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2018 Emerging Creatives Student Summit

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Theme

This year’s theme is Spectacle and the Collective Experience. When people think of Mardi Gras in Louisiana, they think of the spectacle of the parades, the costumes, the drinking, and the food. But that’s just what people see on the surface. The real spectacle is how Mardi Gras overwhelms almost every aspect of life; the preparations, the planning, the parties, the very identity of people and their communities.

We see spectacle all around us: the spectacle of grand science research (gravitational waves and genomics), the spectacle of politics, of theatre, music, and sports. This year’s Emerging Creatives Student Summit will examine how spectacle defines us as a society and community and how we can use it to address the critical issues we face.

How does spectacle define us as a community and a society?

How can we use it to address the critical issues we face?

This summit will feature panels and working group leadership from distinguished professors at Louisiana State University, as well as leading artists and scholars from around the country. Join us this coming February 15-18 to advance your own creative work or research through interdisciplinary collaboration with your peers at leading institutions across the U.S. Undergraduate and graduate students in any and all fields are welcome, particularly those that care about and have a deep interest in the concept of this year’s theme. We especially encourage student research teams from biology, ecology, and related fields, as well as artists/designers, to apply.

About Emerging Creatives

The Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru) Emerging Creatives Student Summits bring together students who have an interest in the arts, crossing disciplinary boundaries, and developing collaborative projects. Each year, 80-100 undergraduate and graduate students attend the summit from a2ru partner universities across the country, along with 12-15 administrators, faculty, and staff. These summits have a strong project-based component with activities such as panel discussions with special guests, keynote speakers, site visits or field trips, performances and exhibitions, networking opportunities, and “bootcamp” or skill-building experiences built in throughout to collaboratively tackle and solve grand challenges*.
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*Grand challenges are ambitious but achievable goals that harness science, technology, and innovation to solve important national or global problems and that have the potential to capture the public’s imagination.

Featured Speakers

Amy Chavasse
Associate Professor of Dance, University of Michigan
Amy Chavasse
Associate Professor of Dance, University of Michigan

Amy Chavasse, Associate Professor of Dance, choreographer, performer, educator, improviser, storyteller and artistic director of ChavasseDance&Performance joined the faculty of the University of Michigan in 2006. She has been a guest artist/ faculty member at numerous institutions including Middlebury College, Arizona State, Virginia Commonwealth, UNC-Greensboro, NC School of the Arts, George Washington, Bennington College, University of Calgary and Cornish College of the Arts. She teaches at Ann Arbor Dance Works, ADF’s WFSS series, at DNA- NYC, Florence Summer Dance, Duncan 3.0 (Rome), and was on the faculty of ProDanza Italia from 2006-2010. She teaches contemporary technique, composition, improvisation, repertory, creative process, and social issues in dance.

 

Carolyn Ware
Associate Professor of Folklore and Gender Studies – Louisiana State University
Carolyn Ware
Associate Professor of Folklore and Gender Studies – Louisiana State University

Carolyn Ware is Associate Professor of Folklore and Gender Studies in the Department of English at Louisiana State University. She received her Ph. D. in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Her key interests center on women’s folklore, festival culture, Cajun Mardi Gras traditions, and public folklore. Publications include Cajun Mardi Gras Masks (co-author) and Cajun Women and Mardi Gras, Reading the Rules Backwards as well as numerous journal articles and chapters on Louisiana folklife, rural Mardi Gras traditions, coastal communities and cultural resiliency, and women’s folklore and gender roles. In addition to her research she has served for the American Folklore Society, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and is Director at Large of the Louisiana Folklore Society.

Edgar Cardenas
Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru)
Edgar Cardenas
Mellon Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru)

Edgar Cardenas received his PhD in Sustainability from Arizona State University. His dissertation, entitled Art-Science for Sustainability, focused on coupling sustainability science with the arts with the objective of bolstering more creative problem solving in sustainability. The culmination of this work resulted in both a written dissertation and a solo thesis exhibit. As a social scientist, Dr. Cardenas focuses on social creativity and small group dynamics, exploring which processes and mechanisms foster creative collaborations. As an interdisciplinary artist, he investigates the ecological, cultural, and technological subtleties of human/environment relationships. He has exhibited internationally at both art and science venues and has been published in art and science journals as well.

In addition to his research and art practice, Dr. Cardenas has also developed, organized, facilitated, and led several artists-scientists collaborative projects, as well as moderated panels on this topic. Dr. Cardenas also holds an MA in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from the University of New Haven with a focus on organizational development and conflict management.

Gabriela González
Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Louisiana State University; LIGO Scientific Collaboration
Gabriela González
Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Louisiana State University; LIGO Scientific Collaboration

Prof. González’s research interest is in the detection of gravitational waves with interferometric detectors, such as the one in the LIGO Livingston Observatory, in Livingston, LA. She has published several papers on the specific predictions of Brownian motion as a limiting sources to the detectors’ sensitivity. She was a founding member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, and has participated intensely in the commissioning of the LIGO detector at the Livingston Observatory since joining LSU in 2001, in issues related to alignment sensing and control. Her group is very involved in the instrumental characterization and calibration of the data collected in the data-taking Science Runs performed by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC). From 2000 to 2007, she co-led one of the four data analysis groups in the Collaboration, dedicated to the search of gravitational waves generated by binary systems of compact objects (neutron stars or black holes) in the final inspiraling stage before coalescence. In 2008-2011, she led the LSc detector characterization working group. In 2011, she was elected as the LSC spokesperson.

George Judy
Gresdna A. Doty Professor of Acting, Louisiana State University
George Judy
Gresdna A. Doty Professor of Acting, Louisiana State University

George Judy is a member of Actors’ Equity Association and the Screen Actors Guild. His credits as an actor, writer, director and educator include work with the Royal National Theatre Studio, London, The Asolo Theatre, Kentucky Shakespeare Festival, Pennsylvania Centre Stage, Illinois Shakespeare Festival and twelve seasons with the Tony award-winning Utah Shakespearean Festival where he performed such favorite roles as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Nightand Polonius in Hamlet. Most recent credits include Beverly Weston in Swine Palace’sAugust: Osage County, Lear in Swine Palace’s King Lear and Falstaff in Merry Wives of Windsor, Richelieu in The Three Musketeers and Alonso inThe Tempest at the Illinois Shakespeare Festival under the direction of Deb Alley. His many regional credits include musical roles such as Pseudolus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Joe in Damn Yankees, Frederik in A Little Night Music and Mack the Knife in Three Penny Opera as well as a stint as a Singing Ringmaster with Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey.

Joyce Marie Jackson
Director, African & African American Studies Program, Louisiana State University
Joyce Marie Jackson
Director, African & African American Studies Program, Louisiana State University

Joyce Marie Jackson is the Director of the African & African American Studies Program and an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana State University. She received her Ph.D. in Folklore and Ethnomusicology from Indiana University, Bloomington. Her key interests center on African American music and culture and performance-centered studies of rituals in Africa and the African diaspora, the Black Mardi Gras Indians, and carnival traditions in Trinidad and Haiti for her forthcoming book on the New Orleans Mardi Gras Indians. In addition, she has directed the LSU in Sénégambia Academic Program, and is currently developing an Academic Study Abroad ethnographic field school in Jacmel, Haiti. Jackson has also been the recipient of many awards, national grants and fellowships, including the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Arts Administration.

Mike Vanden Heuvel
Professor of Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Mike Vanden Heuvel
Professor of Interdisciplinary Theatre Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Mike joined CANES in 2015 when he transferred from the Department of Theatre and Drama. For the graduate program in ITS, he teaches courses in dramatic literature (primarily British, American, and Continental), dramatic criticism, and theatre and performance theory ranging from Shakespeare to the European avant-garde and postdramatic theatre. His CANES teaching will include a course on the reinterpretation of classical plays by contemporary experimental theatre artists as well as offerings in the Classical Humanities track (Literature and the Arts, Renaissance to Remix; Theatre and Science, Classical to Contemporary).​

Mike is an affiliate faculty member in several areas (Integrated Liberal Studies; Visual Cultures; Celtic Studies; Center for European Studies) and an active contributor to International Studies and the UW Study Abroad program, having developed and taught in programs in London, Dublin and Florence.

He is author of Performing Drama/Dramatizing Performance: Alternative Theater and the Dramatic Text (U Michigan); Elmer Rice: A Research and Production Sourcebook (Greenwood); and Decades of American Playwriting: The 1970s (Methuen, 2017) as well as essays on theatre pedagogy, dramatic literature, and performance theory. He is currently at work on a history of experimental American theatre companies post-1970 for Methuen.

Current research interests also focus on interdisciplinary studies of theatre and science, a field in which he has published extensively. He is collecting these essays for a volume devoted to theatre and science and tentatively entitled “‘Congregations Rich with Entropy’: Performance and the Emergence of Complexity.”

Stephen J. Beck
Associate Vice President, Louisiana State University
Stephen J. Beck
Associate Vice President, Louisiana State University

Dr. Stephen David Beck is Associate Vice President as well as the Derryl & Helen Haymon Professor of Music. He holds a joint appointment at the Center for Computation & Technology, where he previously served as the Area Head for the Cultural Computing focus area and Director of the AVATAR Initiative in Digital Media. He was also Interim Director of the center from 2008-2010.

As AVP, he represents research and creativity activity within the arts, humanities, social and behavioral science disciplines. He is also responsible for the organization and management of the Council on Research, or CoR, funding and award programs, ongoing assessment of research administrative procedures, research policy development and implementation, faculty development workshops and proposal development, facilitation of interdisciplinary research activities, various aspects of the federally mandated research compliance program as well as certain centers that report to ORED.

Vince J. Licata
Louis S. Flowers Professor, Erich and Lea Sternberg Honors Professor, Brij Mohan Distinguished Professor, Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University
Vince J. Licata
Louis S. Flowers Professor, Erich and Lea Sternberg Honors Professor, Brij Mohan Distinguished Professor, Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University

Vince LiCata is a biochemist in the Department of Biological Sciences, and he writes science-based plays that have been produced in Baltimore, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Kansas City, New York, Lafayette, Baton Rouge, and Bangkok. COCKTAIL, co-written with Ping Chong, premiered at Swine Palace, and was published by Silkworm Books. His recent play DNA STORY also premiered in Baton Rouge, and is being filmed with support from the Coypu Foundation. Vince has twice won the Baltimore Playwright’s Festival. He has also appeared onstage, including in: The Elephant Man, Mousetrap, Arsenic and Old Lace, Killing the Beast, Uncle Vanya, The Grass Harp, Spoon River Anthology, Twelve Angry Men, and locally in: All in the Timing, A View of the Dome, The Adventures of Little Red Riding Hood, and Sacred Waste. Current ongoing projects include SciDance: where scientific concepts are choreographed into dances, and SciArt Conversations: a presentation series, co-curated with Kristin Sosnowsky, where artists and scientists are asked to present and respond to each other on a topic where their interests overlap.

William DeMastes
Alumni Professor, Louisiana State University
William DeMastes
Alumni Professor, Louisiana State University

Dr. Bill DeMastes, a professor of English at LSU, is in his first year as Faculty Athletics Representative. Dr. DeMastes earned his Ph.D in English in 1986 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a Field of Study of Drama as Genre and a specialization in 20th-Century American and British Drama. He earned his masters in English in June 1979 from the University of Georgia in Athens where he specialized in 19th-Century American Literature.

At LSU, he served as Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences from 2001-2004 and Director of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of English from 1999-2001 and 2010-11. He has also served as Associate Chair of the Department of English (1998-99); Director of the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts Program (1996-2004); and, Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English (1992-94; 2006-06).

He was honored with the LSU Alumni Association Faculty Excellence Award in 2000 and in 2002 won the LSU Distinguished Faculty Award. He was named in 2009 an LSU Rainmaker which is given to the top 100 LSU Faculty. In 2010 he was named the Tiger Athletic Foundation undergraduate Teaching Award University College and in the summer of 2011 was named the Harry Ransom Summer Fellowship recipient from the University of Texas.

Creative Collaboration Resources

This year, we would like to provide you with some materials ahead of time that help you better understand what goes into creative collaboration (CC). Created by our postdoctoral fellow Edgar Cardenas, they cover three major aspects of CC: Difference, Frameworks, and Methods.

In the Press

Using the arts and design to build student creative collaboration capacity

Edgar Cardenas
How can undergraduate and graduate students be helped to build their interdisciplinary collaboration capacity? In particular, how do they build capacity between the arts and other disciplines?

In 2018, I co-facilitated the annual, 3-day Emerging Creatives Student Summit, an event for approximately 100 undergraduate and graduate students from 26 universities organized by the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities. Students’ majors ranged from the sciences, engineering, music, arts, and design.

Read Article

Student Spotlight: Learning at a2ru student summit

By Felicia Swartzenberg

Emily Kordovich, a fourth-year film and animation and advertising photography double major from Holley, N.Y., recently attended the a2ru student summit. A2ru, the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities, organizes student summits to bring together people who are interested in the arts and crossing disciplinary boundaries by collaborating on projects. An annual event, the summits provide a unique weekend-long collaborative experience with discussion panels, speakers, networking opportunities and other activities that help students become better collaborators and to tackle larger challenges. This year, Kordovich traveled to Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, La., to attend the summit.

Outside of her heavy double major course load, Kordovich has many unique interests. She is learning French and Japanese and enjoys creative activities like drawing and making music. Currently, she is involved in a “low-key band” called Twisted Nips as the lead singer and sometimes song writer.

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a2ru’s Emerging Creatives Summit in Baton Rouge

Tonika Sealy-Thompson, Luna Izpisua-Rodriguez

The Emerging Creatives Student Summit, hosted in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, by the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities (a2ru), invited more than 100 graduate and undergraduate students from universities across the United States to assess, problematize, and react to the theme of Spectacle and the Collective Experience. As students and faculty with an interest in the arts and sciences, we collaborated in field trips, projects, and performances to harness and apply our collective interdisciplinary knowledge towards the spectacles that we face in our communities on a local and global scale.

“Spectacle,” in its most obvious sense of the word, and when in the context of Louisiana’s  celebrated Mardi Gras, can be seen as synonymous with tradition, parades, costumes, dance, and food.  However, if one peels off the outermost layer of spectacle in Louisiana, one can find the spectacle that the state’s rich history has left its towns and cities to uphold, and in some cases, to bear. Lively Cajun music and seafood smells emanate from establishments in the French Quarter of New Orleans, and public art installations decorate the boardwalk along the Mississippi River, while withering and boarded-up homes, still recovering from the same river’s unleashment during Katrina, are scattered throughout modern college neighborhoods, making clear the presence of neighborhood segregation and gentrification that pervades the state in both its urban cities and rural towns.

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Student Testimonials

Aaron Calverson, University of Florida

The a2ru Emerging Creatives summit series is one of the most innovative opportunities for students from across the country to meet and stretch their creativity. Whether to forge resilient communities (University of Michigan, ‘16), ideate on water sustainability issues (University of Florida, ’17), or address spectacle in all its forms (Louisiana State University, ’18), these summits challenge undergraduates and graduates to pool their disparate skill sets into a comprehensive thought process and presentation.

However, we must first address the ice-breaking activities of Amy Chevasse. In a rather chaotic-way, attendees took recycled paper, adorned themselves, and mingled for a given period of time. Though initially chaotic, order formed, and bonding resulted; the beauty of movement, eye contact, and respect for others’ presence shaped our individualities into collective purpose.

The following morning, after grouping assignments were set and topics chosen, our group discussed death, memorial, and the spectacle of procession. A key association for us was shame and its various culturally-specific roles acting upon inter-individual interaction. We discussed our points of view in the context of several sub-cultures particularly within the United States and brainstormed some very interesting intersections between gender roles (i.e. social constructions versus biological sex, as well as sexual orientation) and entertainment (i.e. wrestling).

Music immediately spoke to me and I assumed the role of a recording artist to promote particularly the grieving process associated with death, memorial, and procession. Bitter-sweet, I performed “Theme from Schindler’s List” live Saturday morning back home in Gainesville, FL, for my friend’s husband’s memorial service and provided a recording for our group presentation; how serendipitous.

This music exudes grief, due to the timbre and register of the violin, moderate tempo, smooth articulation and perhaps most significantly, acculturated function of the minor key. Contrastingly, in our brief discussion dia de los Muertos, we reflected upon its accentuation of joy for life, particularly via the music providing a very different mood. Our group’s awareness of this contrast provided for a greater collective appreciation of culturally-specific practices and consequently, greater understanding of the worldly spectacle of death, memorial, and procession.

The beauty of the summit series is indeed challenging inner-biases. We individually self-reflect in collective settings, creating symbiotic relationships from initially disparate backgrounds and skill sets. The series is an excellent means for growth across numerous spectra of human experience and I highly encourage continued participation in these summits.

Erica Glenn, Arizona State University
I arrived at the a2ru student conference in Baton Rouge eager to collaborate with others who are passionate about the role of the arts in society. Beyond that, I didn’t know exactly what to expect.

Fast forward to the end of Day 1, and I already had more new friends, new ideas, and new stories (involving Uber drivers with Southern drawls, interesting discoveries on LSU campus, and delicious Southern food) than I could count! LSU is nestled among a series of lakes and magnolia trees (sights that I drank in greedily with my starved Arizona eyes). It was also within easy walking distance of a row of restaurants serving all of the Southern staples (gumbo, jumbalaya, crawfish, etoufee).

As the conference progressed and we attended panel discussions and were placed in project groups, the ideas kept coming, fast and free. By the end of day two, I had a pile of sticky notes with lists and bullet points and thought graphs exploring the nature of authentic science/art collaboration, comparing the place of the sciences and the arts within academia vs. the broader community, looking at issues of funding, and considering the neuroscience supporting the intersection between the arts and social engagement. I found myself connecting concepts I’ve always understood but never quite framed in relationship to each other. That process of creative reframing became a recurring theme throughout the conference.

Day 2 also included a discussion about interdisciplinarity, group breakout sessions, a tour of LIGO observatory in Livingston, a trip to LSU’s Mike the Tiger, and a new computer music concert on campus. (We kept ourselves busy!) I felt a little giddy admiring the 2017 Nobel Prize that had been delivered to the LIGO observatory just before our visit. Our group enjoyed a behind-the-scenes tour (four miles of pipe and room after room of carefully-calibrated equipment), and I learned more than I ever knew about the gravitational waves created as two black holes approach and merge. The simulations are pure art.

One evening, two of the other ASU participants and I decided to drive into Baton Rouge during our post-dinner free time and celebrate our own (very tame!) version of Mardi Gras, two days after the actual holiday. Several magical things happened:

ME: 'I really wish we’d run across an authentic jazz club!'

*We run into a jazz club and become the sole audience members for two laid-back Louisianans playing the blues.*

ME: 'I really wish I had some mardi gras beads to take home as a souvenir!'

*We run into several streets lined with trees full of mardi gras beads and thoroughly enjoy the process of getting them down.*

ME: 'This is an interesting statue in front of the capitol. I wonder who Huey Pierce Long Jr. was?'

*Huey Pierce Long Jr’s great-grandson (who is studying law at LSU) just happens to be the only other person in the park at that moment. He introduces himself and recounts the history of the 1920s governor who championed the poor and almost ran a very successful campaign for president against FDR before being assassinated.*

Add to that some fresh haddock, standing alongside the Mississippi, visiting the gothic cathedral-inspired Old State Capitol, lounging in a porch swing near a historic double-gallery home, and establishing a good working rhythm with my project team, and you have a day that was simultaneously exhausting and exhilarating.

I also had the opportunity to attend a production of Tom Stoppard’s high-minded Arcadia (a play that explores the art of science) and to visit Magnolia Plantation (within walking distance of LSU). Southern hospitality is real, y’all, and I swear that Scarlett O’Hara was ready to shashay down the steps of the main house. (Also, there are cherry blossoms everywhere. And rocking chairs in the airport. I love the relaxed pace of the South!)

On the final day of the conference, my remarkable team of five (representing universities across the country) presented our project proposal to all of the attendees. Most of us had been up all night putting the final touches on our presentation, and we were proud of what we had designed in just one short weekend. Capitalizing on the digital photography skills of one of our teammates, we created a composite image of our five faces—an individualized representation of a collective and a collective representation of individuals. Our project, called “I Told Our Story,” was designed to help communities rediscover and reclaim their collective identity in our increasingly polarized society.

Our goal was to generate a kind of community narrative by way of algorithmic features in an app. Users would access public kiosks and share narrative snapshots alongside literal snapshots of their own face. Upon clicking submit, they would be shown what others had written in response to the same prompts, and they would be able to view their own face merged with as few as one other face or as many as thousands of others in their area. Over time, a literal and figurative picture of each city would emerge, allowing individuals to see themselves as a key part of their community’s makeup.

Karen Loraine Singer, University of Wisconsin-Madison

I am currently a senior attending UW Madison located in Madison, Wisconsin. I was given a recommendation by my mentor, Professor Elaine Scheer, to attend the a2ru summit at LSU located in the state of Louisiana. I am very excited to be included in the process of collaboration with scientific minds along with creatives in the field of Art, not specific to my focus on art skills application. We arrived at LSU a week after Mardi Gras. The energy and excitement of celebration followed us into the summit as we listened to and spoke with experts on the history and meaning behind the imaginative carnival themes celebrated in the area. I had arrived from a hard winter of snow and ice to be refreshed by 80 degrees and warm breezes, as we admired the campus location. The most enjoyable aspect of the summit was the chance to meet amazingly talented people who are curious about inclusion, incorporation and innovation in their particular field of study.

 

They shared their knowledge, offered intelligent thoughts, and encouraged enthusiasm for their field of study. These conversations were then used as a model of a collaboration on the design of unique projects. We were instructed to be a creative as possible and not to be concerned with ugly babies. The term sounds awful, however it gives way to the understanding that original ideas can be ugly, chaotic, disorganized, and problematic and that is perfect. As the projects were being developed, the permission to offer ugly ideas allowed each of us to share something beautiful, productive and unique. From the very beginning it removed the burden of having to have the beautiful perfection that great ideas become, because we had the freedom to explore all ideas. This agreement to create without the anxiety of perfection allowed for insightful ideas to be shared, evaluated and considered. These ideas were organized into plans to be presented. The amazing thing about these presentations was how each idea was so unique in the way it was designed. It was an “Ah Ha” moment as I could see how each of these offerings could flourish to make substantial change in how the US views science and art.

The project designs were formed from a mixture of science and artistic minds into themes that offer participants a positive interaction with the world; improving the places we live, allowing us to thrive in wholesome ways, and to raise children with the idea that science and art matter to us and our world. Attending the summit enlivened my hope that I can make a difference in sharing art practices which doesn’t follow traditional specifics to art and instead combines interactive art practices. One of the highlights of the trip was a chance to visit LIGO. I realized that all great science projects require visual aids to render an artistic interpretation of the data. This not only allows for the science of the idea to be shared with a broad range of people, it also provides a level of understanding that words alone can’t convey. More encouraging is the idea that artistic interpretation of scientific data adds a level of excitement and promotion that encourages both art and science to flourish side by side. Thig goes along with bill H.R. 3344 before Congress which encourages the idea of STEAM; Science, Technology, Engineering Art Mathematics instead of STEM. This balance of both art and science having equal support rings true for me. This summit advanced the understanding that an idea, like STEAM H.R. 3344, should be actively put in place, to alter mainstream thought, much like Einstein’s theory where a theory then becomes a basis of fact.

The best part of the a2ru summit was the way a group of energetic and enthusiastic strangers is formed into a cohesive team through internet interactions at the beginning and group activities to enhance our recognition of each other through play, interpretive dance and general silliness which energized the results of our future collaboration. This initial face to face silliness helped us bridge the awkwardness that face to face interaction have, and allowed us to find a commonality which brought us together quickly. The successfulness of our fractured smaller groups was accomplished as we explored the idea of the spectacle. My small group was a wonderful mix of talents in music, film, and art technology. We devised a plan to create a summer camp to promote the history and enjoyment of Jazz in the comfort of nature. The idea was designed to take urban children with limited means and offer them a chance to see, hear and feel a unique experience that included the art of music and the science of nature. Our plan started with a prototype in the Detroit area. This design would then morph into a more sustainable action to refine the idea and expand it to other locations. The desire was to create an event that was so well received it would eventually include all States. The collaboration with my team was enhanced by the enthusiasm to create an evolution of hope towards learning about art and science through tangle art experiences. The passions of my co-facilitators and the participants I met at the a2ru summit is the best memory when I think of few short days together.