A good weekend.

Sunday April 27th

We had a great weekend of rehearsal…
Lots of exploration of main themes, and continuing to explore how our event will combine performance and participation…

Some core questions we talked about today, as we hone in on the specific content that we’ll center material around…

Who makes decisions?
Who has the power to make decisions?

How do the words we use in this conversation get defined?

What do people want?
…We mostly see our own values as just and right…we assign our motivations and wants positive value in the world, so when different value systems want different things (or the same place), what happens…?

What do our actions and values reveal about each of us in relation to space?

In relation to community?

Who are you responsible for?

How many dreams can a community hold?

How many places can one space be?
(keeping in mind Bill Savage’s equation-
Space plus Values = Place)

Who do you trust?

What would you like to see changed?

What do you fear will be changed?

We also talked about the nature of participation that we might set up in our events, and the choices we need to make in relation to the activities we build into BUILT (no pun intended).

Fiction or Task-Based Activity
Does an activity ask participants to pretend something, to exist in an imagined circumstance (like play characters in a fictional zoning meeting), or is it an action people actually do from where they are, and who they are?

Private or Public Nature
Is an activity one which people do on their own, in the company of others, or does it demand they publicly engage, or state something about themselves…what is their level of exposure, or vulnerability in the room?

Dialogue or Voicing
Is it about the experience of listening and pushing each other, of engaging, or is it about everyone voicing their own perspective and simply being heard?

Deepening or Broadening
Is it about digging into values, into an issue and its complexity, or is it about getting at the breadth of the issue, and building awareness by expanding the conversation?

Tomorrow, we take a tour of Rogers Park with Bill Savage…