By Emily Dobkin
I had the privilege of spending my summer in San Francisco tackling two internships: one working with The 1000 Journals Project, and one working with Southern Exposure. Both of these internships have provided very different perspectives that have helped inform my work within the community arts field.
The 1000 Journals Project
The 1000 Journals Project is a global art experiment in which journals are passed from hand to hand, proving to be an ongoing collaborative work attempting to follow 1000 journals throughout their travels. The goal is to provide a method for interaction and shared creativity among friends and strangers. Those who find the journals add something to them—a story, a drawing, a photograph; anything. Then they pass the journal along, to a friend or stranger…and the adventure continues.
Because I have such passion for The 1000 Journals Project, I was able to re-energize this project that began almost 12 years ago by working directly with the creator of the project. I was able to expand and enhance this project mainly through social media outlets, as I cultivated several more fans on the Facebook page (now over 1,300), and received many positive comments, posts and e-mails from fans appreciating the constant and consistent sharing of journal pages. I also researched and reached out to a variety of museums, as I sent The 1000 Journals Project Exhibition Proposal to institutions across the country, as well as wrote the cover letters accompanying them. In addition, I provided support materials for organizations to make it easier to launch journal projects, as well as helped launch new line of journals, C-Journals, a specific set of journals for cancer patients, survivors, and those witnessing loved ones going through this difficult process.
The most meaningful experience of my time working with The 1000 Journals Project took place during my second to last day, as I had the opportunity to interview a young patient who participated in the UCSF Children’s Hospital 100 Journals Project. To be able to put a face with a page fulfilled a need of mine to connect beyond the surface of the scrawlings, and established a much more human connection with these journals. To hear what Freddie (UCSF patient) and his mother had been through for an entire eleven months, and how powerful journaling just a few pages was in the healing process, overall confirmed how something as simple as a journal can create a safe space, as well as provide as a source of strength to those grappling some larger than life questions. At that point of the internship, I had been turning page after page, after page after page, and can admit that turning those pages was not as magical as it was the first time I held one of the original 1000 Journals.
Yet, in just my short time with Freddie and his mother, I was able to re-appreciate every single page my fingertips had touched because it reminded me each has such a deep, compelling motivation behind it. Above all, I was further proven that I not only have a passion, but a need to connect and interconnect to human experiences, and it is the stories of those lived experiences that drive me to delve deeper into such through artistic and creative means.
Southern Exposure / Mission Voices
Located just two blocks away from The 1000 Journals Project right in the Mission district, Southern Exposure is a 34 year old, non-profit, artist-run organization dedicated to presenting diverse, innovative, contemporary art, arts education, and related programs and events in an accessible environment. I worked specifically with Southern Exposure’s summer program, Mission Voices. Mission Voices offers youth in the Mission district the opportunity to participate in their community by exploring relevant social and personal issues through visual arts workshops. Through a series of workshops that resulted in an exhibition presented to the community, the Mission Voices program teaches youth to use the visual arts as a tool to express their creative voices and to make a visual statement about their ideas, interests, and ambitions. I was able to aid in developing this summer’s theme, co-facilitate workshops revolving around the theme, assist in exhibit installation, and finally evaluate the program with my fellow teaching artists.
I was so fulfilled working with Southern Exposure on so many levels; to be able to take part in the entire process of developing a theme and projects/workshops correlating to that theme, to furthermore being able to take part and witness a program from start to finish, to collaborate with an incredible and talented group of teaching artists and young artists, and to see the culmination of an exhibit in full—-there was so much on my part that was constantly being absorbed and taken away that I know will be most beneficial in taking my next steps forward in the arts field. I had no previous experience working in a gallery setting before, and never really thought I was necessarily cut out for such since I do not have a formal visual arts background. Yet, this organization allowed me to see how I bring a unique skillset to the gallery space, and one that can be appreciated by people of all age groups. I feel honored to have worked with such a dynamic group of visual artists who openly allowed for my creative strengths to so naturally feed into and somehow blend with their own practices. On my own, I facilitated a different set of artistic activities; musically meditative creative writing exercises, the building a human dream machine, and naturally: choreographing a dance flashmob. My team members could not have been more supportive of this movement/creative writing element I brought to the workshops. Simply put: it felt good that everyone I worked with was so appreciative to have someone like me to carve time into our workshops to look at one another and acknowledge our physical bodies as creative tools as well.
In my own workshop facilitation through outward movement that led to inward reflection, I was able to witness moments in which our youth collaborators attuned to their inner creative space, which progressed to them creating innovative work so naturally from that space of creativity. Before this summer, I had never worked with such a range of students; I had students from ages 14-21, some very high functioning, others with learning or developmental disabilities. Though a more reserved group of students, all were so open towards each other, and so willing to help one another. The progress made in each and every youth collaborator was quite noticeable (as even noted by the executive director). I saw walls come down, friendships built up, and creative spirits soar.
Though I set forth in San Francisco with the sole purpose of completing a 200 hour internship, I departed having completed so many more hours of personal growth and a new found freedom through a plethora of experiences, both inside and outside the internship realm. The fact that I can blur the lines of what divided my internship(s) from my explorations, wanderings, and everyday Mission meanderings, and not separate these experiences, but rather mold them together into this one, massive, culturally and creatively rich experience, has exceeded any kind of goal I set for myself on day one. I feel I not only rooted myself so deeply in my experiences, but was also provided wings of confidence to conquer exactly what I have set out to do in the arts field—for my most meaningful experiences came when fostering moments of creative risk-taking. And this is where, I believe, my leadership skills were strengthened the most. Whether it was through my own workshop facilitation through outward movement that led to an inward reflection with my youth collaborators, or simply interviewing a young patient on what sparked him to release his hopes, dreams and fears on a page within a journal— it was these moments that have reaffirmed everything that the arts have given me and what I want to give to others: the ability to attune to that natural inner voice and create from that; to listen to that, and to be patient and flexible so that many more moments of creative risk-taking can be accessed. Moreover, it remains imperative for me to help thin the line that makes people feel separated, and do so in the most creative condition. To be able to facilitate such moments is a unique leadership quality that I cannot regularly exercise within a classroom setting, and this is why I am so grateful to have been able to nurture this ability through my internship experiences.
[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/30461916[/vimeo]To have been able to work both on and be part of a world-wide community arts based project, and also help create, design, plan and facilitate another in which I constantly found myself drawling parallels to has allowed me to absorb an exceptional amount, and I most definitely left my internship(s) taking bits and pieces from each that will forever remain as valuables in my pockets.