What is...What if?

To:: the word writers and object makers who taught me::

Copyright Š 2015 by Con Christeson

there are few rules for: and even fewer limits on: the concept of:: the/a/my: BOOK.

WHAT IS...WHAT IF? Confronting and Configuring a Community Arts Practice

Con Christeson

CONTENT

After Words. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Art + The Verb: To Be . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Collaboration + Other ‘C’ Words. . . . . . 33 Movement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Trans-Form. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 Nouns + Essays. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Feathers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75

Glitter. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

Ladders. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Trees. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Margins. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Liminality + Making Meaning . . . . . . . . 87 Mind Over Maps . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115 Wisconsin et al. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Forward. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167 Re: Sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168

AFTER WORDS

In too many classrooms, the test is ever imminent. We develop memory and recall muscles at the expense of creative reflection and response.

The artist me and the teacher me got together some years ago to develop an assessment tool that pretty effectively replaces quizzes and tests.

In a semester long journaling process, involving both the verbal and the visual, students learn to be a critic, and they learn how to deliver and receive a critique. They get specific instructions about reflection vs. review. They develop personal style by adding color and image.

The are encouraged to think about the big picture of presentation quality. They share several times with me and with each other.

This ‘book’, this personal journal...IT is the test.

I start by saying this: Today you begin to write a ‘book’ about your experience in this class.

Save the first three pages in your sketchbook/journal. On these pages, you are to design a title page, a list of the contents, and an introduction for your readers. Of course, you can’t do it now because you don’t know what will be in your book. You don’t know how you will feel, what you will think about, or what you will learn. To construct the Table of Contents, you will need to review a semester’s worth of visuals and verbal responses. Most importantly, the Introduction will tell your readers what they are about to experience. It is a final reflection about all the reflections you have to offer.

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There is a line from a poem by Herman Zarate that has stayed with me over many years. At one time, I thought it might be in the title of this book.

I know everything I know.

So, everything I know includes growing up in Nebraska, in an Irish Catholic family, attending the same parish school my father attended as a child. A block away, was our big white house on the corner where I remember listening to 78s from the 1940s and watching black and white movies on TV. I had my own tiny room on the second floor. I was tall, skinny, pretty smart, but not very pretty. I loved plays and played the piano. I was creative, introspective, a reader, a dreamer.

At the age of 14, I learned from my stepmother that my birth mother and an unborn child had died when I was 18 months old. I was stunned for months. My father remarried almost immediately after the deaths, and all seven of my siblings were the result of that marriage.

I left Indiana after a divorce and moved to St. Louis with my 11-year old son. I had the luxury of looking around for six months before I took a part-time job at a social service agency teaching GED classes. They asked me to do art five hours a week in the shelter with people who were homeless. That was 1991. Since then, I have been living and walking this personal map of culture and community, looking through the lenses of art and creativity, social service, and social justice. Choosing a direction intuitively based on all of these things I know.

Sometimes, I forget how long it’s been unfolding. I don’t always know what others know about me or my work. I’m not always sure how much they want or need to know. But, it is what it is. I know what I know.

Where I have been informs where I am going. Borrowing Anna Quindlan’s words: I show up. I listen. I try to laugh.

When we listen, we build relationship and commitment.

Since then, I have seen myself as set apart.

I married after a really disastrous third year of college. Over the next years, I had two children and lived in Iowa, South Carolina, and Indiana and supported a husband/medical student/resident/Navy doctor/private practitioner for 18+ years. Along the way, I finished college, rediscovered theatre, and discovered studio ceramics. I taught speech and drama at a high school where I worked with a colleague to build a theatre that could be moved in and out of the gymnasium. I took guitar lessons, dance lessons, and voice lessons. Each one of these teachers, independent of each other, gave me feedback similar to this:

Humor is an art. It demonstrates ease and a bid for connection.

It is a sign of the ability to respond. Showing up is the key to a kingdom.

When we show up, we demonstrate capacity and open doors to possibility.

Art is the great leveler, the bridge builder, the secret weapon.

With Henry James, I say: “...and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.”

You don’t have great technical skill or talent, but you do everything with great feeling.

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ART + THE VERB: TO BE

In many tribal cultures, there is no word for ART. The creative act is in the shape of a context, the texture of relationships, the sounds of inquiry.

It is how people are, not just what they do...creativity and connection, ceremony and ritual, the magic of the marketplace. ART is how we ARE. Arts-based community development aspires to this even as it works with the action verbs like: think, fund, make, show, see, sell. Get this far, and then consider the challenges of: reflection, documentation, and, finally, evaluation.

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CONTEXT The community collabARTive of Peter and Paul Community Services [PPCS] works with people who are homeless. The many causes of homelessness include generational poverty, mental illness, substance abuse, etc. Poor choices can lead to worse choices can lead to cycles of complication and tangled drama. For 30 years, this agency has offered choices and support in the community re: emergency shelter, transitional programs, and supported housing. And since 1999, ART is an embedded program component.

As of 2014, PPCS has moved its administrative offices to a re-purposed public school building that also contains a ‘safe haven.’... 25 one-bedroom apartments for individuals who are chronically homeless.

The idea: housing first. The philosophy: keep people off the street, out of the ER and the jails, and demonstrate that proximity to resources and stability can have an impact on personal health and choices. One of those resources is ART. A room in the building is dedicated to it, and a flexible conference space can showcase it. PPCS knows from experience that art can influence and change the culture of a program, an agency, and the public face of work that is with and for the community. In this context, with these people, there is cooperation and collaboration.

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CONDUIT Collaboration is in constant need of attention and adjustment.

It is a form of art, it’s a dance, a reminder that the only things certain are change and challenge. You won’t find a magic set point or an auto pilot button. It requires collaborators to be the tailors, sew the seams, be the fabric. It teaches us to be plumbers and pipe fitters, measure and manage flow, move along.

DOCUMENTATION Even as we move, we document.

At the Reggio Emilia School in Italy, Carlina Rinaldi says that: “Among other possibilities, documentation is visible listening.”

Rinaldi says that documentation also: - makes the “how” as well as the “what” of learning visible.

- is another way to say the process is important.

- has multiple meanings.

- can serve as a valuable teaching, research, and assessment tool.

- opens a ‘window in.’

- makes things possible because they are visible.

Many of us have the grade-school replay of ‘art’ stuck in our heads.

The frustration of staying in the lines or making paper-plateand-pipe-cleaner projects comes out in clichés like: ‘I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler’ or ‘crayons are for kids’. A standard product with immediate gratification was often the only documentation.

Evaluation meant getting it home to mom and the refrigerator.

Those who say ‘I’m not good at art’ probably had little opportunity to reflect on symbolism or engage in problem solving with quality materials and multi-step processes.

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EVALUATION It reveals the elements of collaboration. Below is a b-word barometer that can measure the ups and downs, reveal challenges and choices, and measure again. Be aware of: Banes Energy and attention from multiple directions. Sometimes overwhelming, always challenging, rarely boring.

Be present. Be still sometimes.

Benefits Increased variety and flexibility in relationships. Self-knowledge and connections with others has limitless possibility.

Bonuses A mutually accessible and grounding structure supporting the presence and process of the group as it functions within the greater community.

Balance Shall we dance? Where do we get ideas? How do we implement them?

THE LONG AND THE SHORT Short term collaboration can seem more manageable. It may not be as satisfying, but it is useful as a tool, a taster, tempting the reluctant and disbelievers. The opportunities for relationship building are limited, and successful skill-building takes as long as it takes to learn the steps in a dance.

With long-term collaboration, there is the challenge of keeping it fresh and focused, innovative yet relevant. Within the culture of many groups, perceived ease and immediacy is the goal, even with multi-step projects, and benefits from good planning and preparation. Read on for two conduits/channels to explore.

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Channel 1:

Channel 2:

How do we think about collaboration in general and/or how is it different than partnership? I like Helen Aarons’ ideas I’ve adapted here:

This is very specific to social service and social justice contexts constructs.

Even as the culture of homelessness is a microcosm of the larger community, displaced people come with a variety of issues that occur in many combinations. Some of these same issues are present for the general population, but homelessness magnifies them and dramatizes the consequences. We are fearful of this ‘other’, subconsciously knowing that one day it could be us or someone close to us. We focus on the fear, the issues, not the person. We keep our distance.

PARTNERSHIP

COLLABORATION

A relationship created through an expressed or implied commitment between two or more parties who join together to achieve a common goal and combine their assets to accomplish the goal.

An open inclusive process, a tool to engage diverse entities to come together to find creative solutions for issues/problems.

• often voluntarily initiated by specific partners • often symmetrical • goals are better achieved together than separately • benefits are evident and tangible for all partners • effective fund-raising/funding tools are in place • specific governance practices • management by inclusion

• inclusive/open/fluid as need • not always symmetrical/may be complementary • a creative problem-solving process across divides • process takes precedent over product • development of new resources

Addiction and mental illness are two of those issues. Abuse of substance or poorly-controlled affect have public faces that manifest as: 1] impulsiveness, lack of insight or focus, poor problem-solving, poor decision-making.

2] a tendency to choose short-term gratification over long-term therapeutic plan of actions.

3] lack of social capital, resources, education, executive function, emotional maturity i.e. you don’t know what you don’t know.

Arts-based collaboration has the capacity to address these challenges in varying degrees. Art is a way to remember and tell stories to others and to ourselves. Larry Sherman, a colleague who was once homeless, observed that the arts collaborative at Peter and Paul resulted in connections and opportunities that gave him the chance to talk to/interact with people who were NOT social workers, policemen, or other homeless people.

Art-based community development wants to take away the expectation of product and encourage process, is flexible with deadlines, opens the door to awareness and exploration of personal issues. It indirectly addresses art and creative ideas, art and skill, art and problem-solving. It employs people, materials, critique and evaluation of work produced by self and others. If offers possibilities for presentation of the work to a broader community. All of these support the individual and promote awareness of self and others which in turn expands productive relationships.

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STORIES

PROMISES

The arts allow us to create a parallel story about community, how we see ourselves, and how we see others. In true collaboration, we slow down, see, and listen. We develop and observe, and we just might choose a new way.

Also included in that box: Dove Promise chocolate candy wrappers.

We had been saving them for years because of the inspirational text printed on the inside for a yet-to-be determined reason or purpose.

The moments that demonstrate interpersonal conductivity and connection make for great stories. At about year five, the collabARTive had been working for a while with artist Sandra Nickeson, a colorful and enthusiastic artist/facilitator. She came into the studio space one night with an idea to participate in an international mail art project i.e. fill a suitcase with objects representing culture/attitude/message etc. She pulled out a medium-sized wooden box with hinges and a handle and enthusiastically launched the group on a hunt through the artifacts in the room. The room where we met was multi-purpose. It was housed in a parish hall and it was Tom Burnham’s office. It contained donated food and household goods and Tom’s personal effects from many years of working and interacting in the community. Add in art supplies and archives of past art projects, and you have treasure for many a hunt.

We saved those wrappers from early on, passing the chocolate around the circle, as we checked in at the beginning of each meeting.

They figure prominently into a couple of stories about long-term focus.

The immediacy of this was electrifying! Old 45s, small painted canvases, handmade books, and other ephemera that was St. Louis-specific.

The box was filled and artfully arranged. The outside was painted, embellished with glued-on objects, and printed with symbols... all in the space of two hours!

So...the deadline for participation passed, and we never mailed that box.

We still have it. Still, it illustrates for me how the relationships built over time supported the immediacy of and attention to process. The buy-in from the group made the fun and excitement of being in the moment possible. A foundation of skills, ideas, and relationships produced a story that transcends over individuals and time.

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By the time our ten-year anniversary rolled around, we had thousands of them in several shades of red lying neatly flattened in cardboard boxes, ‘promise’ themes repeating and reminding. We offered a small honorarium in a call to artists who had ideas for how to use them in our upcoming retrospective exhibit. Out of many thoughtful ideas, Leslie Holt was chosen to proceed with what we call ‘The Dove House’.

The simple intensity of this concept was satisfying. The finished piece was charming, funny, and thought-provoking.

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FIND GRACE

Carry Me Home Sweet Home I propose to create a house out of the Dove wrappers attached together.

The house will be a large, delicate structure (the scale of a large doll house or larger, depending on how many layers of wrappers I will need to make it structurally viable) with a generic house-of–cards design - 4 sides and a slanted roof, immediately recognizable as a house. The sides will not be attached but hanging individually next to each other so that people can see inside through the spaces and read some of the wrappers. The wrappers will mostly be placed with the red side out, but a few scattered will face the other way, with an occasional saying popping up. The house will be suspended from the ceiling with fishing wire, hovering over a pedestal. The house will have no bottom and will hang over several small figures (approx 4-6 inches tall) made out of cast chocolate that will be standing on the pedestal. The pedestal will be at about waist level and just slightly wider than the house. The figures will all be in the same pose, similar to a weight lifter with knees bent, in the process of lifting a heavy weight over his head. They will be standing at the edges of the house, some facing out, some facing in, in position to lift it over their shoulders but not actually touching it. The figures will be somewhat generic, genderless, with only very general facial features representing every human. My hope is that it can be in a gallery location where people can walk all the way around it, smell the sweet chocolate, and watch the house sway a bit with air currents. I want to communicate the idea that the figures are both lifting and bearing the weight of this house. Some figures may be bearing the weight of a makeshift shelter on their backs, as in the experience of homelessness. Some figures may be lifting up the dream of a home, as in the promise of the end of homelessness. And for some, the promise hovers, tenuous and fragile, not yet a reality.

The Dove House stood in the center of the gallery among all the other work from the first ten years. The show, titled Finding Grace, was inspired by an artist book of the same name containing a series of photographs taken of people who are homeless by a photographer/author, while traveling for business. He documented his interactions with people ‘in the margins’, humanizing, capturing the dignity and uniqueness of an individual life and the recognition of personhood that went beyond a label like homeless.

We set about finding grace in all of the work produced, shown, and archived over ten years including visual, written, performance, film, and documentary video. The exhibit was both raw and rich.

At the opening, the men of the collabARTive [current residents and alumni] met the responses of a very diverse public. They talked about their favorite projects, some having participated in the earlier but not the later ones and vice versa. The presentation of so much work in one place told about them and to them. The energy of those who were there and others who were not was palpable. We talked about products and process. First-person stories identify the other if you are willing to sit, hear, and see.

This is a group effort – the lifting and bearing of weight, not something to be done alone. There is sweetness in it, and hope, as well as melancholy, sheer effort, and celebration. I see this piece as a tribute to the countless homeless folks who bear this kind of weight and manage to lift up their dreams.

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EXHIBIT The exhibit, originally scheduled for 30 days, was extended to almost 90 days. At the closing ritual, about a dozen of us stood in a circle in the middle of the gallery, surrounded again by the work. We asked each person to give ‘bookend’ remarks i.e. talk about the opening and now the closing.

One of the men, who was relatively new to the transitional program and had no work of his own in the show, had this to say as he looked around the room slowly and spoke even slower, “You kept it. You kept all this work safe and made it visible for this event. You valued it, and you made its value public. I am very proud to be a part of this group.”

Suddenly, we saw it as he saw it. Each person there that night experienced a shift, a deepening, a well of resource and relationship. This is how we define identity and practice who we are, in private and in public.

After everyone spoke, I realized I had not planned a closing. Bill Cleveland, a mentor and artist himself, was present and offered to close with this story. He worked in the prison system as an artist for many years.

At one facility, he met a boy named Aaron who was 11 years old. At nine years old, he was in a padded cell, angry, hopeless, and self-destructive.

Prison officials gave him the opportunity to try an art class. Last resort.

Nothing left to offer. The effects were profound, and he was able to say it in words and music. Bill sings the boy’s song a capella with his own foot-stomping energy. Even though I’ve heard him do this many times, I still get chills.

Darkness is a way of life, When you can’t find your way.

Darkness is a way of life, When you can’t find your way.

But then you find a way....

And the darkness shatters like an old glass bottle, and a ticket falls out...

A ticket to a lifetime of love.

A ticket to a lifetime of love.

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The public face of homelessness has a reverse side that is personal and private. This story was written by one of our men and is part of our spoken word performance. Its energy is significant and transferable.

When John was murdered, he was described by the paper as homeless…. even though he had his own place for over two years. Someone told the paper he had been homeless, and they ran with it. ‘ MAN WITH HOME MURDERED‘ is a headline you’ll never read. John was a volunteer for a number of organizations. He was a guy you could talk to and get good information from. He seemed to know everyone and all the places to hang.

But, to the press, he was forever homeless. Swing low, sweet chariot, coming forth to carry me Home. [sung slowly with irony]

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COLLABORATION + OTHER ‘C’ WORDS

There is no true north compass for collaboration. Nor is it a destination.

Many dimensions exist in space and time. Stamina and/or the ability to read a map will not guarantee success or satisfaction.

It’s a movable feast, a fluid path. The good news: It is not sink or swim.

My initiation to community arts came in 1993. I was working in a day program in a homeless services agency. I was known as the artist who got out the art supplies for five hours a week, in the midst of all the other pressing wants and needs. From behind a desk, I also did case management for prioritizing those wants and needs downstairs, taught GED classes upstairs, worked with individuals in both places to address life skills and educational aspirations. Some clients were street people, some were residents in nearby public housing. Mental illness and substance abuse were common, all of us were poor in one way or another.

About 2 years into this job, a professional photographer came to visit me. She had put together a consortium of funders and partners from the mental health community and the arts community. She herself was/is mentally ill but with good care and family support.

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She was interested in the stories of others with similar serious challenges but who were less privileged. She wanted to use image and text to create a voice and an audience for this population.

The partnership proposal was this: She had skills and expertise and cameras, and I had relationships with our day program clients.

The theme: A Day in the Life. The process: After a brief tutorial, take a camera. Record what you see, find, do, like, dislike.

Return the camera. Repeat.

The project went very well. About 15 photographers used 40 cameras to produce 800 black and white photos. We curated a traveling show of 40 framed images and 2 composite collages. After the final images were selected, we asked participants to tell us their story of the experience, perceived benefits, their reasons for participating. Selected quotes and signatures were then included in the frame with the photos.

I asked Edward, one of the photographers, what he was thinking as he took pictures with three consecutive cameras. He brought back images that told his story, that included people and places he knew.

He said, “I thought this might be part of a bigger more important thing.”

Indeed. His response surprised me. I continue to try to prove him right. This project opportunity found me. It’s a great example of a successful community partnership but also the development of a sincere collaboration that worked on many levels. I was new to St. Louis, new to mental health and homeless services, brand new to the parameters of being a practicing artist in a non-arts setting. I didn’t know much of what I know now, but I began to understand how the arts can build relationships and build community.

Edward’s door

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THE LETTER ‘C’ Letter logic: the habit/practice of brainstorming with myself to get to or through a concept, process, or sticky spot. The following ideas are brought to you by the letter ‘C.’ These six words describe the components of collaboration as I have experienced it.

Capacity Capacity: 1. the maximum amount that something can contain 2. produce; from the Latin capere 3. take or hold 1. Contain.

What is the status at the core of the system? How much new information and attention can the system bear?

2. Produce: What are realistic expectations for product? Can we be satisfied with good process? How do we choose and handle ‘inventory’?

3. Take/Hold: Take: Ideas, energy, attention, materials, space.

Hold: Choose what is valuable/useful for now. Store inventory and information for later.

Collaboration begins with a capacity check. This is the liminal phase, the threshold, the opening door. In the initiating and the preparing, we are speaking AND listening to: Who are we?

Why are we here?

Each collaborator will contribute a different perspective if they answer these questions...staff, visiting artist, resident artist, funders, supporters, and stakeholders.

Listening, active listening, is the pace car for expectation and anticipation. At various stages in the process, it’s possible that we can only take in information and postpone action until next steps become apparent.

Observe and apply the capacity process with the photography project mentioned before: - a client/artist takes a camera and holds a position while trying to follow directions for the project.

- the artist looks at product and quality vs. quantity of work.

- the host group/agency assesses its core message [containment] and evaluates the influence and impact of the arts process and product on its programming, branding, and funding.

This is capacity that is available as process and/or production continue.

So, yes, it’s complicated.

What is possible?

Between the lines, there is information. Some of it flows below the level of individual consciousness...subliminal: Who am I?

Why am I here?

What will I take away?

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What do I bring?

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Complexity vs. Complicated How many times have you heard yourself sum up an overwhelming situation with the words ‘it’s complicated’? There’s very little real information in that sentence, but it implies drama, challenge, puzzling details, and questionable manageability.

Complexity, however, alludes to layers and depth, choice and possibility, a peeling away of layers to discover trash or treasure. Like change, complexity is something you can always count on, especially considering that human relationships happen over time and are continually shaped by individual choices. These choices are infinite yet limited as we shift focus from details to ‘big picture’ and back again. Embracing complexity means no one has the quick fix, all the answers, the definition of success.

At about year 13, the community collabARTive branched out into another program in the agency. Labre Center is transitional housing, truly residential i.e. private rooms, three meals a day for 15 men who are mentally ill, require medication and treatment plans etc. Art happens at the house once a week. Participation is encouraged, but not required.

Usually, the group is about 10 people. Residents, staff, artists, alumni, and students.

Clear and Hold a Space Immediate buy-in rarely happens. Care in relationship-building is mandatory, but it is not magic. Consistent effort from all group members is not a given or even apparent. Human-to-human, day-to-day, it’s good to remember that intention and focus are influenced [even clarified] by physical and spatial constructions.

After a few months of facilitating this group [capacity assessment], we brought in a local artist to start a workshop that involved paint and canvas scraps and storytelling. He worked with the men for a few weeks, and then he decided we should break up the work tables [that had been pushed together in a big pod] into a sort of z-formation. His reasoning?

Shift the focus from the center to smaller work areas. They are still connected, but pairs and smaller groups are more likely to talk to and support each other, share ideas and supplies etc. It was a very small change, but it was intentional and with observable results. The work seemed more spontaneous and the interactions livelier. Less focus on the self, more on each other.

A dedicated piece of real estate with supplies, furniture, a slop sink, and good light is of course ideal. More important is a routine that is established early, implemented regularly. Call it a grounding or centering, it fuels anticipation and expectation. Without attention to ritual and process, even in a fabulous space, we only have a gathering of bodies. Not intentional. No group.

With Allen Ave each week, we use a circle check-in process at the beginning of the group to orient each other to ‘happies’ and ‘crappies’ from the past week and to re-view connections. At Labre, the check-in is important, but check out at the end of the group is more so. As work is produced and skill levels develop, we make time for critique and sharing of artists’ ideas to accompany the work produced.

The original arts group at PPCS is the Allen Ave program, a group of up to 10 men, displaced for various reasons, housed for up to two years. Home is a congregate dorm-like space above the emergency shelter that they can only access at night. They were required to come to the studio space one evening a week.

Clear a space for the work to be done, to be seen.

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Be intentional about the space and the people to be seen, to be heard, to hear each other. If you clear it and maintain it, they will probably come.

This pattern or series of patterns in collaborations maps the richness of relationships and the shared narratives that develop along the way.

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Center of Gravity Christina Baldwin writes about the power of calling a circle. One of her ‘rules’: place an object, a grounding element, in the center for focus and connection, refocus and reconnection, in any group, small or large.

We have convened a ‘circle’ most Thursday nights for the last 15 years.

Our centering element has been a bag of dark chocolate that we pass around as members verbally check in....Where are you today?

Where have you been this week? What was happy? What was crappy?

We don’t skip this very often. It introduces new men or guests, eases us past resistance, soothes expectation anxiety, feeds relationship-building.

It is often a barometer for what should come next. Focus and centering develops the group muscle you could call core power. A strong core improves balance and maintains space that is ready for new information, new ideas, new challenges. A space to let things in and let other things go.

It holds invisible seeds. It is a capacity for ideas that can be stored and accessed when focus and energy are ripe.

Calling to Account Capacity. Complexity. Clearing a space. Center of gravity. Core power.

This spiraling process doubles back on itself and requires: 1] that we are mindful and 2] that documentation and evaluation inform how we proceed to the next skill, the next project.

This is how we know we are part of ‘a bigger more important thing’.

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Continue In 2007, I went to an academic conference in Kassel, Germany.

After a long series of fortunate events, I arrived to present about community arts practice in general and my projects in particular.

German culture and customs were new to me, but, even more surprising, was the world of academia i.e. the presentation of ‘papers’ by career academics to other career academics?! Really?!

I volunteered to keep notes in conference sessions that I attended and report out at each day’s end in a closing circle. There were two other volunteers for this task...both of them artists/staffers from Blue Drum, Inc. in Dublin. Over food and good German beer, we had many conversations about art, culture, community development, artist training, funding, and documentation. They were interested in the collabARTive and curious about St. Louis’ Community Arts Training [CAT] Institute and its cross-sector training of professional artists and social service providers. In parallel, Blue Drum has a history of connecting artists to community projects but was struggling with preparing those artists to enter a community.

We talked about issues like language [even with English as our common language, the nuances of vocabulary and context are challenging] and logistics [following institutional funding streams in the U.S. vs. Ireland are difficult]. My relationship with Blue Drum continues today.

Ed Carroll, a director there, co-manages a project with me called Project BUD [think: Bud beer, budding growth, and the airport code for Dublin: DUB]. It is a residency exchange program for artists and community workers that informs and expands research and community arts practice possibilities.

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COLLABORATION IS NOT...

Language is ambiguous. It’s a living thing that is constantly adding and subtracting and changing. Words are tools for sharing and processing, but they are distant cousins to the actual concepts.

And yet, it’s what we have.

Collaboration is not predictable.

Predictability makes sense when it comes to good coffee and the stop sign at the corner. It is not what we want in a good collaboration. If there is no give and take, no recognition of the need for balance...

In Mark Twain’s The Diary of Adam and Eve, Eve contemplates the universe from her Garden of Eden perspective. At the end of the speech, she says, “...but then I am the first woman to have examined these matters, so it could be that, in my inexperience, I haven’t got it right.” We humans are the only species capable of developing, discussing, and combining ideas.

Effective dialogue depends on the definitions of terms.

If there are no mystery ingredients, no surprises, no problems or challenges to solve, but you have a story that nobody will want to read or hear.

We want to say exactly what it is. Sometimes, we can be most clear by saying what it is not.

Collaboration is not the same as partnership.

Partners come to the table with resources and offer what is theirs to give and theirs to take away. They see value in combining those resources in a partnership, but the commitment may be limited or conditional.

This ship usually sails with the expectation of an outcome i.e. make sure that the benefits outweigh the costs.

Collaboration is not competition.

Competition is often rooted in a scarcity model.

It assumes limited resources, measurable outcomes, and finite audiences.

I have mine. You have yours. Someone wins. Someone else wins less or loses altogether.

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Collaboration is not karaoke.

Karaoke is a fine party game. It’s an opportunity to sing out loud in a bar to relieve stress and connect with others. Scrolling words and the bouncing ball balance out the stage fright. The reward is back slapping and friendly applause from friends and strangers. In general, karaoke singers only practice in the shower and do not get better over time.

Collaboration is not a means to an end.

Effective collaboration exists, whole and complete, even as it evolves and changes. It is built with attention to what it is and intention for what it can become. Of course, there are milestones to mark. There are outcomes to document. It requires that we hold a space for it despite challenges related to funding, participation, failures.

I think that true collaboration is the never-ending story of humans who fear less and take care of each other more. When we engage in process, we learn about the many ways there are to ‘get it right.’

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MOVEMENT

WHEELS Ed and I first presented about Project BUD in 2010 at a conference in St. Louis. He came from Ireland via Lithuania to sit in a Welsh pub in my neighborhood. The round beer mats at the bar became the presentation visuals for ideas and direction, the wheels to move this virtual vehicle. We wanted to introduce it and get feedback, clarify in our minds the doing, the dreaming. In Ed’s words, a new ‘playground for ideas’.

This partnership and collaborative process helped me look at the influence of personal processes running in the background that overlap the present and its needs and possibilities.

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WEAVING The constructs of communication theory inform my work in the arts. These strong threads run through and overlap into many contexts, pulling seemingly disparate pieces together into a visible fabric.

I have a masters degree is in Human Resource Development [also known as organizational communications which is much drier]. I like that it implied and assumed that humans have resources to be developed, and that there is a field that promotes that development, training, and education. This degree allows me to teach at university.

The class I teach most is a survey course called Interpersonal Communication. I also regularly teach Public Speaking and a class called Learning Strategies. Even with different texts and objectives for each one, I have a particular course structure that seems to work most of the time. Somehow, it translates across these different curricula, and, because it feels authentic, I am more effective.

Dennis called me in the fall of 1998, seemingly out of the blue.

I had been trying to break into the adjunct system for a couple of years, and my resume just happened to land on his desk at the right time.

I went in, interviewed, and took over a class that was already in progress, abandoned by another instructor. I had to orient quickly, and he offered me the use of his syllabus. His course structure and its language have become a piece of the bigger picture that is today my community practice.

I taught many sections of that class for many years. It is an introductory course called COM 101 and is guaranteed to transfer since so many elements were standardized. The curriculum is divided into five units. This simple structure lends itself to flexibility and creativity.

Dennis presents the five units in the following order and includes a ‘skill assignment’ i.e. experiential exercise with each:

I was introduced to this structure by the man who hired me at a community college for my first higher ed gig. His name is Dennis Dufer, and he is a ‘mountain top’ mentor. As I look back and see my experience with him and two or three others, these relationships are the high points in the landscape.

I. Human Communication / definitions of terms and theories

Mentorship. It is not just about leadership or expertise, job or context or skill set. It is about relationship. The relationship quality determines the scale of the value. I’ve had many teachers, supervisors, bosses, colleagues who worked with/over/around me. I learned valuable things. Some I liked, some I did not. Some I respected until x/y/z circumstances intervened.

I can count on one hand the people who made an impact right away and continue to have influence even from a distance of time and space.

Interestingly, I seem to have arrived at a place where others see me as mentor material, but that’s another story...

III. Small Group / process and problem solving

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II. Perception / of self and others

IV. Non-Verbal Communication / body language and much more V. Verbal Communication / word choice and cultural connections

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NEGOTIATE For me, these units flow from and build on each other. The skill-building is essential and part of a great structure for broadening students’ awareness of communication theory and process.

It becomes much more than: I talk. You listen. Switch. Repeat.

Everyday assumptions become significant awareness. The consequence of individual choices are worthy of further study and practice.

They quickly realize the relational aspects of communication competence and see examples of successful process and connection.

Over time, I added and subtracted elements based on what worked for me, for current students, and available time and resources. A series of tests was required by the department, but I wanted to add a level of reflection and response. In year three of my tenure there, I incorporated a verbal/ visual journaling component as an additional assessment tool. It is shared with me and with other students. It goes beyond recall and memorization.

It asks students to read for aha moments, to ask questions, to say what they like, don’t like, or don’t believe about the text. It often sparks connections to other classes, personal relationships, and experiences. It’s how I know they are reading and/or understanding. It’s how they can connect to each other, especially those who might not speak up in class. I continue to test and modify this journaling method.

When I moved to university, I eliminated tests and quizzes completely.

I rely solely on the journaling process and reflective essays and presentations for student accountability. It has its own set of challenges i.e. life without quizzes and tests is outside the experience and/or comfort zone of most students who come through the American school systems.

It takes awhile to shift from studying for a test to reading for context and application.

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At the beginning of the semester, I introduce the journaling process to Interpersonal students. It sounds refreshing to most. Many like the idea of no tests. Some love the creative aspect while others adopt a wait-and-see stance.

As the semester progresses, it gets harder to override old paradigms that include reading, lectures, tests. Their other classes ramp up with projects that also require energy and focus.

The new belief system [jounaling] is challenged. Some default to the familiar forget to ask questions. They get panic-y and get behind.

If they talk to me, we can usually right the ship, reorient, and reflect on expectations. Self-reflection and appreciation of process is recognized and rewarded.

Value is added, values might be changed.

In my public speaking classes there are resources but no text.

No tests, no journals. This class is experiential.

Attitude. Belief. Value.

Get up in front of people as much as possible. Relationship with the audience is primary, and a clear, creative message is essential. With these two skills you offer good information and a delivery that can influence attitudes.

To change a belief, you need some serious data and the ability to connect and to persuade. Do research. Be surprising. Entice the audience to come closer, to think hard about what you have to offer.

To change a value, add value. Do the above and practice. Practice.

And more practice.

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Few of us will allow access in the short term to our core. This is where our values lie. We are consciously, unconsciously, constantly vigilant.

It is nearly impossible to change a value at first try. It is almost impossible for a one-time encounter [or an ill-prepared, inexperienced presenter] to change a personal value.

This is where communication theory can inform collaboration in community.

1. New ideas and new people connections shift attitudes.

2. Good information, shared experience over time, and quality of relationship can change beliefs.

3. Over time, with relationship and reflection, individuals and groups begin to identify closely-guarded common values, and change becomes possible.

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AUDIENCE Presentation can be described as a set or series of communication transactions for which the speaker is responsible but does not completely control. When talking about public speaking, I emphasize that the audience should be the first consideration at every stage of the presentation.

In the beginning, the presenter makes an offering: ‘Here is what I have to say. I am prepared. I am sincere. I have prepared good images and clear language.’ Along the way, both audience and presenter test the transaction, verbally and non-verbally, presenting variables, the goal being validation and connection. Effective speakers maneuver the unexpected and experience satisfaction. They work the room because they can. They arrive at the end with a reasonably good idea of how they connected with others.

They have information about or a call to action for next steps.

The Elements Of Influence for Speakers

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With collaboration, this process becomes a little more complex.

Collaborators are audience and speaker for each other.

Attitudes come out in the brainstorming and take up space and air.

Initially, the effects are friction and fractures.

Making choices is challenging and requires examination of context, language, and beliefs.

Paradoxically, broken pieces become the reimagined parts of a bigger picture.

New attitudes and beliefs re-form at the core of the collaboration.

The Elements Combined for Collaboration

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ARTIST At one point in my life, I was worried [ok, obsessed] with choosing one art medium, declaring a single expertise from the mix in my bag: drama, vocal and instrumental music, dance, visual art, typography, creative writing. I remember standing in my studio one day and hearing quite clearly a voice that said, “Creativity is creativity. You don’t have to choose.”

Really? It’s a relief to be out of that box...

It took a long time to say I am an artist.

It took even longer to say it out loud.

It comes easier now because all my other jobs and projects are infused with and influenced by art and creativity..

Often when I say it, the response is, “What do you paint?”

Oops, back in a box.

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This is how I would map the pieces of my practice.

I work with ceramics and vessels, but... but it’s more and more on the back burner in favor of community/collaborative projects.

Still climbing out of the box.

Still trying to balance.

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This blank one is for you.

If you are not an artist, what goes in the center?

What’s on your map?

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NAVIGATE So here is the dialectical tension: A relatively small percentage of artists make a living with art. Many artists choose to make work in studio practice to sell at galleries or shows. Others, who work in community and care about developing that community, still need to maintain a studio practice to make money. Both groups are asked regularly to donate time, talent, and inventory to good causes because we love what you do, right? Right. Try that line on your plumber.

A navigation tool that combines the Elements of Influence for speakers and the Elements Combined for collaboration might look like this:

Grant funding for long term projects is an option. This siren is tempting.

You do have to write about the who/what/where etc. of the project and know how you will spend the money. If you have been mostly solo, there is a partnership learning curve. Meeting specific requirements and deadlines, working with others, creating a flexible structure, defining context, and managing conflict.

Reporting, documentation, and evaluation of process and product are necessary to varying degrees for continued funding.

It’s risky. There is no guarantee of regular or sustained income.

It requires trial and error and trying again.

Scenario 1: You, the artist, come out of your studio, and look up and down the street.

There is a potential community partner or two or three looking back at you. Do you go back in and play it safe? Or do you develop presentation skills and listening competence and conflict resolution savvy?

Can you approach with a possibility and a plan?

Scenario 2: You, the community group, have heard that participatory arts infusion is a good thing i.e. it can bring good process and visibility while being fun and fundable. You open your door and look up and down for artists/ studios with the right medium, the right product, the right stuff.

Even with a good compass, there is no controlling a process or predicting the outcome. We can develop our awareness, recognize our influence, hone the ability to respond in a meaningful way: Why is this project important?

Who are the partners?

What is the perceived value? What is the risk?

Where will the work be visible? For whom?

What do we measure and when?

How do we document and share successes and failures?

You are not sure. Do you have the right questions to start or choose?

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Seth Godin has more questions that shift perception from self to other before you spend time on tactics, technology, or scale: “ Who is your audience/next customer? [Conceptually, not specifically, describe his outlook, his tribe, his hopes and dreams and needs and wants...]

What is the story he told himself [about the world, about his situation, about his perceptions] before he met you?

How do you encounter him in a way that he trusts the story you tell him about what you have to offer?

What change are you trying to make in him, his life, his story?�

There is no one way to start and maintain a collaboration.

Navigating the unknown is hard. Resistance is strong and pervasive.

These obstacles often send us back inside and off the street.

However, the potential is limitless and alluring.

Bill Cleveland sums it up this way:

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TRANS-FORM

CHANGE OR DIE This is the title of Alan Deutschman’s book on leadership and change.

He says that people are very unlikely to change even when confronted with dire consequences for self or others. Think: weight loss, distracted driving, smoking. When change does happen, three stages of connection and relationship are often factors. Relate, repeat, and reframe.

He says: The keys for real change are for the most of us: Relate: You form a new, emotional relationship with a person or community that inspires and sustains hope.

Repeat: The new relationship helps learn, practice and master the new habits and skills.

Reframe: The new relationship helps to learn new ways of thinking about your situation and life.

I say: Change is a given. Making choices and accessing resources supports effective change.

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Relate: Sustained relationships are essential. Teachers, mentors, counselors, support groups. It takes as long as it takes.

I would add: Teamwork: supports the implementation of new practices.

Relate: Phil Thomas has been part of the community collabARTive almost from the beginning as an alumni of the transitional housing program. He has been housed [although precariously] for most of that time. His relationships with staff, artists, and peers were unpredictable, but, even when he disappeared for months at a time, he would eventually show up again.

Repeat: Commitment that is demonstrated and perceived is a simple concept. It is not an easy process. It applies to those who are engaged in change and those who are supporting that change.

He is a service veteran, a good writer, a cat lover. He’s been abused by family, landlords, the healthcare system. His idea of a good defense is a good offense.

I would add: Learn to learn: enables the acquisition of new habits of mind and behavior.

Repeat: In June 2013, the house he was renting burned down, and he lost his job and his cats.

He was homeless again. He got a bed in Peter and Paul’s emergency shelter. He recommitted to the arts group on Thursday nights. He showed up at my studio most mornings with coffee.

Something had shifted.

Reframe: Use action words like adapt, shift, find a new lens, focus on a fresh perspective. It’s often the metaphor, the creative language, the physical combined with the conceptual that grabs us and holds us and moves us.

I would add: New vantage points [physical and relational] translate to innovation.

New Position: Established attitudes and beliefs resist facts and reasoned arguments. They can be impacted if they are acknowledged and identified.

Successful change efforts are the ones that are manageable in the short term view. The immediacy of hope, empowerment, and a sense of community paves a way for the long haul.

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Reframe: Two of these shifts were physical. I think he dealt with/moderated a substance abuse issue.

Also, he needed teeth. His reasoning was that with teeth, he would present better for interviews, training programs etc. The only way to access that resource was to be absolutely without income.

Another shift was his level of anxiety. He took time to write, to walk, to pick up trash.

He joined a free yoga class and talked about meditating and mindfulness. He still had me/us as touchstones, he was still a little cranky, BUT he did not freak out when his phone got stolen or his notebooks were left on the bus. It was like watching a scripted drama. Except it was real.

New Position: Phil completed a course and is now a fellow of the Community Arts Training Institute that was based in the neighborhood where my studio is and where he has lived. He has access to a computer, and he is writing again. He is also homeless again. How this plays out remains to be seen, but the shift itself is important. It’s like he woke up, looked around, and is deciding to move step by step toward something different.

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MAPS Stepping stones were once placed in rivers to allow pedestrians to cross.

Milestones are in place to provide reference points along the road.

Travelers are reassured that the proper path is being followed.

Distance traveled and distance to destination can be calculated.

Paulo Freire said: “We make the road by walking.”

Yes, we do. And, because it has to be one step at a time, we’re often unaware of distance covered until someone says: Where have you been?

Where are you going? What are the lessons? The stories? How do we recognize the milestones and find the stepping stones?

An example from 1977. My Intro to Philosophy class was taught by an intense and slightly quirky Jesuit priest. I was challenged by that intensity and the immersive experience of listening to him and to others in the class. The textbook (which I still have) was Man Becoming by Gregory Baum.

My takeaway from that book was the concept of ‘fundamental orientation’.

Specifically, I realized that we have choices about the direction we choose to point ourselves, the consistency with which we do that, the energy we invest, and the awareness level we maintain.

Much like the looseleaf paper image, I can see the younger me taking in this information, turning around, beginning to make my way down a path, across a river, over the terrain. The image is very clear in my head, and it allows me to locate myself there, at will, on a giant map. It is available when I need a push or a pull. I often picture others I meet being on similar journeys, trying to imagine their pivotal moments and direction.

Les had an easy, friendly way of running the studio backed up by structure and resources that added value to the experience. For example, he had to approve everything that went into the kiln. Before he would look at any work, students had to have at least three things in that ‘series’ and be ready to talk about a direction, an idea, or a process with materials. This did tend to slow you down, calm the rush to create the next great thing, demonstrate the power of thought and reflection.

He also required us to research and present in class about professional artists/ceramicists etc. This was long before the internet, so libraries, books, and magazines were the resources. We were creating a collective body of knowledge and a shared context. We were encouraged to be curious. I can still hear him say, “You never know what you’re going to find on the way to looking something else up.”

Translation: SYNERGY + DIVERGENCE = WISDOM AND POSSIBILITY From there, I set up a clay studio in my garage, took a job as speech and theater teacher at a high school, enrolled in modern dance classes and guitar lessons. In 1992, after a divorce and a move, I signed up for that master’s program in Human Resource Development which fit nicely with my B.A. in communications and education and lessons learned in the clay studio. I was ready to add a new level of thought and theory.

One of the thinkers I was exposed to was W. Edwards Deming. He had to go all the way to Japan to demonstrate to corporate America the value of quality assurance and creative problem-solving. He believed these are integral and essential to success. He has a list of fourteen essential points to consider, especially this one that stands out for me:

In 1981, I enrolled a in a master’s of education program at the University of Evansville. I finished the first two courses toward that degree and then indulged a personal whim to take a ceramics class. Well, I never finished that master’s program, but I stayed in the ceramics studio for six semesters. My life was changed by the working in clay and by the professor who became my friend and mentor, Les Miley.

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Fear of what? Fear of risk, failure, loss. Fear of creativity and new ideas, fear of challenging the hierarchy or the status quo. If you are fear-full, what are you missing, avoiding, losing? If you are not fearful, what then is possible?

I once read a novel set in the Old West called The Homesman

by Glendon Swarthout. I read the book, gave it away, and then re-purchased it. There were several characters, men and women, good and bad. I don’t remember much of the story line, but I do remember a conversation between the two protagonists.

Yin/yang. Dark/light. Action/reaction.

A simple but stunning view of process and systems.

She: “Why is there such evil?”

He: “Because there is such good.”

So, for me, it’s about the map. The big picture of the destination, and the details we choose to see. The contrasts and the contradictions that often connect us. We make our path, but we are not alone. It’s the direction and pattern, the seeing and the stepping on stones as we cross a stream.

Relationships are important. They require proximity and listening and time. They clarify risks and opportunities. They offer challenges and alternative directions. Consciously connecting our significant events in pursuit of that fundamental orientation is essential. In the end (and the middle and the beginning), authenticity comes from awareness.

Awareness keeps us grounded, keeps us walking.

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NOUNS + ESSAYS

FEATHERS In 2011, the community collabARTive and Common Thread Dance Company performed on stage in the auditorium of the Missouri History Museum. The title of the event was Marking Time/Making Change.

It was a dream come true, a magical night.

Men who are/were homeless were on stage with professional dancers.

They worked to develop original movement sequences relating to life on the streets and the journey toward housing and connectedness.

The year leading up to production time was about preparation.

Still photography and creative writing, interviews and film documentation, fundraisers and spoken word, visiting artists and community events.

The three weeks of rehearsal immediately prior to the performance were not short on drama, betrayal, breakthroughs, and the bending of bodies and minds. There was rehearsal on-site the day of the performance following two days of blood, sweat, and lots of “You want us to do what?!�

The men showed an amazing amount of trust in those people who call themselves artists. The agency staff was supportive and engaged.

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Jennifer Medina’s dance company joined the dream in the final few weeks of preparation. As the director of a brand new company, she herself was just beginning to explore community building. Her dancers, beautiful and graceful young women, got as good as they gave. Such caring and concern and support. Jean Kerr, the producer/director, went between home in Illinois and weekends in St. Louis. Over several months, she built the chapters of the stage story that illustrated movement and demonstrated flexibility. She embodies the model of relate, repeat, and reframe. Her words on the show poster say it well: “Through art, homeless individuals may rediscover movement.

Once moving, the path out of homeless can become clearer.”

The magic of the night was its composite presence. We were like a great bird that suddenly appeared on stage, resplendent in the many colors of the effort displayed by a diverse cast and crew of human beings.

We came together, with varying degrees of commitment and ability, to plan and execute a multi-media adventure that was short, imperfect, and very sweet. At curtain call, as the cast stood before the audience and the crew held their collective breath, the audience stood and clapped... and clapped...and cried and clapped. The feathers from the winged creature scattered around us as we made our way to the exhibit of photos and artifacts installed in the lobby. Some feathers landed on Floyd’s shoulder as he alternately laughed and cried about the performance and the unexpected standing ‘O.’ Larry caught a few as he turned to see his son. They tickled Tom as he laughed about backstage flashlight signals and smiled his pride.

Large and small feathers. Multiple functions....health, warmth, and flight. Lost feathers making room for new ones. I am remembering Emily Dickinson’s “Hope is the thing with feathers.” I am thinking the great bird was indeed hope...hope that flew with us and through us as we took off into the great unknown of a performance event and landed in a place of possibility, pride, and the promise of ‘what’s next?’

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GLITTER, GENIUS, AND CHAOS A man walks into an art group. We are building a large wooden boat with an assortment of repurposed stuff. He’s new to the transitional program but not new to homelessness. He arrives with a bottle of silver glitter and asks: can we use this? It is a boat of dreams mind you, that will soon be set adrift and afire on the river at a community arts festival. Hmmm. Who are you besides what you appear to be, and how is the silver glitter a clue?

Girl enrolls in a Master’s degree program. She is told to choose a topic that will be a theme for research over several courses and eventually the subject of a final thesis document. She chooses leadership and begins research that includes a book called Leadership and the New Science by Margaret Wheatley. In that book, she learns about chaos theory which says we cannot control or predict, only influence. This influence/injection/ infection into a system could be called leadership. It starts with an idea or observation, but action often follows. It might happen quietly without an audience. It is best if you let go of the outcome in favor of what is possible, expecting the unexpected which is probable.

It takes as long as it takes. It’s not over until it’s over. There is always movement to a new place.

The man with the glitter walked into a new situation. His jar of silver bits was a bid for connection. It was an unexpected genie moment for me, illustrating what Rainer Maria Rilke says: “...even between the closest people infinite distances exist, [and] a marvelous living side-by-side can grow up for them if they succeed in loving the expanse between them, [they have] the possibility of always seeing each other as a whole, and before an immense sky.”

Author/speaker talks about the history of the word genius. The genie was once understood as something separate but outside of the self.

It was active in varying degrees depending on the person. A relationship with this force required awareness, patience, and relating over time.

At some point, we humans decided that we could BE geniuses, and that is where the trouble began. Gone was the notion of energy available to all, a connection to something greater. The self became the sole source of inspiration. Quality and quantity of product came to be seen as a lonely effort. Exit Leonardo and Michelangelo. Cue the starving artist in a freezing garret and the ingénue waiting to be discovered in a drugstore.

As the oldest child in an Irish Catholic family, my tendency toward guilt [and, sadly, finding fault] is always playing in the background. And yet, I have a new preference for influence over control. Art in community requires: presence, patience, and persistence. There is no quick way to relationship.

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My own sense of possibility [whether in the power of influence or the mystery of the genie-on-call] means I can live side-by-side with others and intentionally share that possibility, receiving in turn the energy to do it again.

LADDERS One night, I dreamed about a really tall ladder. It was resting precariously on an edge of a horizontal surface. I climbed to the top and found a bar, complete with bartender and customers. They saw me and kept saying be careful, you might fall. I ‘m not afraid, I said. I just won’t look down. Next thing you know, I fall. I’m looking up at all those people.

No memory of the impact, but I touched the top of my head where there was a knot and a little blood….hmmmm. I fell, I hit my head, I don’t remember, I’m ok.

My son and I share a ladder story. When he was seven, our family was building a house. There was a construction ladder in the place that would one day be the front steps. That ladder terrified him, so he refused to scale it. He was too big to carry but too little to leave outside, so we talked about the difference between ‘I can’t’ and ‘I won’t.’ We worked around that fear. We practiced the climb until he could do it.

In my studio, there’s an old, rusty, sculptural, still functional, iron ladder. I paid too much for it, but I had to have the textured treads and the paint spills that don’t at all hide the original red paint. It sits in the window, holding my green plants and its own stories.

These ladder stories are about experience, attitude, learning, movement.

Awareness of where we’ve been, where we are, and the can, the want of going on. I admire people who have easy self-confidence, who are capable of Zen-like, roll-off-your back relating. It seems satisfying and appears effortless. It really never is. As I re-search 20+ years of practice, the big question is what is this thing called arts-based community development practice? What has worked, what has not? What is significant, relevant, transferable? Perhaps, there are new conversations to start, new reflections to hear and see.

What will bring US to an understanding of the story of WE? In the struggle to be truly present, we can practice meeting uncertainty and fear with authentic response and active listening.

We balance.

We suspend judgment, quiet the inner critic, keep climbing.

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TREES They embody capacity and ease. Two worthy goals. I am grateful for the attitude and example of trees. Life force flows with intention and demands attention. The frequency generated is a powerful presence.

The texture is familiar yet no two are alike. Arms extended and inviting.

Grounded yet defiantly vertical. I would like to think they have a dance I could join. I know they have stories. They might be our stories.

A tree has great capacity. Capacity contains and it receives. The smallest tree is a seriously complex system of roots and leaves, fed by sun and rain with the trunk as conduit. They are ecological filters of the wind and the air and landlord to squirrels and birds and bugs.

They appear to be at ease....standing effortlessly in place, hands and eyes open, always quietly and invisibly in process.

A community also has capacity, important components, and constructs that are often invisible. Some are rooted and functional. Others need light and feeding. The story is told over time with the characters who are revealed, the challenges that are recognized, and the movement toward expression and connection with whomever is paying attention.

Like trees, artists are capacitors. A capacitor accumulates and holds a charge of electricity between two equally charged conducting surfaces that have opposite signs. When capacity accumulates in a system, ease is the ability to sit with it, respond to what is there, what is needed.

Artists influence this process by making. They are seers of complexity and filters for metaphor. With art, they see in ways we have forgotten to remember. The working title of this book was once I Know Everything I Know, referencing what was, what has happened so far.

However, we live in what is. Capacity is continually tested. We observe and accumulate, assess and measure. The actual title became: What is...? What if...? Capacity examined and possibilities explored?

The ease? That is a work in progress. Hence, the subtitle: Confronting and Configuring a Community Arts Practice.

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MARGINS In 1999, I finished a community arts training fellowship. I was also on the board of directors at Peter and Paul Community Services. At a board meeting, shelter director Tom Burnham talked about the transitional housing program and his new partnership with a renovated single-room occupancy hotel downtown. Some of the men would move from the congregate shelter setting to their own hotel room. The rent would be free if certain conditions were met like working, saving money, and staying sober. As he described this alternative path, he talked about people who live in ‘the margins’ of society.

With those words said, I saw a piece of looseleaf, something I’ve used hundreds of times for notes or lists. Now, suddenly, this common object became a metaphor. Picture a sheet of looseleaf printed with blue lines on the horizontal and a vertical line running top to bottom.

Lots of safe blue flat and the nice red line that keeps most of us in safe and structured territory. We ‘reside’ there with choices, resources, and space for mistakes and rewrites. We might even have an eraser.

That red line, thin but firm, marks a separate territory to its left.

The blue lines are much shorter. Space is tight. And, there are the holes. Yup, holes.

Many of us get disoriented, destabilized, displaced by any number of things in the course of living a life. We experience disaster, divorce, and death without dire consequence and manage to level out and move on. In long blue line territory, there are safe spaces, choices, and resources that support stability. From the margin, it’s hare to ignore the red line. If we bump into someone, trip over an obstacle, disaster lurks.

With fewer choices and several of those holes, navigation is difficult, dangerous, and downright disconcerting.

People who become homeless tend to find themselves in the margins.

The community collabARTive has been exploring those margins for 15 years. At the end of the our first year, we produced a handmade book that with the title: How Do I Get Home? How Much Does It Cost?

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We have explored these questions with visual art, writing, music, and movement. We present to audiences regularly with a performance piece titled: Footnotes: From the Margins.

We are using art to push at and pull on that thin red line.

LIMINALITY + MAKING MEANING

This word is defined as: “from the Latin word limen, meaning ‘a threshold,’ i.e. the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rituals, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the ritual is complete.” For engineers, it is the measurable point at which an action is triggered. During a liminal stage, participants stand at a place that is between the previous way of structuring identity/ time/community and finding a new way that will be influenced by our shared rituals.

Painter Robert Genn writes: “From a very young age, Michelle drew circles—she describes them as ‘doors’. She likes to layer her work, emphasizing and reemphasizing her favorite shapes. Alternately, she uses petal-like forms and stripes to indicate landscapes and spectrums of colour. Her favourite colour is red, which she says describes fire, the sun, and happiness. According to her friends and family, Michelle is a happy, bright and beautiful person. Michelle has Downs Syndrome.”

The idea of a round door is intriguing. Port holes, portals, movement without hard edges. Where is the threshold for a round door?

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Author Ann Patchett says: “...the dots in your life are connected, how one decision leads you to another, how one twist of fate, good or bad, brings you to a door that later takes you to another door, which, aided by several detours—long hallways and unforeseen stairwells—eventually puts you in the place you are now.”

Step up, over, through. Go in. Find out.

Margaret Wheatley brings us from chaos theory to systems thinking. She asks questions organizing work, people, and life: How can we find order in a chaotic world? How is order different from control? How do we create participative, open, and adaptive organizations?

All of these ideas above rise and converge for me now as I am writing and as I anticipate later today working with a group of men and women who are in transition from homelessness. They are coming to my studio to get cameras, going out to look for symbols and signs in architecture.

With each person’s liminality in mind, we consider maps, motion, motivation, and capacity.

There is tension and irony in talking to homeless people about stepping through open doors. This particular group is new to art as process.

They are benefiting from what I know, even as I re-search what I think I know for this book. Creating maps and documenting motion with them is parallel to the retracing of my own paths and patterns. Assessing and building new capacities while taking a measure of what we have done and learned along the way.

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MENTAL MODELS The Three-Legged Stool Peter Senge The tripod provides a stable base against downward forces and also leverage for resisting lateral forces. Senge uses the metaphor of a three-legged stool to describe creative realization. The core of our learning as humans as we realize capacity can be seated on three legs of support.

Organizations also have mental models. In not-for-profits, they are likely to be built around the people served [“we serve the poorest of the poor”], around the role of the organization [“we are the agency of last resort”] or [“if we don’t provide a service, no one else will”], and around the nature of the activities performed by the organization [“we are advocates for change”]. WE get caught up [and comfortable] in OUR [how-it’s-always-been] story. We miss new theories and opportunities. We lose our ability to respond. We can become blind to what really produces change over time and distance.

The Effect of Mental Models Algodones Associates Much of the information massed on the boundaries of our organization does not get through our organization’s mental model

One leg represents aspirations. Of the individual and of the group.

Personal mastery and shared vision, realized and unrealized. We share stories and culture, honor relationships, encourage interdependence.

The second leg is for reflective conversation. Ideas about what has worked, what might work, what doesn’t work, from a variety of perspectives, coming through personal filters. Senge calls them ‘mental models’: “Mental models are deeply held internal images of how the world works, images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. Very often, we are not consciously aware of our mental models or the effects they have on our behavior.”

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Some information gets through, but is changed

Only the information that fits our “familiar ways of thinking and acting” gets through unchanged

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The third leg is recognition of complexity.

Consider the word re-cognition. We all come to the table with unpacked baggage. We use creative process to become aware of what we have, to name it, to hear and be heard by others. As we feel its weight, understand its significance, and discover forgotten elements, we experience and appreciate the complexity. In a self-organizing system, the relationships provide connection, and reflection brings some clarity. We support a safe exploration of the risky, messy, interesting underlayers.... re-claim, re-focus, re-imagine.

In everyday life, food preparation and sharing meals is a good example.

One or more people plans, shops, and prepares a meal. We eat, we talk, we clean up. This daily process informs how we plan, shop, prepare next time. With community/participatory art, after the planning and prep, we move through the experience of creating together, observing products, and processing with shared reflection.

Our awareness and relative satisfaction with process brings a response to product. These ‘change agents’ influence how or if we will grow or change.

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Organization[s] W. Edwards Deming

Dr. Deming’s Fourteen Points

Core learning supports these next questions that build the capacity of a system. What are we creating? Why do we want to create?

W. Edwards Deming’s ideas about systems, quality, and fundamental orientation met so much resistance from the status quo in the 1970s that he had to go to Japan to prove his theories. He is credited by many with the success of the Japanese car industry.

Dr. Deming’s 14 Points, originally presented in Out of the Crisis, challenges managers to establish continuous quality improvement practices...to survive, compete well, and replenish resources with innovation and research.

The 14 points are fertile soil for cultivating efficiency in the workplace, higher profits, and increased productivity. These ideas seem obvious now, but Dr. Deming’s ideas and personal example of hard work, sincerity, decency, and personal responsibility, forever changed the world of management.

Points 1-7 are important action items, but #8, again, has to be the basis, the fundamental orientation of any process involving people who work together over time:

1. Create and communicate to all employees a statement of the aims and purposes of the company.

2. Adapt to the new philosophy of the day; industries and economics are always changing.

3. Build quality into a product throughout production.

4. End the practice of awarding business on the basis of price tag alone; instead, try a long-term relationship based on established loyalty and trust.

5. Work to constantly improve quality and productivity.

6. Institute on-the-job training.

7. Teach and institute leadership to improve all job functions.

8. Drive out fear; create trust.

9. Strive to reduce intradepartmental conflicts.

10. Eliminate exhortations for the work force; instead, focus on the system and morale.

11a. Eliminate work standard quotas for production. Substitute leadership methods for improvement.

11b. Eliminate MBO [Management By Objectives]. Avoid numerical goals. Alternatively, learn the capabilities of processes, and how to improve them.

12. Remove barriers that rob people of pride of workmanship.

13. Educate with self-improvement programs.

14. Include everyone in the company to accomplish the transformation.

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Plan/Do/Check/Act “It is not enough to just do your best or work hard. You must know what to work on.” ~ W. Edwards Deming You must know what to work on. You must know what to work on.

And then you do it, reflect on it, and act again. It’s simple.

Not easy, but simple.

And recognize that you are not doing it in a vacuum. Plan. Do. Check. Act. This is how Dr. Deming’s Plan/Do/Check/Act [PDCA] model is often seen It is flexible and open to interpretation and context.

PDCA originated in the 1920s with Walter A. Shewhart as a framework for implementing continuous quality improvement. The cycle starts with a plan and ends with an action. Information is gathered with the process of doing/carrying out a plan and checking/observing what works or not.

The information-gathering process leads to the final action or product.

In later years, Deming changed the word ‘check’ to ‘study’ to highlight the idea that this process slows us down, keeps us focused, raises our awareness of the knowledge gained, step by step. In the ‘act’ phase, you could substitute ‘adjust’. This emphasizes the focus on process even more as you move into a new phase or project.

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Re-FORM: Joseph Dager re-thought the PDCA picture and gave it movement and space.

Later, with D. Bob Gowin’s Knowledge Vee laid over PDCA, a transfer of knowledge process is visible and possible, and it becomes an even more dynamic transactional funnel. Gowin says: “Most of us relate PDCA to the typical manufacturing analogies such as cycle time and waste reduction. The Knowledge Vee [is also] useful in knowledge-creation activities.”

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Process/Planning + New Info/Skills = Methodology for Continuous Quality Improvement

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Re-APPLY: I love it when models have depth and breadth and stay open to interpretation. So, Plan/Do/Check/Act is the base. Add the ‘vee’ diagram. In the planning, we think, we conceptualize. We imagine the action or doing, but we also choose a delivery system or method for that action [or adjustment]. Interplay happens between where we are and where we can be. It has movement and possibilities. It activates and humanizes the processes of doing and checking by recognizing interaction and yes, play. And who doesn’t need a little play? Freedom to fail, to learn, to flex, to have fun?

Finally, there is Dr. Deming’s #14. Inclusion and interplay keep us from holding on too tight, forgetting to listen. We acknowledge and accept influence, ours and others. As Mark Twain said: “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.”

In an arts-based collaboration, this focus is especially important if we are to have direction and boundaries and proceed together.

The Planning / Concept - what do I/we know?

- what do I/we believe?

- what is my/our philosophy - what is our focus question?

Bill Wyman was my boss at St. Patrick Center for a few years in the 1990s.

He had some personal shortcomings, but he had a heart of gold and a good idea about how to manage programs and people. I remember a time when the agency was having some growing pains, and there were lots of different ideas about how to proceed. Those of us who worked for him heard him say many times:

The Doing - implement the process - adjust and modify - document/observe

“Almost everybody should know almost everything.”

The Checking - revisit the focus question - summarize responses - observe transformation [what/whom?]

Again, simple but not easy.....

The Acting /Method - what have we learned?

- what is the value gained?

- what is next?

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Transactions Communication Theory Communication. I speak, you listen. End of story? No. Communication is transaction. Transaction implies give and take.

Commerce. Exchange. Change.

Communication models allow us to examine systems...the individuals, the relationships, the simple, the complex. Verbal and non-verbal channels are significant. The transactional model illustrates the multidirectional [and sometimes messy] energy and fluidity of communication and relationship.

In a model intrapersonal and/or interpersonal transaction, imagine the opportunity to be present, to quiet the noise, hear the now, see the immediate. Humans are social beings. We cannot NOT communicate.

We are often impatient with ourselves and others, preoccupied with the next thing we want to say or do. We have personal defaults, even if ineffective, that are easy and familiar.

We also have the ability to override reaction and choose a personal and situational response. In a successful transaction, there is awareness of the need to slow down.

The default processes can/ will carry you if you are not aware.

Be here now.

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Transactional Analysis The theory of Transactional Analysis was developed by Dr. Eric Berne in the 1950s. Originally trained in psychoanalysis, Berne wanted a theory which could be understood and available to everyone. Transactional Analysis (TA) is a social psychology and one tool that can improve human communication. The theory outlines how we have developed, how we care for ourselves, how we relate to others. It offers suggestions and interventions to enable change and growth. TA subscribes to the philosophy that people can change, and that we all have a right to be in the world and be accepted.

TA describes specific roles that we can and do choose to play in our relationship. Freud referred to personality facets of the Id, Ego, and Superego. Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligences theory talks about personality traits that determine emotional health and promote good relating. Many more theories and constructs lead us to know that it is not as simple as ‘can’t we all just get along?’

We are not linear systems. We engage in numerous transactions daily that honor the self and the other...or not.

The more we are aware, the more we question.

How do we see ourselves? How do we see others?

How do we see others seeing us?

Art and creativity engage these questions.

The arts and creative energy bring us together to ask: how shall we live?

Again, the words of Henry James: “It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance, and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.”

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Making Meaning Into the Future/Through the Same Door Transactions, models and charts, awareness and analysis.

In 2008, I saw all of these threads woven together over nine weeks.

We were: - Vernon Kayes [college dean and my boss at the time] and me.

- 20 SE Asian and Mongolian students - a whole host of interested stakeholders.

We converged at a place called Eden Seminary in St. Louis under a grant from the U.S. Department of State. These students came from 6 different countries to improve English language fluency and experience American culture. They took classes at the community college by day, cooked for each other in a tiny dorm kitchen each night, and rode the highways and byways of St. Louis and Missouri on the weekends in a big van to see landmarks and lifestyles. They were also quite competent at riding city buses to get to shopping malls and electronics stores, but that’s another story.

Vern and I were a mom and pop team. He handled the administrative details and curriculum issues. I was advocate, liaison, housemother, chauffeur, event planner.

The challenge was: - to find comfort levels and build relationships with and among people who ranged in age from 17-24 and came from very different countries and cultures and belief systems.

- to systematically document the experience visually and verbally.

- to share and evaluate the effectiveness of the program for our selves, for the state department, for institutions in the students’ home countries.

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With the wisdom of my friend and art therapist, Carol Lark, and the skills of community artist, Melanie Daniels, I designed and implemented an integrated arts component that included: 1] a group ‘art class’ that met at least once a week.

2] an ongoing journaling practice with specific writing prompts and photography, collage, and book arts. These helped us develop relationships, group cohesion, encouraged consistency and continuity, and there was always an element of surprise!

3] field trips to museums and galleries as a backdrop for ongoing discussions about art, artists, community, and culture.

We began by asking ourselves these questions: What are we creating? What do we want to create?

We were imagining the program in general and our projects in particular.

To build the aspirational leg of the Peter Senge’s three-legged stool, we wanted to hear personal visions and goals, envision group process and product, and imagine movement to a new place of understanding.

As time went on, two more questions were asked...

What will you receive?

To receive implies transaction. Beyond the practical goals of language competency and acculturation, we asked them to reflect on their own mental models. To look at present assumptions and imagine the impact of this intense experience in which they found themselves. To anticipate what they would hope for/wish for/want to gain.

What will you leave behind?

This question was asked near the end of the nine weeks, and they could answer objectively in terms of school work, quality relationships with students and teachers, memories of encounters and experiences in the community.

A shift in perspective opens possibilities. Transactions that are openended inform context and relationship. We were asking them to think beyond the self to the system. When we can see ourselves from the point of view of the other and take a place in a bigger picture, we begin to understand accountability to others and responsibility for self.

As kinetic beings, our tendency is to continuously push forward.

We are not always encouraged to take time to reflect. Reflection shifts the focus away from that private personal experience that was our only story.

We become aware of past transactions, lessons learned, and experience gained. The power of intention, agency in determining the pace of our interactions, these bring opportunity and choices. We can move forward with measure and mindfulness.

The stories we see and hear begin to overlap. Some are easy to read.

Some require character analysis and conflict resolution.

Most mysterious of all are the dramas where we played an unknowing part on someone else’s stage and/or the conclusion came after we exited stage left or right. Reflection, creating, receiving, leaving. They help us see our place in relationships and systems. As Rainer Maria Rilke says, they help us see ourselves and others ‘...whole against the sky’.

‘...whole against the sky’.

Who was affected by you? How much? How long will it last?

Probably the most challenging question: We asked them to go deeper, think about influence. What happened here because of you and/or this program that you might NOT know?!

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Making and Meaning Making The first art project was two-dimensional. The visiting students were matched with a parallel learning community at the college. Each person in each group designed an artist trading card that could be copied and exchanged. These were slightly larger than a business card, decorated with collage, text, and a stylized photo of the maker. We shared the finished works face to face as we sat in a very large circle. We told our stories out loud. For the visiting students, we later bound copies of these self-portraits into small books as keepsakes.

The second project asked each person to find and use tiny bits and pieces of ephemera to construct a three-dimensional piece small enough to fit in a cardboard ring box. They were to leave it somewhere in St. Louis, inside or outside, where it would become a ‘found object’, awaiting discovery by persons known or unknown.

Each person photographed h/her piece in a place they chose and wrote in a journal about the experience of leaving it behind. Some opted for a favorite teacher’s desk or with a friend, but others were able to release the little treasure boxes anonymously in a public place.

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Meaning What we explored was reciprocity, relationship, and subsequent re-invention and rewards. These concepts required lots of processing by the group as they imagined in advance how it would feel to leave the piece and walk away.

Reciprocity happens whether we know it or not. It has its own liminal effect. We are continually exchanging information that includes personal data and cues for how to proceed into, through, around the relationships.

Re-invention also happens. We make adjustments and missteps and readjustments. The dance of hope and joy and disappointment and I-shall-carry-on is choreographed over and over. If you only call it a struggle, you might miss the grace and movement of the everyday give and take.

With art process, we can observe and appreciate, we can assess value added, we can reflect on learning and lessons. We can connect open eyes and minds and hearts. There is a freedom in claiming our influence, in critiquing for flaws, in clearing obstacles for good flow. We share the movement, beauty draws us in, creativity gives structure, art builds our history, and artifacts document our process.

Phuong is a good looking guy from Viet Nam and talented in photography and design. He seemed at first to be somewhat aloof and broke a couple of hearts along the way. Toward the end of his visit, he summed up his experience in this way.

To paraphrase: ‘ When I came here, I was not a very nice person.

I was not nice to people because I didn’t have to be. Now, I am different.

I care about these people. I see that relationships are important, and I can make positive choices for me and others.’

With arts-based community development, we ask questions wherever we are. Relational quality and artifactual quantity can be achieved and exceeded. We can re-find and refine our workplaces, our neighborhoods, our cities. All of us find ourselves homeless, mis-placed, or dis-placed at some time. Art promotes discovery and rediscovery of people and place.

It offers choices for reversal or renewal.

There are no guarantees. We don’t always know the why or the where or the when. To quote a collaborating artist, Jean Kerr:

These students [who are now young adults] are planning a reunion.

Meanwhile, with random visiting and the magic of Facebook, the relationships built in those short nine weeks are still being re-examined and re-enforced. When they left us, many hearts and minds were changed forever, in and around us. They took with them a global citizen’s sense of self and a renewal of personal goals and vision.

They are much more likely than most to ask ‘what’s next?,’ and then go find it.

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MIND OVER MAPS

Re-searching. Sketch books, notebooks, and handouts are coming out of hiding one by one. Notes from conferences and lectures.

Details from chance encounters, rich experiences, relationships, processes. A preponderance of doodles and drawings accompanied by mind maps, text, and multi-directional arrows.

Visual journaling. A blogger named Violette writes about this: When I went back to college in my mid-thirties, I couldn’t decide whether to major in psychology or art, so I took classes in both. The notepad for my academic subjects was peppered with so many faces, arrows and other doodles that there was barely room for writing. The arrows were shooting off in every direction. In Harry Nilsson’s epic song “Land of the Point,” he says, “A point in every direction is like no point at all.”

So my point is—ha!—that I didn’t have any direction! Eventually I realized that art was my true love. You will note, however, that psychology has crept into my work as well. Visual journaling for me has been a vehicle to move toward my bliss, and a totally transformative and life affirming experience.

When you doodle absentmindedly, you relinquish control of your left brain and allow your right brain to take over. That’s when the magic happens....Begin sketching without judgment, and let your inner world have a voice!

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Looking back at my own mind maps, I often think, ‘Hmmm....did I do that?’ or ‘why did I do that?’ This probably makes a case for reviewing and re-noting immediately to capture the meaning-full then. What is happening right now is this: What I see of what I did makes me wonder, leads to reimagining, to revisiting names and concepts and online links. In a way, the old content can become new in this context, a new mind map.

On a page in a little green notebook, these three things are ripe for the picking and the reflecting: 1. An alliterative sequence written sideways at the edge of the page: Time / Together / Talk / Take / Turns / Turning / Time

I see them and get caught up in the flow despite having no memory of writing them or how to attribute them. So, it seems they can become a word-map, a structure for describing process and movement over time.

2. The words boundaries and blinders are there. Was it more reflection on maps and movement? The possible vs. the probable?

3. These words are also there: Presence Awareness Reflection Documentation Evaluation Generic but engaging concepts. Could be an outline to explore some best practices in an arts-based community project or practice.

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The Letter ‘T’ First, there is Time. We know it hurries on, waits for no man, flows like a river. It’s the great equalizer...nobody gets any more or less than anybody. Time and its tensions are a common thread/theme in movies and music, prose and poetry. You can’t buy it, you can’t sell it. It’s there for taking and making.

What you might not know: Art can make Time stand still. Yes, it’s true We are amazed and enthralled when it first happens to us. It is not a phenomenon you can expect or predict. Working artists will tell you that it is often the reward for showing up, doing your part, in the process of making/writing/doing.

When Travelers and CitiBank merged, graphic designer Paula Scher was asked to design their new logo. She did it. In 10 minutes on the back of a napkin. How is that possible? says the disbelieving client who felt he might not be getting his money’s worth in process. Her reply: “Yes. 10 minutes...and 34 years.” Time. 34 years of experience.

34 years of showing up, working with tools and art supplies and ideas, experiencing what works and what doesn’t. 34 years brought to bear on a problem that was solved in 10 minutes.

In Grand Central Winter, Lee Stringer, tells the story of how he came to be a writer. He goes back to a Time when he was living in a tunnel under Grand Central Station, depressed and addicted to crack cocaine.

He sold cans and street newspapers to get money. He recalled a ‘spiritless’ day when he did not have the energy to go out and do what he needed to do to collect cans, get money, buy drugs etc.

As he sat there with Time on his hands, he stared at the residue on the pencil used to ream out his crack pipe. It occurred to him that there was one other thing he could do with that pencil. He could write something.

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So, he started writing a story about a friend who was ill and then about that friend’s apartment: “Suddenly, it was five hours later” he says, “I was awake. I was alive. I was breathing heavy....It was like a free hit! These are the things we search for in substance. Many of us don’t know there are legitimate ways to get there.

Writing for me was a way to get there.”

You can read in Stringer’s book that the path to rebuilding his life was not a straight line, but this was the beginning of a successful writing career. Stringer’s five hours was ‘lost’ Time. Lost in searching, reflecting, responding, in the moment. Paula Scher’s 34 years were not obvious to others in the moment of creation, but they were no less significant.

We have choices about our awareness of and our use of Time.

- Procrastination and obsessive tendencies create barriers.

- Mindful presence can alter our perception of time’s quantity and quality.

- Being present can unlock infinite possibilities for creativity and interpersonal connection. By observing, asking, listening, we learn about each other over Time.

You and me become the we and establish relationships.

Time alone is one thing. Time Together is quite another.

Time Together involves transactions that are verbal and discrete.

The word discrete refers to a process that has a clear beginning and end. Ideally, one person speaks, the other listens. We weave through conversational and relational dynamics in a complicated and often unconscious dance. We Talk, we listen, we Take Turns, we give and get information. Spoken and written word, signed alphabet, Braille dots... this is all verbal communication.

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It is, however, non-verbal communication that determines up to 90% of how we relate to each other. It is not discrete. It is continuous back and forth, punctuated by the ambiguities of rate, tone, and pitch. Pauses and disfluencies, body and object language, expression and affect, all of our assumptions about the meaning of all the above.

Last year, I bought a small clay figure. It’s very primitive. It has a bellshaped body and a ball head with tiny ears. On one side of the head, there are the eyes, the nose, and a mouth. On the body, the word ‘Take.’ is printed. The other side has the same face with eyes and nose but no mouth.

The word there is ‘Give.’ That which is ‘unsaid’ often speaks louder, is remembered longer, requires listening on many levels. Listening is the non-verbal capacity of champions. It is our unspoken gift to each other.

What is our capacity? In pairs or in groups, the stages of relational development are observable. We recognize challenges with new information about each other even as we move to new levels.

Movement is inevitable, is evident over Time, and is always to a new place.

We cannot ever go back to, “Hi, my name is...”

In a community arts context, the steps include more formal attention to process, documentation, and evaluation.

What are the details of the project and its people that give life to the beginning, middle, and end?

What are the stories connected to movement forward or backward?

How do we get stuck? And how do we find momentum again?

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The Letter ‘B’ Boundaries In a good novel or properly suspenseful thriller, there is tension and eventually a conflict [dramatic or subtle] that takes the story to a tipping point where everything changes. Without this conflict and the choices made about it, it is less than a good story and less than interesting.

The narrator in Robert Frost’s Mending Wall observes: Something there is that doesn’t love a wall...Before I built a wall I’d ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out / And to whom I was like to give offense.

Every spring, he wonders why the neighbor rebuilds the decaying wall.

The neighbor has no doubts, saying more than once: Good fences make good neighbors.

In the musical, The Fantasticks, two fathers deliberately build a wall between their gardens. By pretending to feud, they try to trick their children into falling in love. There is deception, discovery, and, eventually, a happy ending. The wall provides the conflict, that which is understood and misunderstood in some way by each character in the story.

I am an educator with experience over 30+ years: substitute teacher in public schools, a self-contained classroom in a tiny Lutheran middle school, adult education and GED classes, drama teacher in a Catholic high school, education director at an arts school, adjunct professor positions at several institutions. Each of these jobs [only one of them full time] allowed me time to pursue many other projects in parallel.

I update my resume regularly. Each project informs the others. I prepare, plan, and try to maintain a balance along the way, even as the boundaries threaten to blur.

While working as an artist/educator in a social service agency, I was not bound by the ethics of professional licensure nor was I qualified to make diagnoses or design treatment plans [although I learned about them and supported them]. My primary job was to establish and maintain relationships, take the temperature of that system, use art and literacy to give voice to people who were marginalized.

Wherever I find myself, it’s a challenge to strike a balance between closeness and distance. I add value whenever I can. That translates to creativity, quality in relationship, and pursuit of professionalism.

Balancing and ‘boundering’ require vigilance, flexibility, and energy.

This way of working is a ‘full time’ job. I have been, as marketing people say, building a brand. It’s as if I have been in rehearsal for the part of artist/collaborator in the play called: This is ABCD...Arts-Based Community Development.

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Blinders We all have them. The question is: do they tunnel our vision or do they focus our energy and attention? Do they block out things we fear and dread? Or sharpen our goals and objectives?

Consider this blank template of concentric circles on white paper.

It’s an exercise that asks us to visualize and locate the self in a larger context.

You are the rock thrown into the center. What are the ripples moving around you, away from you? The context can be close and personal i.e. family or work. It can be expanded to national, global, universal.

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When we identify our center and look at what surrounds us, we can tell a story that others might not know. All viewpoints and perspectives coexist.

If the boundaries and dimensions are more visible, we relieve some of the ambiguity, move away from abstraction and assumption, drive out the fear of the other, strengthen personal resolve and direction.

We might give ourselves permission to think bigger, better, more!

In the play Our Town, Thornton Wilder uses Emily Gibbs’ school essay to make a point. Penelope Niven says of him, “...he’s looking at the particular juxtaposed [with] the universal....thinking about the individual...human experience [and] the repetition by millions and millions of people.”

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P.A.R.D.O.N. Human beings are the only animals that can name things. Our larger brain still has the primitive amygdala where the ‘fight or flight’ function waits, but then there is the hippocampus, the source of emotion, attachment, trauma, drama....and long-term memory. This is the recipe for meaningful human connection.

In indigenous cultures, where there is no word for art, art is lived.

Over the years, from studio to studio, I have carried a page from a Theater Arts magazine. When I cut it out, I had no idea that it would become a fundamental part and an orientation for going forward.

I quote:

The best theater, the best art explores the same question every sermon explores: how shall we live?

Time alone, Time with others, give and take, recognizing our blinders and keeping our boundaries. Reading, writing, relating....and repeating.

Living with others means we balance giving-in with standing our ground, making room and gathering in.

In casual conversation or informal interactions, we ask for clarification saying pardon? We take social leave with pardon me. Beyond quick exchanges to intentional human transactions, over time, in any given place, human pardon can become this process…

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Presence: puts us in the moment.

Awareness: brings us to observation, listening, responding.

Reflection: i s the essential antidote to hurry-up-and-get-to-thefinish-but-don’t-ask-me-how-I-got-there.

Documentation: i s the perspective-taking tool that asks: What?

So what? Now what?

Ongoing: w e evaluate, assess benefits and cost, education and skills.

Represent to others the value perceived over time.

Name it and present it: M ake a connection. Respond to criticism and clarify. Ask for and acknowledge audience[s].

We begin, proceed, make decisions and choices, and arrive back at the beginning...but changed, informed, experienced, different, aware.

Henry James said: ”It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance...and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.”

Pardon me, may I have this dance?

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Muse[s] I can trace the path to and from the studio spaces I have occupied since 1990. The first one, my first real stand-alone ‘ohmygoshI’mreallyanartist’ space was on the second floor of a building that was a music school in its first life. In a slightly dicey neighborhood and for $150, I got thick plaster walls, three huge beautiful windows, wood floors, and high high ceilings.

I came back on Sunday morning, cleaned up, salvaged a few things, displayed what I could. A pile of some of the more interesting pieces were labeled with three words that Les Miley said more than once to us novice clay students, “It’s only clay.”

The door had a transom and opened onto a black and white tile corridor that went past other doors, and past a communal toilet with old porcelain sinks. No air conditioning and inconsistent heat but...the light the light the light!

Unless you count the activity in the alley where the Jackson girls regularly practiced the oldest profession, it was relatively quiet at first. I had artist neighbors like Ken the watercolorist, Ray the photographer, and Doug the woodworker. My landlord had an resale/antique business at street level, complete with questionable characters making even more questionable deliveries. His wife was a painter and held workshops in her studio for kids, her own and others. There was a bar below us run by a big loud woman named Ernestine that catered mostly to AfricanAmerican men. I never went in, but, thinking back, I wish that just once I had sat down among the voices coming out of the dark interior.

I loved this place, this space. So much character. So many possibilities.

I made things in clay, finding a way to use acrylic paint instead of the ceramic glazes that would not stand up to the temperature extremes. I learned a lot about how other artists work and sell. I salvaged ware boards from Ken and used wood scraps from Doug to make stamps.

During my first year, we planned an open house on a Sunday afternoon.

I cleaned the studio and happily set up a display on Saturday morning.

When I returned later that day, I opened the door to a disaster. The brickand-board structure that had held all manner of bowls and small sculptures had collapsed into a pile of puzzle pieces. I stood there for a minute.

Then, I turned and walked out. I shut the door and was amazed at how calm I felt.

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At the open house, we had music, guests, lots of art, and I had the story of the ‘fatal’ collapse to share. The muse was present and benevolent.

In 1995, the neighborhood deteriorated. Tom, the landlord, put four locks on an iron gate in front of the glass entry door. Many of the original artists moved out, and people started sleeping there, one with a scary dog. The winter morning that I arrived early and all the locks were iced over, I knew it was time to go. For a very brief nine months, I went to a warehouse space that I shared with an event planner. He was not very honest and, as it turned out, was in trouble with the law.

Things got weird again, even scary. The light there was unremarkable.

I did not detect a muse...ever.

Eventually, I moved to a commercial building in the middle of residential neighborhood. My friend Karen and I rented a storefront. We called it City Sculpt. I, the artist, was building clay structures. She, the exercise trainer, was building healthier bodies. It was a good match.

Eventually, she moved to the bay next door for more space. Except for a couple more brief stints of sharing, I occupied that space solo for the next 13 years. Although different from my first studio, the light was abundant. It faced west through ground floor tinted windows that angled across the front parking lot that was shaded by a Rose of Sharon tree.

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I worked in clay and mixed media, did some tutoring and classes.

I shared it with a homeless man for awhile who came in quietly to work on an obsessive project that was of great importance to him. Another friend needed space to work on organizing years of family photos and genealogy. The last project completed there was a huge [4’x6’] cast acrylic butterfly, decorated by the guys in the shelter with mosaics and a poem titled Fly Away Home. It went on public display with others like it and was eventually sold as part of a fund-raising effort.

What I remember about this place is the time and space in between.

There was work to be made...for shows, holiday gifts, commissions.

The in between might be several days or several weeks. I would go there to water the plants or just check in, and I could feel the muse waiting there patiently. Sometimes, I just sat in the sun in the big chair and waited with it, not needing to DO anything.

In the fall of 2011, we invited two Irish women, one an artist and one a community worker, to St. Louis. For three weeks, they worked and lived in the Cherokee neighborhood in south St. Louis city. Each day they worked out of a small pop-up space they called ‘The Bureau of Enquiry.’

They asked questions, took pictures, made art. They convened small discussions to find out who lived there and why, what was good, what could be better or different? The community collabARTive worked in that space with them for our Thursday sessions. After they left, we continued to meet there for a few months, even though it was a little tight for the group with assorted artists, students, and guests.

Bridging the in between spaces to begin work again was another matter.

I would go there with all intentions of being productive, but I first had to set about reclaiming the space from the spiders, dusting, rearranging, milling around, and just plain procrastinating. If I tried to skip this step get right to making, it was rarely successful i.e. uninspired and unsatisfying. The muse required this re-entry process. S/he was available but could not be forced or hurried. Process, even in reclaiming space, is essential and valuable. I was grateful to this particular muse for the lesson, for holding the space, and for holding me to the relationship.

In early 2011, the furnace developed an issue. Then some landscaping was done incorrectly, water came in, and mold formed. The landlord’s response was less than satisfactory, and I began to feel unsafe, inside and out. In early spring, I asked a friend if she knew of space to rent or share.

Turned out that she and her husband were expanding and reconfiguring, and I was invited to look and consider sharing space in a building with three other artists, a teaching program, and a coffee-roasting endeavor. It seemed like a safe alternative, rent was much cheaper etc....so I went. I had my kiln wired in, arranged equipment and supplies etc., but I only made one piece in the year that I was there. No amount of effort on my part could move me in that direction to work. I was uneasy. The muse did not follow me there....

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The muse returned. It was present in the pop-up space, urging me to consider moving my studio there. In March, a ‘For Rent’ sign appeared in the storefront across the street . In contacting the landlord, Mark, I realized that this would be a very different studio experience. Mark is a community developer of sorts, has tenants that are residential and commercial, connects them in ways that are unexpected. He identifies as a recovering Buddhist and offered to teach meditation to the collabARTive group at some point.

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We ceremoniously moved our stuff across the street and piled it up, some in the street-level space and some in the basement. The plan was that I would occupy the space primarily and the group would meet there on Thursday nights indefinitely. This served two purposes: the transitional guys would be in a community setting, and we could establish a presence in the neighborhood for the agency who would soon be moving into a renovated school building a few blocks away.

A couple of weeks after this move, still awaiting some repairs and painting, I received a call from the neighbor upstairs [at Mark’s suggestion]. She needed a place to hold a meeting for a community of women whose goal was their own empowerment. They straightened and cleaned and decorated with lights, candles, and flowers. I drove by on the night of the event and saw the smiling people inside. It was great to see such good energy created from this gathering.

On several occasions, visiting artists have occupied the space. It has a shower, a small fridge, and microwave. There is an excellent coffee shop nearby and lots of life on the street. They report feeling safe and empowered...and sleeping well. That good energy has continued.

I visit this studio several times a week. I write in the early mornings, hold group sessions and meetings, anticipate a new capacity for making and selling my own work. The texture of the brick walls, the air flow from front to back, the high ceilings and good light from the south make this space pleasant and comfortable. Near the front door is a 50s style chrome and linoleum table, white with six sturdy chairs. It reminds many people of similar tables from kitchens past. It is the heart center of the space. At this table, I/we can honor the past and make plans to move forward.

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The muse is here. Place matters.

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WISCONSIN ET AL

As I write this, it is 12/12/12, a much-anticipated date.

Symmetry, numerology, superstition, prophecy. All in play at once as we humans try to make sense of who we are, how we work, and how we are connected to the universe and to each other. I’m reviewing notes I have from a conference on arts and civic engagement that I attended in Wisconsin. It’s valuable and useful to remember people and process, content and context, the history of the present as I write.

The format of the conference was engaging, dialogic, and thought-full.

It’s worth noting that everybody attending the conference heard the exact same ideas and information in real time i.e. no choices or break out sessions to manage. The format was call and response. Broad topics included healthy community, political health, spiritual health, economics, physical and mental health, and placemaking/storytelling. Each topic was addressed by two presenters with different perspectives. These presenting pairs added depth and value as they engaged each other several times before the conference, formed relationships, prepared the dialogue.

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Academics, policy makers, researchers etc. brought data, history, and context. Qualified artists or arts professional followed with information about programs, aesthetics, and best practices related to community arts and its influence. After each pair of presentations, the audience asked questions and made comments that influenced the content and direction of the discussion.

Abraham Maslow’s humanistic approach to a hierarchy of needs shows us that, only when basic survival and safety needs are met, can we move toward belongingness and inclusion. As we develop connections, self- esteem and even actualization i.e. giving back become possible.

Social capital is the vehicle...a safety net for that tightrope of hope.

I remember I was immediately engaged by the people and the format and felt eager and hopeful. At the bottom of this first page of notes, I wrote three words as spoken or quoted: hope on a tightrope. They call up immediate and visceral images for me, then and now.

Lose your balance up high, falling, falling....the stuff of nightmares.

And yet, hope endures. Here is the full quote from Cornell West: Real hope is grounded in a particularly messy struggle and it can be betrayed by naïve projections of a better future that ignore the necessity of doing the real work. So what we are talking about is hope on a tightrope.

Healthy Community This was the keynote topic. The speaker was Lewis Feldstein, who collaborates with others on publications and projects like Better Together [www.bettertogether.org], promoting community and civic engagement with the tag line: “Connect with others. Build trust. Get involved.”

We discussed at length the concept of ‘social capital.’ It is who you know that matters. Connectivity is at its core. Those who have it are more optimistic, resilient, healthier, safer. Communities that promote it have better schools, more responsive government, and more inclusive and successful commerce. Social capital creates shared norms, builds trust, strengthens bonds with friends and build bridges to strangers.

Without it, we are constantly competing for what is perceived as limited resources, putting out fires, reacting instead of responding.

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Political Health The Call Barbara Lawton spoke about political health and its place in/impact on/ contribution to community in the first of the call and response pairs.

She was the 43rd Lieutenant Governor of Wisconsin and the first woman elected to that position. At that time, she was Chair of the Wisconsin Arts Board. To quote her: “All citizens have the possibility to survive and thrive.” In line with Maslow’s hierarchy, survival means food, shelter, and safety. To thrive, we require belonging and esteem i.e. access to resources like quality education, a good library system, diversity in representation at the governance level, and a healthy not-for-profit sector.

Availability and awareness of resources is key. A person who is aware that resources are available is more likely to survive, even thrive. If these two concepts exist on a continuum, art is a vehicle that can move us from possibility to probability. We all deserve knowledge of and access to culture.

Barbara gave examples of community leadership models that are based in generosity and concern for the common good: a free press that makes information more available and includes new media and its audiences, a community that values arts, culture, and promotes acceptance of new ideas.

She talked about the power of language, relationship, and advocacy. These build our capacity to reframe and orient, to refocus and move forward.

Dan Sikes was homeless in 2012. He’s a smart guy with many life challenges but has talents and creative energy. I met him when he was living in a transitional housing facility where once a week, residents, artists, and staff meet in the dining room of the house to make art. One series of workshops was all about mosaic art, its materials and methods. In preparation for the actual making, we took a trip to the St. Louis City’s Cathedral Basilica which just happens to house the largest collection of mosaic art in the world. It is open to the public most days. We had a guided tour that included a history lesson, introduction to different styles of mosaics etc.

The next week, at group check-in, Dan said something like this: “I never knew I could go in there. I pass that place all the time. I thought you had to have permission....”

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Human dysfunction is often described with big-concept words like racism, classism, sexism. Is there such a thing as culture-ism i.e. lack of access to for some or many on a local daily scale? When the ‘-isms’ are in control, we tend to be vigilant, to isolate, to protect ourselves physically and socially. The idea of what is possible is not clear.

Belongingness and self-esteem suffer.

The list of BIG vices includes fear and greed, but we each experience these in SMALL ways everyday. To bring an issue down to human scale is to become mindful of personal motives and power.

Authentic connection to and knowledge of the other trumps fear.

We listen more. We take risks and ask and advocate. We become resource-full for the self, the family, and the community. With new levels of relationship, we can choose collaboration over competition.

In my college classes, I like to introduce early on the idea of responsibility by re-naming it the ability to respond. Students are asked to identify and experiment with a personal communication challenge.

The research window is 7-10 days. The focus should be something practicable like talking slower or louder, time management, meeting new people etc. They choose two simple behavioral strategies that are repeatable over the time and that could impact the challenge [or not].

I give examples like improve a relationship, change your driving attitude, talk more, talk less in class etc. Many know immediately what they will do. Sometimes it takes them a day or two to actually start. Levels of motivation and persistence vary. Reflection and/or documentation are encouraged.

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They tell the story of the challenge, the strategies, and the results to each other in class while we sit in a circle. The self-disclosure that occurs among relative strangers is amazing. The feedback they give to each other is gratifying. It’s like they were waiting for someone to give them permission to do, to start, to act. They learn about how they see themselves and how others see them. They learn they are not alone, that they all have more in common than they knew.

The experiment demonstrates that you have choices, the you can make small changes. We are all gradually living our way into who we are and how we would will our lives to be, one challenge at a time.

The Response Ra Joy, the executive director of the Illinois Arts Alliance, spoke about his organization and its advocacy on behalf of the arts, artists, and artfriendly policies. His began with: “In 1989, the Arts Alliance publicly supported the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for displaying the provocative work of one of its students titled “What is the proper way to display a US flag?” As a result, our funding from the Illinois Arts Council was reduced to $1 the following year. We framed that $1 check, and it hangs in our office as a symbol of our unwavering commitment to Illinois artists and arts organizations.”

His point? Democracy is a verb, an action word. We speak, worship, publish, assemble, and petition as is guaranteed by the bill of rights.

Each of us can engage civically, in the presence and company of others, using many forms of public dialogue. That dialogue. If we go beyond villainization of the other and reveal precious common ground, if we value energy and creativity, then we are in service to the greater good.

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He referenced Richard Florida, who in 2002, made predictions about the long-term economic effect of the creative class i.e. tech workers, artists, musicians, gays, and a group he called the ‘high bohemians.’ He said that creatives would be the leading force of economic growth, creating millions of jobs over the decade, becoming 40% of the population.

W. Edwards Deming, who preceded Florida, listed 14 points that are lenses through which we can:

- - - -

appreciate a system understand variation incorporate psychology explore epistemology [theory of knowledge]

His work in Japan with Toyota impacted individuals at every level and function, fundamentally changing the manufacturing machine itself.

So we have gathered an unlikely cast of systems thinkers and doers: Lewis Feldstein, Ra Joy, Richard Florida, Abraham Maslow, W. Edwards Deming AND the high bohemians with ideas that range from civic engagement at home to quality improvement across the world.

Les Miley’s words also repeat in my head, “You never know what you are going to find on your way to looking up something else.”

Connections. Systems. Research. You don’t know if it will move you forward or backward, be relevant or distracting, be micro or macro in focus. Connections are waiting to be made with and among creatives from all fields. The politics of governments, parallel economies, urban and rural communities, the arts and culture can benefit from broader campaigns and more inclusive maps.

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Service and Beyond For ten years, I taught in a suburban branch of St. Louis Community College. As an adjunct, I was mostly relegated to teaching 2-3 sections of a survey course in the communications department. In this course, Comm 101, you learn a little about a lot i.e. how to define human communication, relate it to self–concept and esteem, work in groups, experiment with non-verbal behaviors, and live to tell about the muchdreaded public speaking experience.

This was a requirement for most students, so there were usually dozens of sections. It was also a guaranteed transfer course so curriculum was standardized for instructors e.g. text book and study guide, five tests with questions pulled from a test bank, a set of experiential skill assignments etc. I, the socially-engaged artist/educator, always want students to take away more than a book and a grade for their tuition dollars. I added my own accountability elements and activities. I prefer to go beyond multiple choice questions and deepen the experience by highlighting relationshipbuilding: student to student, student to teacher, individual to community.

Early on, I formed an alliance with the Service Learning/Civic Engagement coordinator, Donna Halsband. I got my feet wet by initiating short-term projects until the year that grants were offered to individual instructors.

The task: design a service learning/civic engagement experience that could be embedded into course curriculum. I applied for and received $3000 for the project that was titled: Encountering Intercommunity Dialogue: A Verbal and Visual Journaling Experience.

I hired partners from outside the college system who had complementary skill sets. Carol Lark was an artist/educator/art therapist. She and I designed an interactive journaling process that involved drawing, writing, poetry, group process, and lots of reflection over the course of the semester. Michele Ryker Owens [artist/educator] filmed and documented our site exchange visits and the journal exchanges between the two groups.

She filmed the culminating events as part of a longer documentary.

Our goals: To discover and name attitudes, stereotypes, and fears reported by two seemingly disparate groups: 1] 20 community college students, mostly young and inexperienced, oriented to suburban or rural lifestyles.

2] 10 men who are/have been homeless for a variety of reasons and oriented to a mostly urban lifestyle.

Start a conversation to address the assumptions and the fears of both groups with questions that were in line with communications theory and interpersonal/relational development like: How do you see yourself? How do you see others? How do you see others seeing you?

The protocol: Each person in each group would keep a visual and verbal journal of written and visual responses to a series of prompts and activities initiated by the artists and me. The journals would be exchanged 3-4 times between groups. They would be read and discussed, and the conversations videotaped. The videos were also exchanged and viewed.

Each group took a ‘field trip’ to the others’ site. The men went to the college in the evening when the students were not there, the students to the shelter on a Saturday morning after the men had left.

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We purposely did not bring the two groups together until near end of the semester. There was a culminating event at each site. The first was a meal at a parish hall where the collaborative met on Thursdays. The students planned the menu, and the men planned a participatory art project.

Fried chicken and homemade cookies were on the menu. The art project was an old wooden door, an assortment of found objects and ephemera , and paint. It was titled Into the Future/Through the Same Door, symbolizing the new perspectives, bringing the two cultures a little closer to understanding.

An exhibit documenting work from the journals was mounted in the library on the campus in minimalist fashion with photo copies of journal pages on paper and vellum and attached to huge tin sandwich boards with magnets. Viewers started at one end, reading the story of how the semester began and continued through to see how ideas developed and assumptions were challenged over the next 16 weeks. We provided simple supplies, and viewers were invited and encouraged to add their own thoughts and responses to the actual exhibit.

Robert’s drawing

The impact of the project continued in two ways. We published a spiralbound book of images and text for faculty and the student participants that is archived in the campus library. Over the next two years, I made presentations at regional and national service learning conferences about the project to other educators and communities.

Student poster presentations were also part of the exhibit. As a part of the course curriculum, students met in groups in and out of class to identify an actual need in the community and propose an action plan to address that need. This required additional reflection on what they had seen, heard, felt during the semester. It also provided an opportunity to apply these new insights to real world skills like brainstorming and problem-solving within a group. This was an opportunity to imagine and experience their place in the community as informed citizens.

The accessibility, immediacy, the raw edges of this project and the exhibit that followed were captivating. The message was clear. For all of us, a new dimension was added to the concepts of service, civic engagement, citizenship, and lifelong learning. One of the students from that class was Robert, a quiet thoughtful person I still see occasionally. His words and images are memorable. I know his view of himself, the community, and the world were changed and deepened.

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If we are civically engaged, if we see and take a role for ourselves, if we take the time to listen, we are able to respond. When we are not able to respond to do that, the health of the community is in question. The arts provide structure and process for engagement on many levels, in many directions. Artifacts are produced that document the process. For today and for future audiences. A record of the energy and direction of the people in a room, in a neighborhood, in a community.

In Michele Obama’s words: “The arts are not just a nice thing to have or to do if there is free time or if one can afford it. Rather, paintings and poetry, music and fashion, design and dialogue, they all define who we are as a people and provide an account of our history for the next generation.”

Spiritual Health The Call Rabbi Jonathan Biatch opened this topic with a call to go beyond religion...to individual responsibility, to relationships that are intention-al and respect-full. He asked the question: Is this also the language of art and creativity?

My Response An individual/artist is responsible for: 1. mindful connection to the other, a community, a context 2. commitment to, respect for, and acceptance of process 3. the search for a unifying element as structure AND potential

It is on the job that I learned to talk about the elements of composition e.g. line, form, texture, color. Another one of those constructs is the unifying element, the seen or unseen thing that holds the piece together, draws your eye to the right places, the infrastructure, so to speak.

I learned from others how to tweak the details while looking at the bigger picture.

I am not a painter, cannot draw portraits or perspective, do not have a degree in visual art. My studio practice is with clay mostly. I have shown regularly at fairs and galleries with artists whose work I admire. I was the education director at a small school for the arts where we provided on-site programming and curriculum in the schools. I regularly facilitate visual and performing arts projects and process, often with artists who complement my skills.

When working with people who do not identify as artists, I remind myself to tread lightly, push and pull, over time, through more than one piece of work to get across the idea of process and an individual perspective on product. The best trick is to catch somebody in the act as they reveal their own way of seeing/unifying. The relationships develop along with the art and the possibilities.

I mentioned before the relational dance that we had in Les Miley’s ceramics studio: make work in multiples, defend ideas and process in a private mini-critique session. We learned to see patterns and problems and solutions. To this day, I do this and encourage it in others. It lessens the preciousness of the end product and brings focus to the getting there.

If nothing else, it slows you down.

When discussing the arts, we talk often about relationship and the importance of process vs. product as in 1 and 2. We work under the umbrella of prevailing wisdom, but we’re usually not shy about adding a personal spin. The concept of a unifying element is more nebulous.

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A good visual composition often requires a unifying element. The same is true of a collaboration. Individuals influence its form, flavor, texture, and direction, but a connecting thread that is sometimes invisible is required for viability. After 15 years as managing artist, I am that unifying element for the community collabARTive. I am the constant, present at almost all sessions and events. I observe the variables as they unfold. I am liaison for the agency, the artists, the programs, and the men and women in those programs. I am the keeper of stories, the initiator of any advance or retreat strategies, a repository of the successes and challenges. I did not foresee the longevity of this program. We could not know what lessons would be taught and learned. I am grateful for the energy and support of many many others along the way. I continue to be accountable to the agency staff and clients, to funders, to the community.

There was a time when I thought that maybe I should not/did not need to be present every time. Perhaps, I told myself, it’s your issues of control or a false pride that keep you there. That particular voice in my head was silenced once and for all by two or three incidents with artists and agency program staff that went awry and required major course correction.

Over the years, we have seen weekly workshop participation wax and wane. The most obvious reason is that homelessness goes hand in hand with transiency. Staff changes and shelter program issues, weather and holidays, the economy in general and the demands of hard-won jobs for the men in particular have their effect. Early on, I worried about this.

Are the numbers the most important thing? Will funders object? Is it too much to require of the men, the staff? As of today, we have expanded into two other transitional housing sites within the agency. We have also placed an artist in a sister agency who work with homeless women to demonstrate how this collaborative model translates.

What I have come to believe is this: This is an arts collaboration.

A space where people and projects move in and around and through.

It is informed by individuals, past and present, artists or not, homeless or not. It is a unifying element. Its primary function is to hold a place for community. To go beyond social services. To connect fragile people to resources, culture, and their own creativity. Artists, students, neighbors, funders, and supporters are a part of the collaboration.

They bring biases and stereotypes and assumptions. About art, homelessness, artists, their own capacity. The big picture is made of these disparate and daunting and delightful elements. The original [and often incorrectly translated] phrase of Gestalt psychologist Kurt Koffka says it well: “The whole is other than the sum of the parts”.

Even as we are offered a creative way to process and contribute, we sew the seeds of compassion. Writer Nancy Beckett says: “Compassion in my mind is an admixture of feeling and sustained attention with regard to others. Compassion is the absence of cruelty. Compassion is steady and relaxed—allowing patience where we may not have any for ourselves.

Compassion is acceptance of what you didn’t realize or can’t understand.

Compassion is not attainable without process—going through the various methods of drafting. Each one provides you with another perspective, another point of focus. Each method provides more ingredients to the approach that helps the content to stand on its own...”

The ‘absence of cruelty’ complements a Rabbi Biatch’s call for commitment. The writing process requires ‘various methods of drafting’ as does human relational development. We ‘read’ our relationships over and over like a compelling novel...re-draft and re-focus, adjust perspective, create unifiers that sustain and structure connection.

The language of art and creativity needs words like continuous curiosity and core capacity. It requires active listening. As capacity builders, we write and speak as artists, preachers, teachers,students, neighbors.

To hold a space together, we focus on the details of the incomplete and evolving puzzle of community.

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Economic Health The Call Dr. Jerry Hembd began this talk with concepts influenced by thencurrent events...the bank bailouts, the recession, generally tough economic times. He referenced Richard Florida’s ‘creative class’ and the concept of a creative economy.

Clearly, I am not always a linear note taker. I tend to focus on the details that work with my bigger picture. I wish I could rewind the part where he said ‘too big to succeed.’...it was word play referring to the too-bigto-fail banks and an examination of economies and human scale. It was a vote for local access, equity, and allocation of resources. He talked about sustainability. He talked about relationships that, over time, create ecosystems that are observable and viable.

The ‘riddle of the authentic we’ is the ongoing but necessary tension between unity and diversity. He used words like capacious and conflated. What is our capacity for individual contribution?

When/where does the ‘we’ go forward or pull back? Apology is not only about saying sorry. Rather, it is from the Greek word apologia [Aristotle’s Apologetics] meaning “defense of a position through the systematic use of information.”

The Response Tom Borrup responded to Hembd as a creative consultant with 30 years of experience and as the author of The Creative Community Builders’ Handbook. His key words: local, entrepreneurial, place, brand, culture.

He talked specifically about the assets and history of a place, its identity and its position in the global economy, its culture made visible by way of expended energy and perceived functionality.

A place that has a discoverable culture is ‘brand-able.’ Is it authentic, are its people civically engaged, is there a sense of/effort toward inclusion? Are adaptability, synergy, and resilience the markers of that functionality? Concepts like adaptability and resilience can be over-simplified with images of boot straps, corporate ladders, and transformation through trial and tribulation. We are engaged by thinkers like Borrup to consider how community process and real reflection and evaluation bleed into the individual choices of real people.

In working people who are marginalized, with students, even with artists and entrepreneurs, I have observed that we often listen to the voices in our head that sound like parents, preachers, politicians, celebrities, teachers.

They speak with authority, can be tempered with religiosity, are so close and yet so far. Other voices tell us what ‘everybody’ knows, tout one best way to health, wealth, and salvation. Just do it and you’re done, right?

I heard Peter Senge say once that he does not like the word ‘sustainable’.

I agree. It is not enough, does not imply change or growth, settles for only what is necessary for maintenance. If we gather knowledge and experiences and observe over time, if individual needs are satisfied, if resources are gathered...then collaborations are viable and move forward.

Movement is incremental. New information that builds on the old and searches for ease in relating over time, creates observable capacity.

In community work in general and a participatory arts practice in particular, there is this playing of old tapes and, of course, the allure of new temptations. The key is the grounding. In process. In reflection over time. In celebration of shared goals and products. And more reflection.

And more time.

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Karma Repair Kit: Items 1 - 4

by Richard Brautigan

1. Get enough food to eat, and eat it.

2. Find a place to sleep where it is quiet, and sleep there.

3. Reduce intellectual and emotional noise until you arrive at the silence of yourself, and listen to it.

4.

This is one of the few poems I’ve ever committed to memory.

It is profound in its simplicity and its wisdom.

What to say about Number 4? 1 and 2 are pretty straightforward [although a good procrastinator could get stuck in the definition of ‘quiet’ or the concept of ‘enough’]. Number 3 brings us up short, sits us down with our baggage in tow, dares us to take inventory. Some of us fill the void in Number 4 with those ’other’ voices and nervously move on.

Some are paralyzed and perplexed, defaulting to a back burner strategy, seeing opportunity but not ready for blank spaces or scary choices.

The connection to Maslow’s hierarchy is there of course. Basic needs come before belonging and esteem. The personal approach and point of view is implied but deeper questions about silence and self underlie... why? when? how? at what cost and to whom?

An artist/educator/bridge builder makes an end run around that resistance, with distraction and diversion, into safer territory...the telling of stories about what we did, what we saw, what we felt. Instead of asking ‘why did you do that?’ try ‘what happened? Or ‘what was it like?’

It’s not easy, but it is simple. In any situation, we can answer with a memory, a connection, an encounter...pieces of the bigger story of self.

If we choose to write it or tell it out loud, it comes into the light and gains an audience. It is now a tool for repair or re- build, a step into the ‘silence of self’.

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Resilience There is a set of exercises I use to introduce students to goal-setting and personal resiliency [without calling it directly that]. If you call it a game, construct a list, or rearrange pieces of a personal puzzle, it’s less intimidating.

The possibilities for engagement are here...the list, the length of the list, the content of the list, the sharing of lists, the possibilities in listening and reflecting. Endless. Intrapersonally and interpersonally....

The folks at www.lessons4living.com have some practical but engaging tools.

One of these activities has a very formal title but an immediate process:

WORK

ASSESSING YOUR RESILIENCY RESOURCES - Get a blank sheet of paper.

- Number 1-20.

- Make a list of twenty things that you like to do.

Quoting from the website text: “These do not have to be things that you are currently doing but anything that you have ever enjoyed. In doing this exercise, you may notice something unusual. Many people do.

You become aware that you cannot even come up with twenty things that you like to do.

This observation can become distressing when you think of the possibilities. How many options to enjoy something does life offer? Probably hundreds of thousands and perhaps several million. Let’s suppose that there are a million possibilities, and you can’t even think of twenty options. What does this suggest to you? You have a limited repertoire.

With such limited choices, it is like going to the grocery store when you are very hungry and finding that there are only three items on the shelves and you can’t stand any of them.

You now have to eat something you do not like or do without. With limited choices for enjoying life, you will have difficulty in keeping your resiliency resources up.”

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Picture the Box of Life and decide what fills it up. Some people have the strategy of filling the box with just one thing. For example, some people fill the Box of Life with work. They tend to look at life through the lens of work. When work is going well than life looks good.

If there is a bad day at work then life can look frustrating and depressing. For other people, the Box of Life is filled with the “one thing” of a relationship. When the relationship is good then life is good. When the relationship is poor then life seems negative. Filling the Box of Life with just one thing is not a good strategy. Ideally the Box of Life is divided into many compartments and each is filled with something meaningful, fun, or creative.

WORK

FRIENDS

EXERCISE

FISHING

FAMILY

CHURCH

HOBBY

CHARITY

PETS

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Your Box of Life may be filled with work, family, church, hobbies, pets, reading, exercise and so on. On a day when work is not good, you have other lenses through which to view life. Work may be only one-ninth of life that is not good but the other 8/9’s are fine.

With a Box of Life filled with variety you have many choices to revitalize yourself.

Your resiliency will be high and you will bounce back because of your many resources.”

I usually ask students to work with a group and draw a larger box.

Individual elements appear. Some are common to many, and some are unique. There is discussion and discovery about the self and the other. Familiar activities like list-making and fill- in-the-blanks get at bigger issues like choice, access to resources, and personal responsibility.

Relationships cannot help but change us. We are more resilient.

We are resources for each other.

Darryl Conner, in his book Managing at the Speed of Change, lists ways to develop resiliency and manage change....one we need, the other is inevitable, both we resist.

Be Positive - See life as challenging, dynamic, and filled with opportunities.

Be Focused - Determine where you are headed and stick to that goal so that barriers do not block your way

Be Flexible - Open yourself to different possibilities when faced with uncertainty.

Be Organized - Develop structured approaches to be able to manage the unknown.

Be Proactive - Look ahead, actively engage change, and work with it.

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Being proactive enables you to prepare for what might be coming.

It helps you to scan for signs of change at the step of sensing ‘something’s up’. Focus is needed to clarify the situation and clearly identify the problem or opportunity. Organization enables the development of a comprehensive and detailed plan of implementation. A positive outlook facilitates the actual beginning of the work of change as plans are put into action. Flexibility is needed as adjustments are made and you begin to sense that ‘this will work’.

From the position of having gotten through change you once again need to be proactive as you look ahead to what might be next and prepare to go around the cycle once again. Surviving change will depend upon being a resilient individual.“ Stories are gathered: connection response-ability listening karma repair We observe and acknowledge: reflection resiliency change Shared vision and collaboration: engagement structure culture

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Health/Place/Physical/Mental This reflection includes ideas from more than one talk on the final day: Dr. William Cronon on placemaking, Stephanie Robert and Roseann Weiss on social issues and community art.

“Once in his life a man ought to concentrate his mind upon the remembered earth, I believe. He ought to give himself up to a particular landscape in his experience, to look at it from as many angles as he can, to wonder about it, to dwell upon it. He ought to imagine that he touches it with his hands at every season and listens to the sounds that are made upon it. He ought to imagine the creatures there and all the faintest motions of the wind. He ought to recollect the glare of noon and all the colors of the dawn and dusk.” ~N. Scott Momaday, The Way to Rainy Mountain The above could be a description of William Cronon’s work in American environmental history and the history of the American West. His research seeks to understand the history of human interactions with the natural world: how we depend on the ecosystems around us to sustain our material lives, how we modify the landscapes in which we live and work, and how our ideas of nature shape our relationships with the world around us.

We hear so much discussion in our cities and in our rural areas about placemaking and public art, art and culture. Cronon has a metaphoric formula that calls out the big picture of people and place in a way that really got my attention:

The details that make the formula workable can come from these questions: Where do you live? How do you live? What will you do today that is good for this place?

You and I are the caretakers, the homemakers. Our job is to consider and then knit together the past and present with storytelling. The telling of your story, my story, our story. Stories contain our history and our prophecy. They inspire us, they make moral claims and teach us lessons, they are the touchstones of community that are often unnoticed or under-utilized. Stories mark our crises, recognize our heroes, tell the endings, happy or not. Storytelling and citizenship go hand in hand.

In working with marginalized groups in general and people who are homeless in particular, it is too often socio-economic status, family dysfunction, a prison record, a physical or mental illness that becomes the only story of a person’s life. We disconnect from possibilities and from each other while we look for the right answer, a quick fix, a rescue.

In an art-full pursuit of the WHOLE story, we remember other ‘chapters’ that only we can tell...small things, funny things, sad things.

Stories about kitchens and bowling alleys and cars. First jobs, second marriages, the third cousin on your mother’s side who gave you your first bike. This is not just therapeutic respite or distraction...it’s a tool for gaining perspective. We see that we are multi-layered, dimensional, part of a bigger picture. Our big stories have back stories, and those back stories are often the ones that point the way as we begin to see ourselves as whole and not defined by crises or diagnoses.

We become citizen travelers with connections and choices.

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Stephanie Robert spoke as a social worker and licensed practitioner.

Her interests are: Aging and health; social and economic determinants of health; neighborhoods and health; racial disparities in health.

She talked bout ‘embedded collectivities’ illustrated by concentric circles with a dot in the middle. Each of us is at the center of many contexts and constructs. The self moves in and out, alone and with others, choosing and forming tribes of choice simultaneously [and successfully, we hope].

A search of this term brings up chaos theory and con-joining, in science and in society. Irit Rogoff described the concept in very formal language in We—Collectivities, Mutualities, Participations. I have ‘translated’, but there is surely more than one way to interpret the quote below: Collectivity is something that takes place as we arbitrarily gather to take part in different forms of cultural activity such as looking at art. If we countenance that beyond all the roles that are allotted to us in culture—roles such as those of being viewers, listeners, or audience members in one capacity or another—there are other emergent possibilities for the exchange of shared perspectives or insights or subjectivities—we allow for some form of emergent collectivity.

Furthermore that performative collectivity, one that is produced in the very act of being together in the same space and compelled by similar edicts, might just alert us to a form of mutuality which cannot be recognised in the normative modes of shared beliefs, interests or kinship.

Translation: Collectivity happens when we choose to put aside roles and assumptions to make room for something new because being together has a potential for newness.

To speak of collectivities is to de-nativise community, to argue it away from the numerous essential roots of place and race and kinship structures that have for so long been the glue that has held it together.

Her research looks at social and economic factors in different neighborhood contexts, how and why there are disparities, and how health and well-being are affected over time, into old age.

She referenced the field of ‘community informatics’ that applies technology to information and communication networks. These are leftbrain tools for telling the story of community so far and imagining how far it could go, tools for seeing community processes and achievements objectively, tools that confirm or disconfirm our subjective perspectives.

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Translation: Collectivity suspends personal constructs and releases us temporarily from our baggage and beliefs.

Equally, to speak of mutualities is to think against the grain of ideological mobilizations that are grounded in the pursuit of an end, of a conclusion, of a resolution. To replace that ideological imperative with the ongoing processes of low key participations that ebbs and flows at a barely conscious level.

Translation: Mutualities/commonalities encourage awareness, participation, and process and de-emphasize products and timelines.

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With Not For Roseann Weiss, my friend and mentor from St. Louis’ Regional Arts Commission, asked questions about: citizenship, citizens, roles, responsibilities. Citizenship is more than voters or protesters or volunteers. Citizenship is literally and figuratively citizens sailing on a ship. So then: What is policy and who makes it? How do we connect to them? What is effective? How long does it take? How long do we wait?

Her answer was a process in six steps.

1] Awareness No meaningful connections are made without it. The head connection, the light bulb, the aha moment. This is the first step.

2] Reflection To me, this means consistently being aware of your awareness and noticing how the new idea fits with the old [or not]. Are you adding, subtracting, combining, or just holding for now?

3] Opportunity Who/what is knocking? Is there a process or procedure to which you can apply the new information? Is it a place holder for the really big combination yet to come?

4] Stories As community artists, we do not do our work in vacuous space or lonely garrets. Finding likely conspirators, candidates, partners, funders is what we are about. The best bids for connection are in the offerings that are personal stories. Stories about where we have been, where we are, how we would will our lives to be. If we really listen, we hear significance. There is magic in the story and the teller. A spell is cast that connects the self to the other.

5] Cross-talk A story told and heard draws comment. It also draws pictures, brings other contexts into temporary focus, changes realities and relationships. This is the simplest form of collaboration. It is also the most fleeting, reminding us to repeat steps 1 and 2.

6] Shifting focus As my dad used to say, now you know something you didn’t know before. The knowing adds to and changes: how we see ourselves, how we see others, and how we see others seeing us...

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That last step, shifting focus, had me imagining my own process for initiating and maintaining collaboration. Long or short-term, large or small...you can’t call it collaboration unless you do commit to a process like: 1] Presence Be here now. Be right now, right now. Simple...but not easy.

2] Awareness What is here now? Who? Why? How does it feel? Look? Smell?

What are the inter-person dynamics? Where are we and why?

How do we talk about where we are and/or where we could be?

3] Reflection By taking time early in relationship for this process, we are more likely to retain and share details. This is often an inter-person conversation but can also be an introspective, solo reconnaissance mission. Timely consideration with intent is the key.

4] Presentation This is where you package it and ‘ship it’, as Seth Godin says. You connect the pieces of who needs what, who does what, who will want to see/ hear what we have done or what we know. Choose a medium, make a schedule, gather the constituency, start the clock.

5] Documentation/Story It happens. All along the way. It has reflections and awareness of its own and keeps a presentation style or culminating event in mind.

Listening, moving forward, problem-solving...all of these are part of the process along with record keeping and picture-taking and sound bite recording. We are gathering the bits of the story that we will tell.

A good story, as you know, requires character, setting, detail, conflict, and some resolution....even if that resolution is back to step 1 [in either list].

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6] Evaluation/Focus/Re-Focus This is where details of the conspiracy are revealed. In the Latin: Con=With. Spira=Breathe. We/you/they have been ‘breathing’ together. As we evaluate, is it a long slow exhale? A quick, loud ’whew, glad that’s over!’? Is there sufficient quantity of air and oxygen for another go? Are there witnesses to the conspiracy? Is their breath affected by the exhale?

When people gather around a quilt or sit still to knit/sew/make together, stories come out. Gossip, news, memories are shared aloud and woven invisibly into the product.

Intuit-ive. Intention-al. Invest-ment.

Rules and roles are agreed upon in the present, and collectivity is created along the way. A healthy group is no accident...it comes from and depends on skill and attention to detail.

Isn’t making art in community like building a small nation? We ask or are invited to enter. We develop conscious regard for space, time, and individuals. We determine the boundaries of civic and cultural cooperation together. We want a good product. We share in the making and the meaning. We show and tell about the product AND the process.

Conclusion: Resilient communities are participatory communities.

No to outreach, no to top-down.

With, not for.

FORWARD

I was inspired and encouraged to begin this project during a year-long community arts fellowship at the St. Louis Regional Arts Commission.

Over 4 years, it has been my practice to sit at a big white and chrome table at Red Chair on Cherokee to write and read and read and write three times a week. I am grateful to all the people, past and present, close and far, whose influence has kept me grounded and walking through the re-searching of all these nooks and crannies of passion and practice.

Seth Godin, you will be proud of me. I made this thing. It will ship.

Wherever it lands, it is for starting conversations, hearing stories, connecting, and collaborating.

Thank you, Amy at Paper Boat Studios, for your patience and skill as we navigate the waters of designing, making, and publishing.

Bill Cleveland, Roseann Weiss, and Beverly Naidus reminded me often to attend to those spaces between the fast forwards. Thank you, Leslie Holt and Juan Chavez, for the perspective-taking and choice points gained. A host of other artists and colleagues walked with me through a virtual door that I always suspected was there.

Along the way, there were gracious readers and editors: Roshaunda Cade, Ed Carroll, Vita Geluniene, Ann Haubrich, and Roseann Weiss.

Harper Barnes, you went the whole distance, and you let me see it through your eyes.

Thank you, Donna Turner, for eagle eyes on construction, commas, and content.

Thank you, John M. Winn, for your wisdom and inspiration.

Thank you, John A. Winn, for....well, you know.

Amen.

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Re: SOURCES Dr. Eric Berne. Transactional Analysis in Psychotherapy: Structures and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups. 1961.

Richard Brautigan. The Pill Versus The Spring Hill Mine Disaster. 1968.

Daryl Conner. Managing at the Speed of Change. 1993.

W. Edwards Deming. Out of the Crisis. 1986.

Joseph Dager. Marketing With PDCA. 2011.

Alan Deutschman. Change or Die: The Three Keys to Change at Work and in Life. 2007.

Seth Godin. What To Do When It’s Your Turn (And It’s Always Your Turn). 2014.

D. Bob Gowin. The Art of Educating With V Diagrams. 2005.

Helene Aarons, HAarons Consulting. www.ntc.blm.gov/krc/uploads/412/13_MbN_partnership-vs-collaboration.pdf Abraham Maslow. A Theory of Human Motivation. 2013.

Irit Rogoff. We Collectivities, Mutualities, Participations. 2002.

Peter Senge. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. 1990.

Algodones Associates, Inc. Algodones NM. 1998.

Awakenings. www.lessons4living.com Blue Drum. Dublin, Ireland. www.bluedrum.ie Carla Rinaldi. Reggio Children. Reggio Emilia, Italy. www.reggiochildren.it/?lang=en William Cleveland. Director, Center for the Study of Art and Community. www.artandcommunity.com Beverly Naidus. Arts for Change: Teaching Outside the Frame. 2009 Special thanks to the Regional Arts Commission for its support and the funding to design and print this book.

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