The 787 Collective is proud to present this not-to-be-missed studio experience. From Odyssey Works Artistic Director Abraham Burickson:

What is the one key to really great design? What is required for us to understand each other better? Work together better?

A product or live performance, organizational structure or digital interface — everything we design succeeds or fails in the experience of the user. To create with meaning is to do so with empathy.

The intensive will be a chance to join the Odyssey Works directors and dive deep into Odyssey Works’ intimate and inspiring process on how to create transformative experiences. This class combines the content of our core offerings of empathy & experience design, diagramming, and making meaning workshops, into one intensive that creates community, cultivates communication, and uses rigorous design methods to build empathetic teams connected to their core mission.   

The Design Intensive will take place on the Austin Seminary campus October 12th and 13th from 9 am to 5 pm each day. The cost of registration is $395 per participant, with all proceeds supporting the creative endeavors of Odyssey Works. Registration includes breakfast and a membership to the Library of Experiences (http://experiencelibrary.com/). Some full and partial scholarships available, and the application for scholarships can be found here. To get a more thorough sense of the creativity, philosophy and performance elements that drive Odyssey Works click here to read a profile from The New York Times or watch a TED talk about the concept of designing experience from Artistic Director Abraham Burickson.

photo by Ayden LeRoux from Odyssey Works performance “When I Left The House It Was Still Dark” (2013)

about Odyssey Works:

THE IDEA IS A BEAUTIFUL INEFFICIENCY: A TINY BUT INFINITELY MORE AFFECTED AUDIENCE.

Chris Colin,
The New York Times

Imagine waking up to find yourself immersed in a performance that is all about you. Since 2001, Odyssey Works has been creating immersive, durational experiences for an audience of one. Our team is made up of artists in dozens of disciplines who study the life of one individual and use whatever means necessary to create intimate, meaningful performances that last days, weeks, or months, and occur not on a stage but interwoven with the life of our audience of one. The experiences are transformative; most of our participants change jobs, move, make new commitments to loved ones shortly after their Odysseys.

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Our first 787 Studio short course is coming up on April 11th at 7 p.m. with the fantastic Josh Blaine! The event will take place on the Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary campus. Come enjoy the fellowship and the learning as he shares his approach and philosophy around building community with and through song.  Register here!

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To RSVP for this free event and see a map of how to get there, visit the event brite site here.

To learn more about James Hersch, visit his website.

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Name: Elizabeth Welliver

Age: 25

Relationship to the Collective (or the event): Young Adult Volunteer, part-time worker for the Collective, Attended Citizen: An American Lyric – Book Discussion: April 15, 2018

Describe the event in three sentences or less: A spirit-filled discussion of Claudia Rankine’s Citizen: An American Lyric. The group was intergenerational, interracial, and of a variety of Christian backgrounds. We asked hard questions about what this text requires of white people and people of color in light of persistent state-sponsored racial violence.

What did you notice during or about this event?

I had read Citizen before in an academic setting for a poetry course four years ago. While then I recognized the boldness of its language, the embodied meaning came alive for me in a discussion with people of color. The people that livedaily experiences of racism and anti-blackness were now living, breathing, resilient beings in front of me, reading and speaking in their own voices. The group called my attention to the frequency of Rankine’s portrayal of injury: “How to care for the injured body, / the kind of body that can’t hold the content it is living?” Racism is a perpetrator of constant affliction, injury, insult, wound after wound, targeting children and women of color first. During our discussion, I felt aware in a physical way how white supremacy injures our society and the children of God whom I know and love.

What impacted you the most?

I was most impacted by one participant’s description of an aggression she experienced at her workplace when she was not treated equally or taken seriously as a Black woman. She attended with her whole family, and described her family upbringing in knowing how to respond to such discrimination. The moment of turning for me was when she turned to look at her mother, and said, “Mama always taught me to pray for them. Just pray for them.” This was radical to me because it was an example of Jesus’ instruction to pray for your enemies, even those who persecute you. This moment showed me that even when she experienced despair, anger, and hurt, her prayer life was vital to remain in relationship with white people.

What impacted you the least?

I was least impacted by the time. While we shared two hours of thoughts, I had a keen sense that time was passing without notice because we were engaged in listening and sharing.

What about this event struck you as spiritual and/or carried spiritual significance for you?

The event was a brave space where people of color openly shared their encounters with racism and white people listened, and offered supporting stories. It felt like a true privilege to receive the stories of others, a window into a different reality that exists parallel to my own privileged existence. The sharing of those stories felt holy because each story gave us palpable memories to carry. Christ’s body calls us to share communion in remembrance of him.

“Yes, and the body has memory,” Rankine writes.

I see us now carrying each others’ stories as a way of remembering Christ’s love and the ways we are connected as his body. 

What new or next thing, if anything, did this experience inspire you to do/be/or try in the future?

The event invited me to see that the wound of racism is so deep in America that no one community or group can address it alone. We need more white people to name the sin for what it is: evil. I came away from our discussion moved to develop a better understanding of race and racism from a biblical perspective. I am also reading When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir by Patrisse Khan-Cullors and asha bandele to keep the voices of Black women alive in my mind and body. I am deeply grateful to the participants and the organizers for this vital event.

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