that was informative .If you go to a stand up
show or any show, and you're like, "I have to
follow that?"
thank you. Jessica that was beautiful. Seriously.             Drop the mic.
So, I decided to title this Create, Perform, Life theatre. And the question
is how are we creating the theater of
our lives in a sense of how are we
working together
what are we creating and so I'm trained
as a cell biologist but I work bringing
cultural approaches to academics in
STEM communities as a way of us to
grapple with how we're going to create
our culture in a way that we want to
live in it, whether that's in the
institution or out of it. So i actually thought I had taken
this slide out. I want to give you guys a sense
of how I've come into academia, how i
came into biology and ultimately what
led me to create improvscience.  But again with
this focus on, What is it to create our
culture? And "our culture" I say because we
are people in a world. We are people in
America at this moment. We're in this room and
this moment. How do we want to talk to
another? How do we want to learn from one another? What do
we want to create? And so I am a former
born-again Christian. I love that you we're talking about
theology. I grew up in Northern
California. I am bi-racial. I come from  a poor, working-class
background. My dad was an academic. He was
a cultural historian which I
just learned. It was really interesting.
"what's a cultural historian? Well it's not a
scientific historian. One of his statements
was that it takes a look at all of who
we are -- the moments in history, what our
experiences are - to have an understanding
of where we come from so we have a sense
of where we're going. Growing up where
I did, one of the things was that i wanted a way for
people to be able to come together in
the world. Because basically my world was
fragmented in a hundred different ways. [I was ] born in 1968. Martin Luther King was an amazing
human being. He was a cultural leader. He was a
leader of people that came together very
different backgrounds and they said, "hey we
want to do the country in a new way.
From very very different backgrounds
in fact, people didn't agree on things but they
moved in alliances and allegiances in order
to make a new change in the world. So I
was inspired by Martin. I wanted to be
Martin Luther King or Jesus or Gandhi, something,
someone like that. I was going to... in high school
i was like, "what am I going to do?" So i
really want to change the world. But
people get burned out in change the
world jobs. Right? It's what a hard task. It
doesn't happen very easily. So i decided
i was going to have a day job and I was
going to become a biologist. Again part
of what i wanted to do was address how
we misuse, I don't know if it's a misuse.  But how we use science
to justify a lot of the current status
quo. Or we use it as an argument for many
things. It's a tool. it's something that
people have created and made use of.
Wonderful use. We have great things. We have
projectors and computers. But it also
was problematic. So as an african-american
woman I wanted to be a scientist who could
help take on the challenges of what we, how we
were using science.
And then you go to graduate school. And you learn that in
order to participate and be part of the
scientific never scholarship, you have to
develop a particular identity. And that
identity speaks only in a monotone that will then make a point "that after years of pipetting we have discovered that the DNA
if we treat it with the proper sodium
chloride concentration will precipitate and
then we can do the sequencing that
allows us to do the human genome project and then we will
divide all the variations in the world
and we will be able to solve your problem."
Well it didn't work that way.
Fortunately at the same time that i was
a graduate student I became aware of Dr. Lenora Fulani who was running
as an independent for president 1992.
I worked on her presidential campaign. And Lois Holzman.
They're both developmental psychologist
who have dedicated themselves to
addressing the impact of proverty in the
world, and they created independent
institutions. Starting back in the
sixties, that have been around now for 30 40 years and
it's been an organization of volunteers
and various donors. Primarily
individuals who have said, "Yes we wanted
to participate ...we want to participate in
creating different kind of
America in which we can, again, eradicate/
eliminate/address issues that come from
poverty. It's a multi racial...different backgrounds... Think of a
label, everybody has one. So what I love about
that, of course, was that coming from my
own background, I was looking for ways of
bringing people together from different
arenas. I thought it was important to mention here [Ronin Unconference]
because that question of: how do you
create something around your passion? So
you don't have to have my passion. You
don't have to agree with me even on how to approach things.  I think the
question as a grouping is, for this
conference, is what is the future career of
scholarship? What do you want to create?
You are already saying it.  What you want to create?  Not
what do you want to fit into? But how do you build that? And that's
an organizing activity. So in addition to
having to identify project management, one of the
questions is how do you invite people to do
things with you? We often say, "This is
what I do. Isn't that an invitation?"
I don't know. I have friends that say,
"I'm going to dinner." And I'm waiting.
Was that an invitation?
So, so fortunately, I've learned something
in the last 20 plus years about
organizing. And one of the things in
terms of coming into academia and we
start to develop this identity of how we are
supposed to work, what institutions are
supposed to look like? what scholarship
citations, writing are supposed to look like
And, you go "if I'm not that, then what? Or how do
i create something else that has as much
validation
gender and then you start looking for the
same qualities, those same characteristics. Well,
that's limited. What if you create a new
one? Because we somehow started to think
that what it meant to do scholarship
or phd's was just to be isolated and
doing that transcription. (I'm hoping Jessica looks up for this image) and
that's not at like that's an isolation
when we want isolation duty one
isolation I think the challenge of
breaking institutions and the person who
asked the question before you start to
miss things about being affiliated with
people or social species create being
with one another
the thing is, as a former born again Christian
one of the things i believe in
terms of being in created in the image
of God is we are creators. We are...
We create things. Again, you don't have to believe what I believe
but i think, we see that part of our
intellectual efforts and endeavors are
this creation of things. Creating with
what others have said written. That's
why you want to cite them. It's it's a beautiful
process and the thing is that we leave our
development at the age of like... for
eight-year-olds, for 5 year olds. We don't allow...We
think more of that frair (I wonder if that image is going to play)
I imagine them playing.
imagining them... you can see it. "hey, dude pass me another bar." So we create
this environment of play for kids we
start going, "if you're going to be serious about
your research, then no play." I want to play with ideas
I want to breakout understandings. I want to create
a new norm. How do I do that? And not it is not in
isolation
it's in playviille. Which is what google
learned how to do. And most businesses that are
actually taking off for like let our
employees play state work really long
hours if you break through massage are
whatever take care of that and we should
be thinking about the little spending
era russell johnson i work with this is
one of the things that we did in our
competition as we put lots of money into
creating is John grounds that anybody
could come to that anybody could go to
they could work on the ideas to
contribute to that idea they were there
they were supported by going to make the
argument that our movie coming out of
our because african-american women
scientists at NASA are at the floor
movie in january i don't care it sounds
like a pro this is a great day for me so
up but that got created to get my having
this playground for people to just come
in and work on I guess because we wanted
to go somewhere together
how often do we get invited to play so
when sides what do we do we work with
people to create playful environments
where they can learn and stretch and do
new things
these are phd's in chemistry we're
learning how to give talks right part is
you have to learn how to engage with one
another
look at each other in the eye and be
like oh my god hi
no speak about like in America because
we're looking at each other the i-55 so
how do we create it doesn't have to be
an improv game but you want to create
the space for it will be out risk to be
bold with what you're interested in and
the thing is that the change process
want to create that work for that
relationship because you're going to do
again something risky ask people to do
something different than they've ever
done for my talk and a voice like really
feeling that we don't build way things
are supposed to happen
the question is what do you want to do
to change you don't have to necessarily
create a union but if you have one
engaging talk about how do you create
what is that
I have the pleasure of being at a
conference performing the world which
our performance activists from around
the world including people who work in
the refugee camps in Europe with
platform children in india juarez mexico
this conversation is between Lois
Holtzman can garden from sophomore is
performing psychology and check their
creative performance studies at Columbia
University and then this conversation
they were having an angle what is it
what is the relationship between
performance and social change can take
part in particular for social change and
so I think there's a challenge as
academics because we want to say what
I'm doing institution doesn't have to do
with change but it is a change
it's a societal construct so we are
creating change so that might mean you
have to do a different kind of
performance and what does it to do a
different performance with one another
how do we give up in some sense right
opinion and exactly how we should
proceed to figuring out how to stand
next to each other
it's a different thing me convincing you
that my idea is right
am I asking you to walk somewhere
there's a conversation being bound for
area miles important adult educators the
book is called we make the road by
walking because you want to walk
alongside and creating and have you
listened
to create something and i think what i
love about being invited to be here is
this question of what can we create
together when the wind direction we want
to go in terms of this scholarship
what conversation do you want to have
that you haven't been able that might
seem somewhat inappropriate next week I
want to leave my PhD program and still
be a scholar i wanna i wonder if it's
possible to make money and not sell out
is it okay that I think that there's
meat oh I don't know you this is what's
coming for proposals so people take a
moment and wonder what conversation you
haven't been having that you'd like to
talk with people about you guys are
wonderful gripping laughing listening as
an audience is like fabulous because i
think you can create something together
with that something might consider next
year's a member of cultivating ensembles
conference but it created where we look
at these kinds of
supporting innovation and what can we
create together today
