Spring Inspiration from Three Awesome Organizations
It looks like Spring has Sprung!
This weekend, I noticed an energy shift. Instead of wanting to get all cozy and tuck into an umpteenth season of a soothing, reliable television show, I wanted to go out and hear adventurous music and revisit avant garde films. When I saw these pussy willows that looked solarized, my mind leaped to Solaris, the experimental film by Andrei Tarkovsky.
Blame it on Spring and the return of life and restlessness and reenergization!
This feels like a pretty special Spring. It’s been three years since Covid stopped us in our tracks. It hasn’t catalyzed the massive social shifts I was hoping for (notably the creation of improved social safety nets and other measures that move us more towards greater social equity), but there’s interesting things lurking around the edges: talks of 4-day weeks and increasing autonomy with remote work, etc.
Many of the organizations I’m involved with are doing very cool things right now. They are embodying Spring’s action.
In honor of the days getting longer than the nights, I am shining the spotlight on three fabulous groups that are each engaged in brave, transformative work in the world. I consult with two of them, and sit on the board of the third. I invite you to check out their words below and learn more about them from their websites. If you’re interested in knowing more about how I can support you in your own brave, transformative work, give me a holler!
Community Archiving Workshop has grown since 2011 from a small, volunteer-run group administering an annual audiovisual preservation and archiving workshop to an international network, which organizes dozens of workshops and training sessions and provides free online resources for community-held collections in need.
The group is exploring alternative methods of organization and growth that formalize their non-hierarchical practices and mirrors their values of community, equity, and personal autonomy.
I am currently working with Community Archiving Workshop in a nearly year-long participatory strategic planning process to help them make critical decisions about their future organizational structure and direction. The work has included offering critical resources for self-directed learning, facilitating individual and group meetings, and providing support as they engage internal and external stakeholders. Later this Spring, I will be facilitating a three-day strategic planning retreat with them on a ranch in California. Fun!
The Center at Orchard Hill gathers people together in a community built from the ground up in southern, rural New Hampshire. Built by hundreds of volunteers in 1994, The Center is a multi-use gathering space for creating, learning, retreating, healing, and dreaming.
I have worked and been in community with Orchard Hill for fifteen years, supporting the good folk there with coaching, team development, culture building, and strategy work. In the last few years, The Center bravely pivoted from using their space as an early childhood education center to sharing their space and land with the local community and larger world in ways that center cultural exchange and social inclusion.
I also pinch-hit for Co-Director and Founder Eleanor Elbers, delivering her son Noah's Orchard Hill Breadworks’ goods around southern New Hampshire and Vermont. It’s one of my favorite jobs, a beautifully concrete foil to consulting! Last summer, I created and performed Bread & Bread at Orchard Hill, a meditation on the delivery route and my history with Bread and Puppet Theater.
Continuum Culture & Arts promotes the creation of innovative, world class music while supporting the people who create it and the culture that surrounds it. Their scope is local and international, and social justice is essential to their humanitarian vision for artistic and cultural activity.
Continuum houses several programs, including the Soup & Sound performance series that has been happening in my living room and around the world since 2009; retreats for BIPOC, low income, and international artists at The Center at Orchard Hill; and FLY!, a new initiative that uses the joy and power of drumming as a means to engage with a wide range of vulnerable populations and community-based human service providers.
My work with Continuum is inextricably intertwined with my marriage with Continuum’s Artistic Director Andrew Drury. I coach Andrew all the time about Continuum issues, and I also serve on its board. We often go on walks throughout our neighborhood, each talking about our work and what we’re trying to think through.
Looking for a thought partner as you move through organizational flux? Need someone to guide your group through engaging processes that build your team’s muscle and ability to work together? Can’t figure out how to get your culture and strategy from here to there? Contact me!
Meanwhile, enjoy the new flowers popping up near you. They are beautiful, ephemeral treasures.
