Rubics...An image, a word, a movement...

I chose a prescription bottle as an image as I feel it's an accessible and relatable as an entry point for disability. We all have dealt with accommodation at some point in our lives whether through grief, a hospital stay, or the flu and common cold, etc. I also offer up this image as a way to critique how disability is viewed and the limitations of the medical model. The individual is left out of the picture.

Witness is the word I chose. At an artist talk given by Mark Tribe, an artist who uses protest footage in his video work, I asked him whether he was an observer or participant at these protests. He said both. I believe witness means there is accountability and responsibility of whether we take action.

Sweeping, the act of maintenance is the movement I chose as a metaphor. Again here is a choice. Is policy maintained simply for the sake of policy even if it is not constructive or detrimental? On the flip side, how are ethics and values maintained throughout all our actions and what happens if we realize they contradict policy? "Live Your Beliefs" (sweeping video)

Envisioning an Alaskan community artist collective

I got some unfortunate news via email yesterday: "We didn’t get the grant." In November, I applied for funding from an Alaskan foundation. I thought the project proposal was strong: in three rural Southeast Alaska Native communities, guiding youths in conducting community/elder interviews about their cultural history and identity, then working with the young people to create and produce a play based on those interviews. The grant was available only to applicant organizations, not to individuals, so I asked the leadership of an Alaskan theatre company if we could apply together. They agreed. The theatre was a natural fit for a host for this project, but the staff--overwhelmed as ever with productions, fundraising, etcetera--failed to submit a complete application in the very limited time we had. They were short one letter of support. I scrambled to help, and submitted a letter about one week late.

I’m frustrated, because it seems likely that our application wasn’t even considered because the theatre submitted it late.

I have renewed interest and enthusiasm for creating a non-profit organization of my own. As I imagine it, this organization would

• Function as a virtual/philosophical gathering place for Alaskan teaching artists and community artists
• Give artists like me a structure from which they could apply for projects that require an organizational application rather than an individual

It would also

• have no physical home
• function under the 501(c)3 umbrella of the Juneau Arts & Humanities Council
• have no staff and no overhead
• begin with the membership of a core group of invited artists
• potentially evolve in future years into a more complex entity

What are your thoughts, Rubics?

Do you have any ideas, inputs, challenges for me?

Any model organizations I should investigate?

What are some promising Next Steps?

Kenny Lake Stories - Copper River School District Artist-in-Schools Residency Week 1, December 2012

Hi Rubics,

I hope you guys have been enjoying great holidays!

Posting now about my progress on my community arts project in Kenny Lake, Alaska, and my experience during week 1 of the project in December 2012. 

Loading up the car in Anchorage to make the drive to Kenny Lake

Bin full of food for the week, including some fresh fruit for the teachers!

On the 4.5-hour drive from Anchorage to Kenny Lake on December 9th:

• Long beautiful drive, gray sky, gray road, gray mountains

Matanuska Glacier from the highway

• Stopping at ‘The Hub of Alaska,’ at the junction of the Richardson Hwy and Glenn Hwy, for gas and a coffee. Asked the clerk how far to Kenny Lake. 40 minutes, she said, I’m from there. Oh, I said, I’m going to work at the school. Oh, you must be the artist. So you know, then. Yes, she said, I saw it in the newsletter. ...Her name is Stacy, kids are jonathan, logan, and alexis. Actually Alexis is Stacy’s husband’s granddaughter, older son from a first marriage, but Stacy calls her her own. ..I liked this whole story, in the Hub of Alaska with my cup of weak coffee, my first welcome to Kenny Lake.

'Hub of Alaska' gas station in Glennallen

• From Glennallen, good radio signal--”keeping the christ in christmas.” Long straight Edgerton Hwy drops down down from the plateau, dark gray ribbon in a gray landscape of snowed-on forest and tundra. Sign in a yard: ‘Get US out of the United Nations. $5 info packet.’ Seems to be  libertarian streak around these parts. I might just buy one of those packets.
• Met Dave Wellman, owner of Wellman’s B&B.
• At school, setting up my equipment and space before Monday morning’s first session, Katie the custodian was all ready with names of interviewees. ‘Roy Britten’ -- ‘A salty one, you need at least one.’ 
• Teacher Rylee’s story of taking her teaching job, just last year--it’s all in! I think our theme, ‘What Makes Kenny Lake Home,’ is going to work very well here.

A friendly sign on the drive down the Edgerton Highway

A brief outline of the structure of my residency week: 

• Over the course of the 6-day residency, we completed interviews with 17 Kenny Lake residents.
• Working with 3 upper elementary classrooms and their teachers: 2nd/3rd grade; 4th/5th grade; and 6th grade.
• Monday sessions: building basic drama skills; exploring the experience of conducting interviews
• Tuesday sessions: building basic drama skills; defining ‘ethnography’; beginning to create interview questions
• Wednesday: Story Circle with five elderly residents of Kenny Lake
• Thursday and Friday sessions: classrooms interview additional interviewees, one or two at a times; identify ‘statue moments’ [performable actions, images, and feelings described in the interviews] which may be part of our script; continue to explore drama skills
• Thursday evening: dinner and planning meeting with three host teachers, discussing structure of the upcoming play script as well as a set of goals and intentions between now and late January

Facilitating a Story Circle with elder community members from Kenny Lake

6th grade students create performed statues from interview moments.

Notes from meeting with Copper River School District Staff Development Director (Tammy) about the state of arts integration in the district (Wed 12.12.12):

• This is the 2nd artist-in-schools residency in Kenny Lake’s remembered history (first was jewelry/metal-smithing)
• CRSD is part of New Visions grant from Alaska State Council on the Arts and the Department of Education - this is year 4 of 5 years
• Developments because of New Visions program include:
• Increasing arts residencies
• Being creative with design of residencies
• A fine arts credit requirement for h.s. graduation (next year’s grads will be the first to graduate under this requirement)
• In hiring interviews, asking prospective teachers about arts integration & possibility of teaching arts courses in schools
• Bringing in community members to fill some arts instruction (ie Kenny Lake music program)
• Adopted K-8 visual arts curriculum (with details about integration)
• Use e-learning programs to fulfill arts graduation credits (right now, art appreciation and art history courses)

• Tammy’s concerns:
• Increasing equity--old schedule was such that elective arts courses were only available to ‘smart’ kids who had more free periods
• Demonstrating to board and school administrators that arts don’t take away from the ‘requireds,’ but rather add a more well-rounded experience to student instructional time
• What’s next with the New Visions program? Can we show our progress/success and disseminate to other rural Alaska districts?

My considerations based on week 1; on my meeting with Tammy; and on my questions from the Collaborative Learning Experiment:

• This remains a really ambitious project. I have a lot of work to do simply to realize our artistic and educational goals, before even beginning to do the work of documentation and advocacy necessary to fulfill my attentions for the Collaborative Learning Experiment.
• This is a healthy school environment, with engaged and enthusiastic teachers, students, and community members. The complexity of this project would probably present more challenging obstacles in a situation with more already-existing problems.  
• This school and district already include many strong arts education initiatives, and many allies of the arts in schools.
• With that in mind, my renewed focus for my CLE question comes from one of Tammy’s stated concerns: Demonstrating to board and school administrators that arts don’t take away from the ‘requireds,’ but rather add a more well-rounded experience to student instructional time.
• How can I document and share this project in a way that supports Tammy in her goal?

• Considering Bill’s questions, after our most recent phone meeting of the Rubics Group:

Are you trying to change the curricular policies  of a school district 

OR 

Are you trying to help a small community of teachers discover new and effective ways to advance student learning?

Question: How does a short encounter have lasting impact?   Thought: The most enduring aspect of your project is the harvest of teacher interviews .  Question: How can you use the harvest of interviews to produce a conversation among teachers that has ripples long after you are gone? 

• My project question is: “How can I facilitate an educational theater project with the intention of generating experiences, events, and artifacts that may help change school district policy?” So I’d say, Bill, that I’m attempting to move toward changing curricular policy. The distinction I made before, though, is that I’m not so much setting the goal of making change immediately with this single project as aiming to provide ‘experiences, events, and artifacts’ that may help district stakeholders to make change. ...I’m accustomed to keeping my focus “limited” to student and teacher engagement in my residencies, so this focus on advocacy and policy change feels like it pushes me to go further in my work.
• The interviews we’re harvesting are from the community, about community life, not strictly from teachers--though teachers are interviewed! I think those interviews are great and lasting resources, but they may not serve the exact function you’re imagining since they’re beyond the topic of school policy.
• I like this phraseology, “produce a conversation among teachers that has ripples.” What this inspires me to consider is how I can plan to use my time most wisely when I return to the school to collaborate with teachers, to share the ‘artifacts’ with them that I’ve created, and to invite them to converse about their dreams and goals and strategies.
• Specifically, I’m expected to offer a teacher workshop during my next visit to the school. Typically, I design workshops that offer ideas for using drama in the classroom. But perhaps for this residency I can plan a more ‘macro’ workshop session, in which I share documentation with teachers and ask them to brainstorm about their intentions and next steps. 

Kenny Lake Mercantile

Finally...

I thought we had a refreshingly honest group phone meeting on December 20th. I still feel the same challenges I felt before: at this point, my engagement with the Rubics group--and with this blog--feels obligatory and ‘extracurricular.’ I don’t need to post this to the blog in order to fulfill my obligations or my artistic intentions. It feels like more work. I hope that you--Chanika, Constance, and Bill--will take the time to respond to all of these ramblings. Those responses alone help these blog posts feel more meaningful. And I’ll continue to ponder how we might deepen the value of our collaboration, and/or how we might be more successful with such a collaboration next time.

Here are my notes from our conversation with Bill:

RUBICS

Pay attention to the disconnects

1 – distance learning with own standards

2 – study group re: how do people collaborate across distance

Finding common ground? What are our common goals? How much common ground do we need to collaborate?

We don’t need each other to do our work.

Opportunity to learn from each other

Our work should reflect the disconnect –

What value can we be to each other to continue collaborate with each other?

Some way forward to feel motivated.

The blog - what is it good for?

Lean into/re-imagine the blog

Ryan & Chanika How do you engage institutions? (Bill can help, has experience)

Small group collab over long distance can be hard. What would have made this better? 

I need my energy focused on my own practice

Can art circumvent policy?

In the essay Codeswitch: The Transborder Immigrant Tool by Amy Sara Carroll in the book Somatic Engagement, Petra Kuppers, Editor, Caroll describes her collaboration with Micha Cardenas, Ricardo Dominguez, Elle Mehrmand, and Brett Stalbaum to create the Transborder Immigrant Tool (TBT), a device that uploads poems onto cell phones that provide coordinates to survive the treacherous border crossing between the U.S. and Mexico leading people to safety sites. Her collaborators have dubbed it "engaged poetics" as paraliterary and a G.P.S. as a "global poetic system." "Mary Pat Brady describes the US-Mexico border as a 'state-sponsored aesthetic project.'" In response to TBT, Carroll has received hate mail and death threats.

Carroll states,"TBT is a wager that we must codeswitch in the face of the enjambed politcsaestheticsethics of everyday US and Mexican anti-education, anti-research, anti LGBTQ, anti-immigrant, anti-Latin!, anti-Muslim...sentiments, masquerading as public policy.

Global Questions/Global Connections

Candy Chang’s Ted Talk shows how a provocative question can stimulate people’s hopes and dreams and create a common ground simply by asking people to publicly share what they would want to do before they die. The question was originally posted on a house in New Orleans and then provided people space to fill in the blank with their chalked responses. The popularity of the project blossomed into kits for others to create their own wish list at other sites globally. You can check out her other  projects here.

A collage of engagement with community & collaborators in Kenny Lake, Alaska

Hi Rubics,

Here is some documentation of my engagement with the community of Kenny Lake School and Copper River School District as I'm preparing to embark on my artist-in-schools residency there and to explore my study question for our group.

I chose to share this with you as a collision of images and information, a quick collage, rather than outlining my correspondence and research in great detail. The information and inspiration I've found exist in my head more like this collage than in a clean, organized format.

The images and text here include:

• emails between me, Copper River administrators, and Kenny Lake teachers.
• Historical research about the Kenny Lake community, from web resources.
• Images from a google image search of "Kenny Lake, Alaska."
• Information from a 2012 Alaska State Council on the Arts report about the situation of arts education in three focus school districts, one of which is Copper River.
• Information from "On Thin Ice," a 2009 report from the Alaska Arts Education Consortium, outlining both successes and challenges in current arts education policy and action around the state.

My most recent correspondence from the school was from the principal yesterday (Monday 12.03). Her comments are a good reminder to me to enter with a mindset of openness and readiness to improvise!--

As you’ll soon find, our community is fairly spread out and we’ve been experiencing very cold temperatures already (-30s, -40, nearing -50’s) so seeking out interview type candidates could be challenging as to getting them here to participate.  Just something to think about and plan well in advance for.  We’ll do all we can to make it happen in encouraging those wanted to help make this the most positive time for all involved.

Thanks,
Ryan

From goal to intention: Reframing my project question

Hi Rubics,

I am re-writing and reframing my project question for the Collaborative Learning Experiment:

How can I facilitate an educational theater project with the intention of generating experiences, events, and artifacts that may help change school district policy?How can I prepare for, implement, evaluate, and document an interview-based educational theater project so that experiences, events, and artifacts from the project may inspire the school district to consider new policy that can grow the inclusion of the arts in its academic classrooms and increase the arts-based instructional capacity of its teachers?
The changes are small but significant: I am shifting my focus away from a goal (to change policy)--which is an expectation for someone else--and toward an intention (to strive to create the conditions for potential change)--which is a resolution for myself.

As you know, I’ve been feeling frustrated in recent weeks with delayed communications from the administrator at the school district where my residency begins in one week. In my last packet response, Bonnie, my advisor, challenged me with this question:

How  might  you   reframe  the  project  to  be  something  that  operates  simply  on  shared   terms  and  within  the  acknowledged  reality  of  too  little  time?    Are  your   expectations  realistic  given  what  you’ll  have  to  work  with?    In  short  term   projects,  I  think  parachuting  can  be  best  avoided  when  you  enter  with  humility   and  in  a  spirit  of  learning  (as  you  are  describing)  and  without  an  assumption  that   you’ll  have  some  large  impact.    Perhaps  that  implies  an  improvisatory  method,   more  so  than  something  preplanned.
She also quoted one of my own statements from my packet cover letter: I said that in my frustrated correspondence with the district, I was
recognizing  my  tendency  to  want  action  on  my  own  terms.
I was struck by reading my own words, repeated back to me in her response. Someone who ‘wants action on his own terms’ doesn’t sound like a person I’d be particularly interested in collaborating with. That statement is even more surprising given some of the other work I’ve been doing this semester--analyzing and critiquing different models of collaboration in professional theatre production. I’ve been criticizing the lack of collaboration in a production I was recently involved in, and I’ve been working to articulate my own values for co-creating. But confronted with my own language about this educational project, I realized suddenly that I might be losing sight of some of my own values because I’ve become focused on achieving my ambitious goal of making change. Bonnie called my attention to this troublesome development.

I considered some of the words she used to describe my approach to this project (some of which I was using, too), like “expectations” and “impact”--in a word, “goals.” Phillip Moffitt writes (in an article Bonnie gave to us at residency): “With goals, the future is always the focus: Are you going to reach your goal? Will you be happy when you do? What’s next?” (Moffitt 2003) The original question I articulated for the CRSD project is not only outcome- and future-oriented, it’s also contingent on the engagement of other people whom I don’t know very well and with whom I don’t have a long history.

I’m reframing this question to focus on “setting intentions...not oriented to a future outcome”: “You set your intentions based on understanding what matters most to you and make a commitment to align your worldly actions with your inner values” (Moffitt 2003).

The Beginner’s Guide to Community-Based Arts (Knight & Schwarzman 2005) has been helpful as I’m preparing for the residency, too. In its chapter titled “Contact,” about initiating project plans with a community, it suggests some strong reflective questions:

What assumptions might you have about a community and its people?
What common goals do you and the community share?And one suggestion:
Be as honest and as open with yourself as you are asking others to be.
I hope that the teachers I’m teaming with at Kenny Lake School will give me a chance to share my ideas and will listen openly and with optimism. I need to give them the same opportunity if this is to be a true collaborative process.

Coincidentally--or not?--as I first started the reframing of my question, I heard back from Tammy at the school district office. Communication is now off and running with Kenny Lake School teachers and staff. I’m one week from my first day at the school, and I feel that we’re in a good place in terms of the timing of our planning. This weekend, I sent them a proposed content focus for the residency; now, I’ll wait to hear their ideas for other possible directions we might go. We’ve also scheduled a planning meeting when I first arrive in Kenny Lake. I’m eager to go to the school and, as best I can, to keep my focus on the discoveries, detours, and surprises that will inevitably come our way.