A weekend laughing, making art, growing closer and brainstorming for the year ahead.
Have you ever loaded up three cars with teenagers and driven to corn country for a weekend retreat? No? Well then, my friend, you have not lived.
I (Miranda) can easily say that the Student Advisory Council (SAC) retreat is one of my favorite parts of this job. To be able to take a weekend away from our normal places and pressures and focus on getting to know one another, eating good food, engaging creativity, and planning together for the year ahead is an immense gift.
This year we stayed at a beautiful log cabin home in Remus, Michigan, complete with a pond in the front yard and a fire pit in the back. Surrounded by trees, the sound of crickets, and the resident cat, Grey, we were all set for a relaxing weekend of connection.
Our weekend held a mix of activities that helped us get to know one another, flex our creative muscles, and prepare for the year ahead. Students got to interview one another and introduce each other at our opening night campfire, where we also learned about the history of CultureWorks.
Saturday morning we went in search of random objects around the yard, like pebbles, grass, leaves and sticks. Jaer showed us how to arrange those items on a piece of paper and trace them to create imaginary islands, and he asked us to fill those islands with things we want to see in our own community. Students came up with amazing lore about ladybugs lords, sea monsters, the crown prince cricket, and ponies. One island featured a town that only had restaurants; can you say “yum”?
This year, a primary goal is for SAC to become youth-facilitated. A group of students has been meeting this summer to learn more about how youth directed spaces work, and to prepare for changes in the year ahead. After mapping our islands, those students facilitated a group activity to draft bylaws for SAC. Thinking about rules and regulations and getting to self-govern isn’t necessarily the norm for high-school students, but SAC did an amazing job of brainstorming, discussing their ideas, and boiling them down to the most essential expectations for the upcoming year. We’re excited to see what projects they’ll initiate as the school year gets rolling, and how the new bylaws will help them work together to accomplish their goals.
On Saturday afternoon, Emily led us through a natural dyes workshop. We used traditional shibori folding and stitching techniques to create beautiful patterns in indigo dye, and we worked on table runners that will adorn our dinner tables at the Fall Benefit.
Meanwhile, Jaer and I were in the kitchen mixing up a few loaves of bread, and some of the students helped us braid them before baking so that our dinner might be beautiful, too. Abbie put a lot of work into meal planning and making a pot of soup in advance, and we spent the weekend well-fed and happy thanks to her effort!
After dinner, things descended into organized chaos with an annual favorite: puppets and improv games. We discovered some hidden talents for silly voices and physical comedy amongst our students, and as you might expect, we laughed uproariously.The evening featured a feud between a snooty king and some dragon siblings, predictable crushes amongst the puppets, and a hard-boiled detective solving an unusual crime.
For those who weren’t quite ready to go to bed for the night, we stepped outside for some star-tripping. If you’re not familiar with it, the premise is that you intentionally mess with all the things that make your body able to balance, and then your friends laugh at you as you keep falling over. We each took turns looking up at a star and spinning as fast as we could, then trying to chase a flashlight (with little success!) We did, however, laugh a lot. The evening wound down with quiet conversation as people slowly moved toward their beds.
Sunday was mostly packing up, an impromptu arm-wrestling tournament, and napping on the car ride home.
To me, the retreat is a microcosm of the work we do together at CultureWorks, and the world we hope to build around us. Our time is filled with communal learning, collaborative problem solving, collective dreaming, and play. We engage creativity to make things that are beautiful and to envision our role as individuals and together. We hold together laughter, kindness, and honesty about the joys and painful parts of our lives and our world in a group of people who are committed to one another.
It’s a way of existing together that leaves an imprint, setting us up to be good leaders and neighbors and friends as we go back to school and work and our families. It’s also a kind of connectedness I long for everyone to experience. In a world that is fractured and complicated, I hope we can taste the simple joy of eating soup together. I dream that pots of marigold dye might reconcile neighbors as they gawk at the beautiful yellow that can come from so familiar a flower. Spending time with our Student Advisory Council reminds me that these things are possible, and I’m excited to work alongside them this year as we allow creativity and kindness to shape CultureWorks, the Holland community and our world.
