Behind the design scenes of Microsolidarity Summer Camp (USA) 2024
Sharing the event arc: Welcoming arrival + Shared exploration and discovery + Collaborative creation + Space for emergence
I learned something from Richard Bartlett recently about event design: the importance of the event arc.
The event arc wonders about the high-level experience a participant has while they move through the timeframe of the event. It’s about creating and scaffolding a container that provides opportunity for a desired outcome in a way that protects the participant’s agency for being responsible for their own experience.
In the case of Summer Camp, I started thinking about the event arc early; second only to the overall framing which came out as “an exploration of belonging with more-than-human beings”.
I wondered what kind of event arc would help move people into that exploration. I thought about a participant’s experience in arriving to a new place (a place I know as my home) and what that might be like. I landed on two ideas:
My sense of belonging in this place develops alongside the mental map that builds in me as I explore, wander, and learn to navigate the land here.
My sense of belonging in this place is deepened by moving into reciprocal relation with it. Having my presence shape this place while this place moves things in me.
So the event arc became something like this:
Welcoming arrival + Shared exploration and discovery + Collaborative creation + Space for emergence
Spread out over 4 days like this:
Day 0: A warm welcome to a new home
Arrival day was all about welcoming each participant to this place they would be living in for the next 3 days. We put on a huge dinner in our cozy dining room. The menu was elaborate and comforting: roasted lamb, meatballs, fried falafel, cooling tzatziki, homemade hummus, pita, and a Greek salad. Few things are more welcoming than such a carefully curated meal.
Day 1: An invitation to shared exploration and discovery
The first day of programming was themed as “Mapping Day”. The idea here was to support participants to develop a mental map of this new place, and in so doing, dip into a bit more familiarity with the landscape. What would they find out there? We sent Crews out in the 4 directions. Go out together with your attention and notice what you notice.
When they came back, we formed groups with explorers of each direction and had the group draw a shared map together. Mapping Day was about going out on the landscape with people you’ve only just met and sharing an experience of discovery with them. Would this develop a sense of belonging, both in place, and with one another?
Day 2: An invitation to collaborative work with a visible impact
The second day of programming was themed as “Leave a Trace Day.” I wanted to feel a bit contrary to the popular adage “leave no trace”, and invite participants into an active relationship with this place. As mammals, we have the imperative to piss, shit, and otherwise make positive disturbances in the ecosystem. So we invited people to pee outside — the most fundamental way to leave a trace — and then we also built a beaver dam analog together.
Beaver dam analogs are an increasingly popular method of process-based ecosystem restoration that has humans do their pathetic best to mimic the activity of beavers. Pathetic, because, we’ll never do it as well as the beavers do. But it’s fun to try. For Summer Camp, we wanted to have some fun with this and hold it lightly. Ultimately, the piece of the event arc this activity filled was that of working collaboratively together to complete something with a visible impact. By the time we were done cutting logs down to size, weaving willow fronds, stacking layers of spruce, and packing down bucket fulls of sediment, we had noticeably raised the upstream water level and felt that we had really accomplished something — together.
Day 3: An empty space for emergent transpersonal experience
The third day is the hardest to capture in words. The plan for Day 3 was to have no plan for Day 3. The risk and challenge was to set up days 0-2 in such a way that by the time the group arrived at Day 3, we would have developed enough collective capacity to do something that a great event achieves — a transpersonal experience. The most poignant feeling of belonging comes when the boundaries between “me” and “you” start to feel thinner. When we sense a collective superorganism and feel ourselves to be a part in it. That’s high-weirdness, magick stuff. It also cannot be designed or engineered in the same way other experiences can. It either happens or it doesn’t.
I won’t make any generalized statements about whether or not a transpersonal experience occurred for each participant of camp. But I know for sure that it did for at least some of them. And it occurred for me. This, in my book, is a great outcome. Speaking for myself, to be supportively moved into a space where I can feel comfortable showing up vulnerably and intimately with the group is a peak experience, the core reason to do this work. It is in this space that I build capacity to hold a vulnerable posture in my daily relationships, and that’s a really sweet thing.
Reflecting now on how it all actually happened, I consider the event arc to have been a success. I think it generally achieved what I hoped it would. I’m interested to share the more generalized arc in case someone wants to remix it for their own context.
There’s potential in the experience I had during Camp for having made deep and lasting relationships, which is what microsolidarity as a practice strives to achieve. So it’s probably worth trying with a group as small as a Crew, or even within a Dyad relationship. What can it look like, to explore and create and emerge together? What does it make possible? I hope to continue exploring this, even more next year, when maybe we’ll do Summer Camp again.
