Hi Paul,

The way I treat email signatures is thus:

If I state my organization name in my signature, this is a signal that I am speaking for my committee.
In the case of 99% of my Shared Weight emails, I am speaking only for myself and my own experience. I exclude my committee from my email signature on purpose, for that reason.

At the same time, I see what you mean and get that it can be valuable information.

I did, in the context of that email, mention my dance, but, it was a lot of words so I can see it getting lost.

I'll take your feedback, and look at what options Google Mail has for signatures, and consider setting one up for Shared Weight Organizers list specifically where it can both list my committee and specifically have a disclaimer that I am speaking just for myself.

Questions for you, so I can fill this need better:
- Is it the specific committee that's valuable?

- Are you just looking for geographic area?

- Is listing non-dance volunteer organization memberships also valuable, or just when those are relevant in context?

- Is knowing past committee memberships also valuable, or, again, only when relevant in context?

Thanks!

-Julian

Julian Blechner (he/him)

(Speaking only for myself, and not any organization)

Committee Member, Downtown Amherst Contra Dance, Amherst, MA, USA

On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 9:50 AM Paul Rosenberg <paul@homespun.biz> wrote:

Hi folks

Is there a possibility that contributors to these discussions could indicate where they are from or where their home dance is?

That type of information is useful or at least interesting to many of us

Thanks

Paul Rosenberg

Albany, NY

www.homespun.biz

Joy Through Traditional Dance & Live Fiddle Music

518-482-9255

On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 9:33 AM Julian Blechner via Organizers <organizers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

Jeff,

I'm glad you're able to dig us into some of the particulars of the subtopic about youth leadership in contra.

Certainly I agree that it is not as simple as I stated; my email was meant as brief, high-level bullets, not sufficient instructions for implementing.

I think your questions are good jumping-off points, so I'll do that!

If I had to wager, I would say that your experience with youth dancers in leadership may differ from ones that I've seen and experienced.

Like, the "I" in BIDA is "Intergenerational" with engaging dancers of all ages right there as a primary goal; that alone is going to affect how you and other BIDA leaders current and past engage with potential youth leaders.

And what I've seen in BIDA's policies, what you personally and advocate for, and what I've experienced both as a dancer and a performer at your series contrasts with some of the negative issues I've seen come up.

So, by contrast, I draw upon experience both in dances I've been a regular at, as well as discussions with peers and younger peers about goings-on with various dances, in regards to how youth leaders are treated.

You wrote:
" They're initially excited and propose things, but then get frustrated as the long-time folks explain the issues and none of their proposals stick."

Yeah, I think there's an experience gap that you allude to here and that's real.

At the same time, it is definitely the responsibility for more experienced leaders to mentor newer leaders, and that mentorship means:

1. Explaining issues in a way that isn't discouraging.

2. Not merely using explaining as a way to shut down suggestions.

On that latter point, I've found that - probably more often than not - initial suggestions both in contra dance and in my professional career working in teams usually are not the final solution.

I'm sure I'm not saying anything you don't already know, but bringing it into this conversation here.

Yeah, new leaders to a volunteer organization have a learning curve, and their suggestions may need work.

But, _all suggestions_ I see as frequently needing work.

A healthy committee takes those suggestions and integrates them into whatever ultimate decisions / policies / actions they take. (Again, I'm sure you've experienced this, but for the purposes of leading to my next point.)

By contrast, what I've both seen and heard of from many youth leaders are things like:

"Oh, Soandso has always done the website and that's the way they like it."

"There's no way we could implement Larks / Robins because too many older dancers would hate it."

"Soandso has always done Treasurer"

"A special dance event would be too difficult"

etc.

The summary being that, as you said, youth leaders come in excited with new suggestions. Yes, they may need work. But instead of a committee coming together to form a consensus, youth leaders are shut down.

And I think it's obvious how discouraging that can be.

So, back to the purposes of this email discussion here, the suggestions I would come for include:

1. Come with a mindset of "how can we make this work / alter the idea to make it work" rather than "how will this idea not work"

2. Figure out a way to _try out_ ideas older members don't agree with.

3. On a youth-led idea that older members don't think are practical, do data gathering. Larks/Robins is a great example where practical data made it clear to the many dances who chose to implement it, as, again, BIDA certainly demonstrated, and my own dance in Amherst demonstrated.

4. (In regards to your point B) Specifically solicit ideas from youth leaders. Actively ask their opinions. Realize that experienced leaders have an innate power imbalance and that is a big reason why new / younger leaders don't speak up.

" they don't feel like they've accomplished anything and don't feel useful."

5. Set them up in areas of success. Even little stuff, like, "We had to decide how to set up the fans in the room as we opened back up after the pandemic shutdown" was an opportunity where our group could just ... let newer+younger group members decide and do it with no need for full-committee approval. (Jeff, I think this basically is your "giving people responsibilities")

6. Let them fail a little. This is kind of a repeat of #2, but ... mentoring new leaders means letting them make some mistakes. They need to be able to take some risks.

6a. When they fail, continue to encourage and frame that failure instead as "trying something out and learning as a group".

I think your last point is a good one, too.

There's a 20-something / 30ish led new Fusion dance in the Pioneer Valley. And while one of the organizers has some significant committee experience, they're one of the least in-charge-y types on that dance's committee.

So, lots of potential lessons for the OP and other readers on the group, and this email is hardly an exhaustive treatise on mentoring youth leaders.

In short though, I have experienced and seen the dismissal of young organizers as a repeat, chronic, and widespread issue in contra dance organizations.

It will take active work from older and more experienced leaders to change this.

Best regards,

Julian

On Wed, Mar 15, 2023 at 11:12 AM Jeff Kaufman <jeff@alum.swarthmore.edu> wrote:

On "Listen to youth, put them on your committee, and implement their suggestions", this is pretty tricky and is something I've seen several organizations get wrong.

Let's say you're an established organization with a lot of institutional knowledge and a built-up system of how things are done, and you add an enthusiastic young dancer, musician, or caller to your board.  They probably don't know much about how the organization works, and they're initially not going to know much about what needs doing.  When they have ideas about how to do things differently they often won't understand the practical issues that led to things being the way they are.  So you can easily get one of two dynamics:

a.  They're initially excited and propose things, but then get frustrated as the long-time folks explain the issues and none of their proposals stick.

b.  They stay quiet because they understand how much they don't know, and don't end up contributing much.

Then, when their initial term is up they don't stay on because they don't feel like they've accomplished anything and don't feel useful.

I've been the excited young person in this case, and can think of several other friends who have as well.  In retrospect I think most of us wish we had said no to the invitation.

I don't think the solution is as simple as "implement their suggestions", though: not every suggestion will be a good one (none of us, young or old, have only good ideas).

What I've seen work well is giving people responsibility, especially in areas where they can quickly learn what makes the dance work.  For example, if your dance has a person who does/oversees setup and/or cleanup, teach them how to do this.  Get them filling out the end-of-dance financial sheets to figure out who gets what money.  If you're putting on a new one-off event get them on a small committee with 1-2 other friendly organizers.  Then when they propose changes they'll be better ones (less likely to propose something infeasible) and the changes are more likely to be well received (in a do-ocracy people respect the people they see putting in work).

There's also a completely different path, where the enthusiastic young person gets together a group of people and starts something independent.  They can make their own mistakes, without making more work for people on the committee.  If they want to make their new dance gender-free, half squares, all open bands + open calling, or something else that might get a lot of pushback at an existing dance, they can just go ahead and do it.  When these work well they draw a new crowd, pulling from their own networks instead of mostly drawing people away from the existing dance, and you get a healthier community with more options.

Jeff

On Wed, Mar 15, 2023 at 8:49 AM Julian Blechner via Organizers <organizers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

Lots of good suggestions from a lot of people.

I think I can boil down success keeping new dancers to:

1. Listen to youth, put then on your committee, and implement their suggestions.

2. Have a written values statement, which all of your other policies follow.

3. Make it clear you want to hear from dancers with compliments or complaints. And actually deal with complaints. Over and over, the biggest reason I hear people not returning (other than just not liking the dance form) is unhandled and ignored complaints.

In dance,

Julian Blechner

On Wed, Mar 15, 2023, 8:10 AM Chrissy Fowler via Organizers <organizers@lists.sharedweight.net> wrote:

“Getting back to the subject of repeat visitors, perhaps the biggest difference of all is a caller who brings the fun and the inclusiveness, the type who can laugh with you when something goes goofy.  (…  . ) I'm tremendously grateful to everyone organizing contra dances, and to all the people trying to make their dance a little bit better each week.

Lex Spoon”

Hear, hear!  

(And I think it’s also the organizers who can bring that fun and inclusiveness and set the tone for embracing the goofiness.) Let’s face it, even though some folks forget and take it all a bit too seriously, these dances we love are incredibly weird. Beautifully so, but definitely on the silly side of joy.

I’m also grateful for all you folks sharing ideas and experiences openly and nonjudgmentally. What a gift!

Chrissy Fowler 

Belfast Maine

Where we are digging out from the latest nor’easter (ah the joys of finally getting winter weather in March)

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