation where you might have in 2003 you might have seen this Doonesbury cartoon because in 2003 on the floor of the state legislature in Oregon at the capitol a legislator threw a stapler at the head of another legislator because they couldn't agree on a budget and so they literally started fighting on the floor of the legislature and they had to recess the state legislature early which meant that every public school in Oregon closed four weeks early because they ran out of money every public school in Oregon closed four weeks early and it was on the tail of that that we were working on the tour you know we were in the habit of making a touring show for schools as a part of what we did and one of our board members was like let's not make a touring show for schools let's make a show about what the fuck is going on with our schools I'm so sorry that went out on live stream so sorry maybe even my daughter I'm sorry but anyway that's conversation so we started working on this project and this actually relates to something Elizabeth asked in a way which is just that we took on this project we knew it was a multi-year project we had like a nickel and the budget we came up with was $295,000 to do what we thought we needed to do and we just started and we started interviewing and Elizabeth has done this a million times she's done this too a lot of people in here have done this so we knew that there were partnerships that we had to develop we ended up working with the state legislature the department of education unions anti-union organizations we interviewed students, teachers, school board members political leaders, mayors, lieutenant governors all these people and we created this piece and the piece toured Oregon for nine months every Sunday for nine months we did a free performance in a different town at 2pm on Sunday we did a town hall dialogue where local political leaders and constituents and constituents who often weren't in these conversations in terms of diversity and voice were in these rooms and the show was 65 minutes the public dialogue was 90 minutes and the public dialogue was based in improvisation and performative strategies and facilitation and that show ended up being performed on the floor of the legislature for the House and Senate we had a conversation about it this is another social practice project this is like the Jono show Jono again with a mustache years later so this is a show again, I would define this as a social practice project because we got interested in the urban rural conversation and the values division in this country which would come up in a lot of our projects but we hadn't directly addressed it so we wanted to do something different we felt like in a lot of projects like urban rural people go to urban and they get stories and they take them to rural or they go to rural and they get stories and they take them to urban that's like the kind of sharing that would happen and we said we want to make an art project that brings the audiences together physically we do not want to build a metaphoric bridge we want to build a literal bridge to have a conversation about values and polarization so we made a show that had two act ones one act one is in Malala, Oregon in the Elk Barn on a ranch town of 7,000 people 50 miles away from Portland and the other act one is in a church in North Portland, an African American neighborhood and the two act ones had different casts different audiences happening simultaneously act two on the bus both audiences got on school buses and drove towards each other and act two happened which is a combo of live video and live performance and as a part of that bus trip they make a cell phone call to an audience member on the other bus so they can catch up on what they missed in the other audiences act one and then act three is they arrive at a parking lot overlooking a river in a dead industrial quarter in central Oregon not central Oregon, central between Malala and Portland and they're overlooking this river and they're live on the school buses at the same time and there's a banquet set out for them a locally sourced, organic freshly cooked meal and they basically get off the buses and five people from Malala sit at a table with five people from Portland and they are the guests at a fictional wedding reception and there's a live rock band and there's the bride and groom and the bride and groom are the descendants of the first act people that they encountered in their respective acts so act three is they witness the coming together of these two places but they meet a couple who are having relationship troubles because of their different backgrounds and the audience has to help problem-solve how this marriage can happen so the obvious metaphor a state that is bound, a couple that is about to be bound, how do we talk and think about that so that was a project that we worked for about a year and a half on ten dollar tickets for the whole event including the meal because we super prioritize access for everything, a lot of our shows are free the race another social practice project we were invited to be in residence at Georgetown University for two years where we built a show that opened three days before Obama was elected it was a show about leadership in America and it was a show that worked using interviews and other participatory research methods around DC to talk to people about leadership in America and what the country wanted at this moment and it opened before Obama was elected it ran election night and it ran after the election so and it was a show that was both scripted and choreographed but also had open structures and you'll see in a little while I'm going to show you an image of someone Skyping in from Dublin because we had an international Skype chorus that was a part of the show that we participate in the conversations so I want to say when Anne was talking yesterday about participation and interaction like that's kind of what we do and these are projects I'm giving you that are sort of in the conversation about that work out in the world this is a piece called Built which is a question witness our schools came mostly from foundations in Oregon, private donors and we got a map fund grant which was a big thing for us like a blue chip grant that created capital and rockfeller that helped to loosen up some money we were still raising money through the last performance to get there this project we've been established for a while longer an ADA grant foundations some the city council in Malala and the arts council in Malala gave us small grants the county commission for the arts the race mostly more and more we tour and do residencies and build work so this is a fee situation from Georgetown who basically hosted and sponsored us to do this and May wrote grants to get us in there Built is a project that had different foundation money and was commissioned by an artist in residence program and by a big festival the time based art festival out in Portland, PICAS TBA so it was presented by a variety of partners so we do a lot of fundraising and a lot of partner building over time this is a show about how city this is probably the show that in a way is most directly content related to this symposium in that this is a show we made about how cities are changing and demographic change and what you see is a lot of our work is site specific as you can tell but this is most of you have probably been to an IKEA store maybe so have you ever been to a condo show space which is kind of like an IKEA store where they set up fake kitchens living rooms and bathrooms and you walk through and we were invited to make this show as part of this fancy glass condo thing rising up in Portland by the river does anyone here know Portland at all you must know Portland so they built the south waterfront and we were invited to make something and we said well what we want to make is we want to make something about the complications of how many people hate what you're doing here but it's also viewed by some as really necessary in terms of the economic revitalization of the city so let's make a show about how complicated that is working on it for 8 or 9 months we got the main developer to allow us to stage the show in their condo show space so this is a quarter million dollar white model that exists that is their main sort of pride that they bring people through to look at and that is their vision of what the south waterfront would look like when it was done being built so we staged a tightrope dance over it for a part of the show where our actors were literally in danger of destroying a quarter million dollar object which felt really relevant to some of the stuff we were taking on in that if we destroyed it it would never be paid for which is what's going on in that neighborhood in a lot of ways so this show was a combination of participation we used a game structure that I'll talk about a little bit more where the audience actually built a city collaboratively over the course of the show this is the show Elizabeth mentioned yesterday at some point that she saw because this show has led to a civic practice project that we are now doing that I'll talk about in a second so there's four social practice projects that are like shows with public expressions and manifestations where partnerships grew out of our desire to make an artwork with and about factors, populations, issues and resulted in these events that people could come and experience and then I want to look at the first one so you see this picture is built in 2008 this picture is built in 2012 in rural Virginia and basically what happened was that show lived on as a bit of a rumor in urban planning communities and schools because a lot of planners had seen the show and we basically invented a game for that show this game and we called that show a participatory civic planning game with performance interruptions and we had planners start coming to a participatory civic planning game Harris likes that name a participatory civic planning game with performance interruptions and planners said well we like the show but we'd really like to talk to you about the part of it that isn't the performance interruptions we'd like to talk about the game we had conversations for a few years and then what happened was you must know that two years ago Rocco Landmisman made through the NEA these interesting cross-agency partnerships including one with HUD so there was all this money that came available for creative development around sustainability and the arts community did not know artists around the country to a large degree did not know that 100 million dollars was available and they didn't know it was out there but we happened to be in Blacksburg Virginia giving a talk at Virginia Tech which is where I went to grad school and I gave a much different version of this presentation I talked about built and there were planning commissioners in the room and they came up to me afterwards and said we have this HUD NEA money we don't completely know what to do with it we're having a lot of trouble with the sustainability conversation in our community and that game seems like it could be interesting but this was someone approaching us about a need they had yes we didn't have an existing relationship they approached us we started a conversation with them and over a period of eight months we redesigned the game so that it could be deployed in the five poorest counties in rural Virginia in southwestern Virginia and we redesigned the objects we went in and did facilitation training with them so local people are facilitating it a game that groups of people for the last ten months have been coming together to be facilitated through it involves storytelling, it involves gameplay it involves data gathering and it is the single primary data gathering tool in a massive public engagement effort that is going to be used to determine how resources are allocated in five counties in Virginia because we had yes yeah we're doing it we're in our third community next week it's something that Elizabeth and Dance Exchange and lots of folks have a lot of experience but this is what we do now and this is like a sojourn and a center for performance and city practice project there's 13 people in my company we all sort of lead and specialize in different projects I'm not the guy at sojourn that leads this project Liam, hi Liam leads this particular project what it means is when people contact us Liam starts to determine what's going on with them and how we can start sort of collaborative design meetings over the phone online and going and doing visits and then we go we create a specialized facilitation handbook we go and do a training and we basically are sort of working as co-makers with communities on specific versions of this structure or mechanism that can be useful in their locality but we're really committed to making structures that are replicable and there's a couple reasons one, I'm watching and really believe this is a powerful tool that we have sort of accidentally sidestepped into that's being really useful in non-art settings it is also a way of our organization sustaining itself because every time we work on a project our company and our artists get paid for their work our designer is constantly redesigning and modifying this so it's a civic practice project that has arisen out of a need but is really sort of serving all involved it's a great question Elizabeth can take like an hour and talk really in detail about how she's involved in a lot of projects like this so maybe we'll do a shared convening but it's a great question it's the question Catholic Charities USA approached us because they saw us at a conference yesterday we completed let's see what's the short way into this well actually I didn't actually read that needs, dialogue and civic application assets we bring to the table problem solving, bringing people together building collective vision just to sort of really state those things clearly Catholic Charities needs advocacy, story sharing artist's assets, synthesis of complex material community building dramaturgy could certainly be up there Catholic Charities USA connected with us I don't know how many of you are familiar with that organization I was not really but they do amazing poverty reduction work all over the world they have agencies all over the United States urban and rural communities and particularly in the last few years they are really challenged by people basically wrapping Catholic Church issues on top of their mission and their narrative when they hear their name so they have been trying to figure out how to tell the story of what they do that doesn't say hey we're not Catholic but does say hey we are different than the institution of the Catholic Church and here's what we do and part of that has been they are having trouble building these organizations have been in cities for like 100 years and suddenly the relationships they have that allow them to do pretty amazing work around housing and hunger and sustainability with people of all faiths it's not a proselytizing mission based organization has gotten harder because people are reluctant to have them in difficult community conversations because they fear they bring the freight of the Catholic issues into the room so they asked that we would work with them and so we did a national conference for them we gave workshops we interviewed a bunch of people we created a performance I gave workshops on collaboration and difficult conversations and it was really exciting and they invited us to be artists in residence for a period which started a couple months ago so we are now at regional gatherings with them all over the country four sojourn members not me were just with them in Iowa Tennessee and Kentucky they went home last night and we were at these regional gatherings that were 60 or 70 poverty workers who are coming together to work on skills and basically sort of have those things that happen at convening where you share ideas and hopefully you get a chance to sort of feel supported similar interests and similar needs for skill development so with them one of the things we are doing that I think is interesting and surprising I've heard the term radical generosity and radical hospitality come up here some which is something that we talk a lot about in our work hospitality and generosity and curiosity are our main things but we have been developing some performance based forms for groups of people to be together in rooms and not have this experience but have a different kind of convening experience we were laughing about yesterday Laura and we were saying we want the conference that's just debates and arguments we just want like I want Anne's not in his aunt here I wish Anne was here because I could say what I really want which is to put her and Roberto on stage and like have them argue some and I'd like to get in there too but I would really like that moment yesterday when Roberto asked a question and they had that moment I was like oh I want a day of seeing where that goes you know because that's really rich in addition to the great presentations we're having like you want that it's really interesting so how do you safely make that space so we've been developing this thing called Four Corners which basically is a a real different variation on an open space approach to how people work together wish I had a picture of it but basically you find out the questions that people in a room want to wrestle with you set up different spaces in the room each is a different question you have two people start you have a really skilled facilitator artist at each corner and then people jump in and out of a pair of chairs and talk with each other and then at a certain point can start to go from corner to corner and then the whole group comes together and figures out what the threats are tries to deepen it and then they go back to the corners and then there's a moment of expression that the performers help with at the end and it's really dynamic and apparently in Iowa, Tennessee this past week the Sojourner and Artists we'd set up all these prompts in collaboration with our partners and the one that was the most delicate that we were told would be the most delicate was how do you deal with issues of Catholic identity in your communities and internally and all the staff at Catholic Charities the DC staff, the national staff who are great were really nervous and it turned out that that question kind of took over in every place, people wanted to talk about that and were weeping with the opportunity to talk to their bosses about that publicly and be in conversation and the artist sort of being a part of making that space and framing that in a constructed way so I feel like we were able through our assets to help them break through something and we get over the next couple years to keep helping have that conversation in different ways I mentioned the Penelope project before the one at the long-term care facility means, cross-sector innovation, story sharing artist assets, meaning making dramaturgy, process and place which sort of brings us all the way back to this kind of idea of place this is a nursing home, this is a long-term care facility it has a mile of corridors it has different ways it has people who are able to be functional on their own it has people who can do nothing on their own it has staff, it has families in and out all the time is there a way that story helps make that place not just more livable but actually more help-inducing the tagline for this project, there's a documentary that's been made about it, it's about to be released the tagline is beyond bingo which is not our tagline some of the healthcare providers came up with and it's focused on patient-centered care which I'm sure some of you are familiar with and the idea is that in long-term care generally activities are sort of it's so funny, this word they're placeholders activities are holders for people to do to keep them out of trouble and so something is happening but they're not actually engaging in general so we worked with Anne Basting she's a professor at University of Wisconsin Milwaukee, an old friend she runs the Center on Creativity and Aging she's awesome, we worked with her for a couple years on this project and basically together devised an adaptation of the Penelope story within the Myth of the Odyssey and worked on it, you know this is Dorothy Dorothy isn't mid to severe Alzheimer's in terms of her memory functions and her awareness of what's going on but this is a moment in the show when Odysseus shoots the arrow do you know that at the end of the story when he comes home and so although Dorothy has a lot of trouble holding on to a lot of circumstantial and relational moments Dorothy held onto this action day after day and when given the arrow Dorothy knew where to go with focus and delight across this space carrying that arrow landing it in the right place turning to the audience like this and just continuing to walk out and you talk to her now I just saw her at one of the premieres of the documentary and I don't know, she I don't know, it's actually weird to talk about without sounding like you're trivializing it it's a very powerful experience to work in this kind of setting and it was very powerful to see how the arts work with the health sector to achieve health sector goals that the health sector was having trouble achieving on their own that's the accomplishment and again that's something that other practitioners you know, Liz and dance exchange people and Elizabeth like working on this kind of work for years we're just trying to be super conscious of identifying this and we're involved in getting this work out into the national kind of health community we taught an institute in Milwaukee where over 60 people came from around the world to learn how to take this kind of project into facilities China sent a team of people who are responsible for, in the words of the team that showed up they are responsible for planning for the care of half a billion elderly in the next 10 years and so they were there to learn strategies that they could take back and replicate on massive scales that was interesting and they were great books that were interesting so, I want to be aware of time because I've been going for a while and you've been super patient I wanted to ask you to take a moment, I'm not making a phone call I'm seeing what time it is okay, so there is sort of one more thing I want to run through on here but I would love to sort of give you a moment to check in with each other and I think out of these projects I just showed Penelope you know, sort of looking at these partnerships artists in a long-term care facility artists with a giant social service agency network artists with urban planners artists with a developer working with individuals around the community working with a rural and urban community on a project working with public education there's different kinds of partnerships throughout this, so I'm wondering if you could turn to a partner and share either an example of a partnership from your own experience that you still think about and find interesting or a partnership you have been thinking about in your future work, whether it's social or civic practice, whatever it is just a partnership that you've been thinking about and are still trying to figure out for yourself how to make that partnership happen so this could be an opportunity to chat about that and if what we discover is you guys have been sitting for a long time and you're beyond partner time in this moment we'll see do you feel like a partner moment is okay right now? okay, so how about just two minutes on that partnership, go ahead one minute last moments, you're like I'm ready ready to go on I'm gonna interrupt you and go on I wanna know do you have thoughts or questions, so here's what's coming up I have these elements to just sort of acknowledge, talk about I have looking at engagement, participation and intention with a couple quick examples and then we can go through those and then we can talk and do a couple questions or like I could wait, we can talk a little bit and then I could scroll through those in a few minutes do you wanna see a little more or would you like to ask some questions, talk a little where you at? yes sir and it's certainly reductive for a moment like this but good it is reductive okay good then it's not reductive it's direct to the point out of conversation needs to come a really clear way to articulate needs that the partner can talk about in their context, in their language so we might come with bullet points, but that's coming out of conversation and then I need a way, for instance, these four artists that went on the Catholic Charities trips this past week for Sojourn, like I've been in a lot of the planning meetings with Catholic Charities on the phone and in person and then I am constantly relaying and in conversation with my company so if I'm in a four-hour planning meeting I need to find and develop a shorthand with my collaborators that allows them to be of use and in that conversation when they're on the ground without having to have been in the four-hour conversation so again, sort of clarity intention, a process that is very, I feel like the last couple years we've gotten more and more intentional and I hope thoughtful and specific about our process so we're able to communicate internally, externally within our field and then externally with sort of folks who we are partnering with who aren't necessarily language fluent in what we think about as our language so yes, we have to find those bullet points, but it is certainly defined collaboratively that's a lot of qualifying, I am nervous it is scary nobody wants that what I'm really curious to know is you're having this conversation in your partner how does your company talk about how your video is paid how how do others do how does Mora and Herb staff not only support artists in the community but how do you guys make your salaries, make your lives and how are your people then moving forward and making money in their craft so we're not talking about that now I'll tell you how that not a long answer is like in general how this stuff happens but I can tell you how we work which is when Catholic Charities approached us the first conversation the first set of conversations was wow, is this a useful partnership on all sides do your needs match up with something that we can offer what's the scale of that so the scale of that of what we are talking about together would cost this and we are talking about a project that would have to be fee based because there are other projects we're doing where we are raising money this kind of partnership is not a project we can take on on our own raising money for this would be a work for higher partnership collaboration here's what the scale is now the scale could be here which involves more of us more deeply and over a different period of time it could be here and we basically talked about what are the core goals what needs to happen for it to have integrity on our part in their part and then we found a middle place there was certainly one version of the proposal that was beyond financially what was possible for them but there was also a version that was not interesting enough to be worth the investment I think you're asking great questions I think there's two in here I should say nobody at Sojourn is on full time employment right so everybody including myself I teach at Northwestern so my salary comes from my teaching job and I'm artistic director of Sojourn Theatre and I get paid when I'm out working for that work I don't get paid to lead the company artists in my company get paid if they are developing work if they are on the road working if they are in a room doing work or in a fair way when they are doing prep work or their own work they get paid for that but nobody gets paid daily just for being a member we have one half time managing director who's on salary everything else is project based that said we actually from the beginning it said we would like to pay artists more than decently so we have always looked at the union rate for actors for instance and said we will always pay better than that when we are on the road or when we are at home we will always pay better than that so we have sort of just an amount and then if people are away from home for a certain amount of time it goes up if you're away from home there's the things like your prudium your lodging all those things we have certainly worked as company members we have sometimes wrapped child care if they are going to be gone what that impact is on their family they are going to be brought into a project budget if someone is bringing a child with them we try to deal with that and be a part of that conversation so the short answer to the first part of your question how does somebody ask for the $3,000 for their monthly thing people feel shy about that we have to be comfortable talking about our worth in relation to currency dollars the economy if one is clear about the value of what one does separate from money and one is clear about one's intention and purpose then one can talk about the way you sustain yourself to do that work and what you ask for from partners you also figure out how to scale what you need in relation to some partners we are going to scale a budget differently than others based on where they are at and where their funding is coming from and how it supports us sure sure when I started Hope was vital in 1991 in 1992 or maybe early 93 I like to say no internet no cell phones so those of you coming out of school first of all I want to say like any time I hear someone coming out of school this is not a... I'll get to it's a great question and don't complain because you can access you can find literally just finding what is out there you can do in this room while I'm talking and I won't even know it you can pull a thing out of your pocket and call someone in Hawaii and you won't go into debt I spent two years as I was building that work I went into credit card debt on Sprint payphone cards if anyone remembers those Sprint payphone cards where you would get up and then it would go to your... you'd pay it every month I went into deep credit card debt in building trying to build relationships around the country because I would be at payphones I'd be in Albuquerque, New Mexico working trying to get a gig going in Louisiana I'd be on the phone it would be an hour and a half of the payphone after I'd just done an eight hour session you're on the payphone then you got to get back on later in the night you got to talk to somebody who's in San Jose and it's just ringing up the debt so sorry that was grandpa's story time I apologize so anyway, what I would say is there's two important roles that you're looking for when you're building partnerships there's the gatekeeper and there's the ally you got to find the gatekeeper who's the person who's going to give you access to the room the ally is the person who's going to invest in what you're doing and help you build a relationship I would suggest that I was focused early on too much on the gatekeeper because I wanted to get in and it took me a while to realize that without the ally getting in isn't really worth that much so I used this example yesterday the vice principal might get you into the school but if there's not the history teacher who's interested in what you're doing it doesn't matter how passionate the vice principal is about what you're doing because all they did was get you in the building they're not going to help you have the action and build investment so gatekeeper and ally persistence clarity about who you are and frankly entering the potential relationship without a lot of need entering the potential relationship leading from curiosity and passion more than need because most people you're going to partner with are dealing with tons of need that they have every day just to keep their things going if you are coming from need you're going to have to be a hundred times more compelling as to why I should take your need on top of my need rather than your curiosity and passion in relation to possibly meeting a need of mine or at least being worth my time that doesn't mean you can't have needs but it's the difference again if you are approaching the project unable to accomplish the project without someone you have to be honest about that but that's not the ideal way to build a partnership but it's a necessary way sometimes to build a partnership but you ideally are sort of leaning into a relationship and then seeing what happens if it's a social practice project yes which means you better have done your homework if you're going to say to someone this is what's in it for you because it's pretty hard to say what's in it for you if I don't know you what do I have to know about you to say what's in it for you but yes talking about your assets yes I feel like that was slightly scattered but I got lost in the pay phone gatekeeper and ally is the take away from that yes yeah what a great question our experience has been starting conversations with gatekeepers and moving through that relationship to an ally to build the project with a gatekeeper and if you conceptualize and propose without having an ally in that conversation it's not going to really be ground workable I'm sure you've probably had terrible experiences with somebody in a power position in a place and you come up with these ideas and then the people who actually make the work happen not only aren't interested but actually tell you that those ideas will not work he or she thinks they might work but that's not actually what happens here yeah particularly if you're looking at civic practice and again not to like certainly we have done and will continue to do projects where we're like I have a project idea I have to find the partners who are going to be interested in relationships around this but yes to what you said in terms of that we're trying to do that what about small ones yeah yep it's the micro projects yeah yep yeah let's look at this so let's look at some engagement strategies not as examples of projects but as different tactics and again I think what Laura talked about yesterday with springboards program irrigation artists these little individual projects it's very similar to what we're trying to do with the catalyst initiative at the center and support artists for projects that take 50 hours within a three month span from conceptualizing communication and that we can both mentor and also document those kind of projects because Sarah you are the reason honestly that this kind of work needs to be cataloged in terms of models and tactics because you are doing amazing work and you want to expand your vocabulary and you want things to show partners so you need models and strategies and that's why I think a lot of us are like trying to make that public so who went and where different ways to think about engagement for instance on witness our schools interviewees were community partners the relationship with the audience and who came to it was based on issues the leaders were artists and legislators so thinking about like a micro project for instance you just talked about research some of the early work that we did on this project was literally finding 5 or 10 people to interview in a rural coastal community and then in a coffee shop in that community sharing little bits of those interviews in performative contexts and that was like we're there for three days we interview 15 or 20 people and on the third night with a partner we had at a coffee shop we read some things that have been quickly composed off of those texts and it's a way for people to feel the move from research into some kind of moment of expression and it's a moment for sort of some shared stakeholder in it I'm going to look at another one the where the when when does it happen during development during production during post production activity so it's hard to talk to people about like a year and a half long project if you're starting but is there a way that you sort of look at development not as something that happens privately and internally but I guess just like the example I gave a little bit has sort of small projects that might be building to a larger thing but that are constantly cycling through learning and sharing and learning and sharing but I feel like in a way irrigation is an interesting example of like 180 different things happening and Laura's other example yesterday about you are doing this flag project with me which means you are part of an ongoing flag project right at however many conferences there's that version too which is I go somewhere and I do a development workshop in a particular community with a group of young people and although I'm thinking about a larger project over a two year period I'm thinking it is modularly and tenderly to do one two hour thing with one group and it has it is its own circle and then I do this but there's a relationship between these two and then I do this and both how I talk about it in terms of scale but also are there strategies to connect like what came out of this into this one I don't know if our flags move on to the next one or pictures of our flags or something who knows where site based non-traditional venues associated values I hear a lot of talk about this having just been here for a few days but it seems like there's a lot of interest in site based work in non-traditional venues locations and spaces and I think this is a really hooking way to work on small scales how do you how do you kind of invest a site necessarily known as a space for art or expression with bursts of that that allow you to kind of demonstrate presence and temporary transient impact so I think about like youth workshops that might happen with small groups and what if every couple months three have happened and then what comes out of that is your ensemble makes a small ten minute piece that happens in a public place near each of those youth centers or schools so again the research is moving forward but it's also moving through these manifestation moments I'm going to hold there for a moment that's just some thoughts on that but I want to keep thinking about that I want to know if there's other questions because we are bumping against time total mix mix depending on the project depending on the location corporate sponsors government money, private foundation money really depends on the project for the Penelope project the one in the long-term care facility we're now doing another project in Milwaukee with homebound seniors working with public transit and the health department and caregivers and because of the Penelope projects kind of impact the health sector is really showing up at the table with funding I feel like there's a bit of a history we've proven with that partnership so, yeah, yeah other... how am I doing on time in terms of your sense, are we okay? how are you guys doing? you want me to do a little more of this? I'm super kind, it's a long time for you to sit there and listen to me and be in these seats, so you doing alright? yeah questions? okay, I'll just show another one of these okay this idea of participation, looking at different strategies built this is a question that I think is important when people talk about participation what participatory activity within the work impacts the event itself so I think that there's participation in theater and in lots of events that feels kind of decorative or surrounding the pre-show display the thing that you do something during the show and you take that with you and these things are good and really interesting but then there's also participation that actually impacts what happens in the show making you a co-maker in some way and I just want to kind of note the distinction when we think about participation built being an example in terms of the game nature of it we're doing this show right now in Chicago called how to end poverty in 90 minutes with 199 people you may or may not know and it's a devised participatory show and the deal is that we take a thousand dollars from the box office each performance and it gets dumped on stage in a big glass globe that goes up in the air and the money blows around like lottery balls and the audience has 90 minutes with us to decide how to spend the thousand dollars to attack poverty in the Chicago land area and at the end of the show the money will be spent and the deal is that our job is both to contextualize conversations about poverty in complex and challenging ways but also move the audience through a collective decision-making process through facilitation and dialogues there's a lot of live media in the show with community members having cameos where they get to speak about the issues on the screen so that is an example for us where participation is actually impacting the event because the audience's decision-making will impact how the show ends and where the money goes there isn't a traditional story in the show the audience's decision and how they make it so for us how? this is the international Skype course in the race so that's Dublin and this is a moment where that person in Dublin this is I think the night before the election I guess we did weird shows and this was a Monday night so this is the night before and this person in Dublin was basically asking the audience in this moment and so the audience is raising their hands based on who they think is going to win and then he asked them a question about what Americans thought we uniquely felt about leadership that might be different than other countries and different audience members could answer via live feed to him and be Skype to him so this was a particular like four minute section of the show so again this is a house strategy in terms of participation intention why and this gets me back to bills and this thing that we sort of started about a little bit at the beginning just thinking about this idea of place and the sort of why and we talked about this with Ann a little bit last night but if we are seeking to make place to engage to work with partners to not just be in the studio alone what are our reasons why are we doing that in different instances and our lives change all the time but why are we doing it are we doing it so the community we live in will be better for us are we doing it so it will be better for everyone are we doing it so a community we don't have daily experience of will be better for the people who live in it and we want to participate in that are we doing it because as artists it feels juicy like it's the work that is satisfying to us and we've had to ask that a lot in relation to bills and it in a way comes down to what you asked Roberto in terms of replicability and what the gentleman over here asked in terms of money because this is becoming a project that could like spin larger to more places as more people are connecting with us about it and the question becomes did we develop this particular project to franchise it as a revenue source or did we develop it because as artists we want to be in those rooms having those experiences and doing that work and be paid for that work and so that is a conversation we are having as a group of artists and it's pretty clear as a group we lean towards what we developed it because we want to be in those rooms like that's exciting for us we are also interested in the tool having an having a utility that may be beyond our means as you were referring to and how to do that in a way that feels pretty and is still along our intentions we haven't gotten there yet civic practice social practice I think in the civic friendship practice the utilizing all stakeholders in the process of imagining their plurality is much more in the foreground in social practices it may not be about the big plurality of life together so that's just something to sort of think about in this particular sort of exercise why we might have to have action because everybody's thinking about their plurality the social imaginary absolutely I appreciate that that's a great point we are thinking about that a lot and always how is the work we're doing a part of this gets back to something I said at the beginning about dramaturgy how are we a part of our communities functioning in more healthy functional, connective, equitable ways how are we that as artists how is that part of our role that our role is to express, to comment on to interrogate and also not for every artist but for me I'm interested in my artist peer community of artists who are interested in that and that means we have to put ourselves in context and settings of translation we become more fluent we become more fluid and we become clear about why we're there and what we want to accomplish yes, are we willing to be in discomfort yeah the last thing I have is a question but I don't feel like you I think we're past pair moments right now so I think I would simply ask are there any final thoughts or questions as we move or are we wrapping on the table it's not just in our settings but I feel we're primarily in this particular state that for the polarity between progressive and conservative if there were a way that and I'm triggering this conversation between those two polarities in a state to me feels so vital in this sector right now nothing can get past zero it would be what? urban well we actually explored that urban world model as a reputable model for communities and festivals and frankly we got too busy with other things to deeply invest in getting that out there as a model that we could work on with other places yeah I think the whole two act ones bridge come together meal dialogue it's like a super fun model that I hope we get to work more on yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah it's so neat for me to sort of share this in relation to Lara's springboard work and what she shared yesterday because the sort of way that they talk about the one day training and then sending people out to find a partner and then check in in the study hall and work on it in a way from the outside far less rigorous than a lot of people are comfortable with and certainly then I teach and mentor a lot of artists and stuff and far less rigorous in terms of the time that people spend on that work and yet there's something great about that model of we start with some one-on-one and some basic context and the prompt invitation and it's true the t-shirt that you're part of something and the connecting with someone for me in between this getting a sense of where you're starting from and a sense of honesty and groundiness being a part of a community of practitioners having some tools trying a small project being in conversation through it being in conversation with peers in response to it and then doing it again and seeing what relationship develops or developing new relationships I mean that's certainly without having a community that's certainly how I started and is how I certainly try to send students and colleagues out into the world now is just you've got to have some experiences and you have to be responsible and you need to be in conversation about it but you can become paralyzed by the fear of an ethical misstep and you've got to do and you can prep and contextualize doing in smart ways but what you do you do got to do and I do think I often remember that there are many fields and many moments in our daily life where people are doing all kinds of things without prep that go horribly awry and then many that don't and just being thoughtful about it to begin with puts us in an okay place to try something that probably won't do too much damage but it's a tiny first step as long as we're sort of thoughtful yeah it's really nice to be here and be in conversation with you all so thanks so much for having me oh I want to say this wait I didn't even get to talk about these other projects that's right the only thing I'll say is we have these summer institutes so we do a three day institute this summer we're in DC and we're in San Francisco and it's all on our website which is there at the top and at these institutes this summer it's a little different we're doing a three day devising institute on generating your work and then we're following that with a three day institute on civic practice you can take both but we've pulled them out a little bit because some people are really coming for the generative approach and some people are really coming for devising in civic practice and in DC there's actually a really exciting three day one on and design and media in engaged practice that's being led by two other sojourn artists and that one's going to be actually really exciting so this is how to keep track of sojourn and the cpcp.org thanks guys thanks for listening