Incomplete Incomplete Manifesto for Growth

From Bruce Mau Design via Mike Sansone:

1. Allow events to change you. You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good. Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you'll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome. When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we've already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child). Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep. The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents. The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study. A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift. Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere. John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader. Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Harvest ideas. Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

12. Keep moving. The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

13. Slow down. Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14. Don’t be cool. Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions. Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate. The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17. ____________________. Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

18. Stay up late. Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you're separated from the rest of the world.

19. Work the metaphor. Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

20. Be careful to take risks. Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

21. Repeat yourself. If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

22. Make your own tools. Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

There's more. Go check it out.

Persistence II

I was rushing to post about something else when I read the quote from last Friday about persistence. It made me quickly reflect on the last year and changed my mind about what to write.

Thank you, Nick, for persisting with this crazy plan to form a youth orchestra that would be different. Thanks for working many, many hours and many months without a cent of recompense.

Thanks to all of the orchestra members and their parents who have made the youth orchestra a priority and have attended rehearsal consistently. You are a special group that have encouraged us at every step of the way by your very presence.

We've accomplished a lot in less than a year of existence and we will be persistent in improving every aspect of the program for next year and into the future. Feel free to give us your input on how we can do this to serve the youth musicians of Birmingham better.

And thanks to those of you so whole-heartedly supporting Scrollworks. It seems that we have begun something truly unique, which is both exciting and frightening. But we will persist!

Persistence

From Jaime Austria:
Here's something that I learned through Andy Kilpatrick:
...................................................................................
Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence.
Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent.
Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb.
Education alone will not; the world is full of educated derelicts.

Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

Calvin Coolidge
FROM: "Of Permanent Value: The Story of Warren Buffett," by Andrew Kilpatrick, 2006 Literary Edition, page 1655.
..................................................................................

When I showed that to the personnel manager of the NYC Opera Orchestra, he immediately printed it and posted it in front of his desk.

I'm Stupid

I guess Nick and I are just stupid.

We got the lovely email from Jaime Austria and I have explored the El Sistema-NYC website. The names, the connections, the information... and Jaime has sent me tons of research and correspondence. We don't even begin to compare.

Unlike the other programs planning to duplicate El Sistema's success in the US, we came up with the idea, incorporated aspects of El Sistema and started teaching within just six months. Now we have 130 students.

Our logic was that planning was pointless. We couldn't know what to plan for until we had tried it--locations, teachers, instruments, supplies. How do you budget for the unimagined?

We were so right. Each of our locations, Cave9, Hill Elementary, and the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame is totally different. At Hill Elementary we have learned so much that we'll be forever in debt to the students and Mr. Greene. And the value of the connections made at Cave9 has cemented plans to always offer free walk-in music lessons somewhere, somehow. Every day, new experiences help us adapt the program to suit the conditions we find.

I cashed in my IRAs and donated $37,500 to get us started. I can say that now because I know my mom figured it out--she's barely emailed or called for the last several weeks. She definitely thinks I'm stupid. Dominique and others tried to persuade me not to, as well. And I truly appreciate their concern.

What they don't understand is that the vision I see is so much bigger than me that I don't matter. It's like standing under a starry sky and feeling like a speck of dust before the unfolding universe. If we can get this to work, it will be so powerful that it will change our community, maybe society. How does my well-being matter in the face of such possibility?

It sounds so grandiose and impossible, even to me. Until I'm standing there at Cave9 with music lessons happening in every corner, connections growing between races, ages, zip codes. Until I see Matthew, who we met at the Jazz Hall of Fame sit next to Tyler, surrounded by an astounding array of instruments they both play, discussing the duet Tyler composed for them to play in Tuscumbia. Until I see that smile when one of the Hill piano students gets to take home the little keyboard for the weekend.

And there are the staff. More than one has walked out of Hill Elementary after their first day announcing that it's too much and they can't come back. Every single one has called within 24 hours saying they'll be back. I watched Travis visibly get sucked into the Scrollworks vortex as he taught at guitar at Cave9. He's been back repeatedly.

We decided to act instead of spending months or years researching and planning. That leaves us in a tight financial spot as we finish the school year and await 501(c)3 determination. But we can now plan and budget accurately. We know what facilities we need for different student populations. We know how many teachers we need and how they need to be prepared. We know what instruments are in high demand. We know some teaching approaches for different situations. Even so, we still don't know very much. And yet we know we've already made a difference.

There were a few moments before we started teaching that I thought I may have made a mistake with my money. In the last two months I have determined that there will be no regrets. I have never spent a penny more wisely in my entire life.

Be Good: Paul Graham is such a great guy!

This essay by Paul Graham describes Scrollworks, even though he's talking about start-up businesses:

Here's where benevolence comes in. If you feel you're really helping people, you'll keep working even when it seems like your startup is doomed. Most of us have some amount of natural benevolence. The mere fact that someone needs you makes you want to help them. So if you start the kind of startup where users come back each day, you've basically built yourself a giant tamagotchi. You've made something you need to take care of.

Laptop Rockers ezine! Whoo!

The remix contest is now listed on the Laptop Rockers ezine!

Thanks for the support and help!

Spinmeister has posted about our remix contest on his eMXR blog:

Very cool, Jean - and may the contest be a big success!

He emailed us months ago about this and we appreciate his continued support!

Endangered Instruments: Expanding the Viola Project

This article on unpopular instruments from the Casper Star Tribune is very interesting to me because I began learning the violin in the Casper schools:

The Casper Youth Orchestra felt the symphonic strain three years ago when it decided to expand its Philharmonia group into a full orchestra. But with bleak auditions for wind and percussion players it became painfully clear expanding may not be possible.

"It was so sad because we had none of the wind instruments we needed, like the bassoon, oboe or French horn," said executive director Kimi Winckler. Violas and string basses were down and harps seemed out of the question.

So board members started talking. They felt it was critical to begin "growing" Casper musicians to play the missing instruments, hopefully in both the youth program and later in life.

The program is now in its second year and has about 25 participants. It actively recruits students and offers private instruction. It also helps students get the various instruments, which are difficult to find and expensive to buy or rent. The program pays lesson fees for each student the first few years and often brings in teachers from around the state. Rentals and lessons cost about $1,200 a year for each student.

Measuring Impact

This blog post from White Courtesy Telephone on measuring the impact of non-profits opened my mind:

And this gets to my primary beef with this whole metrics revolution, the disaster I mentioned earlier: I find the image of a funder with a stopwatch in one hand and a clipboard in the other, hunched over a perspiring grantee, rather ghastly, frankly. It’s uncivilized, so clearly opposed to what I believe should be the ethos of the charitable sector, an ethos rooted in love for our fellow men and women, expressed through our work, and incorporating the values of cooperation and mutual support, among others.

It made me realize that my frustration with measuring impact has more to do with not being able to take on any more responsibilities. The idea that the funders might take on some of the evaluation is enlightening in several senses:

In this way, the burden of evaluation is shared three ways, and neither the funder nor the grantee needs to prove for the eleven-billionth time that young people respond well to nurturing environments that stimulate their hearts and minds.

A Percussion Thing?

Harry is one of the most interesting people I know. Yesterday he was one of few (only?) music people to present something at the UAB undergraduate research fair thingie--explaining music he made using sounds from his kitchen: cutting celery, etc. Then he came to Cave9 and taught drums--and trumpet. The photographer from the paper was amazed to encounter him in both locations.

Percussion overload

I love this photo of Kevin. Looks like he has his hands full!

Adventures in Molly-land: Now an Earthquake

Molly is getting to experience more natural disasters in Louisville this year than I am comfortable with. First a tornado hits the music building while she's practicing. Now she calls me at 5 am to ask me to look on the Internet to see if what shook her bed was an earthquake. Yep. 5.4 or 5.2. Not comforted by the fact that she lives on the third floor of a Victorian house. She's fine, thank goodness.