Story of a one day OST with youth

[Marei Kiele]

  Dear Chris and all, catching up on reading recent mails I read yours today. I can sense that the combination of art and OST you describe had a special energy and power. What I didn't get fully clear is how exactly both parts where combined in terms of the form of the event itself. Who invited them to create the piece of art? Was the creating part of the OST or done before? I am very interested in investigating if and how other, less intellectual expressions of who we are, can be combined with OST ~ and for me the experience with Silence intentionally being used in OST, which was shared on this list recently, goes into the same direction. I know there have been several conversations on this list regarding combining other activities and OST ~ or not do anything but pure OST and leave every input to the participants. I would be very happy to hear how you view your experiences in the light of these former conversations? And have you ~ and other people reading this ~ learned something regarding combining OST with other forms that changed your perspective? Thank you for sharing. Marei  
  "Chris Corrigan" <chris.corrigan at GMAIL.COM> schrieb: Colleagues:

Here to report on an OST meeting that I did on the weekend for a really interesting project which got youth to monitor violations of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child..

The project was the brainchild of a number of organizations in the City of Vancouver, who came together to ask about how the UN convention could be used to draw attention to some of the pressing issues faced by children and youth in Vancouver.  These issues included experiences in the child welfare system, poverty, lack of equitably funded education opportunities in poor neighbourhoods, safety and treatment by police, transit security and others in power.

The project lasted over two months during which youth facilitators working with a team at the City of Vancouver set out to hold focus groups to educate youth about the Convention, and to gather information from youth themselves on rights violations.  More than that though, the youth were also invited to create visions for the future and for the City that they wanted to see, and these visions were harvested through words and pictures.

All of this work through local neighbourhood organizations culminated this past Friday and Saturday.  Thirty five youth gathered on Friday, to meet one another, build community and most importantly, reflect on their experience in the process and create a performance piece that would express a summary of what the project had learned.  The performance itself involved the construction of a mural, some spoken word and rap, music and playback theatre.  Parts of the performance were in English, Spanish, Portuguese, Hebrew and Russian.

Saturday morning, leaders from various levels of government and organizations were invited to join the youth in Open Space to figure out where to go forward.  The project was officially over on the Saturday, and so we wanted to create a space in which the messages would get sent and an invitation made from the youth to the adults to work together to keep alive the spirit of what was happening.  Fifty five people gathered Saturday morning, and the youth did their performance which kicked off a short and intense Open Space.  There was some significant power in the room, including two Members of the Provincial Legislative Assembly one of whom is the the provincial child welfare critic.  Topics raised included what to do to help youth live independently and in safe conditions, stopping police harassment of Aboriginal and Latino youth by working with the police, and educating youth and adults on rights.  All of the groups were composed of both youth and adults and the feeling in the room was one of possibility and optimism, despite the huge nature of some of the changes that were being discussed.  To have provincial politicians sitting in the room with street youth, working together to move forward the learnings from the project was a powerful experience.  

Increasingly I am seeing the possibility involved in bringing creative expression into play with youth working in Open Space.  I know there have been many conversations about playback theatre here over the years, but, being a little slow on the uptake sometimes, I'm just now beginning to see how it integrates with OST work.  The creative pieces, and the process of creating something together, is another practice ground for passion bounded by responsibility, and youth find their voices in many different ways when they are invited to work together to create art which is used as an invitation for action.  There are a number of places in which I think this can be a significant combination and I'll be looking for opportunities like this over the next little while.  In the meantime, if you have had experience combining youth, creativity and Open Space together, let me know so I can continue to expand my horizons on this a little bit.

I have a photo gallery from this event at my Flickr site, for those that want a more visual taste of the day.  

http://www.flickr.com/photos/31354844@N00/sets/1509187/

Cheers,

Chris 
-- 

CHRIS CORRIGAN
Consultation - Facilitation
Open Space Technology

Weblog: http://www.chriscorrigan.com/parkinglot
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