Open Circle

Building on the groundbreaking insights of Ken Wilber and Frederic Laloux (REINVENTING ORGANIZATIONS), OPEN CIRCLE brings Teal Consciousness to the community-based story arts, creating safe public spaces for play, creativity, relationship, and transformation. This book is for changemakers, artists, and everyone who cares about thriving community. Decades of artistry and observation converge in OPEN CIRCLE: STORY ARTS AND THE REINVENTION OF COMMUNITY. As a professional and academic theater director, Dr. Richard Owen Geer was driven by the question, "Why theater?" His dissertation focused on the tiny, withering community of Colquitt, Georgia, and his co-founding of Swamp Gravy, an arts-based community development project creating "theater of, by, and for the people." Over two decades, Colquitt transformed using the Story Bridge Method Geer developed into today one of the most extraordinary small towns in America, hailed for its community and economic revitalization through art and culture. The town's turnaround was the subject of three years of social science research by Dr. Qinghong Wei. In her doctoral study, Colquitt outscores three comparable communities in social and psychological wellness and community engagement. Geer and Wei bring five major insights to the public in OPEN CIRCLE: STORY ARTS AND THE REINVENTION OF COMMUNITY. 1. Observing over decades, Geer notices the emergence of a new consciousness among ordinary people as communities everywhere face unprecedented challenges. 2. This consciousness expresses through the Story Bridge Method which for twenty-five years has employed an organizational model that is only now being hailed as the leading edge of organizational innovation. Frederic Laloux documents this global emergence in the 2014 best-seller, REINVENTING ORGANIZATIONS: A GUIDE TO CREATING ORGANIZATIONS INSPIRED BY THE NEXT STAGE OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS. 3. Story Bridge, and methods like it, forge safe public spaces in which people of radically diverse consciousness, class, color, age, and creed create thriving community together as they express their interdependence and shared identity through powerful theatrical performances. Such process builds a resilient and generative relational web that gives birth to individual and collective transformation. 4. The Story Bridge Method can transform communities with or without experts. Manchester, Kentucky, called by the New York Times, "the hardest place to live in America," is reinventing itself through the Story Bridge Method and common people working for the common good. 5. After detailing the "how-to" of Story Bridge practice, the book envisions a future in which artistry and creative changemaking supplant consumerism in the commons. "Xenophobia" was Dictionary.com's word of the year in 2016. In these frightened times, it is more imperative than ever that we regard the "strangers" among us not only with fear but hope. In OPEN CIRCLE: STORY ARTS AND THE REINVENTION OF COMMUNITY, hope becomes action that connects one with self and other and brings forth beauty, truth, and transformation.
About the Author: Richard Owen Geer, Ph.D., received his doctoral degree in performance studies from Northwestern University. He is an esteemed director and scholar of community performance and the co-founder of Community Performance, International (CPI). Dr. Geer developed Community Performance, a theater genre that celebrates ordinary people and their communities. His Story Bridge Method uses theater as a catalyst for peace building and community change. Dr. Geer founded more than a score of Community Performance projects worldwide, one of which is Swamp Gravy, the official Georgia Folklife Play and a participant in the Cultural Olympiad of the Atlanta Olympics. Dr. Geer co-hosts the annual Building Creative Community Conference. His recent keynote at the Brushy Fork Institute presented his vision for the arts-transformation of challenged communities. His publications include STORY BRIDGE: FROM ALIENATION TO COMMUNITY ACTION. Qinghong Wei, Ph.D., is a leading scholar in community development through the arts. Her original research on empowerment pathways and creative programs is a significant contribution to the field. Dr. Wei has been invited to speak at the 2014 Annual Conference of American Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP), and the 2013 Euro-Asia Economic Forum, an international summit of international leaders on economic and social development. Dr. Wei has a decade of diverse development planning experience working with governments and communities. She has crafted scores of community development plans for many municipalities and communities in Florida. From 2011 to 2013, Dr. Wei had an exceptional opportunity to serve as the President & CEO of Overseas China Education Foundation (OCEF), one of the most influential nonprofit organizations in the Chinese American community with assets of over $1 million and over 5,000 registered volunteers worldwide. She is the producer, co-director, and author of SONGS OF TANG HULU.