Category: General Learning

I’ve been writing a lot the last month, organizing a draft of an Art of Hosting resource book, customized for some of the faith community people I’ve worked with the last three years. Part of that includes description of useful principles and agreements.

One such principle that I’ve noticed important in a number of environments is our overall relationship with complexity. Limited to one paragraph, I found myself writing this:

Don’t blame each other for complexity. What if complexity were just complexity? Multiple relations in multiple networks of people in multiple timelines that don’t always line up conveniently. As human beings, we try to look for simplifications in our plans. Often, we project our desire for a kind of simplicity onto situations that will never be as simple as we like. It’s a bit like saying rocket science is as simple as a match and some fuel. That may be true at some level, but isn’t particularly useful. When a situation gets messy, most of us look for reasons to explain why things aren’t clear. Most of us are accustomed to a kind of blame or attribution of fault. Without releasing an essential need for accountability, what if we were to acknowledge that complexity rarely requires blame, but rather, always requires adaptation. We laugh when the predicted sunny day turns to showers. Though we may be frustrated that the picnic doesn’t go as planned, there aren’t too many of us that hold weather forecasters to a certainty of prediction. We bring an umbrella, or put it away, and move on. Moving on feels like a core competency. Letting go of blame is a spiritual practice. Complexity is just complexity.

I’ve started a new project recently with some creative and visionary people from Viterbo University in La Crosse, Wisconsin. University leadership. University faculty from Arts Education and Generalist Education. Pre-service teachers. In-service teachers. Principals from an elementary school and a middle school. Community organizations. The central premise is that authentic arts experiences make better humans. That’s my interpretation.

Recently we gathered, about twenty of us, for 1.5 days as a kind of core team — people committed to the early purposing and grounding of what can be a multi-year effort to change lives through arts integration. Lives of students in the neighboring schools. Lives of all of the groups named above.

Sarah Cook (Assistant Dean, Dahl School of Business) and Sami Weaver, two of our participants, created this graphic illustration of some of our content and process. Our first day together included attention on a starting context, hearing all participant voices on interest and importance, a framework on arts integration from Stuart Stotts, Kennedy Center Arts Integration Specialist, a framework for seeing how systems change, small table conversations on essential inclusions for our project, principles and agreements for the good of our project and the people it will serve, and witnessing our appreciations of this time together. Our second day together included attention on hearing all participant voices on their emerging energy for this work, clarifying our core narrative, exploring insights and inspirations from other national programs, stakeholder groups exploring essential beginnings, and some naming of next steps, which includes an expanded retreat in June.

There are several important resources that that this team has been adding too, that provide background information and recommendations. These resources name some of the scale that we in La Crosse are potentially involved in.

• From the President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities (PCAH, started in 1982 by US President Ronald Regan), the initiative supported by President Barack Obama, Turnaround: Arts Initiative to Help Improve Low-Performing Schools.

From PCAH, this publication, Reinvesting in Arts Education. The “better humans” part of this report includes these points on students who participate in the arts (compiled by Barb Gayle, Viterbo’s VP for Academic Affairs and Dean of Graduate Studies):
– are four times more likely to be recognized for academic achievement
– have higher GPA / SAT scores
– demonstrate a 56% improvement in spatial-temporal IQ scores
– show higher levels of math proficiency by grade 12
– are more engaged and cooperative with teachers and peers
– are more self-confident
– are better able to express their ideas

These are all provoking patterns, aren’t they. Particularly to me, as it seems that on federal and state levels, in times of crisis, complexity, and financial shortfall, budgets for the arts are among the first to go. With desire for essential innovation, we slash what creates the very conditions needed. Further in the report it is noted that high-poverty students are being disproportionately short-changed  on arts education opportunities in their schools.

• Every Child is an Artist from the Public Policy Forum. This 2014 report explores arts education programs in Milwaukee and other US cities.
• First Lady: Arts Education Good for Good Schools. This newspaper article from May 20, 2014 describes some of the priorities that Michelle Obama is championing in support of arts integration.
• In Search of the Next Steve Jobs: Increasing Innovation by Connecting STEM and Art. From the Center of Science, Policy, and Society Programs, particularly from the perspective of needing innovation in science, this article further advocates the role of art experiences in education and society.

We have started to catch some of this on a website, with values of transparency and openness.

Creative. Visionary. Arts Integration. All of these touch me deeply. And, I believe, change lives.

More to come.

Lately I’ve been reading more of Mary Oliver’s poems. She is one of my favorites in the way that she touches the simple of the natural world, which includes the natural world of the human spirit, through words and images. These particular readings come from the publication, A Thousand Mornings, named above.

Here are some that have meant the most to me:

Her quoting of Bob Dylan,

“Anything worth thinking about is worth singing about.”

Her poem, Three Things to Remember

As long as you’re dancing, you can break the rules.
Sometimes breaking the rules is just extending the rules.
Sometimes there are no rules.

This gem on stillness, called Today

Today I’m flying low and I’m
not saying a word.
I’m letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.

The world goes on as it must,
the bees in the garden rumbling a little,
the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten.
And so forth.

But I’m taking the day off.
Quiet as a feather.
I hardly move though really I’m traveling
a terrific distance.

Stillness. One of the doors
into the temple.

And this last one, on the beauty of questions, from The Man Who Has Many Answers.

The man who has many answers
is often found
in the theaters of information
where he offers, graciously,
his deep findings.

While the man who has only questions,
to comfort himself, makes music.

This publication itself is beautiful. A book that feels good to hold and share.

Last week I was able to be part of an opening for the Washington State Nonprofit Conference, Shift: Learning to Thrive in a Complex World. This was the 20th annual version of this conference. Alison McCaffree, Executive Director for Washington Nonprofits, put a lot of good thought into organizing this conference and it’s tracks on Paradigm Shift, Narrative Shift, Shape Shift, and Shift Change. I love it that she wanted to have many formats for learning at this large conference — I’m told there were 450 participants this year. I was happy to be part of imagining some of those options with her, along with my partner Teresa Posakony, early in the planning process, particularly about reshaping the large conference design..

My role was in the first session, joining Quinton Morris a concert violinist, chamber musician, and Assistant Professor of Chamber and Instrumental Music at Seattle University. Really good guy. I enjoyed meeting him, playfully bantering together. He played music of his choice, show tunes for this 8:00 start. I interviewed him on themes of shift, what he loves about his music, and how artistry is needed in leadership and change work. I found it to be playful and helpful.

I then had the role of, what I would call, activating the participants. It was a simple set up about the importance of turning to one another. It was also a set up for more engaged learning during the day. I had them turn to each other in partner conversations with these questions (different partner on each one):

• How are you arriving today? (A simple question to get them started by sharing some of their inner condition, whether it was frazzled by traffic, or excited for the day.)
• In what way is artistry important in your work? (Building on the theme to help draw attention to artistry, creativity, and the spirit of innovation.)
• What is exciting to you in your shifts? What is challenging? (Some attention to where there is natural energy, and, to witnessing what are real challenges for them, rather than having those buried and unspeakable.)
• In one phrase, what is the primary shift that you are giving attention to? Why? (We harvested this on post-it notes and based on the tracks that Alison had created. Steven Wright had made for large maps of the state on which participants could place these post-it notes — one for each track. We later categorized similar shifts together.)
• What is one intention you have today to support you in your learning? (This was about an intention for the day, not for the broader picture of their work. I had them write this on their name tags so that it was visible and a could be a point of curiosity among participants later in the day.)

Glad to have been part of this event, and in particular this theme, the artistry of change. Activating the group, is part of that artistry for me.

A writeup from a participant, Jeni Craswell, Director of Philanthropy with Imagine Housing is here.