experiment
An excellent one by animator Bill Plympton
Embedded?
Need to trim this down and send it to a friend I’ve been out of touch with. Following up on yesterday’s energizing meeting, the guy turned out to be engaged and engaging and had a lot of helpful information, I need to continue the networking. This cat knows two well-known animators he’s offered to introduce me to. Let’s see if this embed works.
The Point of Today’s Business Meeting
I have the product, the original and compelling prototype built and ready to be put in a package and sold. Now I need to develop skill and confidence in the packaging and selling. Today I have a meeting with a man who runs a well-funded nonprofit that uses the discipline of 3-D animation as a therapeutic tool for “at risk” and court-involved teenagers. His organization has an office, where I will meet him, and a staff, including a Director of Programming, the job I had been mainly focused on for the first couple of years of my adventure in becoming the change I want to see in the world. Maybe I will be introduced to his Director of Development, which is what fundraising is called in the corporate world. I need to start meeting these money people and asking a lot of questions of them.
His organization is supported by grants from foundations and sponsored by several corporations. It seems to have been remembered by wealthy people in their estate plans. By all appearances it looks like it’s thriving.
What do I want from today’s meeting? Mostly to get insight into how to raise money, and get the name of a grant-writer to talk to. I plan to ask directly, at the proper moment, and for the rest of the meeting, actively listen. It is the minimum I’d like to take from today’s meeting and I must be sure to get it. Repeat: get contact info for his Director of Development and any grant-writers he knows.
Here are things I will keep in mind.
To speak little of my own program, answering only as much as asked for about it. To draw him out on how he went about building his unique inspiration into a working expression of his idea that is helping many and allowing them to express themselves, learn skills, work as teammates and better their lives. How he got it up and running– how he was inspired to turn his dream into reality and what steps he took. What advice he might have for someone in the beginning of a similar project.
I know the short answer is that it’s possible to build charitable organizations, even those driven by vague or ass backwards missions (as with several I’ve seen), with sufficient funding. If you start with enough money you can hire the people you need to take the organization pro in short order. How to get funding is the million dollar question.
The point of today’s meeting is to listen to this guy, draw him out, hear his ideas. Ideally end with him sympathetic enough to my goals to offer to be a mentor, talk on the phone, bounce ideas off of. That he seems to be a man of few words indicates to me that I should not ramble on either. I should pay attention to what he’s saying, be thoughtful, find areas of shared interest, ask engaging follow-ups.
He e-mailed back quickly to invite me to meet, and though he didn’t mention having clicked on my website, he’s no different from several of my friends in that regard. Even if I were inclined to hold that against him, it would blunt the point of today’s meeting if I had it anywhere in mind. It is, truly, meaningless whether he finds my program cool or not, although hopefully he does.
Today I’d like to take the tour of his facility, if possible, hear the full explanation, see more work by his students. The sale at this meeting is as subtle as the abuse many experience as kids and tricky to put into words. But it is a sale. The point of today’s meeting is to sell.
The person who made the introduction wrote “don’t let him get you to volunteer for him.” I am forewarned. The only other thing I know about the guy, really, is that he chooses to run a program to help “inner city” youth in trouble.
That he chose to do this with his life and creative energy speaks very well of him. I will applaud his mission and ask him how he got the drive to help these kids, tell him, if he asks, about going into that tenement in West Harlem that was right out of Bigger Thomas-world, the brutality and lowered expectations I witnessed there and at the Hugo Newman College Preparatory School there in Morningside Depths, the tremendous creativity I saw in the kids whenever they were given the chance to express it.
And remind myself to stay away from politics. Keep my end upbeat and open. I’m there to listen and drink in advice and wisdom. He’s the customer, and he’s by definition always right. Going there today to exercise the patience I’ve developed in other areas, see what, if anything, this fine man has to offer that could help my organization.
One thing I need to remember, this man was driven to be an artist before he started this organization, which. like mine, is based on creativity. He is among that small slice of people who are excited by creation, know the thrill of timelessness that comes upon a person when he or she is painting, drawing, layering parts on top of musical parts, composing, editing. I need to go there and see where he’s at. That connection to creativity could be the key to the whole meeting.
“Who’s in charge here?” the moments-before-angry faced teacher’s aid asked me in the workshop the day she filled in there for my absent assistant. It was a rhetorical question, I could see by her smile that she got it. The process was in charge, the organized chaos of creativity. She was amazed that no adult seemed to be directing it. There is no point to mention that to this fellow, he is a director in his program and imparting discipline is as important to his stated mission as freedom is to mine, maybe more so. But the impulse to create, this is a key.
Got to trim my beard, get in some of my least shabby clothes, and head down there, with these thoughts in mind:
creativity
identifying with kids in trouble
turning ideals to action
grant-writer and Director of Development
how did you find good people?
Mission Impossible
Breaking the impossible mission into small bites, each broken down into a yes/no question and working through an exercise based on the CBT thought record, with evidence for each answer.
Is the idea or premise of the project sound?
Yes. The premise that children thrive and are eager learners and peer-teachers when they are listened to and encouraged to be autonomous has been shown many times. I have demonstrated this in dozens of sessions in public school after-school programs. Take a look at Sugata Mitra’s great work for an engaging and much more scientific demonstration. Teaching others yields the highest learning retention (90% vs. 30% for demonstration) of any teaching method. (While this seems intuitively true, see this)
The organizing principle of the program is basic and almost too simple to need much explanation. People like to be listened to, children, in particular, need to be heard, have their competence acknowledged. The role of adults at the workshop is primarily to listen to and encourage children’s ideas. In a room where teamwork proves to be the most effective way to work, and is also much more fun than working solo, cooperation takes place naturally. Where there is excitement to do something, and a working method in place, the thing will get done.
Does this translate to the educational and social development gains you tout for this program?
The evidence here is incomplete but results in the rooms where workshops have been held strongly suggest that it leads to these gains. The potential of the program is great, and student enjoyment of it, and engagement with it, almost universal, so far.
How is this program different than other programs that use animation with children?
Those programs offer structured lessons taught by adult teaching artists who guide the children step by step through a given technique. They function in the traditional teacher imparts knowledge to student model where the student then demonstrates what they have learned by carrying out the instructions.
In my program the children are the artists, with access to an array of materials and media, and they learn by observation, discovery and invention. They quickly become the teaching artists themselves when they solve problems and help another student with something they’ve mastered.
Have you made progress marketing?
Yes. I have redesigned the website which has been universally regarded as an excellent improvement over the old one and something that shows the program in action, expresses its essence colorfully and explains it, within ten seconds or so. Czech it.
I am producing postcards, a brochure and a short, beautiful book in children’s book format showing the program in action. I overcame many technical hurdles to design the website and get it on-line and, seeing the concept and shape of each of the other marketing materials I need to make, I am confident that they too will be beautiful and engaging.
Hate to ask a mean question, but have you had business cards made yet?
No. While they are cheap to produce, and any card is better than none and I can always have a better set done later, I have been stymied by design challenges. A pathetic excuse, I am well aware. They are at the top of my list of marketing things I need to design, even though I did not include them on my list above.
Any luck going down your checklist of things you need to do to advance your mission today?
No, none so far outside of this exercise.
Is it possible to sustain a strong belief, even with something that works exactly as you envisioned and designed it, and has the potential everyone you’ve been able to show it to has grasped at once, in the absence of another person who believes in it too?
No. In the long run, no. And this is a long run. That’s why my next task is reaching out to several strangers to see what I can do in that crucial department of meeting people who will be engaged by the program and what it can do. Truly, that is the most important single task ahead of me right now.
Will you get on it right now?
Yes, of course.
Rob:
I got your name from ( ) who met you at ( ). ( ) thought you might be a valuable person to speak with about my program, an educational nonprofit I am in the process of launching.
Based on the principle that adults listening to children is a powerful motivation, the wehearyou.net student-run animation workshop has been embraced by children (and in one case adults with chronic disease) in the dozens of workshops we’ve done. You can see some of their work here (link)
I am in the process of recruiting adult facilitators and collaborators. I believe that Social Workers and Art Therapists have a skill set that would make them ideal in this role, and that they would also derive a lot from participation in the program.
If you’d be willing to talk to me, I’d be much obliged. Email me here or call ( ) at any time.
format for contacting organizations:
Discovered your program recently and admire the work you’re doing. It’s amazing to me that [insert particular amazing thing here] more people don’t see the connection between collaborative creativity and improved social and life skills. Congratulations on your great work.
I’m in the pre-launch stage of a nonprofit program with a mission similar to yours, a stop-motion animation workshop for public school kids ages 7-11. The kids collaborate, like a [compare to their actual work], and do all aspects of production, using computers to create what are essentially digital flip books. You can see some of their work here: http://wehearyou.net/
Of course, the animation is in a way a bi-product and organizing principle. The real deal is the kids working as teams, teaching each other, spending a couple of hours in an encouraging, creative space where imagination and technical precision are two interlocked aspects of good work.
If you have some time to speak with me, I’d be grateful to hear more about how you developed your program from the initial inspiration and first steps to a sustainable program.
wehearyou.net works exactly as designed, kids take to it immediately wherever we’ve done it, but I could use some ideas and guidance about how to get it up and running on a wider scale.
If you’d be willing to talk, email me back or call me any time
at ( ), whatever’s easier for you.
at ( ), whatever’s easier for you.
In any event, know that your success is an inspiration to my fledgling organization.
For Your Consideration
Madness is all around. You can be shat on by people who will insist that you managed to shit on the front of your own shirt, while wearing it. They’ll be adamant about it, angry when you try to point out it would have been impossible, demonstrate the angle of the sphincter relative to the landing zone, show the limited throw range of the asshole itself. Proof?
“There you go, again…” as Reagan, probably already senile, kept chuckling at his debate opponent every time the guy made a good point.
How exposure to adversity effects the developing child
I’ve known people, my mother was one, who although very intelligent, open to considering new ideas, otherwise insightful, would rather kill you than acknowledge their own anger or the harm that was done to them in childhood. Literally, repressing enough pain that they looked like they’d rather kill you than admit to being angry enough to smash someone.
“We never fucking killed anyone, asshole!” they say as a chorus now in my mind, I can see their faces, not relaxed, calm or even, in some cases, recognizable as themselves.
“‘Face twisted and contorted in hate,'” my sister quotes our father, and we both laugh. It was a phrase we heard many times over the Rice-a-roni, flank steak and salad at our formica dinner table in Queens. It was snarled, this peculiar phrase, and stated in exactly those words each time. A very curious phrase to be repeated verbatim, if you think about it.
“Twisted AND contorted,” my sister will say, and we’ll both have another chuckle. But we were not chuckling then, during those terrible battles, nor am I chuckling about it now.
My sister, working in a terrible school, is afraid to apply to move to a better one. “It’s a concentration camp but I’m used to it,” she says, “and I don’t want to leave all my friends I’ve cried with for years.” She agrees it would be better to make new friends she could celebrate with sometimes, instead of just crying and commiserating, but, in spite of being a master teacher, and someone who makes friends easily, she’s afraid to change schools.
“I’ve told your sister a thousand times what a wonderful teacher she is,” said my father on his deathbed, “but no matter how many times I tell her, it makes no difference.”
“A thousand times?” I ask him.
“Many, many times,” he says, remembering distinctly the time he told her that, at the assembly at the school where her class performed, and another one, more than one, besides. To him that was a lot. “I told her a thousand times,” seems to indicate that.
“A thousand times,” says my sister with her trademark irony. Not for nothing did she dub her father the D.U., The Dreaded Unit.
“You are a whiner,” says an observer.
“Do you hear me actually whine?” I ask the jury. On closer inspection I notice the jury is composed of a couple of weatherbeaten mannequins, a decomposing cadaver, three skeletons and a few unidentifiable animals preserved by amateurish taxidermy and propped crudely on the chairs of the jury box.
The judge, for his part, is indescribably horrible. Good thing this is a jury trial, I think to myself.
How does it work? Well, imagine you’re walking in the forest and you see a bear. Immediately, your hypothalamus sends a signal to your pituitary, which sends a signal to your adrenal gland that says, “Release stress hormones! Adrenaline! Cortisol!” And so your heart starts to pound, Your pupils dilate, your airways open up, and you are ready to either fight that bear or run from the bear. And that is wonderful if you’re in a forest and there’s a bear. (Laughter) But the problem is what happens when the bear comes home every night, and this system is activated over and over and over again, and it goes from being adaptive, or life-saving, to maladaptive, or health-damaging. Children are especially sensitive to this repeated stress activation, because their brains and bodies are just developing. High doses of adversity not only affect brain structure and function, they affect the developing immune system, developing hormonal systems, and even the way our DNA is read and transcribed.
Nadine Burke Harris, MD
Expectations
“You expect too much, that’s why you get so cruelly disappointed,” he said.
“Perhaps,” she said, “but by expecting nothing, to minimize disappointment and keep alive the dim hope of a pleasant surprise, don’t you also sacrifice standards and ideals?”
“Maybe so, but keeping my expectations low is more realistic than expecting the rare excellent things that are so infrequently delivered,” he said.
“Mmm,” she said, “it is a lot to expect to be heard, I suppose. We talk most of the time to hear ourselves talk, because we need to speak, after all, not as a way to thoughtfully mull over what the person we are talking to has expressed. It’s the way of the world.”
“My work here is done, sister, you have grasped my essential point. Until you get in the habit of expecting nothing, you will always be disappointed, given the way of the world, as you say.”
“Mmm,” she said, “still, isn’t the way of the world also to wage war, to rage when frustrated, to expect the worst will always happen, to justify torture, to accept our powerlessness against any of the many gigantic, ruthless forces arrayed against us? The way of the world, isn’t the profit of the privileged always bought at the expense of 98% of the world’s inhabitants? At the price of the destruction of the planet we live on and the extinction of most of its life forms?”
“My little socialist,” he said, smiling. “Surely you don’t expect any of this to slow down in our life times.”
“Nobody expected the end of child labor,” she said.
“We fixed that by making international business treaties that allow child labor anywhere but here. Many of our goods are still made by child slaves, and it keeps our prices down, I might add. You feel like paying $2,000 for an iPad made by workers protected by fair pay laws?”
“Nobody expected the United States to do away with slavery. Jefferson and Madison, who both owned slaves, were typical of the antislavery visionaries among our Founding Fathers, and yet…”
“All it took was the bloodiest war in American history and a century of legally winked at lynching, et, voila, a small percentage of formerly enslaved people are now as free as anyone else who has enough money,” he said.
“You make a good point, but it doesn’t swallow the larger point,” she said.
“You say most of us don’t have conversations where we really take to heart what the other person is saying. That may be so, in one sense, in your experience. Yet every day, a million times an hour, these kind of conversations are conducted by salesmen. Salesmen must be adept and sensitive listeners and respond to what their potential customers want and need. If a salesman doesn’t speak in a way that… why the look?”
“What people do to earn their living is not the same as what we do in our most cherished private encounters,” she said. “A psychiatrist may listen carefully and respond thoughtfully…” she began.
“Oh, here we go!” he said, louder than before.
“Why is that so threatening to you?” she asked.
“Oh, boy!” he said. “It’s not like we haven’t had this conversation ten or a hundred million times. I get it, I get it. I GET IT!”
“What do you get?” she said.
“Oh, no,” he said “I’m not going to go there, let’s not and say we did, I know you are but what am I? Hoo boy, no, no, no. Not again, never again. You are singing a one note samba built upon a single note. What is it with you? Why, Dolores, why? I mean, really, Dolores, for fuck’s sake.”
“No,” she said, “you are absolutely right. Anyway, I brought you the cookies you asked for. Here you are. And I will try to get back here to visit you next week.”
“That’s very nice of you, Dolores,” he said, getting up and taking his long coat off the table. “Thank you so much for the cookies,” he said, “they look delicious.” He shrugged into his coat, gave her a hug.
“Anyway,” he said, “thanks for coming to see me. It always makes me happy when you find the time. Once again, you’ve made my day.”
“And you mine,” she said, smiling happily. He smiled back and turned to walk down the long, depressing hallway.
In the elevator he took a long breath and shook his head. “Some fucking world,” he said to himself, as he pulled up the collar of his coat and headed through the lobby and out into the street to hurry back to the office.
Illuminating Quote
“All violence is an attempt to replace shame with self-esteem.”
James Gilligan is a psychiatrist who spent years working with violent inmates and is the author of a series of books on our epidemic of violence.
Looking forward to checking some of these books out.
Untangling Knots — maybe
A few moments spent trying to untangle a knot about some ways people deal with the painful things that happen to them in life.
For a child raised in an angry home, or a cold home, or in a place where little physical or emotional support is given, the options in adulthood may seem limited.
The adult can say, as many do: I turned out OK, all humans have problems, when I stay busy I don’t think about bad things, the past is the past, I’ve made a decent life for myself, people love and depend on me, I may have a temper, and my faults, but I’m basically a good person.
The adult can say: what was done to me was wrong, no child should have to endure abuse, though millions unfortunately do. The parents were perhaps incapable of doing better, but damage was done. On a cellular level, it turns out. Steps must be taken to acknowledge the harm done, identify it clearly, begin to heal real wounds that were inflicted. That the infliction of these wounds was largely unintentional does little to mitigate their ongoing harmfulness.
Some adults will be infuriated by adults who take this second approach. The idea of a person feeling entitled to revisit the wrongs done to them drives them into immediate anger. They may begin, as my father always did, to reflexively compare any complaint to what they themselves have endured and, in their mind, surmounted. This reflex short circuits empathy. The new complaint will always emerge to them as a whine, a cavil, the sniveling of a weakling.
That there are sniveling weaklings who justify their own failings, even brutality, by their victimhood, there can be no doubt. Depending on which side you feel more drawn to, the very words I’m typing now could be seen this way. Of course, unlike the child being hectored while held by the collar, you need not read another word of it, nor consider:
To many people it seems preferable not to dwell on childhood injury. To others, it’s a necessity, attempting to understand and overcome the harm and live a more intact life of integrity. When I get that burning in my lungs during someone’s attempt to bully me, I know exactly why it happens. Many others are not so “lucky”, or lucky, as the case may be.
Then again, luck, I suppose, is largely a matter of luck.
