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Keep Them Safe Stage 4 – Ordeal and Reward

Show time in Franschoek semi final

But the tension built to breaking point as communities descended on the City Hall for the semi finals of the arts competition. One director threw in the towel the night before. One group refused to rehearse for fear of giving away secrets – with disappointing results (their backing track skipped during the performance and their final dance was ruined). Another group took it so hard when they did not go through to the finals that it seemed like all the good of the project was lost in angr and bitterness…

Then finally all competition was over. More than 1 000 children and adults packed into the Stellenbosch City Hall. This was the most representative audience I had ever seen in the city hall – not just one community, one political party or one interest group, but every sector, every class, race and creed of the Stellenbosch and surrounding area was represented. And in the front row sat  the mayor and his wife with a number of other VIP’s.  Evidently Keep Them Safe had brought unity of focus and togetherness across barriers.

On the evening of Friday 9 July, The following prizes were awarded:

  1. Certificate for the go-cart that completed the most laps: James Town (5 laps)
  2. KTS trophy for the overall winner of the gocart rally: Kylemore
  3. KTS trophy for the winner of the most hours of community service during compassion days: Kylemore
  4. KTS trophy for the best graffiti canvas: Idas Valley
  5. Second place for the Performings Arts show sponsored tickets for 5 shows at the Out the Box Festival: Koelenhof
  6. KTS trophy for first place in the PA show and sponsored tickets for the Activate programme and show case at the Out the Box Festival: Kayamandi
  7. KTS trophy for the most promising local talent: Groendal

Congratulations everyone!

Thank you also to the Stb municipality for their support as well as the other 29 partners who made this project happen!

But the most rewarding moment of the entire evening was the election of a two year old mayor!

Near the end of the event Joseph, the MC called pon the mayor on stage to dance the ‘waka-waka’ a dance and song that became popular as part of the world cup hype. The mayor got up and walked past a group of kids that had gathered on the floor in front of the stage. In passing he picked up a little 2 year old who had been dancing everytime he got a chance. He put the boy on stage and hung his own mayors medallion over the boy’s chest.

Joseph caught the moment and introduced the boy as the new mayor. The other MC Lihani proceeded to call one of the dance groups onto the stage to dance with the boy. The entire audience lead by the children and the two year old mayor all danced to the Waka-waka.

I salute the mayor for handing this moment to the children. This symbolic act cemented the central message of the entire KTS project: Keep the Kids safe because any one of them, no matter how seemingly insignificant could be the next mayor.

The big question left to answer: how do we sustain the good work that has now begun?

How can the KTS spirit be maintained as everyone returns home to their ordinary lives after the world cup holiday is over?

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Keep Them Safe Stage 3, part 2 –The journey continues

KTS kids cleaning up Jonkershoek
KTS kids cleaning up Jonkershoek

But

kids not only had to be convinced to come. They also had to be convinced to stay.

And so, even though they adapted and improvised on the fly,  PITCH teams stuck to the broad outline of the programme because it was designed with this purpose in mind. Kids were motivated by a go cart rally, an arts project, a performing arts competition and a sports day.All these were carefully timed and the weekly programme specifically shaped to keep building the dramatic tension that would keep everyone interested until the very end…

The Perfect PITCH  programme was its own perfect pitch. Once kids got caught up in the excitement, there was no falling back.

This article gives a broad overview of the entire 4 week programme as the central 3 stages of the journey for the kids in the Keep Them Safe holiday project.  These stages are:

Stage 2: Preparing for the Journey

Stage 3: The Journey itself

Stage 4: Ordeal and Reward

To recap: Every journey that you design for the purpose of transforming people will have 5 stages. And most projects like this one will include at tleast 2 such 5 stage journeys. At some point these 2 journeys will begin to overlap.

For us in the KTS project, the 2 journeys would begin to overlap as soon as the second journey also hit the third stage: the journey itself.

The KTS project focussed on 5 areas of activity:

  1. Sport
  2. Entrepeneurship
  3. Arts and Carafts
  4. Performing Arts and
  5. Compassion days

The first 4 areas were running as workshops on Mondays, Tuesdays Thursdays and Fridays. Kids could choose which workshop they wanted to join. These were aimed mostly at older kids and youth, but eventually everyone took part, since there was not enough of the older ones to go around.

On Wednesdays everyone would do compassion day. This meant that they would go out to serve their own community in some way: visiting the elderly and ill, cleaning up the park, planting trees or painting a building or play equipment.

 Appart from compassion days, every workshop was designed as a journey to keep kids engaged. All of them followed the same basic pattern:

Week 1 Prepare for the workshop activities

Weeks 2 and 3: challenges and events

Week 4 Final competitions and reward ceremony.

Week 1: Rotating workshops

To help kids overcome their doubts and fears, the first week was set up so that they could do a different workshop every day. This way they had a whole week to decide where they wanted to commit for the rest of the programme.  They could get to know each facilitator and the requirements for each workshop so that they could find their place. They would receive an introductory experience that would prepare them for what was to come…

Weeks 2 and 3 were designed to keep everyone engaged. An exciting goal was set for each week end to focus the energy and keep them amped.

Week 2: Go Cart Rally

The adults’ journey began when they first began to raise awareness in their communities for the kids by organising pre holiday events (see previous posts). As the kids’ journey kicked in everyone was now in the same stage of the adventure.

At the end of week 2 on Saturday 26 June we hosted a great go cart rally. Every community built their own cart, decorated it and found businesses to sponsor them. They created cheerleader outfits from recyclable material and worked out some cheers to egg on their teams. Almost 100 people from every community were transported to a central place in Jonkershoek Stellenbosch.

They were judged on the number of laps they completed in 45 min, the presentation of their cart and stand, their cheer leaders and their general team spirit.

Week 3: Community Arts productions

At the end of week 3 a 30 min performing arts production had to be completed and performed to the parents as a dress rehearsal. At the same time, a 1.5 by 2 meter canvas had to be finished with art and graffiti around a particular theme.

To re-focus all the energy from go carts to arts, we sent guest facilitators in to look at what the groups have been doing and help them improve their standard. This proved an essential ingredient. Without it I am not sure all the communities would have had a product to show. This strategy was planned as a ‘fairy godmother’ strategy. The mentor appears to help the hero over a slump. This kept all engaged and focussed for another week.

Everyone now faced the Ordeal and Reward of week 4., the last week of the programme.

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Team Innovation through Improvisation – Part 5

Click here for more information about our Team Innovation through Improvisation Workshops.

Relationship

How to build team relationships that promote innovation.

The relationships between the members of an innovative team are based on trust and support. Your responsibility towards yourself is to be trusting and trustworthy, whilst your responsibility towards the rest of the team is to support them. The phrase we use in Improvisation to describe this element is “make your partner look good”. When everyone in the team is out to make the rest of the team look good it creates a safe environment where everyone feels safe to share new ideas. We are so used to just making our selves look good, but if you know that everyone in your team is out to make you look good it takes a lot of pressure from your shoulders and it builds trust between you and the rest of the team. Besides ,everyone in the team will look amazing if there are 10 others making them look good instead of everyone just trying to make themselves look better than the rest.

Quick exercise:

Here is a fun game from improvisation theatre that illustrates the “make your partner look good” concept very well. The game is called “Yes lets!” For this exercise you need enough space for everyone to move around. The game starts with anyone in the group making a suggestion for an action such as “Let’s climb a tree!” or “lets bake a cake!” Everyone then replies with the words “Yes lets!”, and mimes the action with enthusiasm. At any point someone else can make a new suggestion and everyone replies again with “Yes lets!”

The best way to make your team members look good is by accepting their suggestions and doing the action with enthusiasm. If someone said something like “let’s roar like lions” and just did it by himself, he would look like a fool and probably feel like one as well. What I love about this game is that you don’t just say yes I like your idea; you actually have to accept the idea by doing something with commitment. Often we will say we accept someone’s ideas but it’s just lip service, because we don’t actually take any action. The safety, trust and support that is generated when everyone in the team is committed to making the rest of the team look good, creates a energetic atmosphere in which innovation can thrive.

Make your partner look good story

Last night my wife told me a beautiful story about how a family made their mother look good by accepting an offer and doing something with it. In this story the offer the mother made wasn’t an idea; it was a reality that was imposed on her without her choice. She was diagnosed with throat cancer. In her final week her last wish was to have a meal with her family, since she loved cooking and sharing dinner with her loved ones. She couldn’t swallow the food because of the cancer and therefore had to spit it out after chewing it. Seeing this, her family also spat out their food after chewing. They made her look good by accepting her reality and doing it with her. Accepting other’s reality, whether it is their creativity, personality or hardship and doing something with it is how you show real acceptance and that is how you build trust in your relationships with others.

More on trust

People often tell me that they can’t trust others because the others aren’t trustworthy. What comes first, trust or trustworthiness? People will say others must earn their trust. Does that mean you treat them untrustworthy until they have earned your trust? People will react in the way that you treat them. If you treat someone as untrustworthy, they will act untrustworthy. But what if you trust someone and they disappoint you? That is where grace comes in, because you know you are also not perfect and also not always 100% trustworthy. Accept the mistake and do something with it. The more trusting you are going to be the more trustworthy the people in your team will become.

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Improvisation class 9 – 29 June

Tuesday night was the last class of my second Level 1 improv class. What a blast! We just played performance games. I’m so proud of everyone. All the scenes you did would have pleased an audience. The first game we played was Spotlight. This game illustrated that to improvise you just need to step in, do something with confidence and trust the process. It reminded me of started my own business. The only way to get over the fear is to make a strong choice and stick to it.

Next we played Freez tag. Everyone came up with very strong characters and Minki’s scene of the two people on either side of a wall was really beautiful. This game again showed how important it is to step up and let your body think for you. When you stand on the side and try to think of something clever you struggle. But if you step up without an idea, take the position and just see what happens you come up with much more creative ideas.

The next game we played was One Word Interview. In this game an interviewer interviews a two headed expert who is played by two other players who has to answer all the questions one word at a time. Luci (interviewer), Liezel and Franz’s scene about Pinokio was hilarious. They accepted each other’s offers so beautifully and picked strong interesting characters.

The last game for the night was Party game. In this game one player is hosting a party. 3 Other players each get an interesting characteristic such as a movie or theatre style, famous person or kitchen appliance. The host doesn’t know what the characteristics are and must try to figure it out through his interaction with his guests. I thought it was hilarious when Nolan thought that Ruan was an Oriental Opera singer.

Thanks again for everyone’s committed and enthusiastic participation. I really enjoyed teaching this class.

I would really appreciate it if everyone who participated in the class would answer the following feedback questions as a comment here on the blog.

1. In what why did the class have an influence on your life?
2. Would you recommend the class to others? Why?
3. What do you think could prevent others from participating in an improvisation class?
4. What exercise or game did you like the most?
5. What exercise or game did you like the least?

Thanks yall. hope to see you 27 July in my level 2 class.

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Keep Them Safe Stage 3, part 1 – The journey begins

Klapmuts soup drinkers giving the thumbs up
Klapmuts soup drinkers giving the thumbs up

But

on the first and second days, it was pouring with rain. When the clouds finally cleared, the mountains were covered in snow. Needless to say, very few kids came to the activities. This proved to be the first of many unforeseen obstacles on the road to running a successful holiday programme.

Because of this, PITCH teams adapted their plans and issued new calls to adventure. They nursed the kids through their doubts and fears with hot soup and warm smiles and an explosive first week line up! .  

For over 3 months we recruited, trained and nurtured about 200 adult volunteers to get them ready, so that they can get us ready. Then the time for preparation simply ran out and the Journey was upon us.

On 11 June Bafana Bafana scored the first goal of the Fifa Soccer World Cup and the following Monday on 14 June KTS kicked off. It was rainy and freezing cold but all over Stellenbosch courageous teams stood ready for kids who needed warm food and entertainment.

It is now nearly 2 weeks later and numbers are increasing every day.

But where do the kids come from? How did they know to come and where to come too? How did they know what they would find when they got there?

While the journey started form the adults and organisers, the kids still needed to be Called to Adventure.

You may have read earlier that we are designing 2 journeys simultaneously.

  1. Keep Them Safe: a story about adults putting together a holiday programme for kids during the Fifa Soccer World Cup
  2. The Perfect PITCH: a story about kids and young people playing and working to express themselves through Arts, culture, sport and entrepreneurship

Of course it is not true that the holiday programme started with marketing. In actual fact, the compassion days each community had to organise in preparation for the holiday programme also functioned as marketing events for the kids and young people.

Many communities followed these up with various events like talent shows and modelling competitions to get the kids’ attention. At the same time we, As back bone team, appointed a group to run a marketing campaign in schools to advertise the programme

At all these events the 3 elements of the Call to Adventure were taking into account:

  1. Who is the target audience? What are their characteristics, strengths and weaknesses?
  2. What do their Ordinary Worlds look like? How are they stuck?
  3. What is our promise to them?

But something went wrong with the marketing… when KTS kicked off, only young kids arrived. There were very few, if any, young people older than 11.  What happened?

One reason was that the schools that were visited with the marketing group were mostly primary schools, so the older kids never heard the Call. Although all Secondary Schools were also targeted, few opened their doors for the marketing group.

Also the holiday programme was designed so that young kids would play from 9 to 12 and the older ones from 11 to 14:00. This was hard to advertise and communicate it seems. Youngsters who did arrive came early with the little ones and then left when they saw too few of their own age there.

When PITCH teams saw this trend, many came up with good ideas in the first week to get youngsters on board. Some paraded through the streets with music and mega phones calling the kids out of their homes and out of the streets. Others changed their programmes by using the older kids who came early to assist with the young ones. Eventually in some communities the two sepearte programmes have now just fused into one.

Finally, a team of photographers and writers have added their weight to our project and have taken it upon them to make the project more visible in the local media. We ar forever thankful to them.  Thank you to the adult Asset Builders of Stellenbosch.

Eventually we are noticing that the best Call to Adventure for the older kids is the content of the programme itself. The longer it runs, the more friends tell each other and the more kids and young people pitch for the perfect PITCH.

The Perfect PITCH programme is its own ‘perfect pitch’.

Why? Because kids, but especially young people are full of fears and doubts and it takes time for them to overcome these and commit fully to the adventure. Maybe more on that next time as we go a little deeper into the design of the programme itself and look at The Perfect PITCH – preparing kids for their journey.

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Improv class 8 – 23 June 2010

Physicalization

Physicalization is the method used by improv players to create imaginary locations, objects, and events. The best way to help the audience and your fellow players see the objects and environments that you create is if you see it yourself.

We started the class with a guided fantasy into our imaginations. The adventure began on the beach, moved to a second-hand store, into a forest, into a castle with a table with delicious food, into a room with photos of significant events, into a room with a person on a thrown and finally into a garden. It is amazing to see how your imagination and your past experiences work together to create this dream like experience. It was interesting to hear who everyone saw on the thrown. Luci saw Richard Branson and Nolan saw an old friend who asked him if he liked his place.

In the following exercise we passed imaginary objects to each other. It was funny to see how the snoek turned into a tray with a half eaten sandwich, the prickly worm turned into a fox and the hot bowl of soup turned into a meatball. Or was it the worm that turned into a meatball and the ancient vase that turned into a fox?

For the next exercise everyone had to reach under their chairs and pull out an object without thinking beforehand what it was going to be. They had to discover something and then explore it until they got an emotional reaction from it. It is difficult not to think ahead and just discover something. However when you allow yourself just to discover, your discovery is much more interesting and your emotional reaction much more authentic.

Next we played an environment exercise. For this exercise a location is determined and then one by one each character must enter the location and use all the objects that all the previous players used and then add another object. It is important to remember where each object was placed. A good way to practice your physicalization is to notice in everyday life how you hold different objects. Doing this will help you to be more present in your day to day actions. We picked a library for our location. I really enjoyed the characters that everyone used in the environment. When you do it in a character you find a lot more interesting things to do with the object. Choosing a character and acting and reacting from that character are probably one of the most important improv practices. For me it is also one of the best applications of improv in everyday life. Who you are, is more important than what you do, because who you are determines what you do. Therefore it is more important to figure out who you are than what it is that you are suppose to do.

For the final exercise we played two person scenes where the first player had to establish an environment through physicalization (the where of the scene). The second player had to establish the relationship between the characters (the who of the scene). The scenes were lovely, thanks for everyone’s participation.

Our one word proverb of the class was: Bafana het almal geskok met voortreflikheid.

Comments?

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Keep Them Safe Stage 2 – Preparing for the Journey

KTS leaders regrouping at a team building session
KTS leaders regrouping at a team building session

But

internal doubts plagued them.  The task was a mammoth one and few felt they could make a difference by themselves. Where would they find the time and money? They weren’t trained for this kind of thing? How will they ever be able to keep it up and sustain such an output?

Because of this the Stb municipality, TUG and the Asset Builders Network joined together to run the Keep them Safe project. Its aim: to equip community leaders for the task of running their own holiday programme for kids during the Fifa World Cup.

And so the backbone team, workshop leaders and pitch teams embark on the enormous task of organising 12 holiday programmes in 12 communities across Stellenbosch. 200 adults 10 000 kids and young people. Their first task: to test their abilities by organising one Compassion Day Programme before the actual programme kicks off.

Peter Block author of Community – the Art of Belonging, teaches the importance of allowing people to raise and share their doubts and reservations. Unless room is given for people to identify and share their concerns and fears, they are unable to move beyond getting excited about something and taking action to make that thing happen.

Doubts and reservations should always be allowed into the space and accepted for what they are. Sales people will also know that if you can accept and work with the potential buyer’s reservations and objections, you are more likely to make a sale.

This marks the first of three elements that make up Stage 2 of the story:

Preparing for the Journey

  1. Refusal of the call: When the internal doubts and reservations are too strong and the protagonist does not feel like he/she has what it takes.
  2. Meeting the Mentor: The introduction of a guide that sees the potential in the protagonist and is willing to offer training and mentorship that would enable them to meet the challenge.
  3. Crossing the Threshold: Protagonist must perform a clear action that proves his/her commitment to the adventure.

As the protagonist sorts out his fears, objections and doubts, he becomes more and more ready to make a commitment or not. While many questions were answered during one on one conversations, we also formalised this stage at our Taster launch. We divided the group according to their area of interest: Performing Arts, Arts and Crafts, Entrepenurship, Sports, Education and Community Wellness.

Next we facilitated in each of those groups a conversation around doubts and reservations as well as the solutions the group could come up with together to address those problems.

We knew that if the questions are not heard and answers do not satisfy, the commitment is not there. In the same breath, if those doubts remain after your utmost attempts to overcome them, you do not want the person’s commitment anymore, because their heart is somewhere else. Let me explain.

For Keep them Safe we had two main objections: Where will the resources come from? How are you going to ensure sustainability?

Our answer to both was the same: How can you help us with this problem? Those who could not volunteer their time, see where they could find resources or did not see themselves  commit to the dream long-term, were not the right people for the job.

In fact, our entire strategy focussed on balancing the dream with the cost.

IF the potential partner buys the dream, they will pay the price. This was also our sustainability plan: If a community could find the resources (time, money, skills, equipment etc) within themselves they will be independent from outside funding and resources and therefore will be able to find it time and time again for every holiday programme to come. Their independence makes it sustainable.

Now make no mistake, many said ‘we are from a poor community, we have nothing to offer’ and we would say: we will help you find what you need’. We offered training in project management, leadership and fundraising. We also offered training and support for workshops and programmes. We provided guides and mentors for every lack.

By the time Keep Them Safe was over, every community would have a trained team that would co-ordinate and run their own holiday programme with resources from their own community. We called them PITCH teams.

At our Taster launch we therefore included an entire programme of introductions where partners and organisations presented their offerings of training and support. It was a dialogue between the fears of the teams and the offerings of the guides.

Finally, we needed all teams to prove their commitment and so we issued their first challenge: within the next two months they would have to run a Compassion Day programme once in their communities. They had to identify a need within their community and organise the kids and youth to address that need with resources from within their own community – or resources that they found themselves outside the community. Again we would provide training and guidelines.

To summarise, the second stage of every story is the preparation for the journey. IF you are planning a programme or project here are the questions you need to answer:

  1. How will you air and validate your target audience’s doubts and reservations? How can you clarify the cost of the commitment?
  2. Who are the Mentors and what training can they offer? How will theymaximise the strengths of the target audience?
  3. What clear action do protagonists have to take to prove their commitment?
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Keep Them Safe Stage 1 – The Call to Adventure

Boy with soccer ball in Kayamandi
Boy with soccer ball in Kayamandi

Once upon a time

there were leaders who saw young people full of potential all across Stellenbosch.

Every day they would do their bit to help the kids discover and utilise their potential. Yet they felt alone in their struggle against the lack of opportunities, the hopelessness and the moral degeneration that threaten to steal the futures of the kids they work with.

Then one day South Africa, is chosen to host the soccer world cup. With it came the promise of economic influx, more money and more hope for everyone. Also along with it came the predators, those who promise the same, but exploit instead: human trafficking, commercial sex, child abuse, substance abuse. The leaders knew the kids would need to be kept safe. They also knew that the world cup would unleash a wave of opportunity for change and transformation – a wave that they needed to ride…

Yesterday I shared with you that most projects contain at least 2 stories: the story of the organisers who dream the dream and put together the project and the story of the target audience for whom they are designing the project.

Keep Them Safe is the story of the leaders and adults who embarked on the journey of realising the dream of a holiday programme for kids and young people all across Stellenbosch for the entire 4 week Fifa World Cup tournament.

The Perfect Pitch is the story of the kids and young people who sign up for the programme.

I am sharing with you the chronological unfolding of each of these stories stage by stage. Every story has 5 stages:

I               The Call to Adventure

II             Preparation for the Journey

III            The Journey itself

IV            Ordeal and Reward

V             Returning Home

In real time today 22 June, the stories are both in the Journey stage, but  let me tell you more about the Call to Adventure of Story 1 – Keep Them Safe.

Every Call to Adventure contains 3 essential elements:

  1. an introduction to the protagonist or hero – once upon a time there was …
  2. a description of their Ordinary World which includes a problem which they are either unaware of, or unable to overcome – every day they would…
  3. a once in a life time Opportunity that promises a solution, or a way out – then one day…

We issued our Call to Adventure in two main ways from September 2009 to March 2010.

First we(and I really mean Henko, the project leader) had one on one coffee conversations with everyone he identified as possible partners – possible heroes for this story. In these meetings they would share their common concerns about the youth – their Ordinary World and the problems they face. Then Henko would introduce his dream… Because of his heartfelt identification with the plight of the prospective hero (being one himself) and his enthusiasm for his dream, the idea spread like wild fire. OF course Henko would never take credit for the idea since it was sparked in him after a conversation he had with people from The Ultimate Goal, the SA Sports Cohalition and the Stellenbosch municipality.  Still he saw the opportunity and started to call everyone and any one to join the adventure.

The Second way we issued the Call was more formalised. In March 2010 we launched a KTS Taster. The aim of this event was to gather everyone who had had a coffee conversation with Henko or one of the others he had ignited, into one space. We wanted to launch our dream formally and explain it to as many ;people as we could gather.

Representatives were brought in from all over the Stelenbosch district and put together in one room to get all the hot coals together and start a bonfire.

Yet now everyone had had time to ponder over the project and some concerns, doubts and reservations had begun to surface. We were moving into the next stage of the story: preparing for the journey… I will tell you all about that tomorrow.

In the mean time, if you have a project that you want to ‘sell’ figure out:

  1. Who is your target audience/protagonist? Is there more than one?
  2. What is their context (Ordinary World) like? What problems do they face that seem insurmountable?
  3. What solution can you provide that will speak directly to this need? What once in a life time opportunity can you identify and optimise (The Call)?
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Keep Them Safe – Introduction

KTS Banner displayed in every community
KTS Banner displayed in every community

Since September last year (2009) a handful of people including myself, started to dream about a mammoth project that will stretch across the entire Stellenbosch district during the Soccer World Cup. While many saw either dollar signs or red flags, we saw a great opportunity for transforming our communities by focussing on kids and young people.

What if we could use world cup fever (or fevah) as a Call to Adventure and community transformation?

The Keep Them Safe project was born.

Today I am thrilled to report that there are holiday programmes running in 13 communities across Stellenbosch targeting kids and young people. The programme is called ‘The Perfect Pitch’ , it will run for 4 weeks and is entirely managed by teams of people from the communities themselves. Today I begin telling our story.

The purpose of the story

From the start I was privileged to contribute my knowledge of story and mythic journeys to help design the entire project as a journey of growth and transformation for all involved.

The story structure of a mythic journey has as its main purpose the transformation of the hero, also called protagonist. The entire story is designed to fulfill this function and every character in the story play his or her role in such a way that the hero can grow. The only difference between the hero and anyone else in the story is transformation and everything and everyone else is there purely to contribute to this.

It follows therefore, that it may be possible to use the structure of story to design a journey of transformation for other people. If you understand how to design a story so that the hero transforms, you can use this knowledge to design events and programmes that would let the participants transform and grow. This is what we did for Keep Them Safe.
Using the 5 basic stages of the mythic journey as well as its sub components, we designed such a journey of growth. As you read about my process, keep in mind that the same principles will be true for any other programme or event you want to design.

The title of the story

Before getting to the first stages, we must first determine the title of the story. The title refers to the protagonist and the challenge of the journey. To keep titles short, one or the other usually valls away eventually, but to get to the final title, both elements need to be clarified. A good example is Sleeping Beauty i.e. the girl who needed to wake” or Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone.

Many stories only have the name of the protagonist e.g. Hanzel and Grettel , others only have the challenge e.g. Titanic. Of course stories have other titles too, but the most common titles are the ones referring to the protagonist and his challenge.

Early on we discovered that The Keep Them Safe project has two titles referring to two different protagonists and two different challenges. Since then I realised that this is true of most projects and it is essential to take the two (and sometimes three) stories apart.

For us the stories were:

Keep them Safe: The story of community leaders working together to keep their young people safe.

The Perfect Pitch: The story of young people creating a perfect pitch for their own lives and their communities.

Today is the first day that these two stories are in exactly the same stage i.e. The Journey itself. So with both stories now running on their own and gaining momentum, let me tell you how we got here, and why the two stories did not overlap until today…

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Improvisation class 7 – 15 June 2010

Breaking routines

This Tuesday’s class was all about breaking routines.  And I’m going to break the routine by writing the rest of the blog in Afrikaans.

HierdieDinsdag inplaas daarvan om klas te hê, het ons almal by Basic bymekaar gekom vir ‘n glasie wyn.  Die rede daarvoor was omdat daar ‘n double booking op die saal was waar ons gewoonlik bymekaar kom.  Ruan, wat die vorige klas gemis het, het gevra waaroor verlede week se klas gegaan het.  Ek het hom toe vertel dat dit gegaan oor storie en dat dit basies daaroor gaan dat ‘n mense goeie storie skep deur ‘n roetine te skep en dan die roetine te breek.  ‘n Vinnige voorbeeld is:  “Een dag lank gelede was daar ‘n dorpie waarniemand ooit gelag et nie (‘n roetine word geskep).  Toe eendag kom daar ‘n bose towenaar na die dorp (roetine word gebreek) en omdat niemand ooit gelag het nie het hy mag oor die mense gehad en hulle sy slawe gemaak (nuwe roetine word geskep).  ‘n Jong seun in die dorp ontdek toe ‘n antieke boek met grappies in sy ouma se huis en begin dit lees en vir die ander mense grappies te vertel.  Vir die eerste keer begin die mense weer lag ontdek (roetine word gebreek).  Al die mense begin toe vir mekaar die grappies oor vertel en soos die mense meer en meer begin lag het die bose towenaar sy mag oor die mense verloor en weg gevlug uit vrees dat hulle hom sal dood lag.  En so het die dorpie bekend geraak as die dorpie waar almal baie lag (‘n nuwe roetine word geskep.  Maar hierdie slag is die roetine beter as die roetine waarmee die storie begin het).  Liezel sê toe dat  ons eintlik ook net besig was om ‘n roetine te breek deur nie klas te hê nie maar ‘n glasie wyn te drink.  Nolan vertel toe dat hy besig is om ‘n roetine te breek deur op te hou rook.  As ons wil hê ons lewens moet beter stories wees is dit nodig dat ons roetines in ons lewens breek.  Baie mense is vasgevang in seker roetines wat hulle verhoed om die lewe voluit te lewe.

Die res van die aand het ons net lekker gekuier.  Luci en Minki het gesels oor skaapvleis verkoop. Ruan het vertel van sy partytjie wat hy vir volgende jaar wil beplan.  En Liezel het ons die storie van die tweeling vertel. Dankie aan almal, dit was ‘n lekker kuiertjie