Today was a day packed with meetings, planning sessions and workshop prep.  Having never developed a project in partnership with a museum before, I am learning a lot about making decisions with a large group of people.  The CMSM leadership team brings many skills to the development process including organization, openness and especially an awareness of what their visitors look for in an exhibit experience. I admit, I struggle with a consensus process in creative work. In traditional theatre projects, the director makes decisions one to one with specific designers in terms of lighting, set design or sound.  Our entire project is managed by a staff of very busy museum leaders whose museum duties keep them busy.  Im excited and inspired that they are focusing their efforts on our collaborative project for the year to take risks and step outside their areas of expertise.

After laying out all of the elements discovered in our research with children on pond and streams, we prioritized tasks and assigned building projects to different committee ares within our team- education, design and myself.  It is challenging to be away from the project for a month at a time. I'm hoping with our new assignments I will be more aware of developments as they progress.  Tomorrow I'll be leading a workshop for a group of children involved in the research process early on.  We are regathering the group to investigate water movement in the stream area of the exhibit through creative drama and body work and will be testing two fabric dyeing activities that will be available to museum visitors later in the afternoon.  

So very pleased to be back for the week as Artist in Residence in Brookings at Children's Museum of South Dakota. I'll be spending the week developing our collaborative installation exhibit, "A STREAM to PONDer: Interconnected Life in South Dakota Habitats" as well as lead some fabric dyeing and native plant sculpture workshops for museum guests and begin the creative devising process with our installation performers. Though initially the exhibit was set to open June 1, delays in our process have led to some awesome discoveries within the research.  All of the research on what is included in the exhibit is based on children's questions and ideas about ponds and streams.  CMSD staff members Carrie Benson and Mike Mogard began the research process with two images of pond/stream habitats and led children through a process of questioning to assess what kinds of areas children wondered about.  Carrie then transcribed each questioning session with children and coded data corresponding to different questioning areas.  What's left over?  LOTS OF DATA.
      Most of this visit will be about disseminating data and making decisions based on most relevant habitat areas, according to the children.  What concepts are children's questions getting at?  How can we explore concepts in each exhibit area?  After seeing the updated space after about 6 weeks, I am excited to dig in.  More updates soon to come!