Opening Space for the Arts

[Harrison Owen]

The following note floated into my inbox as an early New Year's Gift. I
thought you all would enjoy.

 

Harrison

 

NEW EMAIL ADDRESS!!!!

hhowen at verizon.net

Harrison Owen

7808 River Falls Drive

Potomac, Maryland   20854

Phone 301-365-2093

Skype hhowen

Open Space Training  <http://www.openspaceworld.com/> www.openspaceworld.com


Open Space Institute  <http://www.openspaceworld.org> www.openspaceworld.org

Personal website  <http://www.ho-image.com> www.ho-image.com 

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Harrison:

 

My name is Bill Cleveland. I have been using OST as a part of my work at the
Center for the Study of Art and Community.  Much of this involves cross
sector program design, planning, and network building among artists, arts
organizations and other community sectors such as human services, public
safety, education, and community development.  The major focus of this work
has been to address the question.  

 

How can those involved in the arts and community development work together
to create caring and capable communities?  

 

As you can imagine this has been fertile ground for OST. I do 10-15 OST
events a year.   One interesting aspect has been the increasing space that
has emerged within the OST process for the use of the arts themselves as
tools for communication and making meaning.  

 

One event that I have facilitated for the past eight years is a gathering of
150-200 artists and educators called the Minnesota Artist/Educator
Institute.  This gathering has a rotating cast of returnees and newcomers
who come prepared not only to discuss and debate the best practices in arts
education, but also to MAKE ART using OST.   We hold this event, which has
been dubbed the "Woodstock of Arts Education", at Bemidji State University
about 160 miles north of Minneapolis.  We take over all the arts facilities
on campus.  Theaters, dance studios, print making studios, welding studios,
clay studios, computer graphics suites .... for FIVE DAYS of 24 hour, OST
driven creative insanity. 

 

Another interesting creative OST application has resulted in the creation of
three theater works produced by Pangea World Theater this past year.  This
OST-based theater making process (called the Bridges Project) began with a
two day design retreat was convened to produce the creative concepts and
preliminary designs for three Bridges productions. The threshold question
that framed the weekend's efforts was.

 

What stories can we tell together that will provoke new ways of telling?

 

To accelerate the sharing and growth of these emerging artistic ideas, we
employed a slightly modified OST format.  For Bridges, the path from
concepts to production design unfolded in three distinct phases, each of
which was "bridged" by presentations by teams of artists summarizing the
evolution and outcome of their cumulative work in the sessions. 

 

Each of the three phases began with a standard OST agenda setting exercise.
Through this process each artist was given an opportunity to convene a
discussion on a creative idea, issue or opportunity related to the framing
question. For Phase one, seven such discussions were convened on the first
morning of the retreat.  This was followed by short reports from each
session to the whole group.  After lunch, five more idea sessions were held.
But because the retreat's overall goal was to narrow many creative concepts
to three, these sessions necessarily precipitated the cross-fertilization
and eventual merging of a number of ideas. Following a second round of
summary reports the full group identified what they felt were the three most
promising ideas. It is interesting to note that the emerging concepts
emphasized both new approaches to creative collaboration and artistic
content or storyline. After committing to one of the three, the artists then
devoted their final sessions to continued conceptual development and
production specifics such as roles, responsibilities, budget and schedule. 

 

All three theater have now been produced to critical acclaim in Minneapolis
and St. Paul.  

 

So, the process you shared a decade ago has taken some interesting twists
and turns.  Thanks for the inspiration.  

 

I am thinking that these arts-infused OST practices might be an interesting
addition to your evolving peace program.  Give it a thought and let me know.


 

Bill

 

 

Center for the Study 
 of Art & Community

 

4566 Tangleberry Lane N.E.
Bainbridge Island, WA 98110

 

E: bill at artandcommunity.com
P: 206-855-0977
F: 206-855-1895

 

www.ArtandCommunity.com 


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