SENSORY EXERCISE:
The webinar began with Arlene playing Ruthie Foster singing the Lucinda Williams song, Fruits of My Labor, which you can watch on YouTube. This was an exercise to demonstrate how we receive information in many ways, through our bodies, emotions, intellects, and spirits. While some of them are conventionally repressed (everyone knows not to cry when seated at a conference table), training our awareness to notice all of them increases information, possiblity, and choice.

She asked people to think about the following questions while listening to the song:

Arlene explained that our challenge as artists committed to social justice is to convert a culture of disenchantment into culture of possibility.  She then discussed two ways of viewing the world – “Datastan”  and “the Republic of Stories.”

Datastan diminishes us, making it very hard for people who believe its story to see art’s power in the service of social justice:

• As you experienced with the song, there is much more information available to us than is acknowledged in Datastan; and that translates into a lot more capacity than we use in Datastan.
• When we listen to people who want us to be smaller than we are, we may internalize their ideas about ourselves.
• We are afraid to get our hopes up, and so, pre-emptively disappointed, we pay the price without taking the ride.

In the Republic of Stories, we recognize:

• That the way we shape our stories shapes our lives and work.
• That empathy and imagination underpin all social change.
• That everything that has been created must first be imagined, and everything that exists can be re-imagined.
• That the work of artists and artists’ methods are the way to cultivate empathy and imagination, and that we must develop those capacities:

The Culture of Possibility: Art, Artists & The Future and The Wave show how more and more, culture and art are at the center of our world: we crave beauty and meaning; our stories sustain us. Since the advent of YouTube, we’ve become a planet of filmmakers. When we want to express love and caring, fear, or outrage, more and more we use the means of art. More and more, culture is the crucible in which a sustainable future and the relationships that lead to profound individual and institutional change are forged.

To succeed in your mission—to persuade your potential collaborators and co-creators—you all need to see the world through a cultural lens, helping people change their stories to change the world.

VISUAL EXERCISE:
Arlene explained that one of the ways to stimulate new thinking and dialogue is to change the frame of a conversation. We tried this by discussing the challenges and opportunities women artists face, using the vocabulary of a painting. People could say anything they wanted, but they had to frame their statement in terms of the painting, such as: “Women artists help each other, but some have more power and wealth than others; is the risk the same for both?” or “We have to be watchful; those who oppose us may be sneaking up on us” or “Sometimes we have to hide our real mission.” As the conversation continues, the unusual frame frees people up to make more and more incisive and revealing comments.

What can you say about the challenges and opportunities you face using the vocabulary of this painting?

PLANNING EXERCISE:
Arlene explained that in Datastan, people are quite comfortable failing in the same old way, but scared to risk failing in new ways. Planning tends to start with questions that keep practice path-dependent, constrained to the same old pre-approved ways of doing things.  They start out aware of severe budget limitations, constrained by what other people are doing or what they’ve been told funders prefer; and focusing on measurable objectives that provide plausible evaluation. Corralling themselves like this, with the how coming before the why, is how people wind up doing things that don’t get anyone excited, where the most important achievement is getting funded.

Arlene challenged everyone to reflect on the questions below in relation to their work, turning the conventional planning model on its head by starting with your largest mission, values, and principles. She walked us through all six questions using a hypothetical project, and encouraged participants to use the same questions to work with collaborators, formulating vision-and-values-based project ideas.