Category: improvisation

From the Archives: Visual and Audio “Getting Into Online meetings” Ideas

Back in 2020 and 2021 some of my friends and colleagues refused to get stuck in the same-old, same-old of starting meetings online. Fisher Qua showed me a Music Labs experimental tool and playing with it (in this clip) opened possibilities of co-creating visually and aurally that could start a meeting in a way that immediately changed our participation and experience.

A bit wild, sure, but why do we seek so much to maintain the status quo? Why do we snap back to the safe, predictable, without even considering if it is still useful? Time for more creative destruction. Make space for something that is more useful. What meeting starting habits have you creatively destroyed? What new practices emerged from that space you created?

From Graphic Recording to Real Time Collage Capture

Today I had a TON of fun with Beehive Productions “Origin Stories” series where they brought in the two founders of Liberating Structures, Keith McCandless and Henri Lipanowicz. Beehiver Amy Lenzo called to ask if I would do a graphic recording of the two hour Zoom session.

So today I got out my paper and pens with glee. I was all set to draw when my eye caught a piece of interesting paper in the mess that is my desk. Just a few days ago Keith had shared some of the collage work he is doing and I thought, hey, I’ll collage! So without permission I went to work. I pulled and piled scraps in front of my computer, grabbed blue glitter glue and a tray of acrylic paints and went crazy.

Is it useful? Who knows, but it was SURE fun to do. It was total improvisation on my part. Here is the final piece.

A collage of words, pictures and colors that attempts to capture the two hour zoom conversation.

From the Archives: Almost Improvising

I’m editing this one from 2013 just before Superbowl Sunday, which is mentioned in this post. Leaving it AS IS!

“We aren’t always improvising, we are almost improvising. Then there is that moment we are actually improvising and it is all worth it.” Matt Smith, liberally misquoted by yours truly.

I spent Superbowl Sunday at an improv workshop, thinking that my avoidance of the television and a shift from American football sports to theater sports was good karma. I wanted to step further into improvisation, particularly applied improvisation (vs performance.)  Little did I know that my learnings from both would intersect around the power of being ready to improvise.

I met Matt Smith last September at the Applied Improvisation Conference in a fabulous workshop he co-led with Rebecca Stockley. (The post about the workshop experience links to some good stuff by Viv McWaters also worth reading…) After AIN I realized I needed a lot more work on my own in order to weave applied improvisational approaches into my facilitation and community work. Finally, I found a day that worked for me and headed over to the beautiful Valley School (ah, I want to be 8 years old and go to school here!) with an open mind, heart and lots of questions like “how does this work in an intercultural or even multilingual contexts?”

 

“The big question is, what happens when everything changes, when you go off script?” Hofstetter said. “That was where it got fun.”

via How Oreo Got That Twitter Ad Up So Fast.

 

Archives: ROSVIZ 2012 Video Harvest

From the Draft Archives, Summer 2012, the RosViz graphic facilitation workshop with Michelle Laurie. Just. Plain. Imperfect. Fun. The always creative Jason Toal produced. Never underestimate the amount of fun people can have when let loose. I think this is a thread as I reflect back on these old blog drafts!
#MondayVideos

For a slightly more polished harvest video, also from the 2012 archives, take a look at what these kindergartners did for THEIR harvest! https://www.samchaltain.com/this-is-what-student-learning-looks-like

Singing our way in…

Back in 2006 I was a participant in a remarkable gathering called the Evolutionary Salon. It was  an intense soup of ideas, feelings and energy. In these contexts a lot of that can overwhelm me. Luckily, I was not alone. Chris Corrigan and Kenoli Oleari and I were doing a little music jamming and a response to all that energy was born. We called it Euphoric Bullshit, a gentle jab at our own sense of self importance. Originally it was just for us, but our four fearless hosts decided it might help shift the  energy on the third and final day.

Ashley Cooper (who, by the way has restarted her coaching practice if you are thinking about getting a coach), reminded me of all this with a link back to  the debrief the PoP facilitators did.  All of a sudden I vividly remember the moment (and almost the tune!)

I have always found that gentle humor, music, visual arts and dance can open up different channels of connection, communication and meaning making. So literally we can sing our way into better work together. (Speaking of singing, if you haven’t seen this, take a peek.) I need to make sure I keep weaving them in.

Digging around in an old thread in the Open Space email list, I found the lyrics. Um, impolite language warning… but know this was joyously and lovingly sung.

Euphoric Bullshit  by Nancy White, Kenoli Oleari and Chris Corrigan and 90 amused muses

We come into the circle with our passions and resolve
We each have a lot of issues that we really want to solve
But we all start a talkin’, and things get out of hand
So take a little breath (breath) and settle down and we’ll ease into the plan

CHORUS:
Euphoric bullshit is the name of the game
We take the sacred and we make it profane
You can’t come in, unless you bear your pain
Euphoric bullshit is the name of the game

We’re calling a lot of sessions, with various intents
Some get a little bit impatient as we sit upon the fence
But emergence growing edges will carry us all along
We are but one great voice in the universal song

Chorus
Instrumental break

Now the time has come for us to go out into the world
And throw our great intentions into the cosmic swirl
Hey you don’t need to worry that these things will come to pass
Because evolution’s arrow will kick you in the ass

Source: Re: open space poetry