The assembly of those who host space<\/strong><\/p>\nby Chris Corrigan<\/p>\n
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Who are we? What do we do?<\/p>\n
How do we face change while staying true<\/p>\n
to the art that is the heart of community unity?<\/p>\n
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What body serves the life that comes to us?<\/p>\n
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Here we pause and reflect:<\/p>\n
Youth are the truth of growing inclusivity.<\/p>\n
Dialogue, funding, engagement are our tools<\/p>\n
and it’s what we create with them that fuels<\/p>\n
the passion for change<\/p>\n
and well-ordered offerings that welcome the stranger,<\/p>\n
the small connections that bring us into relationship<\/p>\n
with land, citizen, government and institution.<\/p>\n
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So how to begin to offer form<\/p>\n
that invites the spirit of the arts to warm<\/p>\n
the cold spaces of urban waste<\/p>\n
and rural forgetting, arts-based, human-paced<\/p>\n
endeavours that bring us home?<\/p>\n
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How do we step up to govern and guide<\/p>\n
theatres, galleries, facilities, the sides<\/p>\n
of desks off of which our best work is done?<\/p>\n
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And how do we cultivate the source of our energy,<\/p>\n
the money and bodies that make smooth<\/p>\n
the skid roads and rip rap that brings this enterprise alive,<\/p>\n
delivers the promise which grows and thrives?<\/p>\n
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We host space.<\/p>\n
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The spaces between people that light up with the spark of connection<\/p>\n
recognition, a shared story, historical succession,<\/p>\n
the tending of the coming soon that arises<\/p>\n
from the done before rooted in the best of now.<\/p>\n
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The space of social media<\/p>\n
both digital and tactile that expedites<\/p>\n
the meeting of needs,<\/p>\n
the speaking of deeds<\/p>\n
into the record of our collective story.<\/p>\n
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The spaces of creation and illumination<\/p>\n
like so many star-birthing clouds<\/p>\n
spaces that resound with the colour of the voices that sound<\/p>\n
the melodies and harmonies of our becoming.<\/p>\n
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Spaces in which we re-create, in which we see<\/p>\n
what we could be with the power of free<\/p>\n
expression coursing through the veins<\/p>\n
that carry the pulse of life \u2013 the arts beat.<\/p>\n
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And here we confront our souls,<\/p>\n
navigate the narrow channels, reefs and shoals<\/p>\n
that want to gobble us down,<\/p>\n
sink us in work, overwhelm and drown<\/p>\n
our efforts in the skookumchuk<\/p>\n
where scarcity and demand<\/p>\n
suck and boil together and we move uncomfortably with outstretched hand.<\/p>\n
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Only and finally in THIS space,<\/p>\n
do we recognize friends, companions<\/p>\n
that also walk our path between elation<\/p>\n
and struggle, who know the million details that support creation.<\/p>\n
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Thirty years we have sat in assembly<\/p>\n
hosting a resonance that trembles<\/p>\n
up the coast, valleys and rivers<\/p>\n
like so many shivers<\/p>\n
through the spine of beauty,<\/p>\n
a reverent bass line, upon which rests<\/p>\n
the deep song of who we are.<\/p>\n
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A deep bow to you all –<\/p>\n
for the boards that lead<\/p>\n
for the boards that are tread,<\/p>\n
for the boards that are hammered together,<\/p>\n
the music of spruce and pine and fir<\/p>\n
forming the floor from which we stage our flight,<\/p>\n
take wing and soar.<\/p>\n
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This poem was composed in honour of the 30th<\/sup> anniversary gathering of the Assembly of BC Arts Councils. It is a reflection of the issues that were articulated in 18 Open Space dialogue sessions held on the afternoon of May 2, 2009 in Kelowna, when Assembly members gathered to find wisdom in the stories and questions that were held within their community of practice. <\/span><\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Anchored down in San Francisco awaiting a delayed hop to Eureka California, from where we will drive to the Hoopa Valley and work there for a couple of days. \u00a0 On leg five of the epic journey. So a little time to breathe and reflect on a couple of harvests. \u00a0 First from Geoff Selig who was at the Pembroke Art of Hosting, and who collected the tablecloths from a final day World Cafe on what we have learned about the power of conversation. Second, a harvest poem from the Open Space I ran yesterday in Kelowna. \u00a0 This was …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[28,29,6,5,24,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art-of-harvesting","category-art-of-hosting","category-facilitation","category-open-space","category-poetry","category-world-cafe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-yh","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2125"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2126,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2125\/revisions\/2126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}