Expressing Dreams Through Art Contributed to ailist by Stephanie Judy October 2002 In October 2002, I led an “Introduction to AI” workshop at a regional arts and heritage conference attended by artists, arts administrators, and gallery/museum curators. I am normally reticent about asking groups to engage in on-the-spot art projects in a short workshop. However, this was a group of artists! With helpful ideas and encouragement from Peggy Holman in the planning stages, I incorporated an art-making component as part of a 2.5-hour workshop. There were 45 participants, self-organized into four fairly equal-sized sub-groups. One group of arts administrators and museum curators organized around the topic of volunteer burnout. I asked them to come up with a short, simple name for their table, and they decided on “More People!” Another group from a city arts council wanted to look at strategies for addressing long-standing political obstacles to building a new cultural venue — theatre/gallery/museum — in their town. They called themselves the “Community Building” group. The third group was the hardest to pull together, but proved in the end to have the most “Aha!” moments. Each of them was involved in a major arts or heritage project — there were multi-year projects, region-wide projects, large budget projects, and projects involving acquisition of property or major structural changes in existing organizations. They decided to call themselves the “Big Ideas” table. The final group was comprised of old friends and colleagues — all of them well-established “senior” artists who live in the region, but do most of their income earning in cities far from this area — several painters, a sculptor, a textile artist, a blacksmith, a choreographer, and a writer/storyteller. Fishing around for a group name, they saw one of my blank chart pages headed “What Gives Life . . . ” and they chose “Art Lives.” (The people at “Big Ideas” fondly referred to them as the “Big Egos”). After a brief Discover and Dream phase, I asked each group to take 20 minutes to express their Dream artistically. I provided lots of coloured paper, markers, scissors, glue, tape, collage materials, and a tub of rhythm instruments — hand drums, tambourines, claves, triangles, finger cymbals, maracas, and such. I scheduled the 20 minute “art” period to fall just before the afternoon break, with time after the break for each table to display its work. Most of the participants worked feverishly right through the break to finish their creation . . . except for the “More People!” table. I was genuinely worried about them. They had cornered most of the rhythm instruments, but didn’t seem to be preparing anything. At the break, they all strolled out, returning with their cups and a pot of tea just as we were ready to begin. The presentations were amazing. The “Big Ideas” had written a song about courage and cooperation, which they performed in three-part harmony. The “Art Lives” table did a multi-media presentation involving sculpture, origami, dance, and storytelling. The “Community Building” table used yards and yards of flagging tape to encase one of their artist members head to toe in red tape — and then, via mime, got people from the other tables to bring scissors and cut her loose. Once liberated, the artist unveiled a breathtaking “Community Building” collage. And then it was the turn of the “More People!” table. They sat around their table and, each using three or four rhythm instruments simultaneously, they started playing a rather frantic and very catchy rhythmic pattern. After about 30 seconds of this, one of them stood up . . . then another . . . then the rest. Still playing all of their instruments, they left their table and started moving around the room. Very gradually, each one approached another person in the room, and offered one of their extra instruments, which most of us happily accepted. They would each stand beside the new player, “entraining” them in the rhythmic pattern, and then they’d gradually drift off to find another potential rhythm band member. All of the other participants eventually joined in, most of them getting up and dancing around the room, improvising new rhythms, adding some vocals, generally having a terrific time . . . until we realized, to everyone’s glee, that the original members of the “More People!” group had divested themselves of all of their instruments and were back at their own table, drinking tea! I continue to discover principles for finding and keeping volunteers that were embodied in this mini-event: · Create something that people want to be part of · Maintain a positive, supportive social atmosphere · Extend personal invitations · Make it clear what is expected · Make the initial tasks interesting and do-able · Help people get started · Ensure initial success · Be friendly, encouraging, lively · Let new recruits achieve independence as soon as possible · Withdraw initial support gradually · Trust your volunteers to do a good job · Let volunteers feel connected to the entire organization · Make room for new ideas The “More People!” people got a huge round of applause from the rest of the group . . . and I not only got over my reticence about asking people to do artwork, but I learned something about trusting workshop participants, too! Stephanie Judy Argenta, B.C.