I know it’s been ages since I posted anything here - and I’ve even got a post about Goal #3 in the works, but that’ll have to wait a little while longer.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading up on informal education models and curriculum planning (thanks for the resources, Andrea!), and I today I stumbled upon this really interesting concept called Open Space Technology. It’s really less about education and more about bringing a group of people together to collaborate and co-create something, but I think it could have some really interesting applications for the Drama Farm.

So, what is Open Space Technology?

The basic idea is that you invite a bunch of people to come together for a specific goal (defining a vision or strategic plan for an organization, solving a specific problem, etc.), with these four principles in mind:

1. Whoever comes are the right people
2. Whatever happens is the only thing that could have
3. Whenever it starts is the right time
4. When it’s over, it’s over

At the beginning of the meeting/conference/retreat, the attendees are invited to write down the issues that they feel are most important and post them on the “agenda wall” with a specific meeting time and place. Once the group finishes creating the agenda, they split into smaller groups to discuss the issues - anyone can attend any of the smaller groups, and can move between them at will.

The idea is that only the people who are really interested and passionate about the topic will attend, and they’ll do their best collaborating if left to organize themselves as they deem appropriate. It’s really a very simple idea, but the Open Space method seems to provide a structure that encourages people to participate while preventing it from becoming a free-for-all.

What does this have to do with us?

The way I see it, there are two possible applications for this idea in the planning/operating of the Drama Farm (I’m sure there are more - these are just the two that popped into my head as I was reading).

First, a meeting like this could be a great resource in the planning of the Farm. We’ve been talking about organizing something like a charrette - basically, a meeting of the minds to discuss the direction the Drama Farm is heading and the best strategy to pursue it. But, what we had discussed was inviting a select few “experts” in various fields to meet and talk about specific questions that we had for them. The Open Space conference sounds like a much better incarnation of that idea, since rather than “experts”, we’d have passionate, knowledgeable people who would create the agenda themselves and discuss what they thought was really important.

My other thought is that this could be a really interesting way to collaborate on a theatrical production. Let’s say you have your whole cast and production team together for the first meeting - they’ve all read the script, but beyond that, nothing has been discussed - most of them have probably only known each other for a few days at the most. What if you used the Open Space technique to discuss everyone’s ideas about the play - what they thought the important issues were, what direction they’d like to take things, etc. And what if you used the same technique at all of the subsequent production meetings?

OR…

What if we used it at the beginning of each Drama Farm session, to allow the students to direct the program to suit their interests and needs? We’ve been struggling with finding a way for the program to be flexible and adaptable to each individual group of students, without making it so flexible as to disintegrate into chaos - something like this might be just the kind of structure we’re looking for…

If you’re interested in reading more about Open Space, there’s a great short(ish) summary of it here - or, if you’re looking for something a little more in-depth, check out this OST Practice Guide, via Michael Herman’s website.

And let me know what you think. Am I totally crazy, or might this work? How else could we put this technique to work for us? Ideas? Thoughts? Comment away!

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!

In his post about focusing on learning, Scott Walters mentions something that his mentor, Cal Pritner, always told him:

The best thing about theatre is that it’s bio-degradable.

I love that, because it’s so true. Nothing we do in the theatre is here forever - it’s what we and the audience take away from the experience that matters. So why not take risks? If you fail, it’ll all be gone soon anyway - what matters is what you learn from doing it.

…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!

Something to ponder today:

In his welcome speech at Nonprofit Boot Camp, Darian Rodriguez Heyman - Executive Director of the Craigslist Foundation - talked about the difference between dreamers and visionaries.

According to Darian, there are dreamers everywhere. We all know them: they’re the people who see the big picture. They know exactly where they are, where they’re going, and what it will look like when they get there - from A to Z. I’d be willing to bet that just about every person at Bootcamp was a dreamer - we all had a picture in our heads of exactly what our dream would look like once we achieved it, down to the tiniest detail.

Visionaries, however, are harder to come by. They’re the people who, in addition to seeing the big picture - the A to Z - they can also see the B to Y: all the little steps in between that will get them to their dream. Visionaries are people who figure out how to make things happen, and then do it - people like Walt Disney, Jim Henson, and Andrew Carnegie (who are my three biggest heroes, by the way). Every one of those men started with nothing but an idea of how they wanted things to be - and then put everything they had into figuring out how to get there.

It’s an interesting way of looking at it, which I had never thought of before - it really does make clear what sets the visionaries (my heroes) apart from the rest of the “big ideas” people. I’ve got the A and Z part down, and I think I’ve even got the B and parts of the C figured out. There’s a long way to go to find that D through Y, but somehow knowing that there are definite steps out there that will lead me to the Z makes it easier to keep working to find them.

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!

As promised, some more of my random ramblings as I sort through the whirling Boot Camp-induced tornado that is my brain.

When we last left our free-range dreamers, they were pondering this topic:

Find ways that doing what you do can help other people

Everyone always says that the best way to improve your own situation is to help others improve theirs - it’s sort of like networking karma.

Boot Camp was no different - in the welcome speech and the morning keynote, Darian Rodriguez Heyman and Ami Dar both talked about how using your resources to help the people around you will foster an attitude of cooperation and inspire others to help you with your own work. Darien even challenged everyone at Boot Camp to find two people they could help in some way over the course of the day - either by making connections, suggesting resources, or just sharing ideas. (I found my two!)

The thing that struck me the most about helping others, though, was in the Social Entrepreneurship workshop I went to. Rather than just helping other organizations in hopes of good karma bringing something back to them, Room to Read and GOOD Magazine have actually found a way to use what they’re already doing to help both their own organizations and each other’s.

When GOOD was ready to launch their magazine, they didn’t have the resources (or the desire) to conduct a $12 million direct mail campaign to find subscribers. Instead, they found some organizations with worthwhile causes - like Room to Read - and made a deal with them: Subscribers to the magazine would be given a choice of which of GOOD’s 12 nonprofit partners their subscription fee would be donated to in its entirety; in return for these donations, Room to Read (and the other nonprofit partners) would spread the word about the magazine to their existing base of supporters, encouraging them to subscribe to GOOD - in effect, getting a magazine subscription and giving a donation to Room to Read at the same time.

It’s a win-win situation: GOOD boosts their subscription base, thereby increasing their ad revenue (which is where they make their money), without spending $12 million to do it. At the same time, Room to Read gets even more donations, because their contributors are getting something tangible - a magazine subscription - rather than just a thank-you from the organization. By thinking about how what they were already doing could benefit other organizations, Room to Read and GOOD Magazine were able to join forces and make the most out of their combined resources.

So now I’m thinking, how could we do that with the Drama Farm? What would we be providing that might be of use to someone else? I’m still mulling over the possibilities - if you’ve got any thoughts on the matter, leave a comment - I’d love to hear your ideas!

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! =)

Last week, Chris Brogan charged us Grasshoppers with the following goal: “This week, at least twice, spend a moment of your time promoting someone else.” I wrote a few days ago about Derrick and his fresh outlook on education, but I was holding off on my second bout of promotional love because I know so many amazing people - there’s just too many to choose from!

But as I sat in my neighborhood coffeeshop this afternoon, taking refuge from the ruckus of refinishing the floors in the apartment above mine, I knew exactly who I needed to write about. The Crosstown Community Center & Coffeehouse, where I was quietly sipping my mocha, listening to someone play the piano as I worked on my laptop, has been an inspiration to me since the day it opened - one year ago this Friday.

Three years ago, Crosstown was just an idea - a dream that a pastor at a local church had of “a community center in Alameda where spiritual dialogue was acceptable, if not encouraged.” Pastor Dave Nederhood took that dream he had, found some passionate people who shared his dream, and got to work. They found a space - what had been at various times a brothel, a hotel, a train depot and finally a pub - and rallied the community to help them build their dream. For two years, volunteers descended upon the corner bar every Saturday - cleaning the place, refinishing the bar and furniture, painting the walls, chipping in however they knew how.

A year ago, Crosstown opened its doors and immediately became a cherished spot for everyone in the neighborhood - and not just because they have great coffee. Moms with children go there Friday mornings for sing-alongs with Cowboy Jared; there’s a free knitting and crocheting class on Tuesday nights; on any afternoon of the week, you’ll find 2 or 3 people working on their laptops, camped out at tables sprinkled in between the teenagers who stop for a snack or a chat with Dave on their way home from school.

The Crosstown story inspires me because it shows the power that one person’s dream can have. All it takes is a group of passionate people who believe in an idea, and you really can do anything you put your mind to. Crosstown is doing a major fundraising drive right now - it seems that for the last year, coffee sales have covered all of their expenses except their rent (that’s been taken care of by some extremely generous board members!) If you’ve been inspired by Crosstown’s story, consider sending them a small donation:

Crosstown Community Center
1303 High Street
Alameda, CA 94501

Or just check out their website and read some of the articles - maybe they’ll inspire you to follow a dream of your own!