Future Soul Think Tank
2013 | Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco CA
PROJECT PARTNERS:
Asking “What is the future of soul?” in the Bay Area
Future Soul Think Tank was a series of community experiences and installations held at and commissioned by Yerba Buena Center for The Arts (YBCA) in San Francisco, culminating with the event The Public Square Reimagined. Created as a new platform for a creative brain trust, the Future Soul Think Tank was designed to bring together the Bay Area’s most courageous thinkers, designers, entrepreneurs, community organizers, and artists into a collaborative cohort as part of Yerba Buena Center for the Art’s creative ecosystem. Through collaborative documentation, text, art making, arts-integrated learning, and dialogue, the YBCA lobby became a site for group inquiry to ask and answer, What is the future of soul?
Future Soul Think Tank Through-line:
If soul encompasses a striving toward a more egalitarian, beautiful expressive culture – what is the future of soul?
Future Soul Think Tank Through-line:
If soul encompasses a striving toward a more egalitarian, beautiful expressive culture – what is the future of soul?
Future Soul Think Tank Through-line:
If soul encompasses a striving toward a more egalitarian, beautiful expressive culture – what is the future of soul?
Welcome and Overview By Marc Bamunthi Joseph in the YBCA conference Room
About the Creative Ecosystem:
Part academic exercise, part intentional community, the Creative Ecosystem is designed to bring together disparate players from the Bay Area community into a single, collaborative, long-term engagement. By partnering with community leaders from diverse public sector categories—such as academics, arts, business, community organizing, design, environment and holistic health, food and food justice, politics, sports, technology, youth, and social service—YBCA moves the audience experience from a transactional engagement into one centered around collaboration and mutual interests.
Welcome and Overview By Marc Bamunthi Joseph in the YBCA conference Room
About the Creative Ecosystem:
Part academic exercise, part intentional community, the Creative Ecosystem is designed to bring together disparate players from the Bay Area community into a single, collaborative, long-term engagement. By partnering with community leaders from diverse public sector categories—such as academics, arts, business, community organizing, design, environment and holistic health, food and food justice, politics, sports, technology, youth, and social service—YBCA moves the audience experience from a transactional engagement into one centered around collaboration and mutual interests.
Welcome and Overview By Marc Bamunthi Joseph in the YBCA conference room
About the Creative Ecosystem:
Part academic exercise, part intentional community, the Creative Ecosystem is designed to bring together disparate players from the Bay Area community into a single, collaborative, long-term engagement. By partnering with community leaders from diverse public sector categories—such as academics, arts, business, community organizing, design, environment and holistic health, food and food justice, politics, sports, technology, youth, and social service—YBCA moves the audience experience from a transactional engagement into one centered around collaboration and mutual interests.
The dialogical exercises of the Future Soul Think Tank require participants to examine their personal concepts of identity and issues related to identity in the world around them.
Lines of Communication Exercise:
How is the Global South contributing to my personal understanding of Soul?
The dialogical exercises of the Future Soul Think Tank require participants to examine their personal concepts of identity and issues related to identity in the world around them.
Lines of Communication Exercise:
How is the Global South contributing to my personal understanding of Soul?
The dialogical exercises of the Future Soul Think Tank require participants to examine their personal concepts of identity and issues related to identity in the world around them.
Lines of Communication Exercise:
How is the Global South contributing to my personal understanding of Soul?
The workshops recognize everyone’s expertise, and encourage both collaborative learning and individual autonomy through an array of pedagogical exercises.
Deconstructing Our Personal Definitions of the Global South:
Writing definitions on papers as understanding goal statements
The workshops recognize everyone’s expertise, and encourage both collaborative learning and individual autonomy through an array of pedagogical exercises.
Deconstructing Our Personal Definitions of the Global South:
Writing definitions on papers as understanding goal statements
The workshops recognize everyone’s expertise, and encourage both collaborative learning and individual autonomy through an array of pedagogical exercises.
Deconstructing Our Personal Definitions of the Global South:
Writing definitions on papers as understanding goal statements
Reflection and Action/Group Review:
What did we see?
What do we think?
What do we wonder?
How do these presentations link to Teaching For Understanding Goals?
Future Soul Think Tank Understanding Goals:
How is the Global South contributing to our personal understanding of Soul?
How can we deepen our understanding of The Global South using Teaching for Understanding frameworks?
How does peer generated Geo-graphic and Psycho-graphic of the global south inspires thinking about the global south?
Reflection and Action/Group Review:
What did we see?
What do we think?
What do we wonder?
How do these presentations link to Teaching For Understanding Goals?
Future Soul Think Tank Understanding Goals:
How is the Global South contributing to our personal understanding of Soul?
How can we deepen our understanding of The Global South using Teaching for Understanding frameworks?
How does peer generated Geo-graphic and Psycho-graphic of the global south inspires thinking about the global south?
Reflection and Action/Group Review:
What did we see?
What do we think?
What do we wonder?
How do these presentations link to Teaching For Understanding Goals?
Future Soul Think Tank Understanding Goals:
How is the Global South contributing to our personal understanding of Soul?
How can we deepen our understanding of The Global South using Teaching for Understanding frameworks?
How does peer generated Geo-graphic and Psycho-graphic of the global south inspires thinking about the global south?
RECIPES OF SOUL
Recipes of Soul was a participatory compilation of recipes shared by attendees. Forming the basis of this “cookbook” of sorts was an array of “recipes for soul,” including texts from Leonard Peltier, Mohandas Gandhi, Paul Robeson, the Zapatista declaration, Allied Media Projects principles, Shanti Devi’s practices of a bodhisattva, and Martin Luther King, Jr. The Recipes of Soul Station was created in collaboration with the Pie Ranch education program at Mission High School, and partners Evan Bissel and Rachel Vigil.
PROPHETS OF SOUL
Prophets of Soul was a constellation of portraits installed within YBCA commemorating soul power from a variety of eras, geographies, professions, and disciplines. Cook’s meticulous line drawings are map-like markings where dark and light values meet. Sometimes the borders are obvious, like the edge of a shirt collar or the curve of a cheekbone; other times, the gradation from dark to light is subtle, even invisible, abstracting the drawings. In this series, the drawings are made in black ink on brown cardboard to refer to the color of the people depicted. When exposed to the sun, the drawings fade but never completely disappear, like the contributions of the persons portrayed.
SOUL SURFER
Soul Surfer was an installation incorporating an array of African Diasporic symbols to celebrate blackness and evoke spirit. The term “soul surfer” refers to one who surfs for the purest pleasure of the ride, with a deep connection to the cosmos. In this piece, past and present stars from Black history emanate from Cook’s first custom-made long board, waxed and well-worn from use. The Pan-African colored surfboard rises from a Kenyan-made basket on the African clothed pedestal as an altarpiece to soul surfing. The Prophets of Soul portraits emanate outwardly from the altar
DIALOGICAL EXERCISES
The dialogical exercises of the Future Soul Think Tank required participants to examine their personal concepts of identity and issues related to identity in the world around them. One exercise prompted participants to consider how the global South contributed to their personal understanding of the concept of soul, and how to deepen their understanding of the global South using Teaching for Understanding Frameworks. Based on the peer generated understanding goals and experiences from the exercise, participants created a physical tableau with their bodies to represent their meaning of the global South.
