Center for Performance + Civic Practice

CATALYST INITIATIVE

CALIFORNIA

Artist and farmer Nikiko Masumoto, based in Central California, worked with the

Central Valley’s Center for Land-Based Learning, a not for profit with ongoing programming around California. Their

work focused on using Nikiko’s artistic practice and process skills for capacity

building with grassroots organizers who conduct educational programming around

issues of hunger. Their story, over a year of collaboration, is one of relationship-

building, organizational culture, and translating creative practice into settings

and structures that may not initially seem conducive to change.

Mary KimballExecutive Director,

Center for Land-Based Learning

“It was really just more big picture... how can an artist potentially add something different to the work with a community-based organization to help us do something that we’re not currently able to do.”

Nikiko MasumotoArtist and Organic Farmer

“I was very interested in how to approach hunger through storytelling and other arts-based methods to help humanize what we mean by hunger.”

><THE CENTER FOR LAND-BASED LEARNING is an education non-profit with programs throughout the State of California including The FARMS Leadership Program where High School youth learn about agriculture and food production. The students present their work in the State’s Capital at the Farm to Fork Festival in Sacramento.

Their mission is to inspire and motivate people of all ages, especially youth, to promote a healthy interplay between agriculture, nature and society through their own actions and as leaders in their communities.The Center for Land-Based Learning envisions a world where there is meaningful appreciation and respect for our natural environment and for the land that produces our food and sustains our quality of life.

Mary Kimball, Executive Director, CLBL

><NIKIKO MASUMOTO started the Valley Storytellers Project as a means to create public space for Valley folk to tell their own stories. She is the creator and performer of What We Could Carry, a one women show about Japanese Redress hearings.

In 2013 she published her first book, The Perfect Peach, co-authored with Marcy and David Mas Masumoto.

Nikiko:

“Start by getting to know the organization.

And then people... Who are the staff members who I might work with?

And then goals.

Pie in the sky down to, you know, small scale.

Which I know is hard because usually you want to start with —

‘I have this great idea.’

At least for me.”

Their partnership began with a first question:

>

Mary:

“Nikiko asked the right questions and I love that about her.

But for us, it was just kind of like, can we just make a plan?

Can we just figure out what the heck we’re going to do and implement it.

Because that’s just so much our world.”

What to do?

Nikiko’s notes from the first three phone conversations.

>

Claudia Sersland, FARMS Leadership CoordinatorFresno, California

Karen SwanYouth Leadership Programs Director & FARMS Leadership CoordinatorSacramento, CA

* Giving employees skills in a new field or increasing their knowledge base in ways that benefit the organization - growing its capacity to do what it does.

><

Make a plan.

Appropriately scaling the partnership became crucial. Nikiko and the CLBL decided to focus oncreative capacity development* for two of the coordinators of the FARMS leadership program.

The second question:

Together, they developed a series of strategies.

One-on-One Coaching Nikiko, Karen, and Claudia met and talked, listened, and learned about each others’ skills, approaches, and desires for their experience.

Creative Collaboration “Tool Chest”Inspired by these conversations Karen, Claudia, and Nikiko developed a list of Creative exercises for students involved in the FARMS Leadership Program themed around the topic of hunger.

After design, the teams (coordinator + artist) piloted these new arts-based engagements. Sometimes the coordinators led the pilots; some of the pilots were modeled by the artist.

Digital Storytelling WorkshopsArtist-led, the workshops were a chance for the students to examine their own stories and methods for telling them. Nikiko described them as an experiment with the students and the coordinators to find out how the tactics would work. With the students, she did a lot of searching for connections between the different strategies.

>How to build creative capacity?

To make up for geographic distance, Nikiko and the FARMS coordinators would meet via Google Hangouts. Their in-person time was very valuable.

By design, more of the facilitating in the storytelling workshops was led by the artist. This gave the coordinator a chance to observe new and different style and content, as well as student responses.

DIGITAL STORYTELLING WORKSHOPS

Students created placemats following prompts about food and hunger.

Online digital content emerged from the workshops.

Students created placemats following prompts about food and hunger.

Online digital content emerged from the workshops.

Students drawing as part of a “table setting” exercise Nikiko piloted.

In the workshops, Nikiko and the FARMS coordinators asked the students questions like —

How did you feel while gleaning fruit?

How did the physical action of picking fruit change when you knew it was to help feed people?

If hunger were an animal, what would it be and why?One student’s response : “Hunger is like a lion — ferocious, vicious.”

The process wasn’t always easy – >

>“I just think of creativity so much differently than Nikiko does. My default will be not to do this, this is not part of who I am, so I have to concentrate and keep making sure I integrate this sort of thing.”

“I would love to have Nikiko by my side all the time, because she can see what I see, and can instantly see an activity, have a creative approach... How do I get that skill?” - Claudia

“I didn’t want to be pushy, but Nikiko asks great follow up questions, and that pushes me to go further.” - Karen

Karen points out that this question of connecting the physical, personal and emotional - would not have occurred to her to ask.

Karen Swan

Claudia Sersland

>>

but it was fruitful.

This work helps students with different learning stylesengage — it spreads the experience beyond the facilitator’s default mode of teaching, and adds new tools...

From Christine’s perspective, this clearly makes programming better.

Mary knows it will help her staff keep building stronger programs,connecting more with students in ways that we never thought about before, and maybe connecting with different audiences we haven’t done before.

Mary says, “This is all leadership development.”Christine hears, “This was hard, but I want to keep doing it.”

An artist brings reflective impulse to the personal - not just to the content.

The conversation moves beyond outcomes.

Christine Mc MorrowFARMS Leadership Program Director

Karen Swan

Claudia Sersland

Mary Kimball

“This has been a tremendously informative/transformative experience for me as an artistand as a cultural worker.

Some of my takeaways are the absolute absolute absolute value of listening.

And I know that sounds so trite, but really, really taking... doing as much work as I can to take away my ego and really try to figure out what’s happening.

And how I can ask questions.

And serve in multiple roles. Whether it’s as a guide or as an instigator or as a partner or as a friend.

....

The process of listening — I have begun to flesh out what that practice actually looks like for me.”

- Nikiko

“I totally underestimated how intimidating and foreign the word creativity would be... could be for the other folks.”

OUTCOMES <<“In California, Nikiko Masumoto provided one-on-one creative coaching to two Center for Land-Based Learning staff coordinators. They co-designed new activities and exercises to use in engaging students in the FARMS Leadership program. When the artist piloted the new activities, the coordinators had a chance to observe both new arts-based facilitation techniques as well as observe how students responded. Sometimes the coordinators piloted these activities. The spirit of the piloting and experimentation opened the door for the adjustment of activities based on observing student responses and also self evaluation. Nikiko also trained the coordinators and three FARMS Leadership youth participants in Digital Storytelling methods. The stories prompted student reflection on their own connection to issues of hunger as well as learning about this creative technique. Finally, Nikiko created a manual of creative exercises that Center for Land-Based Learning field coordinators can use in their FARM Leadership program work with youth. Both the coordinators and the artist learned about their own practices and the possibilities for adaptation of digital storytelling in their respective work.

....

Nikiko described a somewhat arduous journey in which multiple conversations were needed and the scope and scale of the project fluctuated, including methodologies and target audiences. ‘As an outsider,’ said this artist, ‘I came to a much better understanding of the possibilities when I [saw] the structures and relationships within the organization and observed programming in action. I feel that deep listening was crucial to finding a shared sweet spot.’

At the same time, community partners were sometimes challenged by artists’ more process-oriented approach to planning and implementing activities.

[Ultimately] partner organizations’ desire to build staff capacity in using creative strategies was a positive sign that they valued what artists brought to the table. Some partner agencies viewed engagement with an artist as a professional development opportunity for staff to learn creative strategies that they could carry forward in their work. In California... this became a thrust of the partnership, and from both artist and partner perspective, a way to sustain creative practice within the organization’s work when the artist is no longer present. Even as... California partners sought staff capacity building, they did not view this as a replacement for artists, but rather as a way to enhance their civic processes on a more ongoing basis. In [this case], the organizations saw benefits to continuing to work with artists in the future. ”

- Excerpts from the Catalyst Initiative Report (Animating Democracy, 2015)Animating Democracy is a program of Americans for the Arts

—

“In addition to the capacities and tools that Nikiko has shared very specifically with grassroots-based community organizers who work with the Center for Land-Based Learning in different regions in California, the CLBL participants felt Nikiko really helped the organization itself reexamine what they mean by risk.

She has helped them re-envision the kind of support that the organization needs to give their grassroots workers and has pushed them to reconsider what a social justice pedagogy means, in terms of being dialogical and experiential versus just monological and didactic.”

- Michael Rohd, CPCP Founder and Director

The Catalyst Initiative is an action research initiative — a model for supporting, advancing, and learning from innovative artist and community partner collaborations in order to reveal new possibilities for artistic contributions to community problem-solving and growth.

The Catalyst Initiative is supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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