The second one of our big goals for the coming year is to create an education plan for the Drama Farm.  What exactly do we mean by that?  Well, I’m not entirely sure…

We’ve got lots of ideas for the educational principles behind the farm:  students learning in an informal environment; letting them loose to do their work and seek help as they need it.  But, I know there are a lot of ways we can facilitate that learning - “Free-Range” doesn’t necessarily mean “Free-For-All”!

I’ve got a few specific ideas for ways to guide the students’ educations while they’re at the farm.  We could have single-day workshops and seminars on various topics, taught by the staff advisors and/or other professionals in the community. We could do an informal round-table discussion (maybe over pizza one night a week?) where the students could talk with each other and the advisors about topics of their choosing. We could even give the students the opportunity to teach workshops for each other if they’re interested. There are a million possibilities out there - these are just a few.

The question is, how to we take all of these ideas and put them together into something cohesive? I hesitate to call it a “curriculum”, since that brings up images of formal education with lesson plans and such; I think what we want is more like a roadmap - something to plan out where we’re going and what we’re doing along the way, but not necessarily exactly how we’re going to get there.

Does any of this make sense? I don’t really have the knowledge to talk about education plans and philosophies in vocabulary that other people use - but I know that some of you do! Want to help us mold all of these loosely-related thoughts and ideas into a real education plan? Leave a comment below - we could really use the help!

Derrick Kwa has been an enthusiastic supporter of the Drama Farm since we first met several months ago, and last week he asked me to do an email interview about the Farm and the educational ideas behind it.

You can check out the interview over here on his blog. While you’re there, read some of his other posts - he’s got some great insight into improving the education system.

Thanks for the interview, Derrick!

I just read an inspiring post by David Boevers, one of my professors from Carnegie Mellon. It’s in response to the series of theatre education articles I mentioned earlier, and in it he outlines what the Carnegie Mellon School of Drama is doing to incorporate more of the creative, experimental, “thinking outside the box” aspects into their curriculum.

They’re doing some pretty amazing stuff, but the thing that really caught my eye was a course they’ve developed called OSWALD. Here’s what David has to say about it:

OSWALD. I swear to God the thought behind the OSWALD class is “help students question the status quo, think outside the box, and lead them to explore the larger questions.” Another creature largely of Joe Pino, but also Anne Mundell our Design Coordinator and then to a lesser extent the rest of us OSWALD is intended to help people learn to think, challenge assumptions, broaden horizons, and form their own measuring sticks. Like P.I.N.O. above, OSWALD stands for –REDACTED-. For a while the course was called “&^$%&#$.” The problem was that in development, as soon as we put a more conventional name on it like “charette” or “practicum” or “sandbox” we found that the name brought with it expectations. For our own ability to break the mold we had to come up with not only new content, but new language. As a sideline, the students are going NUTS trying to figure out what it stands for. I can’t tell you what they’re doing in there because it’s the first time through and I am not one of the teachers. I know the first day was a sort of scavenger hunt taking them all around campus looking for clues. There’s a day coming up where –REDACTED-. There was talk of having someone come in with no preamble and start teaching –REDACTED-. There’s no course outline; in the university catalog it says “a course sophomore Design and PTM students have to take, bring tools.” It’s taught as an 8 week intensive, meeting five days a week. Are we hitting our target? Is it working? We don’t know, but so far we’re happy with where it’s going. Evaluation will have to wait a few years I think.

I love the concept behind this - a whole course designed to make students stretch the boundaries of their thinking. Even though the implementation isn’t the same, the idea seems very much akin to the values of the Drama Farm - I think finding out more about what they’re doing could give us some great ideas for things to incorporate into our program. Of course, I won’t be able to talk about them here (just in case any CMU students happen by this blog), but if it leads me to any new Drama Farm ideas, I’ll let you know! =)

Also, you should definitely check out the rest of David’s post - the things they’re doing with the curriculum are really innovative and exciting. I loved every minute of my time at CMU, but it still makes me wish I was there right now instead of 5 years ago!

…to keep you busy while I plug away at updating the website… =)

I recently discovered the blogs of two university theatre professors who (I think) have the right idea about what theatre education should be like. Tom Loughlin at A Poor Player wrote an article yesterday about whether theatre departments today are inspiring their students to create, or just to re-create. In response to Tom’s article, Scott Walters at Theatre Ideas talks about creating a learning environment, rather than focusing on producing “good shows”.

These articles are both part of a longer series that Tom and Scott have written on the current state of theatre education, and I think a lot of it is relevant to the Drama Farm and what we’re trying to achieve. Take a look, and let me know what you think!

I haven’t been writing much lately, but that’s because there’s Big Things going on here in Drama Farm Land. We’re working on a major overhaul of the website right now - it’s pretty text-heavy as it is, and we want to make it more appealing to our potential collaborators (and add some of our new chickens!) Once that’s up and running, we’ll be starting a major push to find interested college students who want to work with us on creating a program for next summer. It’s exciting stuff!

In the meantime, check out this article from Good Magazine. It’s about Project M, which is actually based on a similar concept to what we want to do with the Drama Farm: 8 design students gather for one month, with the sole purpose of accomplishing something meaningful with their design skills. It’s really exciting to see what these students create, and reading it reinforced my belief that we could do something really amazing with the Drama Farm.

Give it a read, and while you’re there, consider subscribing to Good - it’s only $20, and all of that goes to the nonprofit of your choice. You get magazines, your favorite charity gets a donation - it’s a win-win situation!

And stay tuned - you’ll be seeing big Drama Farm updates in the next week or so!

Derrick recently did a great interview with Steli Efti about Supercool School, a new global online school that Steli is working on. Steli’s got some great ideas about education and making learning fun and interesting - rather than focusing on assimilating to the rules, structures and expectations of a formal school system, he’s working on creating a platform for people to help each other find the knowledge they desire and need. It’s actually a lot like the “open-source education” idea that Derrick and I both wrote about a while back.

You should definitely check out the whole interview, but here’s an excerpt from it that particularly spoke to me:

We want to get the sauce tasty. I often use the analogy of inventing tomato sauce. Tomato sauce was a huge invention - a great idea per se. But if you got the recipe wrong - it’s not tasty and people won’t eat it. So in our case, we believe that what we wanna do is a great idea and it will succeed. But we’re not 100% positive that the recipe is perfect right now so what we want to do is get it out there to as many people as possible and get feedback. If people say “mmmhhh…tasy” that’s great. If not, that means back to the kitchen table and more experimenting till we get it right.

This is exactly how I feel about where we are with the Drama Farm right now. We’ve got what we think is a great idea, but now we need to test it out and see how it works - where the obstacles are, what needs to be tweaked and fixed to make it better, and also what’s really great about it and what we should keep.

Steli talks about using Facebook as a way to get feedback from a large community of people, and I’ve been thinking about ways we could do that too. I’ve also been thinking that we need to just jump in and do it - maybe create a small “beta version” of the Drama Farm, and try it out next summer. I think we won’t know exactly what we’re getting ourselves into until we try, so let’s do it!

If you’re a student, theatre professional, or just interested in what we’re doing, and you’d like to be one of our “beta testers”, leave a comment below or drop us an email. And spread the word to other people you know - the next step is to build a real community of people and get as much feedback as we can, as we start to put together a program for next summer. This is one case where too many cooks will definitely not spoil the sauce!

Also, check out Steli’s post elaborating on his tomato sauce analogy, and take a look at Peopleized, where Derrick did his interview - I haven’t played with it a lot yet, but what I’ve seen is very cool!

So, I got back from Nonprofit Boot Camp at 8:00 last night, and my head is still spinning! It was almost 12 hours of fabulous workshops, keynotes, and chatting with other nonprofiteers, and now that it’s over I’m sorting through all of the new ideas and perspectives I’ve found. Here’s just a few of the big things I took away from it - I’m sure there will be more to come in the next few weeks, as I continue to ponder…

Make sure the nonprofit world is right for you

I went to three great workshops, all led by panels of amazing people, but the one that made the biggest impact on my fundamental plans for the Drama Farm was the Reality of Starting a Nonprofit workshop. Ninive Calegari of 826 Valencia (home of the fabulous Pirate Store, as well as many excellent writing and tutoring resources) strongly cautioned against rushing into becoming a nonprofit before exploring the many other options available to small organizations.

If all you’re looking for is the ability to receive tax-deductible donations, you should look into organizations that provide fiscal sponsorship. Basically, they extend the umbrella of their 501(c)(3) status to the organizations they sponsor, accepting tax-deductible donations on their behalf, and then passing the funds on to the supported organization. If you’re in San Francisco, take a look at Intersection for the Arts - they serve as fiscal sponsors of over 100 organizations in the Bay Area.

Another option is to have a fund set up somewhere like the San Francisco Foundation. People can donate money to the Foundation, earmarked for your organization. The money goes straight into your fund, and the Foundation then gives your organization grants out of that fund.

Ninive and the other panelists stressed how complicated the life of an organization can become once it incorporates as a nonprofit, and pointed out that many organizations may never need to. Other than tax-deductible donations for our contributors, the other major benefit the Drama Farm would get from becoming a nonprofit is that we wouldn’t have to pay income taxes - but until we actually have some income, maybe it’s not worth the hassle. So I’m pondering…

Use your Network!

Another thing that everyone stressed, in every workshop I attended, was using the power of your network. Here’s just a few of the key points:

• Ben Rattray of Change.org talked about empowering your network - making it easy and fun for your peers, friends and supporters to contribute to your organization - either by contributing money, getting involved, or just spreading the word to their own networks. Make them feel like part of the whole, and they’ll be more inclined to work for the betterment of the whole.
• John Killacky of the San Francisco Foundation talked about activating your network and cultivating relationships. Once you’ve got your idea nailed down, tell everyone you know. The more people who know what you’re doing, the more likely you are to find the people who are inspired about your plans and passionate about getting involved. Once you’ve found those people, keep in touch with them. Don’t just call on them when you need them - send them updates and progress reports; show them that their opinions and support are important to you, even when you don’t need something tangible from them.
• Jayson Morris of Room to Read talked about one way to activate your network - by creating a buzz list: ask your supporters to sign up, and when you’ve got something really important to spread the word about (the kickoff of a new fundraising campaign, an exciting new programming offer), send them an email. Even if there’s only 20 people on your buzz list at first, if every person on that list passes the word along to 10 of their friends, you’ve just increased awareness of your organization by 200 people! Just make sure not to abuse the list, or you might find yourself in their spam filters!

Find ways that doing what you do can help other people

I have a whole lot more to write about on this topic, but this post is already getting insanely long (there really is a lot of stuff whirling around in my head!) So, I’ll save this one for tomorrow - just to keep you in suspense! =)

I just signed up for Nonprofit Boot Camp - it’s a one-day conference organized by the Craigslist Foundation, with exhibits, seminars and workshops about starting and running a non-profit organization. Boot Camp SF is in Berkeley on Saturday, August 18th, but there’s also one in New York in September, and I think they’re working on holding them in several other cities in the next year or so. If you’re interested in going, you can check out the event and workshop schedules, and you can register for it here.

While you’re at it, check out the Craigslist Foundation’s nonprofit resources page - they’ve got tons of great information and networking tools to get you started in the world of nonprofiteering!

If you do decide to go to Boot Camp SF, drop me a line and maybe we can meet up in between workshops!

Oh, and a big thanks to Katy and slowe for pointing me towards all this cool stuff!

I was talking to a friend about the Farm yesterday, and she asked me how I was planning to structure the curriculum - more workshops and seminars towards the beginning, and then send the students off to work on the production, or just let them fly free from the start? I realized as we talked that I don’t have a definite “This is how I want it to work” plan. I have ideas about ways that it could work, but I don’t want to be the one that sets all the rules. As much as participating in the program will be a collaboration between the staff and students, I want the creation of the program to be a collaboration too.

Ideally, I’d love to be able to hire the staff advisors well before we accept our first students - 6 months, maybe even a year ahead of time - so that we can spend that time working together to come up with the structure and details of how the program will work. Even when we have that figured out, though, I envision the way it works changing slightly every semester. We’ll adapt what we’re doing based on input from current and past students, as well as the working style of the current guest director, and what the current students are looking to get out of the experience.

I started thinking about all of this after reading this article - specifically the part about how open-source ideals can be applied to education. Derrick Kwa had some interesting comments on it, and I agree with a lot of them - open-source is about the users controlling the development, and that’s really where I want to go with the Farm. Our whole purpose in existing is to serve the students - so why not let them be involved in creating and changing the program?

What I’d really love to do, at the same time that we’re collaborating with the staff to come up with a curriculum, is talk to current undergrad students who might be interested in coming to the Farm. Find out what they’re looking for in an internship, and what we could do to make the program even more useful to them. Maybe set up a Student Advisory Committee of some sort - or maybe just go to their schools and talk to them. I really think that they know better than anyone else what they need to fill out their educations - so why not ask them?

I just unearthed all of my notes from the best theatre management class in existence, taught by the one and only Don Marinelli. It’s amazing how many things you learn in college that you never really thought you’d need, and then years later you realize just how useful they are. There’s stuff in here about how to choose the best board of directors, how to come up with a financial plan for starting a company, even how to get people to give you money! I’ve got a lot of reading to do…

A few choice tidbits that really struck me when I first learned them - and that hit me again with fresh inspiration as I skimmed through my notes:

• People don’t give to companies - people give to people.
• Marketing is about educating your audience, not about persuading them.
• Never underestimate the power of your board - they can be your greatest resource, if you respect them and know how to use them.

More on these later, though - I’m off to read some more. Thank you, Don!