Kairos Alive! Cultural Wisdom Immersion and Sharing Project

As of March 9th, we've mounted nine 2-way interactive webcasts of music, song, dance and story participation with older adults and their associated intergenerational family and community members. This is a little over half way through our planned sequence of fifteen webcasts.

The project has been going to plan, with slight variations. Our original plan was to start with 4 individual webcasts, one each with Centro, Walker West, Open Circle and the two DACs in Cass and Lake Counties. Then, we planned to bring this group together for the remaining 11 sessions, opening it up to include organizations statewide for the last 6 of the 15 total webcasts. We did both a webcast and an in-person session (2 different sessions) with Walker West's Amazing Grace Choir, and an individual webcast session with Northern Cass Cty DAC. We are working with Centro Wise Elders on a presentation to share with the larger group. To date, we have not been able to attract Open Circle to the webcast. However, our longtime collaborator Ecumen Prairie Lodge Senior Living in Brooklyn Center has joined the webcasts, and with whom we will have individual session. There will be formal sharing originally included in our project design that will happen toward the end of the series when Ecumen, Centro, Bemidji and Walker will share. Because we had numerous groups waiting for us to begin our webcast season in Jan, we decided to to include more outstate organizations earlier in the project and we are thrilled at the positive response (see testimonials below).

Starting the statewide outreach right away at the beginning of the project gave us more time for the audience to grow while integrating our original core organizations (minus Open Circle). We're very excited that we are doing this! Audience has expanded quickly and dramatically among organizations who serve people with developmental disabilities statewide. We went from 32 people on 8 screens at project start to 136 people on 24 screens last week. We expect these numbers to grow. Participant organizations now are in Bemidji, Walker, Worthington, Brainerd, Aitkin, Northome, Two Harbors, Sebeka, Benson, Morris, Rochester, Winona, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Waite Park, and Apple Valley. More plan to join. It is thrilling to serve this large audience every week, and to see it grow from our outreach efforts!

Sometimes older staff members resist web streaming and engaging with technology, but the younger staff members easily embrace it. We plan further outreach to Open Circle to encourage participation in the remaining part of the series. As you can see in the testimonials, we've been thrilled by the positive reception to our explorations and celebrations of cultural heritage and community identity. Kairos Teaching Artist Vladimir Garrido-Biagetti consistently brings his Chilean Spanish/Indigenous song and dance into our sessions as an inspiration and foil for discussion and participation. Vlad sings in Spanish and provides translations. His mother/son duo Ina-Yukka led a Chilean carnival celebration in the Clubhouse. Performance poet/spoken word artist Joe Davis will be on the webcast in March. He was recently featured on Cathy Wurzer's Minnesota Now radio show. His infectious and inclusive performances enfranchise and encourage both African-American communities and all of us. As planned, we expect to involve guest artist Kevin Washington in the remaining part of the series.

Teaching Artists Maria Genn' and Parker Genn' lead movement and song participations, including 'chair dancing' and other adapted forms so everyone can participate no matter their age or ability. Musician/composer/arranger Thomas Johnson explores sources and performs music and song from popular, Broadway, blues, world, jazz, folk and classical traditions. In all shows, participants are encouraged to volunteer favorite music suggestions that are included on the spot or in later shows. Song and dance participations are framed within cultural meanings, with an invitation to intercultural understanding and celebration via the universality of psychology. Love is love. Lonesome is lonesome. Friend is friend. We value the culture of people with developmental disabilities, and attempt to recognize and serve this community with dignity and respect. And, we find ourselves inspired by their creative contributions to music, movement and group songwriting based in their personal lives and interests. As with all of our work, this is not just performance for a passive audience. The audience participants are introduced to dance moves and song lyrics that they can move and sing to WITH us. And, cultural and historical contexts for the dance and music are introduced that give dignity and respect to their sources, gently reference the historical pain of colliding cultures from which the dance and music arises, and invites all into the dance as beloved and respected creative collaborators seeking connection and meaning.; At of the end of our webcast season on June 15th, we had mounted the original grant-specified seventeen 2-way interactive webcasts of music, song, dance and story participation with older adults and their associated intergenerational family and community members. The original plan was to do 15, but we requested permission in our interim report to reallocate funds to support 2 additional webcasts. Then, we used additional Minnesota State Arts Board funding to bring the total webcasts to 25. The audience developed with the Humanities Council funding was included in these additional webcasts.

The project went to plan, with slight variations. Our original plan was to start with 4 individual webcasts, one each with Centro, Walker West, Open Circle and the two DACs in Cass and Lake Counties. Then, we planned to bring this group together for the remaining 11 sessions, opening it up to include organizations statewide for the last 6 of the original planned 15 total webcasts. We did both a webcast and an in-person session (2 different sessions) with Walker West's Amazing Grace Choir, and an individual webcast session with Northern Cass Cty DAC. As described in our interim report, we were not been able to attract Open Circle to the webcast, as planned. However, our longtime collaborator Ecumen Prairie Lodge Senior Living in Brooklyn Center joined the group webcasts, plus we conducted an individual webcast session with them.

Because we had numerous groups waiting for us to begin our webcast season in January, we decided to include more outstate organizations earlier in the project and we are thrilled at the positive response (see testimonials below).

Starting the statewide outreach right away at the beginning of the project gave us more time for the audience to grow while integrating our original core organizations (minus Open Circle). We're very excited that we did this! Audience expanded dramatically among organizations who serve people with developmental disabilities statewide. We went from 32 people on 8 screens at project start to 175 people on 25 screens at our peak. Participant organizations were from Bemidji, Walker, Worthington, Brainerd, Aitkin, Northome, Two Harbors, Sebeka, Benson, Morris, Rochester, Winona, Minneapolis, St. Paul, Waite Park, Princeton, Preston, Rochester, Arlington, Wabasha, Ada, East Grand Forks, Walker, Two Harbors, Windom, Worthington, St. James, Willmar, Floodwood, Eden Prairie, Brooklyn Center, and Apple Valley. It was thrilling to serve this large audience every week, see it grow from our outreach efforts, and see how positively they responded to our intercultural content!

Sometimes older staff members resisted web streaming and engaging with technology, but the younger staff members easily embraced it.

As you can see in the testimonials, we've been thrilled by the positive reception to our explorations and celebrations of cultural heritage and community identity. Kairos Teaching Artist Vladimir Garrido-Biagetti consistently brought his Chilean Spanish/Indigenous song and dance into our sessions as an inspiration and foil for discussion and participation. Vlad sang in Spanish and provided translations. His mother/son duo Ina-Yukka led a Chilean carnival celebration in the Clubhouse. Performance poet/spoken word artist Joe Davis joined in March. He was recently featured on Cathy Wurzer's Minnesota Now radio show. His infectious and inclusive performances enfranchise and encourage both African-American communities and all of us. Ace jazz percussionist Kevin Washington, whose group headlines the Twin Cities Jazz Fest, joined us in early May.

Teaching Artists Maria Genn' and Parker Genn' led movement and song participations, including 'chair dancing' and other adapted forms so everyone could participate no matter their age or ability. Musician/composer/arranger Thomas Johnson explored sources and performed music and song from popular, Broadway, blues, world, jazz, folk and classical traditions.

In all shows, participants were encouraged to volunteer favorite music suggestions that were included on the spot or in later shows. Song and dance participations were framed within cultural meanings, with an invitation to intercultural understanding and celebration via the universality of psychology. Love is love. Lonesome is lonesome. Friend is friend.

We value the culture of people with developmental disabilities, and attempted to recognize and serve this community with dignity and respect. And, we found ourselves inspired by their creative contributions to music, movement and group songwriting based in their personal lives and interests.

As with all of our work, this was not just performance for a passive audience. The audience participants were introduced to dance moves and song lyrics that they could move and sing to WITH us. And, cultural and historical contexts for the dance and music were introduced that gave dignity and respect to their sources, gently referenced the historical pain of colliding cultures from which the dance and music arose, and invited all into the dance as beloved and respected creative collaborators seeking connection and meaning.

Voluntary pre- and post-surveys were administered with participants to gather evaluation data.