Notes from Arts Call Planning Session 2/16/12:

 

Gan: Subject of next week’s call is “Artists as Bridges” – artists playing a unique role in creating bridges between several social movements and the Occupy movement – more specifically, who is the 99% – migrant workers, immigrants, how the economy is destroying the environment. Wants to bring key powerhouse speakers who have been working on those connecting spaces with their artwork; to have a lead presenter for the main group and maybe a second presenter for the breakouts. He listed the people he’s got so far. The focus on something that’s currently creating a connection between Occupy and a pre-existing social issue.

 

Janelle: Is it the movement or the communities?

 

Gan: It’s on a case by case basis – to have 5 hook speakers in the main group and then have other people doing that kind of work as well in the breakout groups to get into greater depth. Someone actively engaged in a project actively pulling in people that is both Occupy and this other issue. Ex: Faviana – merging Occupy artwork posters with immigrants’ rights – her audience is both immigrants’ rights and Occupy.

 

The 5 people who present to the main group will describe a project they’re working on – dualistic projects – totally Occupy and totally the other issue – coming at it from both angles – really tight presentations.

 

Ex: Hip hop artist working in communities of color connecting communities on economic issues with Occupy. He’s actively doing these projects and has this kind of audience through his work.

 

The breakout groups with more open ended discussions.

 

3 questions to each presenter: 2-1/2 minutes to talk about their work. One example of a work or project that really connects Occupy to other issues/communities. What are the big questions we must confront if we want to further connect Occupy with these issues. An invitation – what is one thing they want to invite people to participate in or join that’s already underway? Trying to think of a way we can do something a little different and go deeper on this call – just kind of push ourselves to some deeper richer conversations about the role art can and should be playing in the occupy movement that people can answer in their breakout groups. Asked us what we thought would be good questions we could answer in the breakout groups.

 

Mike: Talk about what the challenges are – where people feel like they’re running into the biggest problems and have tried successfully or unsuccessfully to address those challenges.

 

Gan: This is perfect – Asking: What are the connections that are there and should be made between these different movements? Where are the obstacles or challenges in these connections between these movements that are not being made, and what are some solutions for bringing these artistic projects more into the occupy movement?

 

Janelle: Breakout groups on 4 or 5 different subjects – people already know what the connections are so they don’t need to take time to answer that. They probably are already invested somehow in those issues. So if you have one person in that group that’s already doing a lot of LGBT stuff and one who isn’t but really wants to get involved. At least 15-20 minutes to be in breakout groups. Maybe smaller breakout groups? If 15 people want to go into the LGBT group there may be too many people in that one, so could break it into 2 or 3 groups instead of one big breakout group.

 

Gan: Introductions waste time – better to have people talking with each other with clear facilitation – don’t take more than 20-30 seconds – just say your name and where you’re from.

 

Janelle: That would take 5 out of 15-20 minutes right there. So just start with the questions. We’d need to find those facilitators.

 

Gan: This is really about challenges, ideas and issues, rather than who I am and what I’m doing. Rather, ask what are we struggling with and what are some answers. How we’re trying to do it is more important. So we could eliminate introductions.

 

Sharon: The bigger breakout groups are fine – that way everyone interested in one subject will be in on all the info.

 

Gan: Thinks that’s good.

 

Mike: It’s fine not to give mini bios on the call, but is there a central place people can post some info about what they’re doing?

 

Gan: FB page and AMO websites are both good places to post info on projects – there are ways we can get in touch with each other.

 

Mike: People can post to the FB page while the conversation is going on.

 

Gan: The more activity, the better.

 

Janelle: Does anyone else want to facilitate the call? You have to learn a basic version of the Maestro system?

 

Mike: Not dying to facilitate, but if it’s needed to be done, he’d be glad to learn and do it. (except he can’t do it next Wednesday night) Sharon will learn how to do it, too.

 

Gan: How can we support Janelle – she’s good at being that voice on the call that people trust.

 

Janelle: It’s not a lot of work – just to get the agenda written and posted before every call. What takes up time is all the other tasks. She can use general support, and it would be good to have someone else who can facilitate the calls in case she can’t. She can put Mike in touch with Andrea – it would probably only take a couple of hours. Email Janelle at the Interoccupy email address.

 

Janelle: Outreach portion – Ken is willing to tech it. We should get the other tech people on the call. She’ll have Ken contact the group about tech and find another tech person. Who can facilitate in the breakout groups? Some groups may be small enough that they don’t need facilitators. Would Mike be willing to facilitate one of the larger breakout groups? People are used to giving their intro’s so we’ll tell them we’re not going to do that, but people will be able to share their info somehow.

 

Gan: Facilitating requires constant intervention – feel comfortable interrupting people and bringing the conversation back to the issue at hand.

 

Gan: Janelle and Mike or Sharon will facilitate rooms.

 

Sharon will be the note taker for Wednesday’s call.

 

Janelle – Outreach: It’s fast for her to send an email. Gan can type up something quickly. Advertise guest presenters and write who they are – she sends it out to a big list of Occupy artists and posts it to FB – she needs someone to go to each FB page and paste the link to the FB event.

 

Gan: If she sets up the event page, he can go to the sites.

 

Janelle: She’ll send out that list of FB pages again – 4 or 5 of the sites are forums or closed sites – you have to add yourself as a member – good for us to do that so then we can take turns doing it.

 

Gan: Posting it more than once isn’t a bad idea either.

 

Janelle: Gan is communicating with the presenters. Maybe Jovanni will send out the contact info to all the groups again – it takes 5 minutes but she never gets to it. Any other outreach we want to do – sending out to our own Occupy groups – is good.

 

Janelle: Are we going to stay bi-monthly or go monthly? It’s now too much for her to do bi-weekly. We have 3 more organizers from the last call. She wants to do one on the Spring Resurgence.

 

Feedback from the surveys – we’ll do that next time.

 

Subject for the call after next week’s call: Could be: movement building; create a new overarching culture; Spring Resurgence is becoming a pretty big deal. Bringing folks together to talk about what’s being planned and how good art can be a part of that.

 

Gan: That’s a great idea and opening it up beyond the framework of art – speakers planning amazing shit that everyone should hear about. One thing he realized is that in some ways we’re ahead of the curve – we see things really far out, and we prepare them too early, because Occupy is so last minute so much of the time. A month from now is March 22.

 

Sharon – It’s fine to be ahead of the curve. We’ll be ready when the time comes, and we can respond quickly. It would be great to have a quick response mechanism in place when things come up that we want to address artistically right away – even just an email blast. (The google group could work for this.)

 

Janelle – We shouldn’t wait until March 22 for the next meeting – March 30 is the big convergence in D.C.

 

Janelle: Spring Resurgence – Who knows folks that are doing stuff? Take Back the Land is doing something. The 99% Spring that smart meme is doing. The Now – national March 30 gathering that Kevin Z______ and Margaret Flowers are doing. Does anyone know what else is happening?

 

Sharon will find out about Occupy Seattle.

 

Gan: Feb. 29 is the big shut down of corporations action. Feb. 27 is Occupy the Food Supply – Seth will talk about it. Feb. 20 is Occupy for prisoners. Maybe he can get some of those folks on the call. Occupy Education is March 1. March 30 is the D.C. action. May 1 is the general strike. There’s a whole bunch of stuff around income tax day – April 15? – a proxy for talking about income inequality – something going on in D.C.

 

Janelle: Specific dates people can have autonomous projects around and get other people involved. Important to get non-artists on the calls. Anyone want to get on the Monday Interoccupy calls and Tuesday calls and let them know we’re having this Spring Resurgence call on March 7?

 

Janelle: The question is how to give a space – there’s usually a huge lack of creativity around how to get arts and culture involved. We want to create a space in which they can get creative. Pick off some people from those calls that can come onto our call, whether or not they present. Also, let’s make tax day a national day of tax art – we’re creating a new cultural day around inequality on tax day and rights – an arts strike – on May 1.

 

Gan: A lot of groups are organizing around the tax day actions – they need the arts stuff – it’s a bunch of academics and lawyers – it’s lifeless – they need us!! The whole thing should be art and at one point you deal with tax policy. Having an arts-specific call on that would be great.

 

Janelle: Was hoping the google group would be a totally open forum but there aren’t that many people on it.

 

Gan: It’s all open to discussion – in this forum the challenge is being really clear and concise – saying these are the connections that are there. If the issue is climate change, how is it directly connected to issues of lack of corporate accountability? He prepares this stuff before he goes on these calls because he likes to be clear and concise and hit his points.

 

Janelle: The “presentations” part is for best practices – who is already making these connections, and the breakout groups are: what can we learn from this – go into discussion and apply it to what we’re working on.

 

Janelle: Having a 3rd element to some of these calls – to have an online site to see these people’s work as they’re talking about it – like the posters or picture of a garden or a piece of video.

 

Gan: What if we were to put together a page – he could put that on the front page for AMO – gathering the content that reflects the structure of the call.

 

Sharon: It doesn’t have to be work for Gan in gathering info from people. Each person can be responsible for getting a link to Gan by a specific date that he can post on the page.

 

Sharon’s questions:

 

How can we organize to promote specific messages from the Occupy movement?

 

How can we organize to support artists traveling to Occupies in different cities – specific contact people, places to stay, that sort of thing?

 

Next call: Wednesday 2/22

 

Next planning session: Thursday 3/1 ?