Action Architects

Saturday: 21st Century Town Meeting®: Building A Performing Arts Community
10:00am-12:30pm

All convention participants will be seated in the Korbel Ballroom at assigned discussion tables. We will work with each of the top opportunities/challenges, one at a time. First, we will consider the major action ideas that emerged from caucus three. Then using wireless keypads, each person will vote on the top priority actions to be taken--at both a national level and a local level. By the end of the meeting we will have established clear priorities for action toward a stronger future for the performing arts in America. Leaders from the national performing arts community will respond to this collectively-developed action agenda--noting steps to ensure that this agenda is enacted.

The NPAC steering committee selected AmericaSpeaks to lead this meeting approach because of the impressive results that AmericaSpeaks has achieved in engaging large groups of people--as many 4,500 people in a single room--in focused and productive conversations that lead to action. AmericaSpeaks developed the 21st century town meeting® as a response to the growing disconnection between citizens and leaders across the U.S., so that people can have a genuine voice in the most important decisions that affect their lives. AmericaSpeaks has employed this approach in addressing a wide range of issues including the rebuilding of the World trade center site, the recovery of New Orleans, and health care reform in California. We believe that our performing arts community can benefit from this approach--especially in this nascent stage of our development as a community, where the need to create accountability, trust and action is so essential.

Slides were projected on two large screens, and participants knew the results of their voting within minutes (slides posted in the following entries). I had the good fortune of sitting next to the very-cool Elizabeth Streb (her business card says "Elizabeth Streb - Action Architect"; I'm thinking about changing mine), and together we figured out the seemingly uncomplicated keypads (you had to vote as soon as voting opened OR at the very end - not while everyone else was doing it). I was greatly amused by the number of TECHNOLOGY signs that flew up after the first (ten) round(s) of using the keypads; New Technologies in the Arts indeed.