SeaCHANGE Conference: Art + Conversation with Victoria Carrington & Robert Sapiro

Transcript (lightly edited for clarity)

Beth Tener
I’m happy today to have Robert Sapiro and Victoria Carrington here. Today’s podcast will share a story of a conference that we put on last summer. It’s going to be put on again, in a few weeks in about a month, it was called SeaCHANGE. This was a wonderful creative event. I’m going to play some clips from Najee Brown, who was one of the other co-creators with Theater for the People. He’s in the middle of preparing a bunch of shows, so he couldn’t be here today but he’s here in spirit. Here is him describing this three-day gathering, in clips from a video we made, which will also be in the show notes.

Najee Brown
I’m so excited about this weekend. We had three incredible days at Green Acre, Bahai Center of Learning during the SeaCHANGE Conference. I can’t begin to say how excited and how proud and over the moon I am of what I experienced this weekend, people just opening up and being vulnerable and showing their humanity like never before, simply because they felt like they were in the safe space. You can just walk into something, say, Man, I just want to do a conference and bring artists together and just have conversations. But the way that we did, it was so unique and so special, that people left not only learning, but they felt like protagonists they felt like they were contributing.

Beth Tener
With me today is Robert Sapiro from Green Acre and Victoria Carrington who was one of the participant and played several roles. She helped invite and enlist lots of other great attendees to come and she was a facilitator of one of the panels. We’re bringing her here to speak to those multiple roles of the gathering.

Victoria Carrington
Thank you, Beth. I am really appreciative. And it’s an honor and a privilege to be here.

Beth Tener
Victoria, I’m going to ask you to introduce yourself, where you are in life, what kind of work you do. And what was your experience of the conference? What was it like?

Victoria Carrington
I am a graphic artist, artist of all sorts, and a web designer. I have my own company, Lilac and Aspen, which is really cool, because it’s a nature nod to both of my home states. I’m originally from Colorado, that’s where I was born and raised. I’ve been out in New Hampshire for about three years.

For me, the experience of the conference was creating community. I had had a number of opportunities to build and create community, but having the space of the artistic and the natural community, the connections, the intersections, and the interweavings of all of these different aspects that connect us was really great.

Beth Tener
I’m going to start by turning over the mic to Victoria. She’s going to host the first part of the podcast and interview Robert and I since we were part of the hosting team of the event. You can ask Robert about how did the collaborators come together.

Victoria Carrington
I’m excited and curious because I don’t know how it all came together, so you can sense that authenticity in my voice. How did this start? We’ll start with Robert. Where did this idea come from for a conference that centered around change around BIPOC visibility, but also around art.

Robert Sapiro
It’s been an exciting process. In some ways, it’s rooted in what Green Acre is all about, which is to be a gathering place where people of all backgrounds, families, friends, and people who want to just work together for peace and justice and the oneness of humanity and the nobility of every human person. It’s an attempt to create a community and ultimately create a society that’s both diverse and united.

Green Acre has been around since the 1890s. It’s been an incredible gathering place was founded by a woman named Sarah Farmer in the 1890s. She envisioned it to be a place where people could come together and talk about the big issues of the day. They would put up these giant tents in the summer and invite speakers from all different locations. The first yoga class was probably taught at Green Acre, and WB Dubois came and spoke here, and Booker T, Washington and, and all kinds of thinkers and transcendentalists came here. In 1929, we had the first Racial Amity conference – a gathering of black and white folks in the little town in Maine.

The arts has always been woven in as part of all of that as well. So fast forward to the next century, Green Acre had been striving to engage in more conversations around racism and racial justice and trying to figure out what that looks like in the 21st century. And at the same time, we decided we wanted to get art on the wall, a very simple thing. So we started to have a series of art shows. Out of that emerged an idea of exploring justice through beauty, and being able to combine these conversations with art.

We also realized that as we engage in the really important conversations, we often fall in the same patterns that are very familiar. Folks who have engaged in them for a while can say, “well, we’re going to start off here and end up there and this person is going to say this.” But when you allow for artistic expression to happen first, people can say things that they wouldn’t feel comfortable saying in a conversation. Other people can hear things they wouldn’t be comfortable hearing in a conversation necessarily. So that combined, hopefully leads to a third conversation, which I think SeaCHANGE showed us.

That’s what we were up to then we ran into Najee Brown. He had been just directing a play in Scotland, and he came to Green Acre for a little bit of a respite and downtime. He was volunteering and staying with us. He moved into thinking about his next phase. We decided to do one of his plays here, called The Bus Stop.

Beth Tener
Robert, I think what was special was that we gathered at a place where people had been meeting and having these conversations for many decades. It’s this is a beautiful place with green grass and white buildings right along a tidal river called the Piscataqua. It felt like that was feeding what was happening there. There’s something to the history in the place. Would you say so, Victoria?

Victoria Carrington
Absolutely. You can sense and feel the history of this being a space of neutrality and peace, to talk about these different perspectives. It’s a space of gathering of different minds, different communities, different walks of life. I think that that was a magic that I kept hearing from people who attended as I walked into the space and I felt a part of and that I belonged and equal amongst everybody there. There’s something to that, that I think just comes with the space of Green Acre itself. So Robert, what was the motivating force of creating this conference?

Robert Sapiro
Najee and I went to three conferences in a month. They were all wonderful. We went to the Black New England Conference, we went to the national Race Amity Conference. And the New Hampshire Arts Council put on an art conference. We got to travel around together. He says it was our Men in Black phase. We rode around going to all these different conferences.

In our conversation around it, we realized we had some wonderful moments at the conferences, but a lot of those moments were in the hallway in between things. They were these conversations we had and these connections we made with people as we went along. I remember, I don’t know if it was the second or third conference now, Najee turned to me in the car and said, “Do you think we can do this? Do you think we can do a conference?”

We were trying to create that space where people could really feel connected. I had gotten the chance to know Beth and her work a bit, I think that naturally led to her collaborating with us. The way conferences are done, where you have a few talking heads and you get a firehose of information. We know there’s good content here, but it just feels overwhelming, and often very choppy and disconnected. So knowing Beth had some skills and capacities around designing conversation spaces, we were just eager to work together with her.

Victoria Carrington
I agree, I noticed there was a lot of process time and transition time and these open spaces for communication. I want to ask Beth about the tools that she created to build this conference, because it was intentional and strategic. I had never been to a conference like that. Normally, like Robert said, it’s somebody talking to you. But to create so much openness for interactivity amongst the participants was some of that magic transformation that everybody was talking about. So that tell us a little bit more about that process.

Beth Tener
Sure. Victoria, I enjoyed meeting you at that event, because she pretty quick. I think outside the main entrance, you asked me “how did you do this? What are you doing?” You saw what was going on.
My work is around the art of: how do you weave community? I once saw a quote from about “unconferences.” They said the amount of wisdom and experience in the room so far exceeds the one or two or three people you could ever put on a stage or a panel. So why don’t we design for that? Or like you’re saying, Robert, if there’s such a buzz at the coffee hour, and most people come to events, as much to learn as it is to meet people and talk about their experience.

I come from kind of a line of learning and lineages of people convening in different ways. Of course, some of this goes back to indigenous traditions of circle process, things that aren’t so a top-down hierarchy – this way of gathering in circles, gathering in small groups and big groups. One of the traditions that I have drawn from as a global network called The Art of Hosting Conversations that Matter. Another one is Liberating Structures, which is a wonderful website, we’ll put in the show notes. They offer many different ways to convene meetings. So that’s what I brought.

You have to invest the upfront time to design it well. One of the methods I use is to have a design team. In this case, it was Rober, Najee, me, and Jessica Gaines, who is another Green Acre, multi-talented person. Robert, I’ll let you pick up that part of the story – how we did a lot of Zoom calls, with one huge Google Doc.

Robert Sapiro
We did meet a lot. One of the most interesting parts of the process was that you encouraged us, and we all embraced the idea, of having the questions be the driver of the conference. We spent a lot of time thinking about what those questions were and testing them out. A few times we felt like we had settled on a good question, but then like realized, Oh, that wasn’t quite it. It was an iterative process of exploring and discovering, “Okay, so these are the big questions that we really feel like could be the most helpful.” We ended up landing on three different questions which then focused the three days.

Things I’ve designed in the past, were like, here’s a topic we’ll do for the day, but when it’s a question it felt different and allows so much more.

Beth Tener
We had one question per day, which were:
• Day 1: How can the arts be used for healing and social change? Good, open question.
• Day 2: How can we amplify BIPOC (which means Black, Indigenous, People of Color) artists work?
• Day 3: How can we create resource-rich environments for artists, and grow how we use the arts for healing and social change?

What I was doing on those calls, was trying to really listen and call forth what was moving in the group. When you do that work together, it’s such a great example of co-creation and collaboration. Everyone should be really listening. Often, the question you start with is not where you end up.

In this case, the resource-rich part was, you know, the whole thing of starving artists, and all the inequities of how resources flow to who in our society. It was listening in to the challenges and that Najee was seeing amongst his friends and having recently gone to Europe, where arts are really well supported. That was “up” and it became this interesting question. You can see how others reading our promotional materials saw that question and were drawn in. Curious how that landed for you, Victoria.

Victoria Carrington
I came in for the conference and was not in the planning. I only saw those questions. They resonated. Some of the groups of friends and colleagues that I brought, we would actually walk the grounds in the morning and think about those questions, and use those as guiding principles. Then at night, we would reflect and have these nighttime conversations, because we were all staying in the Sarah Farmer Inn.

It was beautiful to sit, feel the summer breeze, look out on the river and have these in-depth conversations and process what we had had learned. Those questions, guided, and opened those conversations. I also felt like that kinship and that connectivity. Beth, I’d love to hear more about Kinship and New Directions and the kind of the art of hosting you do.

It had that similar feeling of, in Colorado, you sit around a campfire, you look at the stars, and you talk. There’s something magical about those conversations where you feel the oneness, you feel the connectivity, you feel hope, you feel warmth, and you suddenly don’t feel like you’re alone. All of these walks of life come together. I had that campfire feeling in that moment.

Beth Tener
Thank you, Victoria. Well, is that a softball question or what? Because you know, my website is a picture of a campfire! I love that you said that. That’s the heart of why I created this initiative called Kinship. New Directions Collaborative has been my facilitation consulting work over many years, which was in a consulting mode. Over the years, I honed how to facilitate meetings with a lot of participation and connection. And how to mix methods to get the best thinking of the group. I believe that every gathering should rebuild the social fabric. There’s a great quote from Movement Net Labs: “No one should go home unconnected.”

We need to move from our whole focus being on fixing problems or making profits towards what do we want to create? What do we want to disentangle from? What are the patterns that are healthy, that are missing? The pattern of having time and space with no particular agenda, to sit and talk with each other and sit around a fire or the pattern of a coffee hour where there’s cross-pollinating and lots of different people can meet each other from different places. There’s a lot of innate human patterns of connection, that the rush of productivity and assembly lines and smartphones have really disrupted. How can we give people experiences of what is possible with these different ways of meeting and coming together?

Beth Tener
Robert, maybe you want to talk a bit about how we structured the three days – the balance of enough structure so people feel held and they know what they’re doing. If you get too fluid and open it starts to feel really disconcerting or like a waste of time. So you give enough structure, but then there’s less flexibility and spaciousness. That’s really the art of the design.

Robert Sapiro
We ended up having these three questions and thinking about exploring one of them each day. It began with us as a design team, really becoming clear about those questions. Then we were able to naturally convey it to everybody who was there.

The first day, we started off with a land acknowledgement, but also literally exploring the land. That created a tone and an experience for people that I think was really powerful in terms of being immersed in the beauty of the location and the place, as well as the history and the natural environment. I think that really made a huge difference. We also did movement and other ways of getting ourselves physically grounded each day. Then we had some folks do what we call fire starter conversations, because I guess we’re going to keep the campfire metaphor going.

The fire starter conversations were a wonderful exploration of the question from different perspectives. We had three or four panelists each day. They opened up and went deep and real. It took away any of the typical blocks or obstacles that people might have, because it was just so wide open, and so real and honest and authentic. People felt like, oh, okay

Then we had an opportunity to get together in small groups, either through World Cafe or 1-2-3-All, where everybody got to participate in that question. Then we had plenty of time for lunch and it was a delicious lunch. Then we had workshops, where people could choose going to different workshops, on different topics with different kinds of presenters. There was a time slot for them to happen twice. So that was really powerful.

Then we came back and had a chance for people to sort of digest all of this, and then have something called Open Space where people could bring up their own topic, whatever that might be, whatever they wanted to talk about, based on all that they had been going through during the day. We had these amazing, wide ranging conversations -some were three or four people or they were 20 people.

Beth Tener
So Victoria, anything you want to share for you about what that flow of activities was like?

Victoria Carrington
Robert, in that summary, you took me back to all the different layers. The design was so key, in that there was structure, but there was also some space, some creative breathing space. The ones that stood out is the fire starters. For me, I remember Najee had asked me to do the opening fire starter to get people excited and connected. And I was like, “I’m not entirely sure what I’m doing. But okay, here we go.”

We did the land acknowledgement with Jessica, and I was feeling so connected to the land and hearing her speak about her indigenous culture and her indigenous heritage so freely, with so much honor and grace, I was like, “Wait, this is what I’m going to do, as well.” I started off with a drum circle, to remind us we’re like one heartbeat. It was an amazing way to see that ripple effect. I did not plan that, it totally came from being in the space and being within community with everybody who was there at the conference.

I heard a lot of feedback. Everybody had a different part that really spoke to them. The Open Space was an activity people said: “in every conference, everywhere, we should do this.” I’ve been to a number of conferences where we have all these great topics and information. We want to talk and debrief. Sometimes people go out to dinner, but then it’s loud and you can’t hear and you don’t get to talk to everybody. Whereas the Open Space was designed so well, that it allowed people to have those burning conversations and create those deeper connections. I’m still seeing those ripple effects. I’m still seeing people talking about them. I don’t know if now or later Robert wants to talk about the hair conversation, but people are still, a year later, talking about the hair conversation in Open Space.

Beth Tener
I’ll quick share how this got organized. Then we’ll have Robert tell that story. It was a classic story from this event gets retold. The way Open Space works is you have a big flip chart or chalkboard and you invite everyone in the room to suggest topics for conversation. It can be on anything, and then we’ll write it down. You explain there are four simple rules, whoever wants to join that one can join that one, you vote with your feet, if you get there and you’re not learning, or it’s not really what you want, you can leave and join another conversation. So, it’s this incredibly freeing ability to put the agenda in the hands of the audience and let whatever’s bubbled up that day, find that space. And then you say, okay, so Victoria wants to talk about this, why don’t you guys go up and sit in the lobby of the inn? And if anyone wants to join her, go there. You other guys are going to sit over on the corner of the porch. So you give people simple instruction where to go and whoever shows up with the right people, when it’s over, it’s over. It’s a freeing. very light structure. So that’s how Open Space works. We’ll put stuff in the show notes on how to structure it. Robert will share the story of one of the topics that bubbled up from one of the workshops.

Robert Sapiro
There was all of this art on the wall, from the art show for Afrofuturism that we were doing in collaboration with the Seacoast African American Cultural Association. One of the pictures was by Arya Badiyan, and it was called Unbound. It was a picture of a woman whose curly hair was extending to the edges of the canvas. I did a workshop twice that day where we looked at that painting.

The first time, one woman who was from African descent, and she living here in New Hampshire. She talks about how meaningful it was to see the freedom of the hair, which is under such constraint and constriction in our society. Then the next one, I was with three African-American women. Again, that image became the topic and it was so fascinating, because it was meant so much on so many different levels. And to see how that unfolded, I learned one of the more important things I could learn as a facilitator and as a white guy as well, which was just to be quiet. So thankfully, I was inspired to do nothing, which was perfect. The conversation just continued and got more intense. And then it naturally came up in Open Space, as one of the topics. There were 20- 25 women talking about their hair. Victoria, you can describe what happened, I just have the outsider story.

Victoria Carrington
Yeah, that was the magic. Backing up a little, first off with the Open Space, Beth, in the way that you set the tone. One of the words that I heard over and over again, was “you have the permission to go where what where it feels right.” That’s not a message. I get a lot at conferences, and you constantly reaffirming that, I really believe set that tone and created that domino or that ripple effect to where, when Robert is leading this workshop, and these three, women of color want to talk about hair and Robert says “we can do that.” And then he just says, “Why don’t you do that?” which I know doesn’t seem like a big deal. But, honestly, it is. It is not often that a white guy, who is the Executive Director of something, says “you know what, you lead this conversation. I’m just going to sit back and learn.”

Beth Tener
Oh, you’re so right.

Victoria Carrington
I think it was on day one. Those small gestures. It’s all strategic and came from the space. When we had Open Space. I just said let’s talk about hair.” And next thing you know, I’m with 20 women from all these different walks of life, these different colors, different textures, different styles, and we’re all sharing our hair stories and journeys. One woman is even crying and saying that she just felt like that conversation healed 30 years of trauma for her around her hair. Another woman felt like she could be seen and felt more pride in wearing her hair natural. I loved my curly hair a lot more, as well.

That’s why we bring up the hair story. It shows how spaces work. We started the conversation talking with this prompt and then we’re looking at this art on the wall. We are assessing, we’re evaluating it, we’re finding the connectivity, and then the space is created, and then we’re able to continue the conversation. And that ripple effect is still huge and still impactful, where people are still asking me about hair.

Beth Tener
You mentioned at the start, Victoria, that people were saying that this conference was transformational, or it was magic. I think what we’re hearing here, this is where the magic happens, because our design team would never have sat around and said, “of all the workshops, we can do, let’s do one on hair, like we would never have planned it that way. And then just the freedom that anyone who cares about it can go to that place and find each other. As I said, when we go to gatherings, part of what we want is to find our people or find an interesting person I would not normally interact with. A theme of these recent podcasts I keep hearing is: “wow, at this conference, I met that person, and then we became friends.” So that’s partly why I love Open Space, because people find each other who never could.

Victoria Carrington
There were other topics like white supremacy, police brutality. Some of these topics that are really heavy. One of the artists that I invited is a BIPOC artist, who focuses on indigenous and cultural and sacred jewelry. I invited her to the conference. And said, I can’t afford to go. I reached out to Najee and Robert, and talked about how do we make this equitable? How do we make this accessible? And that was one reason, I think I was able to invite a number of people, because there was a level of autonomy given to me to help people be met, where they’re at. If somebody needed a 50% scholarship, or if somebody needed 25%, or if they needed a full scholarship than they would be met where they were at.

So this young lady got the scholarship and was able to have such a transformative experience. This is actually kind of somewhat of news to Robert. She said that being around, Robert, and having these conversations was able to heal some of that space of not feeling as safe and comfortable around white gaze. And not because there’s anything negative or bad, it’s just she hadn’t had those experiences where she could feel seen, where she could feel heard. And then to be in an Open Sable with you. talking about police brutality, is like, wow, like, that’s when people are talking about the magic and the transformation. It’s stuff like that – because those aren’t everyday acts, but they have an everyday impact. Because now, she’s able to have a more open heart, and learn how to guide and have those difficult conversations with people who might not have the same background as her.

Robert Sapiro
Oh, that’s beautiful to hear. Victoria, your approach was so helpful. It offered learning that Green Acre has incorporated in terms of how you approached inviting people and meeting them where they are. We have structures in our society where we say, “Oh, you can apply for a scholarship.” Then there’s some evaluation that has to happen and some criteria. When you approached folks, you shared a vision of what it was going to be. Then if you saw that they were excited about it, then you said “Great, so why might you not be able to come? What obstacles might you have?” And if it was financial, then we were able just to say, “hey, well, you can do this.”

What I thought was interesting was you asking what did they need, because people didn’t necessarily need 100% scholarship. Wherever their circumstances were, they could share that. Then, we could meet them there as opposed to trying to do some blanket formula for how to do it. I felt like that was really inspiring.

Beth Tener
I hear in that: How do we move from being so transactional and bureaucratic towards being relational? This is a completely relational way to do it, because to Green Acre in the end, whether it’s 50% or 100%, it doesn’t matter that much, right? What matters is the way that people feel invited and welcomed and supported to be in the circle.

Victoria Carrington
Yeah, I did not expect to be the woman who came with the entourage of people, but it was it was coming from this space. Hearing a lot of obstacles that various artists and various communities had and being like, “Alright, let’s talk about them, let’s figure them out.” I did not realize that a space like I felt that weekend was possible, where I felt seen, where I felt whole, where I felt safe, where I felt heard, amongst all sorts of people from all sorts of walks of life, while having difficult emotional conversations. I haven’t experienced anything like it, prior to that conference

Beth Tener
That is the art of hosting these gatherings. We’re trying to have these really difficult conversations, and we’re coming into them in a highly individualized culture, with a ton of judgment and punitive, quick-to-exile attitudes. We shame and judge, and say “you’re not doing it right.” Given that, you can imagine our nervous systems when come into that kind of dialogue. This is part of what’s challenging in workplaces, where everyone is super busy trying to have these deep conversations on the heels of generations of historic traumas.

My philosophy is, we need to create spaces, which I call resource-rich, that are so welcoming and supportive. That’s why the arts are great, we have music, we have dance, we like use all these ways of being in our bodies, knowing, connecting, and sharing meals. We surround the conversation with that, in a way where everyone can kind of come in and not feel on edge. There’s a lot of warmth and friendship. We’re connected to nature, the bigger systems. I think that’s the next chapter of how we have approach the hard work we have of healing and restoring and finding our way through all these divisions we have,

Victoria Carrington
Absolutely. Feedback from the artists was that they felt seen and valued as an artist. It hurts my heart sometimes to know that art isn’t as valued in American society as it could be. Because art is so important to so many societies. It’s so important to the human experience, music, dance movement, fine arts, painting, sculpture, all of those things. That was a huge feedback that I heard of all these artists who said “I felt valued” We even had the term the “dope-ability”, which is a combination of dope and nobility.

Beth Tener
I forgot about dope-ability!

Victoria Carrington
Regal, like kings and queens and royalty. It’s not often artists are like, I feel like royalty. When I walk into this space, I feel cool and royal. So dope-ability! I probably will make those stickers.

Beth Tener
One of my favorite moments in Open Space was a topic of: how can white folks be part of supporting BIPOC artists? It was a summer afternoon, and Robert, his wife, two or three younger people of different identities. Maybe one other older white woman… it was such a mix of generations and identities and backgrounds and some artists and others. We had a conversation for an hour and 15 minutes. The Open Space went into dinner. That conversation was so moving, it was so genuine. We were understanding each other and more and more able to bring up the harder things and talking about our families and our kids. I’m still thinking about that conversation.

Robert Sapiro
It was wonderful, similar to the hair conversation, right? There was a space was created where and when people have a genuine question that they want to explore, and they’re sharing it with the group. Then whoever is compelled to be there, shows up and has it. It really comes back to the power of Open Space. I think it also speaks to the way that it was designed. Everybody felt included and felt dope ability, because of the various things that we created together.

We had this rich depth so that people then could formulate: Well, what are my questions? Because there’s no way we could have gotten that group of people together spontaneous, like, hey, we’ve all just met, let’s have this conversation, right? You could never plan that. And it didn’t take that long either. I mean, that’s the part that that’s mysterious. It could be either be – we never have that conversation or it takes like 15 years of friendship, right? But with this environment, you know, after two days we got there.

Victoria Carrington
Absolutely. That was such an intriguing part. DEI is a hot topic and everybody wants to talk about it. But at the same time, what does that really mean and what does that really look like? This is what it looks like, because we have people from different racial backgrounds, different parts of the country, other countries, people from the queer community, and not just one side of the queer community. There was a lot of representation. I remember somebody was talking to me about accessibility and what they needed in terms of their accommodations. And they were like, Oh, I’m supported in my accommodations,” like they were almost shocked. And I was like, yeah, we’ve got you.

I think that all of these different perspectives were able to show up once we created all that space. Then you have these in-depth conversations and you can see beyond some of the identities and find that connectivity, and that oneness. I got to have experiences with people who don’t have the same lifestyle as me. And I got to really understand why it is important to have equity, why it is important to continue whatever advocacy and social justice is needed to help continue to push, resources forward so that everybody can have a happy, healthy quality of life.

Robert Sapiro
I appreciate that point, so much. It is one of the few spaces I’ve ever been in that felt it had equity in it and had inclusion that felt meaningful, and had diversity. And yet, we didn’t do any of the performative things. We did it, we didn’t talk about it. Maybe that’s what it was,

Beth Tener
hence the name of my podcast, Living Love. We just lived it.

Victoria Carrington
And people saw it. Some of the community members that showed up with me, had felt like, “okay, here we go. Here’s another, you know, performative..” And then they went, and they were like, “Wait, this is not performative. This is real, this is authentic. I want to keep coming back.” And that magic that people’s lives, changed my life change. I know other people’s lives changed because of this conference. And it’s because it wasn’t performative, it was authentic and that gives so much hope.

I think about it being the sea change, like it’s a sea of change. And that gives so much hope in this season that we’re in of wanting some more authentic, sustainable DEI type spaces.

Beth Tener
A friend of mine, Bruce Nayowith, taught me this concept in therapy. They studied hours of therapy sessions. There might be one or two sessions where you have the breakthrough moment, where our brains get rewired. You were mentioning your friend with the bias, where she had her view “it’s gonna be like this.” But you have a positive disconfirming experience. That is what rewires our neuroplasticity, like, you’ve always thought it’s one way and then you actually live through something that challenges all your preconceptions.
So that’s what we were doing for three days together. We have been told we have to live in bubbles and be all separate and segregated. We all spent three days – well some people came for a day or two – but everyone who is there could feel something different was happening here.

Victoria Carrington
And the vulnerability and the safety. I think that that was also like a key is that people could be vulnerable. They could feel safe and there wasn’t judgment. And the silence, that’s another piece of. I’m not sure if that was baked in the design or if that’s your brilliance. But there were some times where somebody would share something really vulnerable or really emotional and the facilitators would hold that silence and space. People could process. People could feel connected, and people could empower and share that space with that person. We share the silence.

That’s not always something I see at conferences either. It’s always like, alright, we got three days together. Let’s get it going. It’s so funny because the lack of trying to push out so many results created more results.

Beth Tener
Very true. This is what makes me crazy, because I feel, if you want to be efficient, have a three day meeting. If you want to be really efficient about getting where we want to go, like let’s meet for three days, stay over, talk about things, sleep on it, talk over coffee, have breakthroughs, do some work, go for a walk. That is actually how we will most quickly get our whole group together and seeing where we Need to go. My frustration where I live is that people ask “Can we do it in like a 90 minute Zoom or maybe an hour, because we’re all really busy.?” We’re all so busy being efficient, and trying to spread something out over a lot of months with short meetings, when if you could have three wonderful, enjoyable days and we would get so much further.

Robert Sapiro
Victoria, when you were describing being in the Sarah Farmer Inn and with your friends having that conversation along the river – that’s exactly what Sarah Farmer’s vision was. She was in a meeting in Boston on a hot summer day and it was loud. She thought what if we could have these conversations along the Piscataqua River, how much different would it be? And here we are more than 100 years later doing it!

Beth Tener
What happened after the gathering, what’s rippled after for each of us? I’ll start with one. Victoria and I became friends. I learned she did graphic design and asked her to help with my Kinship logo? Victoria is the one who designed my logo. It has been a joy to work with her. And then I referred several other friends to get websites done. So that was great.

Victoria Carrington
Yes, which has been a really amazing ripple effect. When I went to the SeaCHANGE Conference, I knew I wanted to do more art, I’ve always wanted to be a full time creative. I did not think that it would happen this quickly. It’s because of Beth and those connections and working with her. And then some of her friends and her community that I was like, wow, I think I can do this.

Beth Tener
As I got to know Victoria, we got talking about our ancestors and our stories, and I love her story.

Victoria Carrington
Something started at the conference, where I was able to find my voice in stating who I am, all of me. I identify as Dine, which is Navajo, and Mexican and African American. Some times I tell people that I am one of the most American people that they’ll ever meet. That comes out of being overly frustrated by constantly getting asked where I’m from. When I say Colorado, people say, no, no, where are you from from? And it’s like, no, you’re asking why I’m thisbrown woman and where my lineage comes from.

Something that I really sensed is, especially as Jessica was doing that land acknowledgement was the connection to this land and the space and knowing so much of my history. I even met a woman who we found out we’re cousins from, like Mexico. What’s funny is, she’s a blond, blue eyed woman, and I’m sitting there at lunch at the Conference, learning she lived in Colorado around the same time I did. We have some connected family lineage. We start speaking Spanish, and everyone around us goes, What’s going on? I love who I am.

I want to create more of those spaces. I felt like this was a space where people got to celebrate who they are, but where they come from, in a way that it that is honorable. I’m from the United States. I tell people, no one in my family emigrated. They’re like, what? That’s not possible. They were like, what about your dad? I’m like, I don’t think slavery was immigration, but like anything, because that’s hard.

It challenges their preconceptions, like what you were saying earlier, Beth, I love that challenging those preconceived notions. We have them as we navigate through society, good, bad, or indifferent. We get these narratives. Anytime we have a chance to challenge a narrative, and question how we truly feel about it, and does it align with our morals, with our values and our beliefs? And what we stand for is an opportunity to create that social change.

Beth Tener
And it’s personal change. There is a difference between anti bias training and positive disconfirming experiences where you fall in love with people and their stories, where you connect into your common humanity and you really start to adore these people. That is what we did at SeaCHANGE and that’s different from “come to your to our mandated anti-bias training.”

Victoria Carrington
That was probably the first space that I said publicly that I’m Dine and some of that has to do with protection, things that have been done to the indigenous communities, very tragic things. To know that we’re creating these circles where people can be who they are wholly and safely, it brings so much hope.

Beth Tener
It does. All of us are just a small part of these much bigger stories and we need to be way less judgmental and punitive in how we try to find our way through this.

Victoria Carrington
I would love to hear Robert’s ripple effects.

Robert Sapiro
We do lots and lots of gatherings. Having this experience of having a design team and going through this process and seeing the experience and the results. When we started to think about an annual winter school that we do, it’s between Christmas and New Year and it has been happening for decades. We get a particular crowd of folks who come. They’ve come for many years in a row, sometimes generations of folks, where people are bringing their children and they came as children.

We thought, Well, why don’t we take what we’ve learned from SeaCHANGE and how we designed that and apply it to this. Even though the topics were kind of different, we realized we could use almost exactly the same structure. It was longer with five days, so we had to do some changes there. We had folks come away from that saying that by far it was the best winter school that they had ever experienced. And that includes a woman who’s in her 90s, who’s probably come to every winter school, she wrote us an eight, paragraph email about what was wonderful about it.

At Winter School, friends here in my local Bahai community took a workshop with Beth about listening skills. They incorporated that into a devotional gathering that they do regularly. It’s really beautiful to have the ripple effect of a ripple effect.

Victoria Carrington
Those circles keep getting bigger and bigger, and it’s serendipitous. That’s one of my favorite words. I got an email from someone that I had met at the conference, who was like, Oh, my gosh, I hear you’re, a full time creative, I want to work with you, I love your art. Just knowing that those ripple effects are still going brings so much joy and hope, especially in sometimes very heavy space. There are some heavy topics that we have to walk through. Even within my own community. There was a place I like to walk outside that there was some anti-Semitic graffiti, and I felt, Ah, it’s so heavy. But then I remembered that we have this mountain top, we have this peak, that was the SeaCHANGE Conference. There are these mountaintops where we can rest and recharge and regain hope. And that helps us go out into those valleys.

Beth Tener
Beautifully said, Victoria. Love that.

Najee, Robert and I are getting ready to put it on again in June 2023. I’ll tell you the three questions we have, using the same format:
• What would you like to see change?
• How can the arts and the creative process be a way to experience and grow empathy?
• How can we use the arts to build the community we dream of?

I want to thank you both so much for being here. And I look forward to continuing this stream. And I hope it does inspire lots of others to think about designing gatherings in different ways. Any final words?

Robert Sapiro
See the listeners at the mountaintop June 9 through the 11th!

Victoria Carrington
Yes, it will be nice to go back to the river and have the conversations. I hope we can continue to create the ripple effect of joy. Thank you, Beth and Robert.