Everyone must be wondering what is going on? What has happened to Refugee Nation since Alaska? Well, a lot. We apologize first and foremost to those that have been reading up on us and wondering when is Refugee Nation coming to our city? town? home? Well, to be honest we needed to take a long break. Just consider for a moment all that traveling: planes, trains and automobiles from June to December in and out of town from New York, North Carolina, Massachusetts and Alaska, the miles, the people, the energy and effort, the changes in time and weather...it's exhausting! It's work!! So we felt we needed to take a breather. Calm ourselves. Be with ourselves. Be down with ourselves and during that time we took time to evaluate 2007 and all it's struggles and successes and take that knowledge to plan out the 2008 series of Refugee Nation events to come. We hope you follow us again because our batteries are fully charged and we look forward to making impact with people, places and things...promise. So come along for the ride or better yet come see us in person when we are in town. It's a lot nicer face to face, smile to smile.As you can see we will be in Northern California this month and am very excited about the incredible opportunity to put what we've learned in our growth last year into practice. I call it the creative trinity. The creative trinity is the interconnected efforts to make a residency and performance effective in any town we come upon. The creative trinity are 1.Artists (that's us) 2. Presenter or venue 3. Community coordinators and in a sense we are all producers in this jigsaw puzzle of getting this production running and gunning. With these three parts in communicato, planning, meeting, calling, strategizing,
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decision-making; together with one vision we can accomplish anything. It's like a tripod...without one leg, whatever it's holding will fall. So in terms of this visit to Northern California we have La Pena Cultural Center as our presenter, Vinya Sysamouth & Khammany Mathavongsy & Phoumy Sayavong who have stepped up to be our community coordinators. (I consider them like the three-headed elephant of old Laos)So the creative trinity came together and met in February to discuss the way we will make Refugee Nation as successful as it can be in the Bay Area. We are now putting into action the plan and look forward to how it will unfold, as we rally each other THE Refugee Nation NoCal Team. (as I call it) San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and Richmond...here we come!!!
There are other highlights and activities to note as well like: How did a 7 year old Lao-Chinese-American child empowered herself with her family's story? What happened to Refugee Nation at Lowell, MA...wasn't that suppose to have happened? What was Ova and Leilani doing in Pioneer Valley aka "Happy Valley" in western Massachusetts? What is the Lao'd and Proud club? Hmmm...the queries of the mind? But I'll save that for another entry.
