Naming Our Beliefs and Addressing Difficult Issues

ARTS FWD
By Angela Tillges

Rendering of floating river platforms for Redmoon’s Great Chicago Fire Festival. Image: Lin Ye

Last month, Redmoon brought together an innovation team with representatives from Chicago Park District, Cure Violence (formerly CeaseFire), Family Focus Lawndale, and the Harvard Graduate School’s of Design and Education for a week-long retreat. Together, this team developed a prototype called The Forge, which is the articulation of the collaborative process model by which Redmoon builds relationships with community partners and engage them as core collaborators. The “a-ha!” moments for the group came from the power of naming, both in our relationship building with partners and in Redmoon’s collaborative process. What I mean by naming is making explicit our assumptions, beliefs, and practices, and engaging partners in a mutual dialogue about them. This is the second post from Angela Tillges about Redmoon’s experience in the Innovation Lab for the Performing Arts. [link]