C han g in g C ourses
Making a Scene
A Communication class maps Austin’s creative communities. By Robyn Ross This semester, a group of students is spending months studying a single equation that has nothing to do with math. Instead, the “Austin Equation” course examines how collaboration and dialogue add up to Austin’s national reputation for creativity. The titular equation, developed by instructor Heather McKissick ’88 and collaborator Bijoy Goswami, is Experience + Community = Scene. An engaged life in Austin, they suggest, is made up of a series of distinctive experiences: South by Southwest. The Zilker Kite Festival. The Fusebox Festival. Most EVENTS experiences are connected to a larger community with similar interests — South by Southwest to musicians and promoters, for example. Together, the experiences and the related communities make a scene. McKissick, the president of Leadership Austin, and Goswami, an entrepreneur, have encouraged leaders in scenes like music, entrepreneurship and visual arts to map the key people and COMMUNITIES organizations in each scene. A “scene steward” creates a EDUCATION diagram of connections within the community and invites other scene leaders to revise it: Who’s missing? Where do we need to draw lines to show collaborations? The maps are visual representations of networks — the relationships a person usually understands only after years Austin of involvement in a community. With the maps, Austin Entrepreneurship newcomers, including college students, can quickly orient Scene themselves to Austin’s unique culture. McKissick and FUNDING BLOGS Goswami hope that by taking the class, students will build connections with professionals, organizations and causes throughout the city. The maps also give veteran Austinites new ideas for collaboration. When Goswami created the entrepreneurship map, “most people’s reaction was, ‘Holy cow, I didn’t know there was all this stuff going on in the entrepreneurship scene’ SOCIAL — including people who lead organizations on the map,” he says. In follow-up meetings to fine-tune the map, people who did complementary work met and decided to work together. The students in the “Austin Equation” course are helping community leaders map burgeoning scenes like fitness and green energy, as well as more established ones like theater, music and entrepreneurship. They’re using the Austin Equation blog (atxequation.com) and Twitter account (@atxequation) to post what they learn. Incubators And at the same time that they’re studying a scene, the students are becoming more civically engaged. McKissick and Goswami hope linking into the Austin scenes helps the students develop their own sense of stewardship, whether that means volunteering, interning or voting in city elections. “We’re helping [students] understand that being involved in their community is both about their individual journey and their role and responsibility in stewarding Austin as a city,” McKissick says. “By learning more about what makes Austin work, they will learn more about who they are and directly apply both after the class is over.”
12 St. Edward’s University
75490 St Eds.indd 12
9/30/11 12:18 PM