Hybrid Arts Learning at Goddard for Tiffany Beard

Tiffany Beard, a first semester student in the Transformative Language Arts concentration, just started a blog and wrote an article for examiner.com in Washington, D.C. entitled "Hybrid Arts Learning Found At Goddard College." Here's a photo of Tiffany at the August residency sometime in the middle of her own learning discoveries. She describes herself as "The quintessential Renaissance Gal. An accomplished writer, singer, and performer; Tiffany is committed to helping fellow artists collaborate for social change." You can see Tiffany's blog here. Check it out!

Media Literacy For Teens & Kids: Changing Communities, Changing Lives

In recent years, two of our students have shared with us astonishing work on media literarcy: Cara Lisa Powers, who graduated several years ago and focuses on working with teens, and Mary Rothschild, currently in her final semester and focusing on helping parents, teachers and children navigate media for kids.

Cara's not-for-profit, By Any Media Necessary, follows its mission "to provide interactive and engaging bridges from entertainment media to education and action." Cara's book of the same title was also the lion's share of her master's thesis. Cara develops all manner of curricula as well as action toolkits and public forums to help youth as well as their educations and community activists engage in greater dialogue about media and community. She's currently pursuing a doctorate in Educational Leadership and Change at Clark University.

Mary's organization, Healthy Media Choices, provides education and tools for parents and teachers and others working with children, drawing from a multi-cultural perspective and from narrative theory and therapy. In addition to a regular radio show (some of which are available in podcasts at WVEW from Brattleboro, VT., Mary presents workshops and trainings throughout the Northeast, and consults with organizations widely.

Both Mary and Cara help people concentrate on the real and enduring stories of their lives rather than mindlessly accepting the media stories about who to be. Their work is rich and far-reaching.

Workshops From Recent Residency: A World of Change In Action -- A Sampling

Qualitative Research Methodology with IMA Faculty Member Karen Campbell: Research projects with human subjects are often the focus of IMA theses: An African American lesbian interviewed African American lesbians about their experience of acceptance/rejection in relation to their churches and local communities; the High Chief of Tobi Island designed a community visioning process toward taking charge of the conservation of their remote island environment in Palau; another student conducted oral histories with elderly Appalachian musicians. These projects took considerable planning around culturally‑appropriate and ethical styles of obtaining informed consent, “interviewing” participants, and the final presentation of the research data. This  will be an interactive workshop so come prepared to give a succinct overview of  your project (even if vague as yet) so that we can help guide you to the best resources.

Memoir, Narrative Construction, and Change, with IMA Faculty Member Jim Sparrell . In this workshop we will consider the role of memoir for personal/self/psychological change in the context of a constructivist perspective to more deeply explore heory underlying TLA and narrative medicine. I will touch on recent neurocognitive research from Joseph LeDoux and Deana Schilling, as well as work from Matthew Lieberman. In understanding the process of writing memoir we will use Sven Birkerts’ lovely little book, The Art of Time in Memoir.

Rethinking Right Livelihood from the Ground Up, with IMA faculty member Katt Lissard: At progressive institutions like Goddard, where many of us have been drawn to pursue our studies in order to create a more sustainable and satisfying life, the term ʺright livelihoodʺ can take on an oppressive quality, positing the necessity to find ʺthe ʹworkʹ that expresses and fulfills our needs, talents, and passionsʺ – and leaving us with a sense of dismal failure if we havenʹt figured out a plan for just how to do that. While we all want to discover and pursue our ʺcallingʺ or ʺmissionʺ and also find a creative, just and economically viable living in the process, in this workshop weʹre going to look at ʺright livelihoodʺ from the ground level, and move up from there.

What Does It Mean To Facilitate Change For Other People? With IMA Faculty Members Caryn Mirriam‑Goldberg and Francis X. Charet: We often talk about how our work and studies relate to changing the world, but what does it mean to actually help a person or community change for the better, particularly through workshops, coaching, consulting, activism and/or community building? To
truly facilitate change, we need to widen our perspective to understand the cultural, mythological and historic context of our work and those with whom weʹre doing this work. In this workshop, weʹll open up some of the big questions informing the theory, practice and ethics of helping others change their lives as well as our own assumptions about transformation, healing, creativity and liberation.

How Songs Find Stories: Music, Memory, and Narrative, with IMA Faculty Member Jim Sparrell: This writing workshop will include a demonstration of the musical timeline as a means of
accessing neglected memories, as well as some discussion of cognition, memory, and music, and time for participants to begin composing a personal essay or poem based on the construction of their own musical timeline. In addition, I will present this with illustration of ethical practices for giving
workshops in the community.

Jungʹs Red Book: Liber Novus, with IMA Faculty Member Francis X. Charet: The psychologist C.G. Jung has made major contributions to several area of thought and influenced people in the arts as well. His notion of the mandala or magic circle as an integrative symbol has caught the attention of many people. With the recent publication of what amounts to his own richly illustrated diary of fantasies and visions entitled The Red Book: Liber Novus we get a chance to peer into the remarkable
processes this man underwent.

The sky inside a stone, with IMA Faculty Member Ellie Epp: One long tradition says humans are made of two kinds of thing, a material body and an immaterial spirit, soul or mind. This ancient contrast between material and immaterial substances has persisted even in very recent thinking, where it takes the form of a contrast between matter and energy. But what IS matter? A stone in our hand is a dense, heavy thing, completely solid, and yet the physicists who are our authorities on such questions tell us that, seen at the level of atomic structure, even the densest physical matter is nothing but open space.
 
“I, You, and It”: Exploring Meaning through Audience and Form, with IMA Program Director, Ruth Farmer: Please bring something you have composed: a poem, an essay, or something visual/aural. You will use the piece as a starting point for exploring how form and audience affect meaning. We will discuss and practice James Moffett’s “four stages of discourse – inner verbalization, outer vocalization, correspondence, and formal writing."

The Power of Words: All Roads Lead Home

Here is faculty member Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg's account of the Power of Words conference, a conference that began in IMA and that Caryn organized for the first seven years.

For the last six days, I've been immersed in the Power of Words, both lower case (as in how powerful our words can be when it comes to changing the world and our lives) and upper case, as in the 8th annual conference of the same name. For me, this event was a homecoming of many dimensions: the conference was held at Goddard College, my second home (who every knew that this phrase would apply to a dorm room where I live approximately one month divided over three visits each year for the last 15). It was also a conference I founded in 2003. But mostly, I found my way home to that newborn glow of what can happen between us all when we create together stories, poems, songs, performances and exchanges about what matters most.

Maybe that newborn glow also had something to do with the newborn -- Nahar Nadi Keefe-Perry -- daughter of the TLA Network co-coordinators, Callid and Kristina, who were responsible for organizing the conference. Born less than a month ago, this inquisitive and beautiful new being was a constant reminder to me about how precious, alive, tender and beautiful the life force is. The Network, by the way, is the not-for-profit organization started by Goddard students, faculty and alumni and others who resonate with what we started at Goddard in the name of TLA.

The things we do at this conference include the usual suspects for most conference (workshops, big group sessions, performances and panels) along with the less-than-usual (talking circles each morning where each of us could speak deeply in a small group, hearing ourselves through having good witnesses and learning how to listen fully to others). Performances were dazzling:

• S. Pearl Sharp's performance poetry brought to the surface an artful and soulful combination of ceremony, humor, deep wisdom and the astonishing dance of Nailah.
• Kim Rosen recited the poetry of Rumi, Mary Oliver, Derek Walcott and others with great passion and joy.
• Gregory Orr's reading and talk on poetry as a way to praise the body of the beloved (which could be interpreted as the life force, Book of Poetry, or whatever we love most) illuminated everything I know and want to know about language.
• Nancy Mellon's combination of superlative storytelling, mythological weaving and anatomy showed us how our bodies are our stories.
• Greg Greenway's singing, songwriting, guitar- and piano-playing journeyed us through the heart of music in praise of homecoming, liberation and the hard work involved in being fully human.
• Katherine Towler's reading from the third book in her Snow Island anthology took us to a small Rhode Island island, just on the edge of time and history, and shaped by a kind of yoga of the imagination so visible in her writing.
• The Coffeehouse of Wonder was so gorgeous, full of the most expansive humor and wildest edges of grief, love, joy and courage that those of us in the crowd went wild every few minutes.

But what brought me home most of us was simply being in such a diverse community, covering age (from newborn to elders), race and ethnicity, sexual orientation and identity, life experience in so many varieties that we made a community that had each other's backs and hearts. Sitting in the back of the haybarn last night were a pact of African American storyteller-shamans. Walking across the campus was a teenage girl who would still share her full imagination with her mother, both of them attending workshops together. Sleeping in the dorms were people ready to stand up and follow their callings as well as those leaning forward to open the door.

I'm back in Kansas through the magical surrealism of plane travel, but I'm still carrying that dazzle and depth, lightness and weight, freedom and connection of being part of the Power of Words.

Pictures (from top): Jen, Callid, Kristina & Kim; Nahar in the arms of Suzanne with beautiful mom Kristina looking on; Katie Towler; Scott and friends performing; a gorgeous pact of shamans; leaving Vermont.

Trust the Process: What Starting Goddard Is Really Like

Joanna Young, a new student in the Individualized MA, wrote this blog about what she experienced when starting Goddard. Check out her blog to see how it all turns out!

How do even begin to write about my week? It was intense, exhausting, relaxing, exhilarating, freeing, validating, educational, empowering.

On Thursday evening I drove into Goddard College in Plainfield, VT. I felt ill with nerves. Even a walk around the stunningly beautiful campus couldn’t settle the raging butterflies. (This is a campus like no other – an English garden-type maze, a water garden with fountains, garden house complete with carved animal heads, trellised walkways, a clock house… and a barn converted into the community center and Haybarn theater. This also included the silo room – or as my advising group came to call it – the Womb Room.)

I was about to embark on a life-changing adventure as a graduate student. I was facing a week, semester, two years of unknowns. And I’d have a room mate. This was a major challenge to me. Having never gone away to college as an undergrad, I had not experienced the right of passage that is sharing a room the size of a bath tub with a complete stranger. Walking into the room for the first time I was taken aback by the close proximity of the two miniature beds. What if she talked too much, snored, farted… what if I did?

Although I was beyond excited and anxious to start something I had been wanting to do for 15 years, the Unknown was eating away my insides. But once my husband left I became calmer. Stronger. Empowered. I unpacked my clothes and my confidence and went off to meet my fellow graduates.

Now, I don’t mingle well. My shy teenage-self is who usually shows up when the my role (i.e. mother, teacher, bank teller) is undefined and “just me” is standing there, exposed. When I walked into this first “check -in” I quickly realized this was one of those times. I felt my shoulders itching to concave, my eyes to cast down and my acne to pop. But before I had a chance to find a dark corner in which to dissolve, a tall, blond man from Wisconsin asked if I was a newbie. I said I was (could he tell by my deer-in-the-headlights stare?). He welcomed me and asked me what I was going to study. I began to relax and by the end of the evening, thanks to the incredibly welcoming returning students and faculty, I had pulled it off (I think). Joanna: Graduate Student.

That evening sitting on my crunchy bed (sans roomie still) feeling slightly forlorn, I wrote in my journal:

I have this song running through my head: “What the hell am I doing here? I don’t belong here…” But I do belong here [Our minds love to tell us crazy untruths.]…. A first step on a strange new journey – fearful, excited and a little overwhelmed by the hugeness of it all.

I let those voices of fear rob me of an opportunity by convincing me not to go away to school at 18 because of The Unknown, of looking foolish in front of strangers and distrust of my own abilities. No more. I ignored the voices and faced my fears. Instead I listened to my passion and believed the path would become visible once I took that step forward.

It did.

To learn more about trusting the process -- parts 2, 3, 4 & 5 -- check out Joanna's blog, Wisdomwithinink.com.

Graduation Day!

Today I watched nine of our students graduate -- nine people who came here to Goddard College with a passion for studying something of their own design, and who, through the process of looking deep and wide and trusting where they were led, found their way to astonishing projects.

• Mike Alvarez wrote a stunning thesis on the connections between creativity and suicide, looking at what the act of creation can mean (or not mean) for healing.
  
• Jame Vincent created a collage of poetry, prose poems, fiction and dialogue along with a critical paper to study the intersections of exile, homecoming, language and creativity.
• Bernard Carey, in studying the absence of fathers in African-American homes, ended up co-writing a play with his daughter, who he had abandoned as a child; a performance of great healing and courage.
• Amanda Lacson took her study of mythology and love into a study of why and how we need to examine cultural stories about romantic love and into a powerful collection of poetry, prose and other kinds of writing exploring mythology and love in her own life.
• Jaki Elmo, through the lens of speculative fiction, explored how fiction can help us navigate and see anew the possibilities of our world and she happened to write an entire speculative fiction novel along the way.
• Angela Davis studied how mainstream European culture in the Middle Ages monster-ized the "other" -- particularly Moslems and Jews, and what this says about our time today.
• Jenny Gundy wrote a memoir about embodiment, earth and homecoming and wrote about ecology and culture.
• Jes Wright looked at how motherhood could be a source of liberation and creativity as well as restricting through poetry and prose.
• Griffin Brady created the Slyboots Guide to Living and Drumming -- a curriculum based on his world-wide study of drumming across cultures.
  

As I watched these people give presentations in the last few days and graduate today, I felt such pride and love for their work. All of these graduates brought such bravery and vision to their work, giving themselves over to their heart's calling, what their life is leading them toward.

It was also wonderful to hear our keynote speaker, Jim Merkel, author of Radical Simplicity, speak about giving back to our community most of what was given to us, and seeing sustainability and love not as a trend that will come and go, but as a place to land and live.

What was most moving to me, however, was watching the graduates' families -- some flown in from across the U.S. and Canada -- who piled into almost all the presentations. The families became their own kind of family, getting to know each other, encouraging one another's graduating members and delighting in what all these students had achieved.

Pictures, from top, the graduates; faculty members Francis Charet & Karen Campbell with Jame Vincent; DawN Crandell, daughter of Bernard, with Ruth Farmer, IMA program director, and Barbara Vacarr, Goddard President; me and Amanda Lacson; Jim Sparrell, faculty member, and Mike Alvarez & Bernard Carey; Jim Merkel.

The Nature of Consciousness: An Interview with Francis X. Charet

Francis X. Charet, faculty member in the Individualized MA program and coordinator of Consciousness Studies, speaks about the conditions of time, mind and the soul on the Single Eye Movement website. Drop by and listen to what he has to say. Here's an excerpt:

My own view is that there is a fundamental unity underlying "body" and "mind" and yet a distinction has emerged seemingly to initiate a dialectical process for the purpose of the differentiation of consciousness. Some have resisted this distinction in favor of one side or the other; there are others who have seen and experienced the unity behind it all and these are the visionaries. But to attain this level of consciousness, and not experience it as the consequence of regression into unconsciousness, is exceptional, transpersonal, and probably the work of several centuries on the collective level.

Read more here.

Speaking of consciousness, here is Francis with the very conscious Grace Paley several years ago on the Goddard campus.