They’re doing some pretty amazing stuff, but the thing that really caught my eye was a course they’ve developed called OSWALD. Here’s what David has to say about it:

OSWALD. I swear to God the thought behind the OSWALD class is “help students question the status quo, think outside the box, and lead them to explore the larger questions.” Another creature largely of Joe Pino, but also Anne Mundell our Design Coordinator and then to a lesser extent the rest of us OSWALD is intended to help people learn to think, challenge assumptions, broaden horizons, and form their own measuring sticks. Like P.I.N.O. above, OSWALD stands for –REDACTED-. For a while the course was called “&^$%&#$.” The problem was that in development, as soon as we put a more conventional name on it like “charette” or “practicum” or “sandbox” we found that the name brought with it expectations. For our own ability to break the mold we had to come up with not only new content, but new language. As a sideline, the students are going NUTS trying to figure out what it stands for. I can’t tell you what they’re doing in there because it’s the first time through and I am not one of the teachers. I know the first day was a sort of scavenger hunt taking them all around campus looking for clues. There’s a day coming up where –REDACTED-. There was talk of having someone come in with no preamble and start teaching –REDACTED-. There’s no course outline; in the university catalog it says “a course sophomore Design and PTM students have to take, bring tools.” It’s taught as an 8 week intensive, meeting five days a week. Are we hitting our target? Is it working? We don’t know, but so far we’re happy with where it’s going. Evaluation will have to wait a few years I think.

I love the concept behind this - a whole course designed to make students stretch the boundaries of their thinking. Even though the implementation isn’t the same, the idea seems very much akin to the values of the Drama Farm - I think finding out more about what they’re doing could give us some great ideas for things to incorporate into our program. Of course, I won’t be able to talk about them here (just in case any CMU students happen by this blog), but if it leads me to any new Drama Farm ideas, I’ll let you know! =)

Also, you should definitely check out the rest of David’s post - the things they’re doing with the curriculum are really innovative and exciting. I loved every minute of my time at CMU, but it still makes me wish I was there right now instead of 5 years ago!

The best thing about theatre is that it’s bio-degradable.

I love that, because it’s so true. Nothing we do in the theatre is here forever - it’s what we and the audience take away from the experience that matters. So why not take risks? If you fail, it’ll all be gone soon anyway - what matters is what you learn from doing it.

I recently discovered the blogs of two university theatre professors who (I think) have the right idea about what theatre education should be like. Tom Loughlin at A Poor Player wrote an article yesterday about whether theatre departments today are inspiring their students to create, or just to re-create. In response to Tom’s article, Scott Walters at Theatre Ideas talks about creating a learning environment, rather than focusing on producing “good shows”.

These articles are both part of a longer series that Tom and Scott have written on the current state of theatre education, and I think a lot of it is relevant to the Drama Farm and what we’re trying to achieve. Take a look, and let me know what you think!

In the meantime, check out this article from Good Magazine. It’s about Project M, which is actually based on a similar concept to what we want to do with the Drama Farm: 8 design students gather for one month, with the sole purpose of accomplishing something meaningful with their design skills. It’s really exciting to see what these students create, and reading it reinforced my belief that we could do something really amazing with the Drama Farm.

Give it a read, and while you’re there, consider subscribing to Good - it’s only $20, and all of that goes to the nonprofit of your choice. You get magazines, your favorite charity gets a donation - it’s a win-win situation!

And stay tuned - you’ll be seeing big Drama Farm updates in the next week or so!

As I walked around the exhibit hall, I recognized the names of at least 70% of the exhibitors there; that didn’t seem all that strange to me - after all, it was a conference focused on my chosen industry. What astounded me was that most of the attendees seemed not to know about the services available to them. They had no idea that VolunteerMatch.org could fix them up with volunteers who were interested in their cause, or that The Foundation Center offers free workshops and classes in fundraising basics.

That’s when it hit me: all this research I’ve been doing for the past year has really paid off!

Once I discovered that I had all this useful knowledge about nonprofit resources, I had to do something with it! I decided that the best thing to do was to put it all in one place, where it’s easily accessible and other people can add their own resources to it as well. To that end, I proudly present:

The Giant List O’ Nonprofit Resources!

It’s a Squidoo lens where I’ve compiled all of the great nonprofit resources I’ve found so far - links, blogs, services, books, etc. - and I’ll keep adding to it as I find more. I’m encouraging other people to tell me about their own resources too - there’s no way I can find all the good stuff, and if we pool our knowledge, we’ll all end up better off in the end…

Check it out, let me know what you think, and if you’ve got a resource to add, leave it in a comment! Also, if you buy anything through the Amazon links, a small portion of the money will go to Donors Choose, and another small portion will go into the Drama Farm Startup Fund. So do some shopping - it’ll make you feel good!

In his welcome speech at Nonprofit Boot Camp, Darian Rodriguez Heyman - Executive Director of the Craigslist Foundation - talked about the difference between dreamers and visionaries.

According to Darian, there are dreamers everywhere. We all know them: they’re the people who see the big picture. They know exactly where they are, where they’re going, and what it will look like when they get there - from A to Z. I’d be willing to bet that just about every person at Bootcamp was a dreamer - we all had a picture in our heads of exactly what our dream would look like once we achieved it, down to the tiniest detail.

Visionaries, however, are harder to come by. They’re the people who, in addition to seeing the big picture - the A to Z - they can also see the B to Y: all the little steps in between that will get them to their dream. Visionaries are people who figure out how to make things happen, and then do it - people like Walt Disney, Jim Henson, and Andrew Carnegie (who are my three biggest heroes, by the way). Every one of those men started with nothing but an idea of how they wanted things to be - and then put everything they had into figuring out how to get there.

It’s an interesting way of looking at it, which I had never thought of before - it really does make clear what sets the visionaries (my heroes) apart from the rest of the “big ideas” people. I’ve got the A and Z part down, and I think I’ve even got the B and parts of the C figured out. There’s a long way to go to find that D through Y, but somehow knowing that there are definite steps out there that will lead me to the Z makes it easier to keep working to find them.

Check them out:

You can see the rest of the photos, taken by the fabulous Ben Peoples, on my flickr page.

What do you think?

There’s lots more where this came from - check out Doug Savage’s Savage Chickens cartoons!

You should definitely check out the whole interview, but here’s an excerpt from it that particularly spoke to me:

We want to get the sauce tasty. I often use the analogy of inventing tomato sauce. Tomato sauce was a huge invention - a great idea per se. But if you got the recipe wrong - it’s not tasty and people won’t eat it. So in our case, we believe that what we wanna do is a great idea and it will succeed. But we’re not 100% positive that the recipe is perfect right now so what we want to do is get it out there to as many people as possible and get feedback. If people say “mmmhhh…tasy” that’s great. If not, that means back to the kitchen table and more experimenting till we get it right.

This is exactly how I feel about where we are with the Drama Farm right now. We’ve got what we think is a great idea, but now we need to test it out and see how it works - where the obstacles are, what needs to be tweaked and fixed to make it better, and also what’s really great about it and what we should keep.

Steli talks about using Facebook as a way to get feedback from a large community of people, and I’ve been thinking about ways we could do that too. I’ve also been thinking that we need to just jump in and do it - maybe create a small “beta version” of the Drama Farm, and try it out next summer. I think we won’t know exactly what we’re getting ourselves into until we try, so let’s do it!

If you’re a student, theatre professional, or just interested in what we’re doing, and you’d like to be one of our “beta testers”, leave a comment below or drop us an email. And spread the word to other people you know - the next step is to build a real community of people and get as much feedback as we can, as we start to put together a program for next summer. This is one case where too many cooks will definitely not spoil the sauce!

Also, check out Steli’s post elaborating on his tomato sauce analogy, and take a look at Peopleized, where Derrick did his interview - I haven’t played with it a lot yet, but what I’ve seen is very cool!

When we last left our free-range dreamers, they were pondering this topic:

Find ways that doing what you do can help other people

Everyone always says that the best way to improve your own situation is to help others improve theirs - it’s sort of like networking karma.

Boot Camp was no different - in the welcome speech and the morning keynote, Darian Rodriguez Heyman and Ami Dar both talked about how using your resources to help the people around you will foster an attitude of cooperation and inspire others to help you with your own work. Darien even challenged everyone at Boot Camp to find two people they could help in some way over the course of the day - either by making connections, suggesting resources, or just sharing ideas. (I found my two!)

The thing that struck me the most about helping others, though, was in the Social Entrepreneurship workshop I went to. Rather than just helping other organizations in hopes of good karma bringing something back to them, Room to Read and GOOD Magazine have actually found a way to use what they’re already doing to help both their own organizations and each other’s.

When GOOD was ready to launch their magazine, they didn’t have the resources (or the desire) to conduct a $12 million direct mail campaign to find subscribers. Instead, they found some organizations with worthwhile causes - like Room to Read - and made a deal with them: Subscribers to the magazine would be given a choice of which of GOOD’s 12 nonprofit partners their subscription fee would be donated to in its entirety; in return for these donations, Room to Read (and the other nonprofit partners) would spread the word about the magazine to their existing base of supporters, encouraging them to subscribe to GOOD - in effect, getting a magazine subscription and giving a donation to Room to Read at the same time.

It’s a win-win situation: GOOD boosts their subscription base, thereby increasing their ad revenue (which is where they make their money), without spending $12 million to do it. At the same time, Room to Read gets even more donations, because their contributors are getting something tangible - a magazine subscription - rather than just a thank-you from the organization. By thinking about how what they were already doing could benefit other organizations, Room to Read and GOOD Magazine were able to join forces and make the most out of their combined resources.

So now I’m thinking, how could we do that with the Drama Farm? What would we be providing that might be of use to someone else? I’m still mulling over the possibilities - if you’ve got any thoughts on the matter, leave a comment - I’d love to hear your ideas!