First Story Circle, April, pt 4

From Nephelie, 4-30-18

We had our first story circle, co-hosted by CERRU. It went very well! Sophia and Yael had reserved the room for us and invited CERRU program participants. Most of the attendees were old friends of the program, current students and QC alumni. For one of them, this was her first CERRU event. We had five women and one man. Plus me, Cusi, Sophia and Yael. It was a really lovely group.

Since I am not usually the one leading our story circles, I benefited from consultation with Paula and Peter before hand. I was grateful for their advice and for a menu of options that could work in a limited time-frame. Reports from Cornerstone's engagement activities for our Native Nations project in AZ were also helpful in thinking about how to approach [this...]

The group was a beautifully diverse group, mostly women, mostly muslim, mostly immigrant: warm, engaged, thoughtful, smart, articulate, curious.

As introduction, everyone shared story of their name. Some fascinating answers, many about how names were given and significance within family. Names as signifiers of power, family identity and cultural traditions. Harry’s story about escaping persecution as a Jewish family in Europe, three brothers (his father's generation) took the name of the town where they were parted as a way to recognize each other again, as each of them fled in different cardinal direction, north, east, west. And how a generation later, they did in fact, reconnect with long lost family separated by oceans, through the name.

Five Senses exercise went well. Everyone shared verbally. There were some common themes,... The answers were beautiful, lyrical and evocative. 

What is an assumption that non-residents make about Queens?

Assumptions non residents make about Queens - that there is such a thing as ‘Queens” when in fact USPS has different zip codes for each neighborhood and residents almost always will identify as from one of these neighborhoods: College Pointe, Flushing, Jackson Heights, Astoria etc. While Brooklyn, Bronx, Manhattan and SI identify as boroughs, Queens identifies as neighborhoods.

Christine’s comment about education, family values and reasons that so many first generation students choose Queens College resonated with many in the group.

That there is nothing to do here.

That there is inclusion/integration as well as diversity. 
(We have heard over and over that while there is diversity, there is also silo-ism, each keeps to their own, with no real integration between groups of people from different cultures, religions and ethnicities. Walking down the street, one sees people of all different cultures, religions and ethnicities, but any deeper or personal connection, is rare or non-existent. CERRU was founded in order to engage this problem.) 
How does one engage beyond the boundaries of one's family? 

What needs to be in a play about Flushing/Queens College?

• ·      SEEK (a mentoring organization on campus) One of our participants is part of this program and testified to how supportive it is.
• ·      The 7 train.
• ·      The Quaker meeting house and the Flushing Remonstrance.
• ·      Main Street Flushing:  From downtown Flushing to Queens college, passing through Asian (Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese) neighborhoods, through the “world” (over 200 languages in those blocks), to Jewish Community, near the college. (As it happens, this is the walk that Cusi and I took yesterday.)
• ·      The Unisphere
• ·      Pomonok

If we were to adapt a story/myth to be about this community, what should that be?

“Tradition” from Fiddler on the Roof, sung in all the different languages.

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There were more suggestions, but can’t recall the other specifics. ack!

I am thinking about best practice in terms of recording these story circles. I facilitated the session so did not take notes. Cusi took some notes, recording things that struck her. When I sat down to record the story circle a few hours later, I was dismayed by how much I felt like I was forgetting. As [an introduction I didn't] feel like recording something like this is appropriate, as it might put people off, but I do wonder about how we capture the range of replies more fully. Voice recording, or a dedicated recorder, might make sense for one-on-one interviews, but it feels like it could be limiting in a “get to know you” type of event like this one. 

In any case, the notes here about the story circle are based on my recollection of the main themes, and I’m sure I’ve left some things out.

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who else should we be talking to?

Sophia and Yael, with input from Monna, noted some names for us to follow up with.  Including an Afghani women's group, and an orthodox Jewish woman there whose story is of her discovery of the world outside her community, for the first time.

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To remember for future sessions at QC - the classroom spaces are tightly booked-- not much set-up time and a class was entering as we were tidying up, minutes before our reserved time slot was finished. Snacks were much appreciated, but I will think about a way to set them up so that it’s easier to gather up and make a quick getaway as we are winding up our story circle and a class is swarming in.

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We closed with info about next story circle on May 9^th - Bring your friends, families, tell others to come. There was a great energy among our group. Almost everyone lingered in the hallway as we walked and talked towards the quad. Warm excitement and enthusiasm all around.

Cusi and I spent some time talking in more depth with one of the participants  - Monna.  She’s a recent QC alum. Was part of the three year Heather Raffo residency for Arab American women (changed her life), Iranian family, she lives in Queens with her family and is developing her career as writer, actress, activist, she’d be great to have involved with the our project!!  She is a member of Equity though, so asked the question if she could volunteer as a community participant or would that be a problem?

[ Note: While Cornerstone Theater negotiates with AEA for most of our productions, as an educational program, an Institute production is liberated from some restrictions like the ratio/number of union members that can participate.]

Cusi and I had lunch at the Dining Hall where there are three choices - Kosher Kitchen, Shah’s Halal and Chinese: microcosm of the world-food options on Maine Street Flushing and a good snapshot of the microcosm of QC student population.

Discussed at lunch: Cusi’s commitment to settling on the source material and/or specific theme/point of inquiry, before our next story circle on May 9^th. We are agreed that this will be incredibly helpful to us all as co-creators/collaborators...

Finally, I had a meeting with Pat at Pomonok Community Center!  This meeting was hard to arrange. Took multiple emails and phone calls to get a reply from him, and though I had sent him the info he requested, he hadn’t yet had a chance to review it. He’s been in his current position as director for about a year. I get the feeling that he’s got a lot going on!

He has the impression that there are a lot of plays about Queens lately. Not sure what those are, but we connected that impression to what he had heard about the Working Theater’s play (Alternating Currents), that he had not seen.  I clarified that we are a different company and a different project.

His first question was about whether we had paying jobs to offer. Pomonok is a low-income community so that is foremost on his mind. I felt skepticism from him about what we were offering, and how this could benefit his center. 

As we continued to talk, he came to better understand who we are and what we do, and our potential value as an experience for his community, to be part of making a play... He gave me his full attention and as he started to understand what we’re about, he was able to imagine ways that we could support the community and the programs they have at the community house. His excitement grew and grew. By the end of the meeting, he was super jazzed about Cornerstone, is anxious to learn more about us and some of our community partners (he’s gonna look up Father Greg) and we had a sketch of a an engagement activity (or two) that we could offer to his inter-generational family literacy program (a new initiative they are just now starting up).

He asked for detailed email follow up, cc’d to his Family Engagement specialist, Kim H. I will do this, and hope to clarify what we can offer and how it could support his programming needs. I am hoping that if we successfully host one or two engagement activities/story circles with this inter-generational group that will help us build enough of a connection to invite further participation in July.

I will follow up on all of this, and we’ll see how it works out. It took a bit of pushing to get this meeting, and it took this meeting to get his attention. I don’t know if he and the center have the capacity to sustain this conversation so that we can implement all of this. I get the sense that they are under-staffed and overwhelmed. I think it was helpful that Sophia and Yael had recently met with Pat, as a first conversation about ways that QC might be able to build a more long-term program with Pomonok. If we can link our work to this longer term planning goal, we may be able to be helpful in building some little bridges here. But, all that said, we now have his attention and his enthusiasm, and he promised to reply to messages more promptly. 

He asked to better understand what I meant by  “Story Circle.”  I was able to share specific examples of the story circle we had just had across the street at the college, and also encouraged him to participate in our next one scheduled for May 9^th.

Talking about issues in the community, I asked what work needs to happen here: community healing. 

We also talked about the big issue in the community, this came up in many conversations I had over these days, that though there is amazing diversity, this does not mean that there is inclusion or integration. Everyone is in their own silo, he said. I suggested that, maybe, through shared experience of making a play with your neighbors, and then watching it together, in the auditorium at the college across the street we could perhaps help folks to step out of their silos, a little tiny bit. This was intriguing and inspiring to him.  

He was joyful and energized as we parted.

NMA