The Circle Is Already Listening: Littleglobe's Collaborative Creative Process

Littleglobe (LG), a Santa Fe-based nonprofit artist production house, exists to create collaborative art with communities and to foster meaningful connections and healing across the boundaries that divide us. LG consists of a team of professional artists and facilitators from diverse cultural and artistic backgrounds committed to working with underserved communities. LG develops projects to creatively explore difficult questions while illuminating perspectives, experiences, expressions and stories that are underrepresented. LG artists strive to create original works of social, environmental and artistic relevance that empower participants to explore, define and express issues of meaning using their own unique voices.

This paper aims to outline the essential elements of the collaborative creative process that informs LG’s work. At the core of each project is the creation of means to make connections among people and communities and restore relationships. LG recognizes that many individuals and communities are suffering from isolation, social exclusion, hopelessness, disrespect and misunderstandings. LG’s team believes that through responsive, safe and sustained creative interaction, the possibility for direct communication, dialogue, dignity and empowerment becomes possible.

The Origins of Littleglobe

Creative expression has always been an essential activity of humans to help transform something that is difficult into something that offers strength and insight. It has helped us navigate challenges, diagnose illness, sustain engagement in conflict, and touch upon that which is essential and beyond definition. It helps us to revise and transcend harmful stories and envision new futures. We desperately need creative exchange — it allows us to expand and unfold, to recalibrate and to reconnect.

In 2000, I began what would become the core of LG’s work, the Common Ground projects. After many years working as a musician/artist, facilitator and educator in the U.S. and abroad, and upon the completion of a graduate degree in experimental music composition, I began to envision an artistic practice that was relational and integrative. I took inspiration from artists and collectives that have functioned outside of conventional art-making contexts to realize more immediate connections between art and all other aspects of life. I began to develop a practice that combined complex creative inquiry with meaningful community engagement.

While I entered into collaborations with cancer centers and community groups, I developed an approach to community-engaged arts that required shared risk, witnessing, safety, interdisciplinary investigation and collaborative learning. This early work was shaped by a concerted effort to transcend the hierarchical nature of authorship. In each of these beginning projects, I avoided entering into the collaboration with a preconceived intention for the creative outcome; instead, together with other artists and participants, I engaged in open-ended exploration and let the creative logic of the entire group establish the form and content of the end result.

As the projects grew in number and scale, two other artists, Valerie Martinez and David Gallegos, joined LG co-founder Chris Jonas and myself to become the current core artist team. In 2005, LG became a nonprofit and is currently engaged in a wide range of projects including large-scale community performance projects, grassroots touring of community dialogue projects, new operas, installations, residencies and workshops. Funding for past and current projects comes from specific art and music commissions, as well as social-justice grants and educational grants for school-based work, and residencies. LG builds partner webs between funders, artists, community participants, schools, state agencies and other institutions.

In recognition of the physical and emotional intensity of the work that the artist team does, LG also supports and nurtures the individual creative works of our artists. The organization has been structured in such a way as to promote an awareness of and support for the creative health and well being of all of LG’s artists and staff.

Littleglobe’s Common Ground Projects: The Evolution of an Approach to Creative Collaboration

The circle is already listening (Kathy Sanchez, indigenous activist and founder of Tewa Women United, in a workshop for Littleglobe staff).

LG’s Common Ground projects are large-scale community collaborations that emphasize meaningful dialogue, artistic innovation, renewed connection and social transformation. Typically several months to several years in duration, these projects bring together community participants, affiliate artists, community organizers and partner organizations to create community-specific work that honors both the wisdom of each individual and the specific needs of each community. Common Ground projects have shown that engaged creative work enables individuals to cultivate shared experience (across racial, economic, generational, cultural and ideological lines) that prevents potential conflict and promotes individual and community empowerment, empathy, social inclusion and a renewed sense of human dignity.

Central to the creative approach of Common Ground is the idea of creating a circle encompassing all members of the collaboration: In this circle, everyone is seen. LG artists attempt to leave habitual ways of relating to one another and find a common language in the exchange. In this way, the collaborative ensemble begins to see, hear and move within a shared language that is alive and defiant of simple definitions. When a circle is drawn with a partner community, there is a commitment to the notion of receptivity, based in dignity and respect. This circle becomes an artistic frame and a place of illumination. The circle listens; the group listens to the circle; interactions grow exponentially into community. This new circle that is formed during each community collaboration ultimately paves the way for an ongoing commitment from LG to the community participants, rather than a single discrete project.

Common Ground projects typically begin with a series of conversations. During these conversations the artist team listens, asks questions and listens again. LG asks community members to share their perspectives and guide how the organization initially chooses to participate. LG then seeks to understand the pre-existing needs, challenges and parameters of the particular place. Partnerships emerge as local artists and coordinators are invited to join the artist team. These local team members then assess what kinds of assistance community participants may need, such as honorariums, childcare, food, gas vouchers and transportation.

By giving each project ample time to develop, trust and relationships blossom. When working with people who have experienced various kinds of social exclusion, marginalization and trauma, time is essential for revising perceptions of one’s self and one’s world.

Once the initial partnerships and a team have been established, workshops begin in schools, community centers, senior centers and other community sites. There are no auditions, and participation never requires experience. An ensemble is created across boundaries, bringing together a group of people who do not ordinarily work together. Past community ensembles have been intergenerational, multiracial and drawn from a wide socio-economic spectrum. The initial workshops are designed to be interdisciplinary, focusing on trust and play, rather than the creation of artistic products. In a spirit of nourishing bodies as well as minds, food is provided and shared at every workshop. Over months of work, this initially disparate group coheres into a close-knit community and eventually a new work is created. The final form of this creative work is determined by the ensemble as a whole and may result in a film, festival, art installation or performance. This work is then shared with the larger community. The ensemble participates in evaluations during and after the project to help guide future work. Participants from previous projects often join new projects as mentors, and LG is constantly creating ongoing opportunities for engagement and mentorship. Past participants are now members of LG’s board and are helping to steer future directions.

LG’s work is responsive and generative. The artist team never starts with an agenda or specific outcome in mind. Occasionally, parameters may be established by the nature of the commission, such as “Memorylines,” which was commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera as a musical-theater performance project. Most of the work begins in an open-ended way and is informed at every step by the community engagement. As a result, the ensemble members’ sense of ownership in the final work is significant. This model for generating a truly collaborative community artwork is often initially difficult to comprehend; funders may feel more confident about familiar community-engaged art outcomes such as a theater performance or a mural project. However, by allowing the art-making to lead the process, the ensemble is able to truly engage as a group with curiosity, wonder, exploration, shared discovery, surprise and mystery.

While there is a core group of artists from LG on each project, the artist team for each large-scale project reflects the needs and desires of the partnering communities. For example, LG is currently at work on a project with two Navajo communities that have a real interest in film and visual arts. As a result, a filmmaker and a visual artist have been hired to bring additional skills to the project and augment the capacities to the artist team. LG also invests in regular trainings for artists and affiliate artists to provide all of our staff with the skills to be more flexible and sensitive to a variety of issues that may arise.

Two Early Projects

You just want more of it, now don’t you?
You just don’t want it to end.
It just made you feel good.
We were family, just like family.
(Nancy Clarke, resident of O’Connell Court Sheltered Housing
“MOMENT” participant Cork, Ireland)

The evolution of this creative approach was greatly influenced by the experiences and reflections of two large-scale projects that I directed; “Crossings,” a four-month project with The Creative Center: Arts for People with Cancer (N.Y.C., 2001) and “MOMENT,” a five-month commission from the E.U. Festival of Culture that brought together youth and older adults from a sheltered housing project (Cork, Ireland, 2005).

“Crossings” consisted of an ensemble of 14 women survivors of cancer who had never performed together. Over four months, the women engaged in group investigations into sculpture, live video, music, soundscape and movement with an artist team consisting of a new-media artist, a composer, a choreographer and a sculptor. In addition to this creative engagement, the sharing of food at each session was critical to establishing connections within the group. The final performance at the Judson Street Memorial Church gave birth to a creative ensemble that is still working together today. Dialogue with the audience was held at the end of each performance and allowed audience members to share in the investigatory process the participants had engaged in.

The second large-scale project, “MOMENT,” was commissioned by The European Union Festival of Culture (Cork, Ireland. 2004) and focused on bringing together local youth and homeless older people living in a sheltered housing project. Workshops were held three times a week in a small room in the housing unit. The workshops included traditional Irish singing, soundscape recording, shadow puppetry, spoken word, movement and the creation of a musical gamelan out of teacups. Because tea-time was the central daily event for the residents of the sheltered housing, the team decided to frame the culmination of the collaboration as a “Tea Party Performance.” The sold-out performances, held at the shelter, included family members, staff and the general public.

In both of these projects, the challenges and successes were radical. Participants in both projects experienced profound health improvements, ultimately suffering less acutely from depression, relying less on medication and experiencing a heightened sense of general well being and connection. However, in the sheltered housing in particular, it was difficult to get beyond the resistance of staff, with many expressing great skepticism about patients’ capabilities and expressive skills. After the performances, these same staff members expressed amazement at the degree of skill and intelligent expression they witnessed being created by the residents of the shelter.

However the most profound challenge was what to do when each project was over. Both of these projects existed within discrete time periods, and without the possibility of sustained creative engagement on the part of the artist team. This ultimately informed what has become core to LG’s concerns: sustainable engagement, mentorship and the development of long-term partnerships.

In-depth Case Study: Memorylines: Voces de Nuestras Jornadas and the Making of a New Kind of Community Opera

It was as if you could see other's people's feelings and then those feelings became your own (Poppy Wilder, 11 years old, ensemble member, Memorylines).

In May 2007, LG’s first New Mexico-based community collaboration culminated with 24 people taking the stage to perform “Memorylines: Voces de Nuestras Jornadas” at the Lensic Center for the Performing Arts in Santa Fe. Commissioned by the Santa Fe Opera and the Lensic, this community-dialogue opera bridged cultural, economic and generational boundaries within the complex and often contentious cultural fabric of Santa Fe. In this highly segregated community, the “Memorylines” ensemble was a rare sight, with Pueblo, Hispanic and Anglo community members — ages 8-87 and comprising recent immigrants from Guatemala, mail carriers, nursing-home residents, middle-school students, and contemporary and traditional artists — all working creatively, experimentally and through a deceptively simple approach to community building. 

When I, as artistic director, began the research work for the project, she spent many hours talking with people from a wide range of Santa Fe communities. Three points became apparent: 1) tourism perspectives or branded notions of Santa Fe were plentiful; 2) dialogue between citizens of Santa Fe, who are traditionally segregated from one another, was absent; and 3) “Memorylines” should help to bridge boundaries within the city’s community. Ultimately, “Memorylines” explored the complex multiplicity that characterizes Santa Fe.

The project was initially conceived of as a seven-month project with performances to be held in a circus tent at the rodeo grounds, with food and dialogue following. Eventually, however, the funding support was cut back from one of the partnering organizations, reducing the project to five months with a final performance in a beautiful but formal stage environment. This initial setback was discouraging to the artist team as it limited the possibility for a larger, more diverse audience, and ultimately excluded an expanded civic dialogue around the project.

The “Memorylines” circle was drawn, first, with the selection of a diverse group of six artists. They, in turn, invited community members, subsequently forming a 24-person, broadly diverse ensemble. The early stages of most LG projects start with work that is open-ended, generative and relaxed. The first “Memorylines” session consisted of gentle explorations with words and sounds. Ensemble members were assured that they needed no experience for this kind of work, and that there are no mistakes.

The core artist team for the project was made up of LG artists David Gallegos (production director), Molly Sturges (artistic director/co-composer), Valerie Martinez (librettist) and Chris Jonas (video/co-composer). This initial team was then joined by affiliate artists Rulan Tangen (choreography), Jaime Becerril (social worker), David Dunn (acoustic ecology), Estevan Rael-Galvez (state historian), Penny Rae (assistant director/writer) and Chrissie Orr (set and design). The team met each week to discuss what had happened and to plan future sessions.

The first six weeks of sessions were surprising for everyone involved. No one could have anticipated the amount of laughter and joy expressed. Some felt trepidation at first, but more and more the creative work inspired curiosity and commitment as the group moved through explorations of spoken word, movement, percussion, sound-mapping and live video. Much of the work of the first months happens in small one-to-one meetings or creative sessions. These included acoustic recording sessions with people in their homes, conversations about drawings or writings, recording meaningful popular songs, and duets with artists composed of drumming and vocal work.

Weekly sessions were held in Santa Fe Cares Nursing Home as well as Alameda Middle School. Members of both centers were invited to participate in the performance. A bus brought residents from the nursing home to a dress rehearsal and performances where they witnessed one of the residents perform on stage. Six Alameda Middle School students also joined in the performance effort and opened the piece with a recitation of the ancestors of the eldest participant, Agnes Salazar Trujillo. LG often talks about maintaining open tiers of engagement to address the specific needs of individuals and communities, and this approach worked well.

The process was not, however, without challenges. Over the course of the project, Immigration and Naturalization Service activity heightened in Santa Fe. For the four people in the ensemble without legal citizenship status, these weeks were terrifying. The ensemble dealt directly with the effects of immigration sweeps as some participants went into hiding. Earlier in the project, Bob, a retired engineer who was born and raised in New Mexico, told one of the LG staff that he “had never had a conversation with a Mexican person before.” Suddenly, he had a direct and very real sense of the realities of living as an immigrant. The immigration sweeps had a lasting effect on the ensemble, and all the participants circled around the people most affected. This bonding would become a central element of the performance.

At LG, the artist team often asks the question, “When does your story become my story?” Selena Sermeno, a conflict-engagement specialist from the Bartos Institute, affirms that people stay involved in conflict only when they are emotionally moved. LG projects have affirmed that long-term creative engagement has the power to help people experience empathy and connection. The “Memorylines” group clearly experienced empathy as well as real concern for and enjoyment of each other.

Over time, the group sculpted a new opera based on personal journals, exchanges and other material that had developed during the time together. As the ensemble delved into the idea of personal maps (emotional, physical, historical) the group explored what connected and separated each person. The ensemble generated material via reflections on the landscape of Santa Fe, family stories, daily routines and places the ensemble members have called home. The libretto was culled from all this material and, thus, “Memorylines” had 24 participating librettists.

Creating the final score and libretto was challenging for the artist team. For many months, a tremendous amount of expressions were generated with the ensemble. These materials were rich and often deeply meaningful or significant for the artist team. A musical culture had been created within the group based upon “conduction” practices and the sculpting of improvisational soundscapes in real time. When it came time to bring in the eleven supporting musicians, choices had to be made about the music. For the co-composers, this issue of authorship and filtering seemed awkward in the face of the rich musical improvisational culture that had been cultivated within the group. However, the nature of the performance demanded that the co-composers create coherent songs that could be sung on stage.

Similar issues existed for Valerie Martinez and Penny Rae, the artist team members working on the libretto. Hours were spent pouring through interviews and journals to create cohesive elements. In many cases, they asked for additional writings from the group to fill out sections. The nature of this kind of community collaboration ultimately demands and allows for the artist team to make decisions and alter elements in order to give shape to the overall form.

The process of empowering people to prepare for a large stage performance took time. Every week, small “practice” performances that involved spoken word, singing, movement and video were integrated into the workshops. Through this kind of safe play and preparation, little steps were made each week towards developing the ensemble’s capacity for that kind of platform.

The performance opened with the eleven-piece orchestra playing the overture followed by the recitation of a list of the oldest ensemble member’s ancestors. The performers came out individually and in small groups, reciting names of ancestors as an invocation that sent a particular message to the audience: We are a kind of family and we have come to share something with you.

The various sections of “Memorylines”explored notions of home and identity through song and spoken word. For example, early on in the performance five performers have this exchange:

One: I don’t know where I am.
Two: You’re home.
Three: I’m not home.
Four: I’m home.
Five: You are?

This section ended with Lupe, a Santa Fe letter carrier, stepping forward into a single light with his hand over his heart. “I come to you as I am,” he says, before the light goes out.

Other exchanges included a spoken and song exchange between David and Karmela, both of whom have roots in northern New Mexico. David spoke of his difficulty in being the son of an alcoholic father, of moving to a white town and being called a “spic” for the first time. Karmela spoke of being from a family “like the Cleavers, but brown.” As a child, it had never occurred to her that being Hispanic could be considered a bad thing until she left Santa Fe for the first time.

Subsequent sections of “Memorylines” focused around personal border-crossing stories and the hardships of being an undocumented immigrant family in hiding in Santa Fe. Ultimately, the piece culminated with the full cast singing in Mayan, Spanish and English:

I am light
I am breath
I am tired

I can feel
I’m alive
Standing here with you

I have lost my way so many times
I am strong now, here beside you

By the time “Memorylines” was performed, the ensemble had gone through the rigorous process of creating, rehearsing and staging a professional piece that began from intimate and tender seeds. Many in the ensemble had never performed at all, and if they had, it was not in a theater as large as the Lensic. The cast was tremendously empowered by the experience. People who seemed terrified in the initial phases of staging the piece shone brightly during the performances. One young girl from Guatemala, who rarely spoke during the early months of the project, performed before each 800-person audience with great confidence; she spoke her own words, written in Spanish, about her grandparents in the sky as she gestured expressively with her arms.

The emotional relevance of the “Memorylines”process was not lost on the audience. Identity, race and the reality of migration (among other themes) that were central to the opera seemed to resonate with many in the audience. In addition, and perhaps for the first time on one of the main stages of Santa Fe, border-crossing stories were given voice, and the audience responded. Sometimes the resonance may have been uncomfortable. During the section of the opera dealing with issues of immigration, a few of the more traditional opera audience members walked out. This demonstrated just how tense this topic is in the region. Sadly, LG didn’t have the opportunity to engage the audience in dialogue after the performance. It was a missed opportunity. This desire has led to shaping of the projects that LG has developed since “Memorylines” ended.

“Memorylines” Challenges

Even with four months and a substantial research and development period, “Memorylines” seemed too short a project. Ideally, two to three years is a more appropriate period for this type of engagement, and LG is currently planning to continue work with the “Memorylines” ensemble. However, LG also walks away from “Memorylines” into an expanded community. Ensemble members have become part of the organization’s board, advisory council and artistic team, and are participating in LG’s current 18-month project in rural New Mexico. This new collaboration builds on everything learned in “Memorylines.”

With each project, LG also learned how individuals begin to feel ownership of the process and the performance. LG’s team now understands more about the obstacles to this sense of ownership. Most of the “Memorylines” ensemble members felt deeply connected to the project, yet for some who lived further away (such as one family from a pueblo an hour from Santa Fe), getting to sessions was intermittent. Many ensemble members also had more than one job, and though LG pays everyone an honorarium and offers food, transportation and child support, the stress of adding another commitment, such as a multimonth project, was very difficult for some. The expansive and ambitious nature of this project ultimately meant that LG wasn’t able to respond fully to everyone’s individual needs.

New Projects: Responding to Lessons and Inspirations of “Memorylines”

This is healthy, we need to be talking about these things. It is time for these feelings to come out. Everyone knows they are here (A.J., Common Ground TOC Project participant in speaking about the expressions coming up about economic and cultural divisions between the village of Cuba, N.M., and two nearby Navajo communities).

As a result of “Memorylines,” LG has taken on the development of two new projects, “Letters From Home,” a touring community-dialogue performance project, and “Common Ground: TOC,” a long-term intergenerational and intercommunity collaboration with the rural village of Cuba and two neighboring Navajo communities, Torreon and Ojo Encino.

“Letters From Home”: The notion of “home” is historically layered and ethnically complex in New Mexico and the southwest. It is a story of land, of rooted and nomadic peoples, of drawn and re-drawn boundaries, of occupation and re-occupation. What was originally home to indigenous people became “home” for the Spanish conquistadores, for the Mexican nation and for the expanding United States. How we feel about the landscape, about our sense of belonging, about home, depends essentially on where we stand, where we came from and how others claim the earth beneath us.

“Letters from Home” is inspired by one of the most powerful themes that emerged from the “Memorylines” project. “Letters from Home” will allow members of the original ensemble and new participants to delve more deeply into what “home” means to those who may and may not share a particular ancestral history. Through a process of sustained creative collaboration over many months, the ensemble — again multilingual, racially diverse and intergenerational — will experiment with “letters” of various forms (video, music, visual art, poetry, animation, dance, etc.). From these “letters,” the ensemble will develop a performance that serves to deepen and broaden our understanding of belonging, displacement, migration, occupation and other elements that form one’s sense of home.

The piece, once developed, will become a performance frame that can tour to small community venues. LG will do short term workshops with other rural partner communities to explore these topics and integrate local expressions and participants into the performances. Each performance will include food and dialogue.

The Common Ground: TOC Project (working title) with Torreon, Ojo Encino (two eastern Navajo Agency communities) and Cuba: Following “Memorylines,”LG was commissioned by the N.M. Arts and Social Justice Committee to engage in a similar project in rural New Mexico. In partnership with The Lensic Performing Arts Center and The Southwest Organizing Project (an Albuquerque-based community-organizing group), LG chose to base this 18-month-long rural collaboration in the small town of Cuba and the two eastern Navajo villages of Ojo Encino and Torreon. These interrelated communities are deeply affected by racism, poverty and hopelessness. Over 80% of the population of Cuba exists below the poverty line, while percentages in the neighboring Navajo communities are even higher. The struggle to survive reinforces differences between these communities, and yet they share a basic desire for communication, connection and growth.

This intergenerational project brings together a diverse range of community members, including contemporary and traditional artists, community organizers, students and elders. The resulting creative arts project, launched in October 2007, has encouraged participants to explore issues of primary concern in their communities through a collaborative storytelling festival. LG artists are currently working at Cuba High School, Torreon Day School and Ojo Encino Elementary. In addition, LG facilitates an intergenerational ensemble of participants from all three communities. The bulk of the project will culminate in June 2008.

The participants have decided to create an interactive story festival that will occur annually as well as generate income. The festival will include video, spoken word, music and theater elements. As a result of this in-depth collaboration, LG is now looking at a much longer sustained engagement with these communities. Initial conversations are underway about ongoing mentorship opportunities, summer programs and, most important, the development of the communities’ much desired cooperative community arts center.

The TOC project is the first of several projects that will take place in rural and economically depressed areas of New Mexico and the southwest in general. The objectives of this new, rural New Mexico initiative are to afford participants with the tools to express issues of significance and meaning in their lives; explore and elevate under-represented perspectives, stories and experiences; provide mentorship opportunities with professional artists; and teach a wide range of community facilitation and dialogue skills. In the hopes of enacting real change in these areas, each project is the first step in an ongoing community collaboration.

Conclusion

“I'll just tell you that this week was very, very difficult for us. But here, in this group, I feel so content and happy… because every day I learn beautiful things, how to open my mind, to change and not dwell on my fear” (Lilia Perez, ensemble member, “Memorylines”).

LG rejects traditional notions of “helping” and finds that true artistic collaboration is much more honest. It doesn’t recognize a difference between community and other kinds of art, and focuses instead on relational, creative practices and daily contexts. LG’s work is a means to know one another, to witness one another, to humanize conflict and remove hierarchical and preconceived notions of the “other.” At the root of all LG projects is the idea that the arts are uniquely positioned to bring social and environmental healing as an integrating relational force. New connections and relationships can be formed by engaging communities in collaborative art making and artistic expression. In this way, LG sees art as compassionate, dignifying and transformative.

This essay is part of the Community Arts Convening & Research Project, 2008, funded by a Nathan Cummings Foundation grant to the Maryland Institute College of Art.  The essay was reviewed and selected by the project's Editorial Board: Ron Bechet, Xavier University of Louisiana; Lori Hager, University of Oregon; Marina Gutierrez, Cooper Union; Ken Krafchek, Maryland Institute College of Art; Sonia Mañjon, California College of the Arts; Amalia Mesa-Bains, California State University Monterey Bay; Paul Teruel, Columbia College Chicago; and Stephani Woodson, Arizona State University.

Molly Sturges (composer/performer/intermedia artist) is the artistic director of Littleglobe <http://www.littleglobe.org>. She is based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Original CAN/API publication: November 2008