Destination Tomorrow
Tableau #3 from the group I worked with.
A month ago, Bright Invention delivered a Creative Corporate Training workshop to the nonprofit Destination Tomorrow (DT), located in the Bronx, NY. They are an inspiring organization. This is from the front page of their website:
Mission:
Destination Tomorrow believes that it is more helpful to empower our most vulnerable LGBTQ+ community members in a way that takes them off the path of needing emergency care. The organization emphasizes economic, social, and mental empowerment through a variety of holistic educational, financial, support-based, housing, and health programs.
Vision:
As we provide consistent, necessary, and empowering resources to LGBTQ+ clients, we envision a future with and for them that avoids crisis situations through action plans and connection to community.
Kiersten and Owen performing scenario 2.
DT is a kind of all-in-one resource center for their constituents who are mostly queer black and brown people, many of whom have experienced trauma. Our work with them marked the first time we had worked directly with the LGBTQ+ community (we raised money for The William Way Center through our Improvathon in 2018.) Our connection was made through another consultant who referred us to them. Plans took shape quickly. DT is gowing, and we were hired to address two topics: friction in the workplace between people who had been with the organization almost from the beginning and new hires brought in to manage the nonprofit’s expansion; and how workplace behavior with visitors can have a real impact on the well-being of the organization. These are topics I had addressed in my work through CCT before. So why was I so nervous about this workshop?
Simple: I am a straight, cisgender, middle aged white guy. I worried that I would be distrusted at the outset, that our differences would be too great for real human connection. From my conversations with DT’s dynamic Executive Director Sean Coleman, I learned about the struggle and crises many on his staff have lived through. The intersectionality is overwhelming: oppressed because of race, sexual identity or orientation, gender, class - simultaneously. And into this beloved community I walk in: a child of wealth and privilege, private school and Ivy league, laden with unconscious bias and inherited racism. Would I make some kind of horrible mistake in language or behavior? Would all my assumptions about our shared humanity distingrate under the glare of my whiteness? Would we be too distracted by the wrapping, unable to receive the gift inside?
A Destination Tomorrow staff person plays in scenario 1 with Kate (right.)
It was a four-hour, in person workshop held at their location in the Bronx. My three assistants were Kiersten Adams, Owen Corey and Kate Black-Regan. We discussed my trepidation at our first rehearsal, and assured each other that all we can do is arrive with thorough preparation, open hearts, and good intentions. Then worked on our two scenarios. One examined a rough first day at rehearsal for a young dancer, who is put through a kind of interrogation by the grand dam of the company. The second involved a visit from a grant manager to a fictional LGBTQ+ nonprofit in which he is treated poorly by the first person he meets, and has to describe this encounter and its implication for future funding to the Executive Director.
It rained all day the day of the workshop. I met my colleagues at a predetermined location in Philadelphia and we drove in my car to the Bronx. I shared with them that I wanted to try something new at this workshop. Sensing, somehow, that this group would be open to creative exploration, I proposed that we use the exercise called “tableaus”, in which a group makes a sequence of group poses to describe a journey. The journey I proposed was DT at the beginning (tableau 1), DT now (tableau 2) and DT as you wish it to be in the future (tableau 3.)
After a couple of hours of rainy driving, we had enough time to grab a snack, and then head upstairs. We met Sean who led us to a larger room where our group was waiting for us. Sean introduced me, and then I addressed the group with my team beside me. Kate had suggested a wonderful welcoming statement that she learned through another kind of training she partook it. I asked her to read it aloud, which she did. In simple and powerful language it names differences and distinctions and welcomes them. I spoke about Bright Invention and our work, and how meaningful this workshop was to us, and especially to me as the father of a transgender son. Kate, Kiersten and Owen introduced themselves. Then we started playing:
Zing, boing, pow, moo run by Kiersten
Met too run by me.
Yes, and . . . run by Owen (including exploration of “yes, but” and the hysterical suggestion from a participant that “yes, but” is nasty - “yes, however” is better.)
Tableaus, two groups: Owen and I in one, Kate and Kiersten in the other.
The tableaus took some time, and were amazing. I was reminded that the learning of this exercise comes not in the performing of what is created (although that is a powerful moment), but in the collaboration required to create it. We from Bright Invention tried our best to allow for the necessary mess and chaos, offering our suggestions sparingly. The tableau exercise took us well into hour 2, but it was worth it. During the break, someone approached me to say “I have never seen this group of people so happy to be together. This is amazing.”
Next came the scenarios which took up the better part of 90 minutes, with a break in the middle. We had vigorous discussions and play-ins (in which someone from the client group steps up to play one of the characters after we work on it for a bit.) The final hour (more like the final 30 minutes) was with Sean, so he could talk about why he thought it was important to do this work, and have a discussion with the whole group.
Later that week, I sent an evaluation form for participants to fill out. Some comments:
“The scenarios were great for the group as it was beneficial to see situations played out without ego. It was live conflict resolution that we all benefited from.”
“I found that the tableau exercise helped me to identify the ways in which my leadership qualities can include a bit more perspectives from the individuals with whom I am on a team.”
“I found the workshop very enriching especially with the different scenarios. What I liked was taking into consideration all the group's suggestions to improve the scenarios. It's very instructive and useful.”
And what of all my trepidation? I think looking back that the fear itself was an aspect of my unconscious bias. Some powerful part of me wanted to focus more on differences, but in practice our immediate experience bonded us together. At Bright Invention we say “when I can play with you then I am safe with you,” and this was born out at this workshop. This will sound trite but here it goes. Yes, we are different - all of us. But the needs and desires we share in common connect us more powerfully than differences drive us apart. In fact, in order for differences to drive us apart we need to make them more important by intentionally focussing on them and saying “yes, but” instead of “yes, and.” Or “yes, however.”
It was a good car ride back, and by the time we returned to Pennsylvania the rain was dispersing and the clouds were like something out of a Maxfield Parrish painting. I hope we can work with DT again. It will be like seeing old friends.
“The River at Ascutney”, Maxfield Parrish
