[rsc] Re: Declarations

Hi Monica,
Did you mail them into the ROOTS office in 2007?
best,
Hope

On Sep 16, 2009, at 12:10 PM, Kathie de Nobriga wrote:
monica, I regret to say that I haven't seen your declaration, or have any idea of where it might be. I have some files that I can look through next week.....did anyone else see it? 



Hi Kathie,
I sent ROOTS a declaration two years ago, by mail, after the 2007 annual meeting, and Tom and I have been asked to become members (in training, I assume ) of the RSC work group, after reminding Bob that we are still interested at the annual meeting this year. 
I attended a Learning Exchange in Charlotte, NC in 2008.
We are excited about the upcoming retreat and are planning to participate. 
Do you need anything else from us (new declarations, etc).?

Love,
Monica Nolan
P.S. The type on Hannah's Declaration is too small for me to read, but thanks for sending it. 
On Sep 16, 2009, at 10:19 AM, Kathie de Nobriga wrote:


Application for Resources for Social Change Workgroup
Hannah Adams
HannahDAdams@xxxxxxxxx
781-801-0072
New Orleans, LA
Submitted: 9-9-09

1.  Describe a specific community arts project you were involved in.
Since moving to New Orleans two years ago, one of the most rewarding relationships I have built is with Kids Rethink New Orleans Schools (Rethink), a group of youth activists who use media and art to express ideas about their education. I actually met the Rethinkers through a theater project that taught me a lot about the importance of community-based art through its own failure to truly engage with community. I was working with a theater company in the winter of 2008 to generate an original comedy about public education in New Orleans. We began by using story circles and Boal image exercises to reflect on our own experiences with education, but we were hitting a wall. About halfway through the process we realized we needed to begin conducting interviews with folks who were more affected by the New Orleans public education system than we were. I had heard two of the Rethinkers speak about their experience at a forum on education, and so I got in touch with them and began attending meetings. Ultimately, their stories and ideas, and those of other youth, educators and parents that we spoke to, formed the core of How to Draw the Sun; or, Kiss Me Paul Vallas. But we had come to them too late- the most valuable lesson I learned from working on that play was that I shouldn't try to speak for kids in New Orleans schools- they are perfectly capable of speaking for themselves. And it wasn't enough, ultimately, for their words to appear in our script. Our exploration of education would have been far richer had they been at the table with us from the beginning. After the show closed, we talked a lot about how we could make our contribution sustainable. It seemed narcissistic and entitled to think that the best thing we could do with our show was tour it around to Teach for America presentations and education policy meetings. Spending time with the Rethinkers made me realize that I needed to spend more time listening and less time acting like I was the expert. I decided that I would attempt to cultivate an ongoing relationship with Rethink. For the last two summers I've led theater workshops with the Rethinkers that have focused on communicating through images and visioning solutions to problems they experience. We use a lot of Theater of the Oppressed techniques and improvisation. The first year the youth generated skits about food justice to perform at a press conference they were holding, and the second year they created a "tableau museum" representing their ideal school to help illustrate their ideas. Working with the Rethinkers has reaffirmed my belief in theater as a powerful movement-building tool, both in the Boalian sense of providing techniques to rehearse possibilities for transformation, and in the Brechtian sense of taking the status quo and making it "strange."
2. What are your Guiding Principles as an artist working in community?
Living in New Orleans post-Katrina has been a challenging experience and one of great growth and transformation for me. Working for a housing justice organization, I am hyper aware of the ways in which my demographic (white, college-educated young people with middle to upper-middle class roots who are not from here and moved here after the storm) has appropriated communities and sparked a devastating wave of gentrification. I recognize the ways in which my institutional privilege and mobility allow me to live in this amazing city when thousands of families are homeless or still displaced. I struggle a lot with how to support an anti-racist movement for a Just Reconstruction without reproducing the very systems of oppression that I want to fight. My identity as an artist interested in theater as a tool for social change has been deeply impacted by my growing understanding of interlocking systems of oppression and how they intersect with my privilege. Recently when helping to organize the State of the Nation festival in New Orleans I realized first- hand what it meant for my intentions not to match up with my impact on a community. My failure to communicate a piece of information to another festival organizer translated into a power play and appropriation of her community's space. In fair housing law it doesn't matter what your intention is, only your impact. Similarly, in the situation at State of the Nation, it doesn't matter that I didn't mean to reproduce an inequitable power structure, but that was the impact of my actions. In general, I have shied away from taking much artistic initiative in New Orleans to date because I don't feel that my methodology is strong enough yet to make me a fully responsible and accountable artist in this community. My guiding principles? I believe in humility and shared power. I believe that I have things to share with communities I am not from, but that mostly I have things to learn. I believe that everyone has assets they bring to the table. I believe in creating art that supports existing organizing efforts. I believe in respectfully sharing stories and space rather than mining for sound bites and images. I believe in listening more than talking. I believe that I am not central to the movement, nor should I be central to any art project aimed at movement- building. I recognize that my presence in a space changes that space because of my privilege and historical access to power, and I believe in being honest about that fact. I believe that our artistic collaborations can be laboratories where we imagine how to live and work more equitably. 

3.  What do you want to learn?
As I mentioned before, I want to develop a methodology around community-based theater and theater as a tool for social change. I am interested in working with other artists (especially those who have much more experience than I do) to examine our artistic communities and processes and develop a set of best practices. I would like to explore accountability, and how artists can be accountable to communities they are not from. I would like to learn more about the history of theater's role in social movements and the legacy of Roots. 

4.  What do you know and can share?
My educational background (for better or for worse) is in theater, and I focused a lot on radical theater movements and community-based theater practices in college. I know something about Theater of the Oppressed and generating work from personal stories and experience. Right now I'm taking a class on community-based theater with John O'Neal and the Free Southern Theater Institute. I can share my honesty, enthusiasm, deep commitment to the work, and willingness to get up and be creative. 

5.  Why are you interested in joining RSC?
Being part of Roots has felt like coming home. I feel like RSC is at the heart of what Roots is all about, and I would be honored to participate in the workgroup and continue to develop my understanding of the role of artists in community and the role of art in movements for social change. By also participating in the Annual Meeting workgroup I hope to contribute to both substantive and administrative work within Roots. 





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