Running head: ARTS-BASED LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT CURRICULUM
Arts-Based Leadership Development Curriculum
Jessica Baron and Hilary Martin Himan
Oregon State University
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ARTS-BASED LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT CURRICULUM
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Arts-Based Leadership Development Curriculum
Group Expectations
In our first group meeting, we agreed to several ground rules in order to facilitate a
positive experience for our Leadership Development Curriculum project. We agreed to be
considerate of each other’s time, with the understanding that we were both busy, in our work and
in our lives outside of work. To facilitate an inclusive environment, we promised to listen and be
open to each other’s suggestions for the project. We found it important to keep our commitments
to each other and promised to notify one another as soon as possible if we couldn’t make a
meeting time or a deadline, but we understand that life happens and sometimes other projects
take precedent. To help facilitate progress, we pledged to have action plans at the end of each
meeting and to communicate by using Google Docs so that we could work on our own time, as
well as keep each other informed through email and text message on our progress.
Arts-Based Leadership Development Curriculum
The arts can serve as an excellent vehicle for teaching leadership skills and developing a
leadership identity. The following is a multi-session arts-based leadership development
curriculum, intended to be used with 14 sophomore student leaders. The assumed stage of
development for this group is that, while sophomores, they have demonstrated initiative to seek
the role of being a leader in a student organization or in a paid student leadership role on campus.
The group of 14 is assumed not to have previously worked together and most likely will be
meeting each other for the first time. One commonality among the group members will be their
interest and willingness to engage in arts-based pedagogy. Various artistic forms will be used,
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including theatre games, movement, vocalization, and collage making, encompassing theatrical
performance, dance, music, and the visual arts. These forms will be the means of teaching
leadership skills, with clear learning outcomes and assessment strategies attached to each
session. The purpose of our arts-based leadership development curriculum is to use the arts to
teach leadership skills and behaviors to second year students using a collaborative and relational
model .
Leadership Development Theories and Models
The Leadership Identity Development Model, as developed by Komives, Owen,
Longerbeam, Mainella, and Osteen (2005), plays a significant role in our curriculum. We believe
that the arts-based methods of the curriculum may be a key tool for helping student leaders
traverse the transition from being “leader-identified” (Step 3) to “leadership differentiated”
(Step 4) (Komives et al., 2005). The arts-based methods can be particularly conducive to aiding
students in understanding non-positional leadership, recognizing that they can contribute to
leadership from anywhere in the organization, trusting others in their group, being open to other
perspectives, letting go of control, seeing the collective whole, and learning group skills.
The primary leadership model guiding our Arts-Based Leadership Development
Curriculum is the Relational Leadership Model, developed by Komives, Lucas, and McMahon
(2006). Komives et al. (2006) explore leadership as happening between people and define it
broadly as a “relational and ethical process of people together attempting to accomplish positive
change” (p. 11). Relationships are the key to leadership effectiveness. Much of the arts-based
exercises we employ in the retreat are about learning how we relate to others. Other aspects of
the Relational Leadership Model that are important to our curriculum development are:
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Purposeful Leaders: Leaders are able to have commitment to a goal or activity. Leaders
demonstrate the ability to collaborate and find common ground with others to facilitate
positive change;
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Inclusive Leaders: Leaders understand, value, and actively engage diversity;
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Empowering Leaders: Leaders encourage members to engage and get involved;
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Ethical Leaders: Leaders are guided by a system of moral principles;
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Process-Oriented Leaders. Leaders are aware of the way a group interacts and the impact
it has on the group’s work (Komives et al., 2006).
Our Arts-Based Curriculum is also heavily dependent on experiential learning, coupled with
intentional reflection and meaning-making, as influenced by Kolb’s (1984) Experiential
Learning Theory. As Gehrke (2005) states, “Leadership is inherently an experimental process of
engaging with others and learning how to be more effective in that context” (p. 15).
Learning Outcomes
In the process of developing learning outcomes, we solidified the specifics of our
program’s goals. We believe that as a result of this program, participants will be able to:
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Discover a sense of their own innate creativity by experimenting with performance,
sound, movement, and the visual arts. We define creativity as “the tendency to generate
or recognize ideas, alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems,
communicating with others, and entertaining ourselves and others” (Franken, 1988, p.
396).
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Translate physical and artistic experiences into reflective meaning making.
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Apply theatrical and artistic collaboration concepts to everyday group dynamics.
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Express artistic impulses within a group to develop autonomy and build confidence.
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Create art with others and relate those experiences to leadership skills.
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Extend the self in conversation to at least half of the group members.
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Interpret the process a group must go through to create a collaborative piece of art.
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Deconstruct the fear of failure and issues of perfectionism by practicing risk taking.
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Meeting the Needs of the Target Group
As mentioned above, we plan to target sophomore students who have leadership roles on
our campus. We chose this group because these students may be “leader identified”, but may not
have yet gone through “the KEY transition” to “leadership differentiated” (Komives et al., 2005),
and we believe that an arts-based curriculum can help ease that transition. However, we
understand that the nature of the program may not be conducive to all, as it is a physical program
that may include touching other students. Those with religious beliefs that prohibit physicality
between the sexes or those with physical disabilities that prevent them from engaging fully may
not experience the program as it was designed, although we would do our best to accommodate
these differences to make the program as inclusive as possible. We suspect that arts-oriented
students, with majors in creative disciplines, may enjoy this program more than others, because
they may be more comfortable with the methods we will employ. In our marketing materials, on
flyers and in emails to student organizations, we need to be upfront about our methods, as there
are students who could be immensely uncomfortable with performing in any way in front of
others.
We understand that some may be skeptical of these methods, both using the arts and a
relational mode of leadership. It will be our challenge to make a case throughout the program,
relating the arts to leadership in a practical way and the definition of leadership as between
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people in process. Our multi-day curriculum will take place over a weekend using a full day
Saturday and half day Sunday structure.
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Arts-Based Leadership Curriculum
Saturday Activities
9:00 am - Introductions & Names
The facilitators will begin the program by introducing ourselves, our personal
orientations to leadership (including the concept of relational leadership), the kinds of activities
we will be experimenting with over the two-day program, and the purpose of these activities in
terms of how we believe they relate to students developing as leaders. We will also introduce and
hand out journals that the participants will be using often to reflect on their learning throughout
the weekend. Setting up the concept of the journal, we will explain that this tool will help them
to take their learning back to their work with student organizations and/or employment on
campus, although they will be handing it in to us for a short time at the end of the weekend.
Finally, we will tell students that, on Sunday, there will be an opportunity for friends and family
to come and see a performance, culminating some of the weekend’s work. Students will be asked
to invite anyone they wish to attend. We will then play a simple name game to help the group
learn each others’ names, as well as begin to encourage students to get comfortable making
choices and vocalizing in front of one another.
Sitting in a circle on the floor, we begin a rhythmic slap, clap, and snap pattern. Each
person, in rhythm, says “My name is” and his or her name. The group repeats it with “Her name
is” and the name they just heard. Then the individual says, “And I like” and offers some personal
favorite food, color, movie, anything they can think of in rhythm. The group repeats, “And she
likes” and the item. We put it together as a group, “Her name is Jenny, and she likes Star Wars.”
There is no pressure to rhyme, simply to offer one favorite item to the group, and the goal for the
group is to repeat each person’s name several times. Once every person has gone, we will go
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around the group one more time all in a row, “Her name is Jenny, his name is Robert, his name is
Greg, etc.”. The hope is that, by the end of the exercise, everyone knows each other’s names
fairly well.
9:30 am - Babbling, Adapted from Phil Porter and Cynthia Winton-Henry (2002). The InterPlay
Leadership Program: Secrets of InterPlay Two.
Babbling is a simple exercise to introduce the artistic experience of storytelling and to
help participants connect with one another. In this activity, each participant finds a partner and
determines who is Partner #1 and Partner #2. The facilitator begins by asking Partner #1 to
“babble” for 30 seconds, describing the place or one of the places where the student does most of
her work. After 30 seconds, the facilitator rings a bell and then asks Partner #2 to share on the
same topic for 30 seconds. Then, the facilitator asks for participants to change partners. The
process repeats. This time the facilitator asks Partner #2 to begin, “Tell your partner something
mundane you did in the last two days.” Partner #2 babbles for 30 seconds, and the facilitator
rings the bell. Partner #1 then speaks to the same topic. After the facilitator rings the bell, she
asks for the partners to notice for 30 seconds. The process begins again and can go on for a few
more rounds. A typical babbling sequence would include five to eight rounds, with at least three
partner switches. The facilitator could move into words/phrases related to the topic at hand, such
as: Talk about the word “leader” for 30 seconds. Talk about the word, “follower” for 30 seconds,
etc.
The leadership focus of this exercise is to build community and increase participants’
comfort level, as this is the beginning of our leadership development retreat. The primary
learning outcome for this exercise is #6: extend the self in conversation to at least half of the
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group members. Assessment would be accomplished by asking each participant to write in their
journals about their partners and the things they learned/noticed.
10:15 am - Walk, Stop, Run, Adapted from general theater games and from Phil Porter and
Cynthia Winton-Henry (2002). The InterPlay Leadership Program: Secrets of InterPlay Two.
In this activity, the group is asked to make choices between three options: walking,
stopping, or running. After instructions are given, a piece of music is played and participants are
asked to explore the space, to notice each other, and to make choices. Aspects of following and
leading may emerge.
The leadership focus of this exercise is to lead participants through incremental steps
toward improvising, making choices in the moment. We also hope this exercise of Walk, Stop,
Run leads to increased interaction among the group and for the group to “claim” the particular
space. The primary learning outcome for this exercise is #1: discover a sense of your own innate
creativity by experimenting with movement. The facilitators employ Robert Franken’s (1988)
definition of creativity: “Creativity is defined as the tendency to generate or recognize ideas,
alternatives, or possibilities that may be useful in solving problems, communicating with others,
and entertaining ourselves and others” (p. 396). In this exercise, participants will discover a
sense of creativity by experimenting with movement. As participants move about the room and
interact with each other, they may generate new possibilities through the choices they make.
After the music is done, the group will be asked to sit down in a circle. Facilitators will
ask, “What did you notice?” After the verbal debriefing, participants will be asked to write in
their journals about how this activity might relate to leading and following and their personal
choices in group work. How did it feel to experiment with movement? Could they apply those
feelings to experimenting with leadership? What might that look like? How did the participants
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use their creativity in the Walk, Stop, Run exercise? How does using their creativity translate to
participants’ leadership roles on campus?
11:00 am - Snack Break
11:15 am - Seeing A Sport, Adapted from Viola Spolin (1963) Improvisation for the Theater
In this activity, the group divides into two teams of seven each. Each team decides
secretly what sport their group will watch. Each team then gets up in front of the other in turn
and creates the environment of watching a particular sport. They are allowed to use vocalizations
but not words, and they must all be at the sport individually, that is they did not come to see the
sport as a group. The other team will try to guess what sport the group is watching based on their
movements and vocalizations as a group.
The learning outcomes for this activity include discovering innate creativity by
experimenting with performance, sound, and movement; translating physical and artistic
experiences into reflective meaning making; applying theatrical and artistic collaboration
concepts to everyday group dynamics; and expressing artistic impulses within a group to develop
autonomy and build confidence. Simply performing the act of watching a sport with others
contributes to the discovery of creativity and creative impulses. The nature of the activity,
individually yet within the group, builds autonomy and confidence. Relating the concept of
watching something together, even though the group members are not to interact with each other,
requires collaboration and relates that to an everyday activity.
After both teams have gone, the facilitators will debrief the activity, asking students to
recall the process and the experience. Once students have reflected on the experience itself,
facilitators will ask students to theorize how this simple activity might apply to group dynamics
and leadership, including engaging active listening skills with the whole body, concentration and
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focus, and nonverbal communication. Assessment will come with this debrief by asking students
to reflect in their journals the many ways in which they listened to and communicated with one
another while playing “Seeing a Sport” and how they might apply these strategies of
communicating to their student organizations and on-campus employment.
12:00 pm - Lunch
1:00 pm - Status Game - Adapted from Keith Johnstone’s (1979) book, Impro.
In this activity, the group will be playing with the concept of status as a way to manage
conflict and understand group dynamics, especially with a multicultural/social justice lens. The
game will first be introduced with a brief lecture and demonstration of status reflected in
everyday life. Johnstone (1979) emphasizes that status is what one does. Various examples will
be given by the facilitators of physical status interactions, such as one individual walking down
the sidewalk and approaching an individual. The oncoming individual has to quickly move aside
as to not get bumped. The facilitators will pause for reflection, and ask the group, “Who had a
higher status in this scene?” The facilitators can reflect with the group that often status is
reflected in society and culture in ways that are far more complex than simple physicality. We
can brainstorm with the group about power and privilege, particularly around topics of dominant
social groups. Are we aware and watching for status games being played when there is social
injustice involved? Are we participating in status games, trying to maintain our higher status
(privilege) without being aware of it? The group will discuss, and then move to another physical
example. After several examples, the facilitators will then have the 14 participants split into
pairs. The pairs will be given a scenario/case study typical of student leadership on campus.
These scenarios will describe a scene, such as a student group meeting in a room for a meeting
and there are not enough chairs around the table for the entire group to gather. What is a low-
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status choice for the student leader to make? What is a high-status choice? What are the pros and
cons of each choice? Each pair will present their particular scenario to the entire group, using
other group members as “extras” in their scene should they choose. Each scene will be briefly
discussed.
From reflections on physical status choices, the group will then move to verbal status
games. The facilitators will again demonstrate an example of the “see-saw” principle of statusone goes up while the other goes down. The facilitators will act a brief scene from an actual
script or something from everyday life. Such an example could be as simple as,
Facilitator #1: Oh, I love your sweater! Where did you get that?
Facilitator #2: Oh, this old thing? I’ve had it for years. (lowering Facilitator #1 status)
The facilitators would play the scene again, this time making a different choice.
Facilitator #1: Oh, I love your sweater! Where did you get that?
Facilitator #2: Thanks so much! I bought it at that store you were telling me about! What
a great suggestion to tell me to go there! (raising Facilitator #1’s status)
As Johnstone (1979) mentions in Impro, “Many people will maintain that we don’t play status
interactions with our friends, and yet every movement, every inflection of the voice plays a
status...Acquaintances become friends when they agree to play status games together” (p. 37).
The facilitators will mention that in student group interactions, as leaders we are playing status
games with each other. Sometimes conflict occurs because the see-saw effect is unbalanced,
lowering someone’s status over and over again. The facilitators will then instruct the group to
find a new partner, and these partners, after deciding who is Partner A and who is Partner B, will
be given a piece of paper with the starting lines of conversations typically heard within a student
organization. The instructions will also include which partner is to begin playing lower status.
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Each group of two practices on their own, practicing what it feels like to try to raise their
partner’s status and trying to lower their partner’s status. After everyone has had a chance to do
that, the group will come together, and the facilitators will ask if any pairs want to demonstrate
for the whole group their scene. After some students demonstrate their status interactions, the
group will debrief the exercise verbally, and then take out their journals to reflect on status and
their particular context of leadership.
This activity focuses on the learning outcomes, “translate physical and artistic
experiences into reflective meaning making” and “apply theatrical and artistic collaboration
concepts to everyday group dynamics.” With the focus on multicultural issues and
acknowledging and fighting oppression, we are also helping form inclusive and ethical leaders in
the Relational Leadership Model (Komives et al., 2006).
3:00 pm - Transformation Exercise - Adapted from personal theatre training experience
In this exercise, we ask students to extend themselves a bit more than they have by
performing alone in front of the group. We begin by standing in a circle. One person steps into
the circle and makes a repeating sound and movement. (One of the facilitators will most likely
begin to offer an example.) This sound and movement should not use comprehensible language
of any kind, no words or gestures that others could conceivably understand as attempting to
make meaning. The person in the center will allow that repeating sound and movement to morph
and change into a different sound and movement. We will make particular note of this point in
the setup of the activity; students are meant to allow a change to happen, not to consciously
choose a change, but to go where their bodies and voices take them. Once she feels that the new
sound and movement has settled and established itself, she will take that sound and movement to
someone else in the circle who will mirror it. They will switch places and the new student in the
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center of the circle will begin the process again. The goal is for each person in the group to have
at least one chance in the center. This activity is not meant to inspire laughter but a more serious
sense of performance and an almost solemn atmosphere.
There are many of our learning outcomes that apply to this activity. The facilitators will
focus on the following: discovering a sense of innate creativity, translating physical and artistic
experiences into meaning, expressing artistic impulses within a group to develop autonomy and
build confidence, and deconstructing the fear of failure and issues of perfectionism by practicing
risk taking. After the activity is complete, we will ask students to tell us what they noticed about
the experience. What happened as the activity went on? How did they feel during it? Fearful?
Silly? Stupid? In control? Lost? Why did they feel the way that they did? Did they feel
responsible when they were taking someone else’s sound and movement to “get it right”? How
did they allow one sound and movement to shift to another? Were they thinking hard about what
would be interesting, cool, different, or acceptable? Or were they able to simply let a new sound
and movement come without thinking about it too much? When they were standing in the circle
watching, did they find themselves judging other people’s choices? The questions for this
activity are almost endless.
The facilitators will spend quite a bit of time talking about this activity because it
explores leadership and followership, failure and risk, confidence and autonomy, and ensemble
(or team) support and judgment. After fully debriefing the activity itself, we will ask what
students can take from this experience into their organizations or workplaces on campus. This
phase of the activity will incorporate some lessons regarding the relational leadership model, but
the conversation will be mostly student directed. Before moving to our break, we will ask
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students to write answers to several reflective questions in their journals about applying the
lessons from this activity to their leadership roles on campus.
4:00 pm - Snack Break
4:10 pm - Group Identity Collage
We will turn to the visual arts after our afternoon break to offer lessons using various
learning preferences. With this activity, participants will break up into groups of 3 or 4. Each
group will be given a large poster board, plus crafting materials, paints, crayons, and markers.
We will also provide many magazines that participants can cut up. The facilitators will explain
the goals for the activity. Each member of the group will share some things about herself related
to her identity, including family structure, hometown, favorite things, leadership role on campus,
major, hobbies, skills, fun facts, etc. The facilitators will ask participants to share those things
that truly define who they are. We will preface this activity by explaining that they should only
share things that they are comfortable sharing and talk for only a couple of minutes per person.
Then the group will develop a “group identity”, which they will represent in a collaborative
visual collage using the materials provided. They will give themselves a group name and use
visual elements to show their combined individual identities.
The learning outcomes targeted for this activity include: discovering creativity by
experimenting with the visual arts, applying artistic collaboration concepts to everyday group
dynamics, creating art with others and relating those experiences to leadership skills, extending
the self in conversation to group members, and interpreting the process a group must go through
to create a collaborative piece of art. After the groups have had time to develop their collages, we
will ask the groups to present their group identity collage to the rest of the participants,
explaining why they chose the imagery and visual representations that they chose.
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After all groups present their collages, we will further assess the effectiveness of the
activity by asking participants to explain how they worked together to make choices, how they
communicated and made decisions. We will ask them to reflect on their experience by applying
this artistic group work to group work in other contexts. How was this similar and different?
Some targeted reflection questions will be raised to address in their journals.
5:00 pm - Toning, Adapted from general theater games and from Phil Porter and Cynthia
Winton-Henry (2002). The InterPlay Leadership Program: Secrets of InterPlay Two.
For our last activity of the day we will play with our voices and sound. This activity is a
group tone song. The group stands in a tight circle, shoulder to shoulder. One of the facilitators
makes a tone, and asks the group to match it. The facilitator makes another tone, and encourages
the group to match the “spirit” of the tone, rather than the exact note. This instruction may be
helpful for the non-singers in the group! Then, the facilitator asks the group to practice
responding to their tone by asking the group members to make a completely different tone. From
there the facilitator invites the group to make a tone song, beginning by all matching the first
tone. The facilitator explains that after the tone matches, then group members have choices to
make: to let the tone continue to match, to change the tone, or to go to stillness (silence). This
can go on, and the facilitator does not need to worry about ending the group tone song. The song
will find a natural ending.
We as facilitators will be focusing on the learning outcomes of expressing artistic
impulses within a group to develop autonomy and build confidence and deconstructing the fear
of failure and issues of perfectionism by practicing risk taking. The group tone song helps
participants claim their voices and appreciate the songs the collective voice can make. Group
tone singing can be frightening for some, especially if they have self-identified as a “non-singer.”
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But even the choice of stillness, or silence, is a valid choice, and listening is a skill. Depending
on people’s comfort level, group tone singing may be a bigger risk for some than others.
Before we close for the day, we will ask students to spend some time in reflection as we
give them a self-assessment worksheet on the learning goals and the activities we did throughout
the day.
6:00 pm - Close for the Day
Sunday Activities
9:00 am - Review of Previous Day’s Activities
The facilitators will begin the day with a short review of Saturday’s activities and a
framing of the direction in which our work together is moving. We will explain that today we
will work toward more explicit performance to focus on risk taking, confidence building, and
continue to inform our understanding of collaboration.
9:15 am - The Ball Game, Adapted from personal theatre training experience
This game uses soft volleyball-sized rubber balls. Participants stand in a circle and one
ball is thrown in a pattern from one person to the next with each person catching and throwing it
only once. We usually begin with hands up so that participants know who has already received
the ball. Once a pattern has been established with one ball, we send it around in that pattern
several times until participants are very comfortable with the pattern. We then introduce the
concept of a second ball. This ball may be a different color to help with differentiation, or it may
not be to make the game a bit more difficult. Now, we establish a new pattern with the second
ball. Once the second ball’s pattern is established, we will run the first ball’s pattern several
times before introducing the second ball into the mix and performing both patterns at once. If
possible, we will introduce a third ball and repeat the sequence.
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There are several learning outcomes associated with this concentration and ensemble
forming game. The facilitators will focus on: translating physical experiences into reflective
meaning making, and applying artistic collaboration concepts to everyday group dynamics. In
order to send and receive the ball, it is important that participants check in with those that they
throw to and make eye contact before sending that ball to them. This contains a valuable lesson
about the notion of communication happening between the parties communicating. Also, it takes
an enormous amount of concentration to perform this activity well as a group, and that
concentration needs to emerge from all members of the group truly focusing on the energy of the
team, listening with their whole bodies, and being ready to receive at any moment.
After the activity, the facilitators will debrief by asking about what participants noticed
in the activity and how these might directly apply to the ways in which they communicate with
their respective teams in student organizations and employment on campus. We will ask them to
reflect on 1 or 2 short questions in their journals.
9:45 am - Gibberish, Adapted from Viola Spolin (1963) Improvisation for the Theater.
In this activity, the group will practice speaking in gibberish, which is the substitution of
shaped sounds for recognizable words (Spolin, 1963). Phil Porter and Cynthia Winton-Henry
(2002) also use a form called “Made-Up Languages” in their babbling sequence which is quite
similar. People communicate using much more than their words, and leaders need to be effective
at communicating with their whole bodies. Gibberish also allows participants to become more
spontaneous and natural, which can translate into their roles as leaders.
To begin, the facilitators will demonstrate gibberish by talking to one another in
gibberish. Perhaps the facilitators will discuss their decision to have gibberish be the next
activity and will ask the group to get a partner (in gibberish.) Once everyone has a partner, the
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facilitators can explain in English that our next brief activity is Gibberish, and we will ask you to
speak to your partner in gibberish as if speaking a made-up language, conversing as though
making perfect sense. Each set of two gets one slip of paper, with a topic to talk about. Only one
person of each pair gets to see the topic, and that person begins to speak about that topic in
gibberish. The other responds in gibberish, and a conversation ensues. Sample topics could be:
Where they want to go on their next vacation, who should do the dishes, the most challenging
member of their student organization, etc. Once the pairs get going, we as facilitators can coach
from the side, encouraging participants to use different sounds, tones, and rhythms.
This is a short exercise, but taps several learning outcomes simultaneously. Gibberish
naturally demands the use of the whole body, and will not be effective if a student “tells” and
does not “show.” Consequently, the student will discover in the exercise of gibberish their own
innate creativity by experimenting with sound and embodied movement. Gibberish also helps
participants develop autonomy and build confidence in a fun, non-threatening way. Like the
early babbling activity, gibberish also allows the group to extend themselves in conversation
(albeit conversation in a made-up language) to other members of the group. Because gibberish is
also not a familiar tool to many, we will examine how this risk-taking practice of speaking
gibberish felt in terms of the student’s definitions of failure and perfectionism. Since gibberish is
a made-up language, there is no way to do gibberish incorrectly. However, we as facilitators will
be hoping to see variety and flow in the gibberish expressed.
After several minutes of speaking gibberish, we would gather back in a circle and debrief
the students’ experiences. We as facilitators would ask, “How easy was that for you? Did you
find that gibberish flowed or was stilted? What helped the process? How many of you feel like
you learned something about your partner? How many of you think you know what you were
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talking about with your partner? How does this relate to your leadership capacity? When you are
not speaking gibberish, do you think you use your body to communicate as well?”
10:00 am - Wake Up, Buckos - Adapted from personal theatre experience
Wake Up, Buckos is an improvisation scene game. Two participants will volunteer to try
a scene. They will begin asleep on stage (or simply at one side of the room to simulate a stage) in
some way. The rest of the group will then chant “Wake Up, Buckos” and the two players will
wake up. Through listening and paying careful attention to one another, saying “yes” when one
partner makes a choice and then adding to that choice, and allowing the scene to come together
organically, the participants will create a scene together that includes a location, a relationship,
and a problem or conflict that needs to be fixed. They will resolve the problem or conflict to end
the scene.
This improvisation game is a fairly advanced one, adding to our curriculum an explicit
performance component with meaning making and an attempt to create a story with a partner.
The learning outcomes touched on here include all of our intended outcomes: discovering
creativity by experimenting with performance, translating physical and artistic experiences into
reflective meaning making, applying theatrical collaboration concepts to everyday group
dynamics, expressing artistic impulses to develop autonomy and build confidence, creating art
with others and relating those experiences to leadership skills, extending the self in conversation
to group members, interpreting the process of creating a collaborative piece of art, and
deconstructing the fear of failure and issues of perfectionism by practicing risk taking. We will
give participants multiple opportunities to practice scenes and will focus on creating location,
relationship, and conflict, rather than trying to entertain. The concept of “Yes, And”, which
originates in improvisation work, will also be a huge part of this exercise, reminding participants
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that their partners and their teams across campus have great ideas that they should capitalize on
and then add to in order to create strong events and programs. In this game, there are no bad
ideas, just ideas that your partner did not hear you say or encourage you to expand.
We will play this improv game for some time in order for students to become truly
comfortable with the concepts involved and will take some time to debrief the lessons for leaders
inherent in improvisation, including flexibility and adaptability, creative thinking, active
listening, and communication. We will then ask several targeted questions for them to write
about in their journals that will allow them to reflect on the ways in which they already
improvise with their team members in their organizations and in student employment and how
developing improvisation skills could improve their teams.
11:00 am - Performance for Family and Friends
This culmination of the work in performance may be a difficult transition. However, the
facilitators will be sure to reiterate that the goal of performing some of these activities is not to
entertain but to share learning. We will lead participants through shortened versions of Status
Game scenes and Wake Up, Buckos scenes, enough so that every student appears in at least one
scene.
We chose to include a performance so that participants can share their learning with those
who may be important to their lives or work and also to provide an extra element of risk taking
practice in our curriculum. Risk taking as a leader is an important skill to develop, and even
when an activity or decision may feel safe in one circumstance, it could be completely terrifying
in another. As an element of relational leadership, we hope students leave the program with a
more developed sense of risk taking as something that can happen between team members. The
riskiest decisions and activities are also often the most rewarding or successful.
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12:00 pm - Recognition and Awards Ceremony
To end the program, we will have a short ceremony commemorating participation in the
experience. We will give students certificates and small “Oscar”-like trophies to recognize their
work in this process. Reminding students about the relational model of leadership, we will
emphasize in these last moments that leadership happens between people in collaboration. The
work we all did together over the weekend was an attempt to comprehend what that kind of
leadership feels like by using arts-based methods.
Before they leave, we will ask students to do a guided reflection in their journals about
the entire process and the learning and growth that occurred. We will also provide a survey to
provide us with more information about the success of the program structure, activities, and
intended learning outcomes. We will collect their journals for assessment purposes, so that we
can gather more assessment information about the program’s success and the possibility for
transformative learning, with the promise to return the journals to participants within the week.
We will congratulate them and thank them for participating.
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Group Evaluation
1. How did we work together as a team? How did we intentionally develop our group?
Hilary: I thought we worked well as a team. We intentionally developed our group by
sharing identifying group expectations the first time we met. We also were really good
about communicating throughout the term what was going on for us in terms of workload
or other personal stressors, and we both exhibited adaptability and flexibility when the
other needed it. We also intentionally developed our group by meeting in person,
generally every two weeks. It was good to develop our relationship and share new ideas
as we developed our curriculum together.
Jessica: I agree that we worked well together, that we kept each other informed, and that
we were adaptable and flexible with each other, which I find to be one of the most
important aspects of group projects. Throughout the term, we continued to adjust our
styles of working with one another to accommodate our other commitments and our goals
and dreams for the project. It often seemed as though we were preparing this curriculum
for an actual launch in the coming weeks, with both of us including the kind of detail and
care that would be needed if we were actually going to teach the whole thing.
2. What was done to communicate, make decisions, deal with conflicts, and share the workload?
Hilary: I think neither one of us was afraid to share with one another our thoughts and
ideas, so we could be very open with one another. We also used Google Docs instant
message (IM) function quite a bit, as we both worked on the document simultaneously
from different locations. Through IM, we were able to clarify moments of confusion or
disagreement. For example, on the Walk, Stop, Run exercise, I learned of it originally in
my exposure to InterPlay, though I vaguely recalled similar exercises in my theater
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experiences in high school and early college years. Jessica learned of the Walk, Stop,
Run exercise through her professional theater experiences. When I originally wrote up
the exercise, I cited Phil Porter and Cynthia Winton-Henry as originating the activity and
encouraged on the handout that anyone replicating this activity must cite InterPlay and
Porter and Winton-Henry. Jessica challenged me on this assertion, reminding me that she
had encountered the same exercise in a non-InterPlay context. I listened, agreed that
Walk, Stop, Run was not solely an InterPlay exercise, and adjusted how I cited the
activity.
I think we tried to share the workload equally, but Jessica also was gracious in
admitting she was taking fewer classes this term and willing to do some work in terms of
editing the paper and making sure it flowed. With Jessica’s background in creative
writing, and with my four classes this term, I was happy to oblige! We divided the ArtsBased Leadership Development Curriculum into sections. I created the first draft of the
overview, and Jessica took the lead on developing and refining the Learning Outcomes
that we had brainstormed earlier in the term. Jessica also edited the overview. Jessica
created the basic outline of the structure of the retreat, using suggestions we had proposed
in one of our group meetings. We then decided who was going to do the write up on the
activities. We each made sure our sections were complete, and then Jessica did further
editing and formatting.
Jessica: I found this to be one of the group projects least fraught with conflict that I’ve
experienced, and I think this is because we both respected each other’s experience and
expertise in the various elements of the program. Some of this emerges from having a
group of two; there are fewer schedules to deal with, fewer ideas to incorporate, and
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fewer decisions to make. But I also think that we just worked out an early system of
being honest with our ideas, our time, and the pieces we wanted to work on personally.
Google Docs was a huge lifesaver in this regard, especially considering that we do not
live in the same community. We were able to communicate in real time about changes we
wanted to make, aspects we wanted to add, or comments we had on our partner’s work,
without needing to be in the same physical space.
3. How did this all work? What did we learn by working together?
Hilary: While I generally resist group work, I was excited to be paired with Jessica and
to have Arts-Based Leadership Development as our topic. I knew Jessica’s background
included the performing arts and creative writing, so I looked forward to learning from
her and also sharing our passions, as I had a history in theater in my late teens and early
20’s. Overall I think the process of our group work went well. I know from sharing our
StrengthsQuest results that Jessica is probably more strategic and works ahead on
projects, and I tend to procrastinate and work better under pressure and with deadlines, so
Jessica may have had to adjust her ideal timeline to work with my slower timeline. Yet, I
feel like our final project came together, and we were able to coordinate work times on
Google Docs well.
What I learned from working with Jessica: I learned that I often try to make things more
complicated than they need to be, and Jessica was a great partner to keep us on track and
not doing more than is necessary. I learned that letting a partner know when we plan to
work on the group project is extremely helpful and anxiety-reducing. I was reminded that
I am grateful to have had an adaptable partner!
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Jessica: I am definitely comfortable with working collaboratively, but I do better when
I’m working with those who will assert their views and opinions. Of course, I try to
encourage those and provide space for new ideas and innovations, but if none are
forthcoming, I tend to forge ahead. Hilary was great to work with in that we seemed on
equal footing, both comfortable voicing ideas and directions and making decisions that
would impact both of us and the program. I do tend to work ahead a bit more than Hilary,
but in the end this was not a problem as we worked on our own time and gave ourselves
action items and deadlines.
What I learned from working with Hilary: Hilary really taught me a lot about looking at
theatrical and artistic activities through a different lens, which was important for this
project. Since my experience with theatre is in the context of putting on a show in a
professional setting, Hilary was able to help me balance those ideas with how they apply
to leadership and with teaching students who may be completely new to arts-based
concepts. I was happy to do the final formatting and editing because my coursework was
complete at the point of finishing this project, and Hilary was grateful for this. This
gratitude and positive communication really made me feel good as a contributor and is
something else I learned from Hilary in this process. Celebrating your group members for
the work that they do can be a motivating and energizing way of working.
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