The UMOJA group (our 8-10 year olds) are working on the music for the song Ancestor’s Breath by Sweet Honey in the Rock with Kelly. But, it didn’t stop there. I walked inside the space to find the rest of the UMOJA group working with youth intern, Morgan, on another part of the song:

And then…yes, there is more…I went upstairs to Masankho’s dance class where the PAZ group (6-7 year olds) were practicing their dance to the same song.

The final performance of this camp is Friday, July 1 at 12noon where all of these pieces will come together. What is so incredible to me about this program is the level of artistic rigor that these elementary school age children experience. They are being treated by their teachers as real, working artists. Sure, they get a lot of breaks. A lot of time just to laugh and play and be with their friends…all of which is important. But, they are also learning to be part of something much bigger than themselves. They are learning what it means to try something, to look at it, and then to try again. And each individual kid is learning that they are and have something of value to contribute to this artistic community. That, even at 6 or 8 or 10, they have beautiful stories, voices, ideas, and images, to share with the world.

Plus, we just started collaborating with a videographer who we will collaborate with to make a “microdoc,” a very short documentary about the Go Girls! Project.   In preparation for this and the expansion of this work, I figured it was time that we tell the Go Girls! story…

Go Girls! is a project for elementary school aged girls to use drama, visual arts, creative movement, and music to create and perform their own peaceful and powerful plays.  It is based on the idea that, when women and girls learn how to access our true power of creativity and compassion, stand up for ourselves and others, and put our voices center stage, we will become the leaders we are meant to be.  We will change the world.

Go Girls! is a program of Oakland, CA-based Glitter & Razz Productions, founded in 2003 to celebrate kids and the grown-ups who love them with premium camps, classes, and events that promote compassion, community, and creativity through theater.

We, the founders, Lynn Johnson and Allison Kenny, had been teaching and creating theater with and for communities in different parts of the country for 10 years before we met in 2002. That summer, we met while both teaching drama for a summer program in Marin. In addition to falling in love with each other, we also discovered our shared philosophy of the magic and power or theater for personal development and social change.

We began our Glitter & Razz began life as a once a year summer camp at the Marsh Youth Theater in San Francisco (2003-2006). Then, since we wanted to move to the East Bay, Glitter & Razz had to move with us.  We officially and established ourselves as a business in 2006 and spent 1 year in residency at the Julia Morgan Center for the Arts in Berkeley before moving into our current location, the Glitter & Razz Dramatic Play Space, in September of 2007.

During the summer of 2008, we were preparing for our first summer camp season in our new space and something happened that had never happened before.  We had one session where only girls signed up.  It was a shock to us at first.  Having come from the non-profit arts education world, we were all about diversity and inclusion.  It was a little uncomfortable for their not to be any boys participating.

Then, we figured that we had to roll with it.  We remembered the important women and girl spaces that had been important to us in our own development.  Allison grew up in a family of 4 sisters and a single mother and was active in WomenStory, a AZ-based organization that facilitates intergenerational groups of women and girls in spiritual and creative exploration.  Lynn was a Girl Scout for many years and actively found her feminist voice in college when she minored in Women’s Studies and focused on the role of women in mass media and the arts as creators, subjects, and audiences.

That summer, we made “the magic and power of being a girl” the theme of the camp.  We created a play that was about the celebrations and the challenges that young girls experience on a day-to-day basis.  The play took place in, what we called, Lovely Land, where nothing ever went wrong.  Until one day, it did.  The play was about how all of the characters (which ranged from princesses, to fairies, to dogs to rats) learned that, in order to navigate and overcome challenge, we had to learn how to work together.  The original song from the show went like this: “Sometimes it’s hard in Lovely Land / Things can get ugly, out of hand / We chose to be mean but we can change / Let’s choose to be kind, right now, today.”

That was such a successful summer that we asked the girls and their parents if they would sign up for camp again the following year if we repeated the “Go Girls” theme.  The answer was a resounding “Yes!”  Now, in 2010, we are facing a sold-out camp (with a long waitlist) and the Go Girls! Project is a year-long program made up of 3 different components:

• The Go Girls! Camp | A summer creative intensive just for girls
• The Go Girls! Afterschool Club | 10-week sessions where girls connect to their own communities while they explore the greater world around them
• Go Girls! For All | Learning Events for girls and the women and men who love them

The main activity of Go Girls! camps, classes, and workshops is the creation of theater.  But the work goes even deeper than that.  We intentionally integrate social/emotional learning into our Go Girls! curriculum in developmentally appropriate ways that seek to address: the formation and maintenance of positive and healthy friendships; confronting bullying behavior in yourself and others; navigating and regulating our emotions; effectively overcoming challenges; strengthening communication; taking responsibility for and pride in ourselves and what we say and create in the world.

Our main curriculum influences are:

• Kidpower
• Playback Theater and the field of Drama Therapy
• Augusto Boal and Theatre of the Oppressed
• Viola Spolin
• The work of the Greater Good Science Center
• Youth Development
• Powerful Non-Defensive Communication
• Way of Joy Chi Gong

Allison:  “We definitely have a peace agenda.  There is just so much violence in children’s lives.  It seems like everything that they sees flashes, beeps, and screams.  Being a girl means having to encounter attacks from boys and each other.  Not to mention the messages from our culture and the media about that teach us that we are weak and less than.  And on top of that, our feelings are constantly invalidated.  We are told to ‘get over it.’  Telling a child to ‘get over it’ without also teaching them how to name, claim, and regulate their own emotions is like telling someone to become a millionaire without teaching them first how to balance a checkbook.  Go Girls! is designed to give girls the skills and tools to center themselves, to listen to and trust their own emotions and voices, so that they can know it’s okay to feel.  Not only is okay, it’s what makes us strong.  It’s what we bring to the world.”

Lynn: “I believe that the process of creating and rehearsing an original piece of theater is one of the most important learning experiences that anyone can have.  It teaches women and men of all ages to collaborate effectively with others, trust their own creativity, and establish a reflective practice.  These are the world-changing skills that need to be cultivated by all of us.  I am choosing now to focus my effort on women and girls because, as the Dalai Lama says, ‘the seeds of compassion were sown by my mother.’  We are the leaders that the world is desperate for.  It is time for us to step up and teach ourselves the true power of the feminine; the power to stop, to be still, to listen, to collaborate, to reflect, to trust our own inner wisdom, and to act according to that wisdom.   We need to teach it to ourselves so that we can model it for others.

“Emphasizing the need to build a safe and happy environment, he said money has become extremely important these days. “Building a robust economy is vital for growth but germinating the seeds of human values within ourselves is equally important. Money can give you all kinds of facilities, it can fetch you the luxuries but can it give you peace of mind? We must, therefore, pay more attention to our values.”

Compassion, he said, is a prerequisite for building a happy individual, a happy society.” READ MORE>>>

Our mission statement is based on the Dalai Lama’s call for a more compassionate planet.  I believe with all of my heart and soul that theater has the tools to help us all practice being with each other in the most value-rich ways possible.

And, this is why we do Go Girls!: “Advocating strongly the need for women to play an active role in the society [the Dalai Lama] said that biologically women had greater proclivities towards compassion. ‘In my case also, the seeds for compassion were sown by my mother.’”

Here’s the Glitter & Razz Logic Model:

1. Many of the world’s problems exist because of a lack of compassion (poverty, abuse, neglect, violence, climate crisis, etc.).
2. If each individual were to practice compassion -get better at it – it would change the world.
3. The best way to practice the elements of compassion is to be in intentional community with other people.
4. One of the best ways to be in intentional community with other people is through creative exploration.
5. Theater is an ideal forum for creative exploration because it incorporates all other art forms and puts creator and audience in the same room at the same time to interact with issues live…working together to solve a problem.
6. Women have “greater proclivities towards compassion.”
7. Women should lead this effort towards changing the world.
8. Women in theater should lead the effort towards changing the world.

This is why I am here.  Thank you Dalai Lama for giving us the call.

But you can make the choice not to dread it this time.  Live performance, of any kind, is one of the only opportunities we have to break our routine, to step outside of self-centered haze, and celebrate being part of a community of caring and creative people.  Arlene Goldbard, author and cultural activist says:

“We are in the borderlands—on the bridge—between paradigms. Specifically, we are moving from an old, mechanistic worldview that treats artistic creativity as an accessory to the important things of life…toward one that understands culture as the secret of survival, as the best way to cultivate imagination, empathy, and other life-skills essential to viable, humane community.”>>>

As you prepare to go to your school play this Spring, try to resist the urge to think of it as just a nuisance that you have to get out of work for, an experience”only a mother can love.”  Instead, you can decide to empower the experience by really connecting with your child, finding your own creativity, and/or sharing your gifts with the community by considering these 5 ideas:

1) Bring Cookies
The power of a fresh baked homemade cookie cannot be underestimated.  And it doesn’t matter if you are gluten-free, sugar-free – it’s not the ingredients that are my point here.  My point is that food is a great connector.  Nothing can beat the feeling of taking the time to make something from scratch and bring it to share with a group of people in celebration of a job well done.  Don’t feel the need to wait for someone else to organize a potluck and send you an email.  Just make something and bring something.  (By the way, if you are gluten-free, sugar-free, I made this raw chocolate cake once and actually really liked it.  Plus, it is no bake so the kids can help with every step of the way.)

2) Lead an Emotional Learning Experience for your Young Performer
I can assure you that your kids have experienced a wide range of emotions in the creation, rehearsal, and performance of what you have just witnessed.  We have one student at Glitter & Razz who often tells the story about when she first came to us and felt so shy and scared and then made a transformation to feeling and excited and proud of herself.  You can tell them that you are proud of them until the cows come home.  But, you will help enhance your child’s social/emotional skills when you ask him questions like:

• “How did you feel doing the performance?”
• “Did you feel scared at all?”
• “What did you do when you felt scared?  How did you feel scared and do the play anyway?”
• “How do you feel now?  Is it different than how you felt before the play?  Do you feel proud of yourself?”

3) Make a New Friend
We know that sometimes life can feel quite lonely even though we are surrounded by a bunch of people.  Try to remember that this bunch of people who are with you in the audience of this play have a lot in common with you.  These are all people who love their kids, who care about their learning, and want to support the school, church, or center where the play is being performed.  So, don’t be shy, introduce yourself to someone you know you “always see at these things” but have never taken the time to meet.  Offering a cookie is a great ice breaker (see idea #1).

4) Go Deeper for your Own Creativity & Learning
Creative inspiration can come from anywhere.  Why not your kids performance?  Maybe you love classical music and you just love that music that is featured in your daughter’s ballet recital.  Or maybe your son wrote and performed his poem about spring and that made you think, “hey, I used to write poems!” What is stopping you from learning more about that composer or writing that poem?  Let your kids’ creativity inspire your own.

5) Give Money
We know how good it feels to give to something we really care about.  What do you care about more than your kids?  So, again, don’t wait for someone to organize a fundraiser and ask you for an official donation.  Just write a check and hand it to the kid’s teacher.  Tell her, “Thank you for inspiring my kid and helping to bring this community together.”  Most school teachers who direct the school play or lead the spring recital are working way above and beyond their salary to make that event happen.  So, you may even forget making a tax deductible donation to the school and just make a check out to her directly.  I am serious.  It will make you feel so good and your kids teacher feel SO HONORED.  If you feel weird giving her a check, then give her a gift certificate for a massage.  Something that indicates that, now that this play is over, it is time for her to focus on herself for a bit.

So, of course, to broaden my scope, I had to read The Tao of Pooh.  I am going to mis-quote it but, one of my favorite quotes in this book goes something like this- If you want to gain knowledge, collect things.  If you want to gain wisdom, get  rid of stuff.  Again, not a direct quote.  But, it get’s at the heart of why I am doing this today.  Wisdom helps me trust my own creative voice.  If I can get stuff out of the way, I can hear what that voice is trying to tell me.

When we hold onto stuff that no longer serves us, we block the flow of our creative energy.  Even more importantly, we get in our own way of being present and compassionate with the rest of the world.  We are so caught up in all of the energy of our stuff, that we can’t give the proper attention to being generous and kind to others.  Once we get rid of the old stuff, there is more space for new and fresh energy to move through.

Throw some things out today.  Just start with that one basket that collects junk by the front door.  And get the kids involved.  Does she really need all of those toys?  Can he make some space on that bookshelf that filled to the brim?  Teaching kids now the power of getting rid of stuff that no longer serves them will help reinforce their creativity and resiliency as they grow.

I was at Glenview Elementary School in Oakland where I teach a class.  Before class, I had to pick up the kindergarten boy that I pick up each week from his teacher and walk him to our classroom.  He is small kindergartener, young for his grade.  He was carrying a big bag and his jacket because it was unexpectedly too warm to wear it.

This week, when we arrived at the classroom, the door was locked.  I knew I had to go all the way back to the office to have someone let us in.  But that meant walking all the way back with this little boy and all of his stuff.  For a split second I considered leaving him there.  It was on school grounds.  There were tons of adults around.  It would only take a second.  “No Lynn!  He is your responsibility.  No matter how long it takes, you have to bring him with you.”

So, even though he had already completely undone his huge backpack to show me the banana he had in his snack and the intricate robot he had made out of gluing millions of pieces of paper together (which was very cool!), I said “C’mon buddy, we have to go back to the office.”

And this is where the respect comes in.  This little task of walking a few hundred feet to ask someone for a little help would have taken me about 2 minutes by myself.  It took at least 4 times that long with my little 5 year old buddy.  And this happens to moms and dads everyday, all the time, trying to make the simple things of life happen at often a snail’s pace.  And that doesn’t count the times when the kids are slow AND throwing some kind of fit.

So, here’s my plea to all of us who may not have kids in tow.  HELP A MOM OUT.  When you see a mom (or dad…sorry guys) with, like, a bunch of kids pulling this way and that in Target or Trader Joe’s or the post office, just go right on up and ask them if you can run and get anything for them.  It’s such a simple thing.  Be grateful that you have the ability in that moment to run freely and pay it forward.

If I had to pick the one thing that matters most to human happiness, I would say that our relationships with other people matter more than anything else.

Step #2 in Christine Carter’s Raising Happiness is entitled “Build a Village.”  This chapter breaks down why it is so important to your child’s overall health and happiness to be positively connected to other people and how you can help him/her be that way.

Inspired by this chapter and my own personal experience working with hundreds and hundreds of likable and unlikable kids, I care share with you the top 5 things you will want to teach and practice with your kids to make sure they have the social and emotional skills to be liked by and connected to other kids.  And yes, it can be taught!

1) Active Listening
Listen when someone is talking.  Make eye contact.  Ask the other person questions.  You know for yourself that you feel more important, valued, and appreciated when someone is really listening to you.  When you are with someone who makes you feel appreciated, you will most likely like that person, right?

I think this is the number 1 thing we can do to teach kids to be connected to other kids because it is so easy to teach.  All it takes is practice.  The reason why I see so many kids who don’t do this is because we don’t expect that they can.  But they can.  Even 4 year olds can.  I take that back…ESPECIALLY 4 year olds can.  4 year olds are just coming to the time in their lives when they understand the power and appeal of friendships.  Developmentally, they are shedding their completely self-centered ways and starting to believe that other people can actually be interesting.  This is the perfect time to teach them and practice active listening:

• Insist that your kids give you eye contact when you are talking to them.  Here’s the trick – make sure you give them the same courtesy.
• Coach them through a 2-sided conversation.  For example, “I just asked you how your day was and I listened to your answer.  Now, it’s your turn to ask me how my day was and you will listen to my answer.”  Here’s the trick – don’t talk too long.  They are only 4.  They will get bored.
• Celebrate them every time they are actively listening.  “Thanks so much for listening to me talk about my day.  I feel very special when you do that.”

2) Self Regulation
We know that kid that gets angry and frustrated all the time and takes it out physically and verbally on other kids.  We also know that kid who cries and whines all the time whenever something doesn’t go her way.  These kids are hard for other kids to be around.  For obvious reasons.  These kids need to learn how to control their feelings in healthy ways.  The main way for you to help them is for you to make it VERY clear, on a consistent basis, that their behavior is not okay.  Check out this cool article from PBS Kids that says, “From the start, set clear limits and provide simple explanations (”No biting. That hurts mommy.”) As your baby grows, try to be consistent as you express expectations and set rules or consequences.”

At Glitter & Razz, we begin each class and camp with a community circle where the kids have to experience a moment of silence together.  We talk about how this is the time for them to transform their free play energy into focused energy.  It’s a very successful practice.  Most of the time kids take this moment very seriously.  However, when they don’t, it’s a wonderful opportunity for modeling and reinforcing self-regulation.  The rule is to be silent.  That’s the boundary.  Any behavior outside of being silent is not tolerated.  So, when someone laughs or makes a silly noise or even breathes too hard, we either start the moment of silence again or we ask that person to step out of our circle.  This is teaching the kid that it is up to them to take care of themselves and that certain behaviors are appropriate at certain times.

3) Navigating Conflict
Kids will fight.  As Christine Carter points out, kids are more comfortable with conflict than adults are.  Conflict is not a problem.  Conflict is a good thing.  The problem is that kids have not yet learned how to work through conflicts.  It’s our job as adults to teach them.  People who can work through conflicts in peaceful, loving ways are well connected people, indeed.

We use a Peace Place to work out conflicts.  It’s a dedicated part of the room where a script hangs on the wall that helps kids work through conflicts.  It’s a classic I-Statement: I Feel___When You___I Need You to___and I promise I will____.

Read this to learn more about what Christine says about this.

4) Kindness
As a transition from “Kids Choice”, our free time time, to focused class time during our camps, we often give the kids an opportunity to share a celebration of someone who was kind to them during  Kids Choice.  We hear stuff like, “I celebrate Sarah because she played with me” or “I celebrate Ben because he helped me clean up the animal toys even though he wasn’t even playing with them.”  Kids appreciate kindness and generosity and want to be around it.  Christine writes in her book, “My guess is that most parents hope their children are kind, but few deliberately teach kindness in conscious ways.”  But, like all of  these skills, kindness can be taught if we as adults are modeling kind behavior ourselves, telling our kids what it looks like, and celebrating them when they do it.  “Raising Happiness” is chock full of ways to teach kindness to our kids.  Here is another good article I found online.

5) Play and Have Fun
Kids like kids who they can play with, have fun with.  This may seem like a no-brainer but we are seeing more and more instances of kids who just don’t know how to play.  We know the story.  Modern kids are overscheduled, have a lot more distractions, spend less time outside, spend more time isolated from other kids, etc. etc. etc.  My 8 year old niece once told me about a girl in her class at school that she didn’t like very much because, “she has no imagination!”

Kids, whose only real work IS to play, to make-believe, are coming to us at Glitter & Razz not very good at it.  When prompted to use their super power of imagination to make up stories or games or simply to play with wooden blocks or plastic animals during Kids Choice, we hear “I don’t know” or “what should I do right now” more often than feels natural. In these situations, our job as adults is not to tell them what to play.  That does not let them learn how to play.  My teachers and I just keep asking questions – questions that will inspire their creative muscles:

• Only you know what to do.  What do you think you should do right now?
• What does this block remind you of?
• What can you do with these blocks?
• What would happen if a zombie came in the room right now?
• What would happen if a zombie came into our story?

The play must come from them.  From their ideas and their imaginations.  The more they use their imagination muscles, the stronger they will be.  And the stronger they are at playing, the more fun they will be to the other kids.

This post is part of a series of posts as I read Raising Happiness: 10 Simple Steps For More Joyful Kids and Happier Parents in preparation of our event with the author, Christine Carter, PhD on March 20.  Click here for more information and to register for the event>>>

Monday is our first Play in a Day Camp in honor of the life and work of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  I decided that the theme of the day will be peace and freedom.  We haven’t done this particular theme yet so I am up this morning doing some research.  I, of course, first went to the Teaching Tolerance website.  Their stuff is an amazing resource to teachers and us teaching artists.  They are high quality teaching materials that they provide mostly for free.  Any of you who are exploring issues of diversity with your work will definitely want the get connected to these folks.

So, I am definitely inspired.  Here is an activity I am looking at called Freedom Flag.  What I like about it is that it uses multiple art forms – music, words, and collage.  The purpose of the activity is to engage kids in a discussion of freedom to get to heart of what it actually means.  I was challenged by figuring out how to do this so this is is good start.  However, I will have to adapt the activity…here’s why…

“Using red, white and blue construction paper, create a class “Freedom Flag,” by writing the key words for freedom on strips of red and white paper…”

Using red, white and blue construction paper?!?  How are kids supposed to learn about freedom if we tell them they can only use 3 colors in their flag?  Actually, limiting it to 3 colors is not the problem.  That’s actually a nice parameter.  The problem is that we are telling them which 3 colors they can use.  I understand that these are the colors of the US flag as it currently exists but the purpose of teaching kids art is teaching them how to notice things that exist and comment on it in their own way.

To me, freedom is being able to be and create your true self without anyone else imposing on you what they think that is.  I might say to the group, “we are going to create our own flag that represents our own freedom here in Oakland at Glitter & Razz.  Our flag should have 3 colors.  What 3 colors should we use to create this flag.  What 3 colors would represent us?”  And then take them through a process of voting as a group.  Now, the activity is teaching democracy in action through a creative process.  It is also helping them build their identity as part of a community.  It even provides a fertile ground to discuss dissent (”yuck, I don’t like pink!”) and how important it is to freedom.

I will run it by Martin, our art teacher, and see what he says.  And I will keep researching to figure out how to take this same idea into our creative movement and drama classes.  Either way, I am very excited about this.

Oh, another little criticism about Teaching Tolerance…they do not seem too friendly to those of us who work for ourselves…their free materials go to classroom teachers, administrators, church leaders, and employees of non-profits.  You even need a signature from some boss.  Maybe I will contact them and let them know about us small business artists who are doing important work with kids too.

Maybe we’ll see you Monday.

The work of artist Shara Hannah Finerman

2010 is the year when artists will take over business.  I can feel it.  This article in the New York Times clearly shows that business schools are looking at the current state of the economy as an opportunity to prepare its students with the critical thinking and problem solving skills so necessary to the creative process that artists tend to have these skills by the truck load.  In fact, just the other day, as I was having tea and toast at Pizzaiolo with one of my new favorite teaching artists, Shara Finerman, I told her that we were all in a great position to start and run successful businesses because we have what many business people work so hard to attain – creativity, innovation, flexibility, etc.  Personally, I have found it much easier to enter into my business with these skills and then teach myself Quickbooks later.  You know what I mean?

Anyway…Shara shared with me that it was her desire to teach full-time in a school.  She wanted to have the experience of working with a group of students over a longer period of time – an experience not often associated with being a part-time teaching artist.

Then, I challenged her.  Since Shara and I originally met back in October at TAO’s Mind Your Own Business event for teaching artists, I asked her why she felt the need to be in a school in order to have this experience.  Why couldn’t she go into business for herself?  She could find a small group of students, a group that wants quality art instruction (one they may not be getting in school).  She could find a little studio or they could come to her place.  She could meet with them weekly.  She could help them build their portfolio.

And she could do it all her way.  Build up her own philosophy of art, teaching, and learning.  She does not have to limit herself to the traditional pay scale of a teaching job and, with the money she earns, perhaps even make a bigger impact on the kids and families in the community who do not always have access to quality arts experiences.

We are in the business of creating.   Let’s create strong and sustainable businesses that will support us, our communities, and strengthen our economy as a whole.  For more inspiration about arts entrepreneurship, go where I go…I am really into Rebecca Stees’ creative biz wow and Dennis Baker’s blog.

This learning is key for the creative process.  Did you know that Ancient Greeks and Romans believed that genius had nothing to do with the individual talents or competencies of people?  In fact, geniuses were spirits assigned to us to help us do great work.  In this definition, the spirit provides the inspiration and we do the hard work to make it manifest here, on Earth.  Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love (one of my personal favorites) has an amazing TED Talk about this…

Whether or not you believe in spirits, the fact of the matter is that, this idea that we have been holding that some people are just born very very smart and others are not is not getting us anywhere.  It’s definitely not helping our kids learn any better.  When we start to understand that we may not understand exactly where genius comes from, but we do in fact understand how to work hard, make a bunch of mistakes, and keep working anyway, then we will at least be good partners with genius.  And we can pass that on to our kids.