Convenings
Past Learning Exchange Reports:
Seattle, May 3–5, 2002
Andrea Assaf
2002
Breaking Conventions Discussion Group: Interdisciplinary
Participants: Tom Borrup, Selma Jackson, Steve Day, Ann McBroom, Bill Bulick, Sharon Hayden, Raylene Lancaster.
Tom Borrup facilitated.
Designing Formats
Tom: Every person has a different style and sense of timing. A key challenge is designing formats that will work for everyone.
Sharon: We use lots of different methods. For instance, we had a high school debate with the speech club. The kids had to take the opposite viewpoint, which provided a great learning experience for them.
Raylene: We had meetings with different groups, and we didn't have strict rules. It amounted to lots of people having conversations, which moves our community more than anything else. It's casual conversation about important issues. It's a bit like osmosis. It's a form of consensus-building called aelike. Everyone has an opportunity to speak to the subject at hand. The conversation goes around the group 3 times, allowing people to consider different views. It takes time and requires commitment. There must be 100 percent consensus. If one person can't agree, there are several options: 1) that person can decide to live with the others' decision; 2) she can remove herself from the process and be noted as opposed to it; 3) she can change her mind over time; or 4) the group can stop the process and begin again later on. Aelike means to stand in agreement.
Framing Sessions
Raylene: It's important to find out why people are coming to the table and to set the environment of the discussion. Working with a group that's already on the same page is different than working with another kind of group ... Other circles that we've participated in were held for information's sake or to participate in an interactive session. Some meetings, people thought that they could share their ideas, but the meetings were actually designed to provide information to them. It's really important to make sure that people's expectations are aligned with the type of meeting planned. We need to be very clear about what the meeting is going to be. We have to be very clear with the speakers and then with the audience. We have to make sure that the speakers are on board and realize what is expected of them.
Selma describes town board meetings that focused on changing street names. Community members came to the meetings expecting to be able to propose and vote on new names, but the board had already decided on the names and were only allowing the community members to co-name them. She explains that the board caused a lot of tension by failing to set the parameters at the start of the process.
Selma describes the Urban Bush Women dialogues she's attended. At two of them, the participants received 3 index cards on which they were asked to write something about their own hair, something about other people's hair, and any questions they have about hair. At the third party, the facilitator didn't use that format, and the participants had very different opinions about the party. Some thought that there were very different agendas there, and Selma got flack from the host, who felt that the facilitators had agendas that they hadn't shared with others in the room. Selma said that they have gone back to the 3-question format as a result of that debriefing with the host (which was the first debriefing they'd done). The cards with the participants' questions are passed around the table so that everyone gets to read them and see that they aren't alone in their questions and thoughts. This process breaks down barriers. The dancers then develop an improvisational dance based on the cards and discussion, and the participants discuss their reactions to the dance.
She explains that the Urban Bush Women, who were new to Brooklyn, asked her to help them convene different groups of people, including a teen mentoring group (5 people), a house party (25), a community organization (40), and a church group. They also did a hair party at an Americans for the Arts conference in NYC (250 people). The artists tour the country, and the logistics of place influence the dialogues that occur there. In the larger sessions, they use a panel of community representatives who have a discussion before the larger audience and then they open it up to everyone.
The Role of Art in the Process
Selma: Art provides another way of engaging the audience. The artists take the written word and create a dance, which provides a new vocabulary. They use dance intermittently throughout the process.
Tom: The process of making art is also a place where dialogue can happen. Our project involves multiple layers with 5 artists who focus on equitable community development. In one layer, teenagers work with a found object sculptor who poses questions about what makes you feel safe in your community. The teens made sculptures that represented safety to them and then discussed how the objects represented their experiences. In another layer, a choreographer gets people to develop a movement vocabulary that they use to consider how their community is changing and how they want it to change. The project is helping artists to develop their participatory practices and enabling them to engage audiences in artmaking. In another layer, an artist draws a map of the community and tell participants to stand where they work or live. They can then see where they are in relationship to each other. She then rides a tricycle through them, weaving in and out and bumping into them to see what they will do – whether they will move, stay put, or move away and then come back to their initial spot. At bilingual events, she rolls paper out on the floor and, in small groups, asks participants to talk about and develop symbols that represent safety/comfort in their community. They then develop a mural with those symbols.
Raylene describes an exercise in which a circle of participants cross their arms, take the hands of two people across from them, and then try to untangle themselves without letting go of the others' hands. Children are able to do this more quickly. You can start to see leaders and followers and notice who moves where they think they need to go without talking to anyone else. Participants then discuss what happened. [We then did this exercise.] Raylene explains that it issometimes impossible to untangle a group, in which case, just like in dialogue, you just have to let go. The exercise parallels how things can emerge in discussion. You can end up in one big circle, two smaller circles, or have to begin again.
Abandoning Formats
Sharon: We sometimes have to abandon laying ground rules. Ground rules can sometimes prevent people from expressing themselves, because they’re afraid they might be disruptive. Rules are an interesting thing...
Tom: Most of us have abandoned the prevailing formats of how arts get created.
Ann: Perseverance sometimes had to abandon the idea that art had to stand on its own, which seems like violating some artistic norms.
Sharon: We commissioned an artist from another place to do our public art, but then the community took ownership of it and it became participatory. We had to deal with the tension between the original artist's intent and the community's wishes and values.
Raylene: This is what democracy is about, everyone having a voice.
Art or Culture? Community Concerns
Tom: You have to consider the history of an area. Different waves of immigrants can change an area dramatically. Needs and concerns change over time.
Raylene: There are generations of families here. Other people can look around and say, that's just a pile of rocks over there. But we know what that pile of rocks is and what it means to our community. Who determines what is art and what is culture?
Selma: In African American traditions, art and culture are one.
Sharon: When you create something and put it out there, how much do you let go?
Raylene: How much do others assume that you let it go?
Raylene discusses art and culture in the public domain and issues with others' appropriation of that art or culture. She provides the example of photographers who take photos of cultural practices that have great meaning to those who participate in them.
Raylene: We need to meet photographers with grave discussions, explain the problem to them, and demand a reaction.
Question: Does the art always become part of (and owned by) the community, as in Hawaii's case?
The group discusses public art and controversies over conserving the artists' intended expression versus meeting the community's needs/wishes. Steve describes a situation in North Carolina, where road expansion forces the State to sell public art back to the artist. Raylene states that it is crucial to consider the community's wishes and concerns.
Selma discusses a Minneapolis artist who interviewed community members and then developed the Freedom Gates as a tribute to Richard Wright.
“It's also possible to have a community respects and reveres an individual artists' vision.”
