The season is winding down. It's been a solid set of months of learning and exploring for me and what SEA is and what it makes. The last month of our season will be filled with different types of programming than our usual Artist Conversations every Friday night -- we have planned an opening reception for the beginning of a mural project downtown; a living room lectures night (an open platform for anyone to give a lecture about something they know lots or little about); a final game of CITY; an "elsewhere drive-in" to screen all the videos made this season; and a closing event, the dead writer's convention.
SO! I'm working towards making the last CITY the best. This includes making those much-talked-about passports, and personally inviting all the people I and the other elsewherians have made connections with over the season -- Ed, Danny, John, Queena, Chef Graham, Charlie and Ruth, Butch, Wesley and the people at the BCC-- once you get going the list really does seem pretty exciting!!
One thing Stephanie and George and Danna and I talked about at a SEA refocusing meeting the other day was the idea of making this CITY one where people who we see and interact with in our daily walking-around-the-neighborhoods would come into elsewhere and do an "everyday life performance" -- do what they normally do, but within elsewhere! A performance by context! In true elsewhere spirit -- do what you already do but within the context of what's already here, already functioning within the world and city of elsewhere.
That's what's on tap for the next few weeks...
I've been attending the weekly Beloved Community Center open table community meetings for the last 4-5 weeks and I've really been learning so much about creating open opportunities to build relatedness within a community. One key part of this meeting for me was a discussion about creating spaces for authentic dialogue and communication. That means creating spaces where all parts of the story have the opportunity to be expressed and listened for. As one retired minister said (i'm paraphrasing a bit), "Everyone has a position and experience to share -- some part of the story that I don't have or know from my personal experience. It takes everyone's participation to see the whole picture and not be overrided by our human desires for personal money and power."
Also, this week, I spoke up about really wanting to create ways that Elsewhere could connect and collaborate with projects the BCC are working on. The 30th Anniversary Celebration of the Greensboro Massacre is coming up November 4-7th and so I think that Elsewhere will participate in a piece of that event.
I started sending email updates to the rest of the Elsewhere Community that can't make it to these open-table meetings on Wednesday and Danna responded that she was interested in screening Greensboro: Closer to the Truth the movie at Elsewhere -- or at least learning about it and watching it ourselves to become more educated about the event an implications. This feels perfect and exciting. Me going to these meetings has been making Elsewhere a part of the BCC consciousness more, and informing the Elsewhere community about what we've discussed at the BCC meetings is making Elsewhere more aware of our community concerns and events.
!!!
We concluded CITYweek on September's First Friday. It was really exciting to have lots of people come through and experience CITY and Elsewhere...
Here is a piece of our lego-version-of-Greensboro! All week visitors were invited to put their special locations and landmarks on the map, and stake their spot with a flag describing what they were building. Queena's Hair Salon was on there, as well as Anthony's addition of his mom's house in Winston-Salem (it was a bit off the map).
On Friday September 4th we had a habdashery, a pre-teen pop group from Europe, the Press Office Agents interviewing people about their South Elm experiences -- and just so many people! It was the CITY experience sped up -- I had to hire a new assistant, Lloyd, also known as Greg Shelnutt, current visiting artist. He was really key in keeping the entrance to the CITY poppin and also injected some great new energy into the whole enterprise of welcoming people.
(this was greg before I hired him -- before he started his upwards-moving career in the tourism bureau.)
The week was a fun experience to see our community pull off a whole slew of events one after another, and was a learning experience about how to make that many events successful. I realized a big part of organizing with communities outside of Elsewhere is the need to start talking plenty a head of time so that we can fit into their timeline of organizing events. At Elsewhere we're really good at making things happen even at the last minute -- coming together and mobilizing the environment, volunteers, and programming needed for an event this Friday. But when it comes to working with other organizations I really need to make sure to plan more time so as to make sure they can participate without being too rushed.
a really satisfying event happened last Thursday. Anthony and I, as part of SEA programming in CITYweek, hosted a silk-screening intervention on Elsewhere's sidewalk! He told me later he'd never done that before -- silk-screened in such a windy, unpredictable, chaotic setting -- but it turned out so great. It was really fun to be working and have people walk right by and become a part of it without even trying too hard. We screened everything! One guy came by, took off his shirt, we screened it, he borrowed an Elsewhere Collection shirt while it dried, and then 15 minutes later he walked away with a new shirt!
It was a really great opportunity to talk to people about SEA and what the heck it even is... even though I've been talking to lots of these people for a while and they've been to lots of SEA events they still didn't really know what the deal was. It made me realize that I really need to make a more obvious connection and explanation. We silk-screened one of my bandannas with a big SEA logo and it looks so darn good I've been wearing it ever since. I had a thought that we could silk-screen lots of pretty squares of fabric and give them out to all our neighbors as SEA bandannas they could have and wear around (branding! wow! what a concept! so brilliant!) and be part of our club! That logo would be everywhere! And then, people would start to feel like part of something bigger.
My only question is: does that make the whole thing more exclusive? If I'm clearly making something that connects people to being part of a club, does that make people who I for one reason or another haven't given a bandanna to feel left out? Or is it like a team shirt that makes everyone feel good and a part of something awesome and full of community? Let me know your thoughts in a comment if you feel moved please.
Point is, great event. it was so lovely to hang out and meet new people. I got phone numbers and contacts of so many different people that walked by -- potential collaborations and artists in all forms from our neighbors and passers-by! "Crazy" is a poet, C.C. (who I recognized from our Elsewhere Restaurant back in June!) makes t-shirt art of another kind than our silk-screening, and Sally is showing her work at the Yew Tree gallery next door and described to me how her paintings were based in community ideas. So thank you all who came out or who happened upon our event and took off your shirt for the sake of decorating it with some neighborhood pride. even if you didn't totally know what SEA was when the day started.
isn't this a beautiful logo though?!!?
p.s. it's in our bathroom too!!
Yesterday a visitor came into the museum while I was watching the front desk and asked if we were the ones that had the "Free Coffee Cafe". I said yes, and she and the person she was with laughed and got really excited...
Awesome Visitor: We found one of your cardboard signs in the dumpster a couple of weeks ago and I thought it was so funny -- I thought maybe it was a joke actually. So I took it home and it's hanging in my living room! We've been searching around to figure out where it came from.
Me: Wow! How exciting!
So, wow! How exciting! Bits of Elsewhere are traveling elsewhere... be on the look out for your own piece of SEA and elsewhere that can be part of your life too! And then let us know!
Last Wednesday, I attended the Beloved Community Center's Open Table Community Meeting, and wow --- it was such an exciting opportunity! Gale, a new volunteer, told me about this meeting when I mentioned that I was interested in getting more involved in their community but didn't know how. So I worked it in and showed up! I was kinda nervous, like your first day of school kind of nervous, but Gale sat next to me, and everyone was really welcoming and excited to have new community members there.
The BCC is "an organization committed to affirming and realizing the equality, dignity, worth, and potential of every person and to confronting the systems of domination that prevent us from doing so. Using community as a framing concept, the BCC has built an impressive base within grassroots communities in Greensboro and a growing network of progressive activists and organizers from various racial groups and social classes. Although we are focused in Greensboro, our work and influence reach far beyond this city." What an organizational mission statement!
Basically, this is just the connection that I was hoping to make in order to get more (personally) in touch with what is going on in Greensboro outside of my small understanding and involvement in the more artsy side of things. I wanted to connect with the BCC in order to better see where Elsewhere and our SEA programming fit into the larger scope of what's going on in Greensboro.
At the meeting, I mostly observed and listened to what everyone around the table was saying. There was a very diverse crowd at the table -- black, white, jewish, christian, people who are Greensboro natives and people who just moved here. We introduced ourselves and then got into some of the issues on peoples' minds. In a two hour meeting we only really scratched the surface of what there was to say and discuss as a community and as a group of concerned citizens, but it was an incredible space, full of caring listening and lots of layers of understanding and critical thinking. These people were really in touch with what is going on in their community, and the different ways that we could respond to larger events.
They were excited to get involved at Elsewhere too! They were interested in the ways that we could use arts to build community and to promote or contribute to their programming and initiatives. I'm intersted in that too... we'll have to see how this week goes, and where the conversations go. They said that some Elsewherians had come to meetings at the BCC in years past, and even gone to church some weeks there. So I think we have connected with them before.
The main thing I'm really excited about was making a personal, concrete, face-to-face connection with the BCC because I really respect what they're up to and all the knowledge and understanding of Greensboro they encompass. I think building a background of relatedness will lead to really great collaborations in the future, as well as a sense of neighborhood trust. They're only two streets away! Definitely in the SEA.
Kirsten, our Museum Coordinator, Anthony, our Creative Assistant and I set off yesterday to prepare ourselves to outfit all of South Elm with official South Elm Alliance Gear via screenprinting. Anthony is the expert and artist, I am the errand driver and conductor, and Kirsten is providing the cat-enthusiasm, while also amazingly getting work done in the car ride at the same time.
finally, we make it to Kinko's and can watch Anthony in his true element, in his studio of extreme copy-machine art. First he cuts everything up. Slaps it onto the machine and then presses so many weird buttons on the copy machine. Then he does stuff with glue sticks and sharpies and reverses the image and makes it bigger or smaller or darker or lighter. We cut it all up again and cram all the images onto one piece of paper, glue glue glue cut cut cut sharpie sharpie sharpie and bam, it's finally on a transparency and ready to go into the next phase of screen-printing.
While watching this process Kirsten and I learn about the magic of blocking photons and exposing areas of the screen and the chemicals to light to make these images actually become stencils. I still don't totally get it, but to be fair I was distracted by trying to do five other projects at the same time.
Up next: the messy ink part of screen printing. We are printing images onto the CITY movie DVDs and their labels which will be for sale during CITYweek, and then after that preparing for the SEA Bring-Your-Own-T-shirt Screening project. We made a tiny baby SEA logo for really sweet SEA sleeve printing. (That's coming up in two Thursdays!!! --- SEA you then!)
Exciting news! Volunteers are comin' out of the woodwork here, peaking their heads up and ready to jump into elsewhere chaos and projects and communities. Big thanks to Neighbor Jeff who has become a part of our kitchen table, as well as Gale who is committing to being here every Saturday to work with Urban Green and SEA. It's really great to make new connections and bring new people into our community. So thank you -- it's really a key moment in figuring out how to have more people involved at Elsewhere. If you yourself are interested, please let us know (email me! community@elsewhereelsewhere.org) and we'll jump you into the loop.
Bringing volunteers in -- making easy and concrete opportunities for people currently outside of Elsewhere to get involved and make a dent in this big project -- is really a big piece of making the project more accessible to all of Greensboro. So, I'm trying to say, THANK YOU!!! and, WOW!! WHERE WILL WE GO FROM HERE?? I'm excited to see where we can go with the volunteer program, and the new friends I get to make through this process.
Up next: Attending the Beloved Community Center's weekly open forum for community discussion, next Wednesday 1-3pm. Volunteer Gale told me about it, and I'm really excited to have the opportunity to get involved in that organization and make some new collaborations between Elsewhere and BCC. I haven't known how to get involved, and now meeting Gale has made that easy! Who knew that meeting people and making new connections could be so easy.
holy moley.
So, if you thought one night of CITY was enough, enough imaginary re-imagining of Elsewhere, enough creative exploration of metropolis and bureaucracy and institutions, enough playful interaction between residents, visitors, members, and neighbors, get ready to explode your mind.
Next week will kick off Elsewhere's grand CITYweek -- a whole week of CITY interaction. When you come to visit the museum, there will be no, "Hi, welcome to Elsewhere!" Instead, it will be, "Hi, welcome to The CITY!" We will be using this week to develop our CITY characters internally, really figure out how they work and how they operate within the CITY, and we will be using this week to reach out to our neighbors and SEA community to involve them more in what the heck CITY is all about. If we can get someone to walk in just once during CITYweek, to experience our everyday metropolitan life, then maybe it will connect with them in a small way, and that will be a key in to have them come back.
During CITYweek we will host a variety of different events which engage different parts of the CITY. I'm excited for some of the events that will get us Elsewherians out of the building! We're going to be leading downtown tours of our SEA neighborhood -- which I'm hoping will bring in a variety of people to add their important landmarks to our tour, and expand all of our understandings of this neighborhood. We're also hoping that we can build a stronger connection with our neighbor, the Beloved Community Center, through a combined gardening day at their garden or ours, led by Urban Green Coordinator Curtiss Martin.
It's also an opportunity for visitors to contribute to our museum in ways they wouldn't normally think of. In the museum, you will be able to contribute to a growing map of Greensboro in our front window... made out of recycled materials and dictated by what our visitors think is an important landmark. Another project at the front desk will be an opportunity to collect our neighbor's (non-elsewherian) buttons, something we hold as almost gold around here. A button from each of our neighbors will go to making our SEA flag a more vibrant representation of our community, and the ideas behind CITY.
The Press Office will be hosting a series of fancy interviews -- a chance for visitors and neighbors to share their stories of this place, of their experience in the CITY, in the South Elm Neighborhood, and in Greensboro. These interviews will become part of the magical CITY movie we'll be filming for all week.
And, you knew it would come soon enough, we'll finally be outfitting South Elm with official SEA wear, gear, and merch. Once you see it on a t-shirt, that means its real. So picture the entire community wearing the SEA logo on their pants, notebooks, birthday presents, shoes, and babies. We'll be wearing our SEA hearts on our SEA sleeves.
ok so there's like a billion other events. the point is, that i'm pumped to see how this evolves as a whole week of playing pretend. How will the staff meeting go (I might have to record it just to show you all how crazy it might get with George in his CITY character attempting to continue conducting normal business around here)? How will our visitors react -- will they jump in more or will it just be more confusing? What types of music does the CITY play? Will everyone be really dead by the end of the week -- or will we just be THAT MUCH MORE PUMPED??!?!?!??
MORE INFO/REFLECTION/THOUGHTS/IDEAS/PICTURES/PROGRESS SOON!
Before July's CITY officially kicked off, our front sidewalk became an incredible sight -- a free coffee cafe, a set of Elsewhere-esque-tables complete with chess games (played by tiny toy pieces), neighbors, and iced coffee served by our favorite Elsewherians! It was fun to see people walking by, becoming intrigued, sitting down at a ironing board table (topped with Elsewhere irons of all sizes...) and enjoying some iced coffee. After peeking in the window, many came into Elsewhere afterwards, exploring a place they might have otherwise passed over -- an overwhelming blur of objects and people, now suddenly a compelling and understandable place to be and see!
Hopefully our guests made some new friends and some new conversations. The possibilities of sidewalk-events is just beginning....
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Susie said:
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