NOBODY’S BUSINESS MEETING GUIDELINES
1. ROLES!
Facilitator(s) – invites practitioners and organizes the daily meetings
Documenter(s) – gather and notate the practices shared, for shared archive (coming soon)
Practitioners leading – share a practice by leading
Practitioners following – participate by practicing the practices
Observers – participate by watching
Note: Roles can be shared and/or exchanged throughout a meeting or week. A single person can perform one, any or all the above roles in any given meeting.
**Once a person has participated in a Nobody’s Business meeting, they can organise and facilitate further meetings anywhere anywhen!**
2. SCHEDULE!
The suggested format is 4 hours per day for 5 days. Example time use: 1 hour for introductions and sharing warmup practices, 3 hours for sharing artistic practices. To be decided by the facilitators and practitioners. This format can also be expanded or contracted to longer or shorter meetings, for fewer or more days.
3. PLAN THE DAY!
Start each meeting with a short introduction of everyone present and if they have something to share. It’s great to share, but not obligatory for participation. If someone has a practice to share, they should give in this introductory circle just the necessary information for planning: how much time they estimate is needed for the practice that day, what level of preparation might be required, and if there is a preference of order (to be first or last or otherwise). Please save the full instructions for the leading of the practice, and focus here on just basic information necessary for organising the order of the day’s practices. The facilitator of the meeting is responsible for proposing an order of practices to be shared that day, taking into account the information and wishes of the others. This planning should be efficient as possible to prioritize time for practice.
4. TIME!
Each practitioner is the leader during the time they share a practice and should respect the timeframe they have suggested in advance. When you lead a practice, take into account that the time you lead includes explanation, priorotising ample time for others to understand by practicing it themselves (doing is knowing!), and discussion/feedback, to be handled as you see fit (maybe you don’t want discussion at all, maybe you want specific forms of feedback, maybe you prefer people to write about it, etc).
5. DOING IS KNOWING!
When you share a practice, score, method, or tool, it can be from your work, from a collaboration, something you learned or adopted from someone else, from a creative or educational process, a piece, a private or public context, something you have done for years, or something relatively new. Prioritizing the expertise of experience, we ask that whatever you share, that you have done/practiced it before. The more you have practiced it, the more you know about it, the more you information/knowledge you are able offer to others.
6. CITATION!
When you share a practice or score, you must cite where/when/whom it comes from, or where you think it originates and descends from, directly or indirectly, by influence, inspiration or adaptation. Citation/accreditation is part of the documentation and the overall project of Nobody’s Business as a mapping of knowledge production and movement.
7. USERS & DEVELOPERS, NOT OWNERS & PROPRIETORS!
Whatever you share in a meeting, you offer it for use by others. We propose not to speak in terms of ownership or property, but rather in terms of users and developers, as in open-source vocabulary, we are creating, using, and developing tools. Each re-use is also a form of development.
8. USE AND DEVELOPMENT!
We are interested in and welcome the potential developments of each other’s practices. If a practice inspires a development or variation, or if a practice shared reminds one of a related practice, any new versions, variations, relatives or combinations of practices shared during the week are given verbal description in the “CLOUDING” feedback session at the end of the meeting (see below). If doing the variation during the week is desired, Regarding guideline #5 (DOING IS KNOWING!), we ask that developers of a practice first spend some time formulating their proposed development and practicing it before bringing it back and sharing it with the group, and therefore to introduce the variant or relative version on one of the following days. This is in order to respect the plan made at the start of the day, as well as to differentiate between sharing knowledge and workshopping creations.
9. CLOUDING!
At the end of the day, or at the end of the 5 days, the group gathers to name and explain/instruct practices that came to mind in relation to the practices shared. The practices described in the CLOUDING session can be from past experience or for imagined futures. In other words, if a practice shared during Nobody’s Business reminds someone of a practice they have done before, OR inspires a variaton/adaptation, all of these past and future relatives of the practices shared belong in Nobody’s Cloud. The practices that are shared by narration during CLOUDING are also documented in the same instructional/re-usable format as the practices that are shared by doing together, and are archived along with the other practices shared during the week. The difference is that they are not practiced during the meeting, only explained.
10. DOCUMENTATION!
The practices shared will be documented and archived on an eventual online Nobody’s Business Practice Archive. Documenter(s) please take care of clear documentation during the meeting and following up as quickly as possible after each meeting for clarification, while the information is fresh. It is the choice and responsibility of the practitioner of the practice shared to formulate the practice clearly for use/development by others. Various media can be employed in documentation (text, images/diagrams in pdf jpeg or tiff, video), depending on what media are most effective in transmitting the practice for use by others. Follow-up from the practitioner sharing may be necessary to supplement the documentation (the sooner the better).
Documenters, please send documentation to: nobodysdance@gmail.com and
Please use the following format for documentation:
Name: (title of practice/score, if applicable)
Shared by: (name of person sharing the practice)
Origins: (citation of sources/origins/contributors)
Notes: (if applicable)
Directions: (instructions or score, how to do the practice)
Duration: (if applicable, if not already in directions)
11. DISCIPLINARY AND INDISCIPLINARY!
Nobody’s Business started with “Nobody’s Dance” sessions. Meetings can also be gathered under Nobody’s Performance, Nobody’s Text, Nobody’s Theater, Nobody’s Music and etc. The borders between disciplines in the performing arts are fuzzy. If a practice can be shared with, used by, or thought through the lens/container of the name given to the meeting, go for it. Also possible: host a meeting called Nobody’s Indiscipline!
12. OPEN STUDIO!
The sessions are open to public viewership. Feel free to invite people to watch! The Facilitators and Practitioners can decide if the doors open periodically and when, or if they remain open the whole time. (Ex: once every hour, once every half hour, between practices, or open doors). Observers can stay as long as they wish.
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