Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

“The best audience for a poetry reading that I have ever experienced is the audience during the Dodge Poetry Festival’s High School Student Day. Busloads and busloads of students from surrounding towns, counties, and states came to Newark to listen to poets read and talk about poetry.”

–Oliver de la Paz

Since 1986, over 45,000 students and 10,000 teachers from as far away as Florida, Wisconsin, Maine and California have participated in High School Student Day, the largest poetry event for high school students in North America.

Pre-registered high school students and their pre-registered teachers are admitted at no charge to all High School Student Day events, described below:

· POETS ON POETRY: Festival Poets read and discuss some of the poems and poets that have mattered to them. Time is set aside for Q & A.

· CONVERSATIONS: Intimate groups of Festival Poets discuss the enduring themes evoked by poetry, including Going Public with Private Feelings, When Politics is Personal, and Saying the Unsayable.

· FESTIVAL POET READINGS feature a dynamic and diverse group of poets.

· POETS FOR TEACHERS (preferred seating for teachers): Festival Poets explore how to bring poetry to life inside and outside the classroom.

· STORYTELLING, poetry’s closest relative, is performed throughout the day.

· OPEN READING: Time and space is set aside for young writers to read their work to their peers.

· Pre-registered schools have the option of remaining for THE EVENING MAIN STAGE PROGRAM of readings and music at no charge.

High school teachers can CONTACT US at studentday@grdodge.org with questions, but more information will be available as the Festival approaches.

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The best way to get up to the minute announcements as the Festival approaches is to join our mailing list. If you are a teacher, make sure to join the Teacher Mailing List to receive updates related to the 2012 High School Student Day.

For more information about the Dodge Poetry Festival and programs, visit www.dodgepoetry.org

Be our friend on Facebook,  and follow us on Twitter @DodgePoetryFest

By Elizabeth Murphy

The creative industries’ ability to innovate new economic opportunities continues to make headlines. Our colleagues at the National Creativity Network (NCN) offer inspiring examples of how the creative sector is driving innovation, job creation, and economic sustainability. Did you know that the State of Massachusetts employs a Creative Economy Director and that Vermont’s Department of Economic, Housing and Community Development has recently announced the establishment of the Office of the Creative Economy?

Over the past two decades, international governments (notably Ireland and the United Kingdom) have recognized the sizeable contribution the creative industries have made to their overall economies and have instituted policies and funding schemes designed to enhance this growing sector. In the United States, the terms “creative economy” and “creative industries” are beginning to take hold and are increasingly recognized as a powerful strategy for economic and community revitalization. As this field continues to develop, we are faced with the challenge of defining the creative industries, but nationally and internationally, this definition remains a moving target. Generally speaking, the sector has been described as a range of economic activities which are concerned with the generation or exploitation of knowledge, intellectual property and information. It is widely accepted that the activities which comprise the creative industries include architecture, design, arts, research & development, publishing, software, computer programming, scientific research, film, tv and radio. However, definitions are, by nature, limiting, and if there’s one thing we’re learning, it’s that the creative industries have an inherent capability to expand in unforeseen and innovative ways.

Recently, we have been invited to serve on the newly-established Creative Economy Coalition – a creative industries working group of the National Creativity Network. We join other thought-leaders around the country dedicated to: linking the creative industries to commerce, education, science, technology, and government; to advocating for the creative industries as an economic stimulus that grows jobs; and to stimulating innovation and imagination throughout our communities.

We are also interested in defining metrics for measuring the impact of the creative economy throughout the nation. Last week, members of the Creative Economy Coalition presented a very engaging NCN webinar on Growing the Creative Economy (Note: this webinar archive will be posted by the end of the week.) and you can also find previous webinars including one where New Jersey’s own Leo Vasquez from Arts Build Communities presented on the topic of Creative Placemaking.

While we all get our heads wrapped around the impact of the creative economy in our own state’s and communities, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (produced jointly with the United Nations Developing Programme) has published extensive research on the global creative economy. Their recent 2010 report provides evidence that the creative industries are among the most dynamic emerging sectors in world trade. The report defines the creative industries as “the crossroads of the arts, culture, business and technology…composing the cycle of creation, production, and distribution of goods and services that use intellectual property as their primary input.”

The rate of growth in world trade of creative goods rose from $7.8 billion in 2002 to $21 billion in 2008 (a growth rate of 14%). And despite the decline in the world economy brought about by the Great Recession, the creative industries have remained relatively robust. The report states, “The emerging creative economy has become a leading component of economic growth, employment, trade and innovation, and social cohesion in most advanced economies…It also shows that the interface among creativity, culture, economics and technology, as expressed in the ability to create and circulate intellectual capital, has the potential to generate income, jobs and export earnings while at the same time contributing to social inclusion, cultural diversity and human development.”

At Creative New Jersey, we are working to bridge the gap between our sectors, fostering connections between commerce, education, culture, government and philanthropy, in order to drive innovation and revitalize our state. We are currently developing a series of Community Creativity Convenings which will bring cross-sector leaders together to explore how creativity and innovation can transform their communities. We are working with a wide variety of partners in Essex, Monmouth, Mercer, Morris and Camden counties which include urban regeneration nonprofits and economic development councils, county arts councils and arts organizations, universities and educational associations, mayoral associations, sustainability and environmental nonprofits, and philanthropic leaders.

Together, county by county, we will begin to transform our Garden State through spirited, ground-breaking discussions which challenge the status-quo and encourage new partnerships and strategies that have the potential for reinvigorating the local and statewide economy while strengthening the fabric of our communities. In the coming weeks, we will announce the schedule for the upcoming Community Creativity Convenings, and we will keep you informed as new convenings are announced.

The power of this transformation lies in the infinite capabilities of each and every New Jerseyan as we meet at the intersection of our sectors. So, join us at the crossroads, and let us know if you are interested in working with Creative New Jersey in hosting a Community Creativity Convening in your town.

Inquiries regarding joining the Creative New Jersey movement and/or hosting a Community Creativity Convening should be sent to Elizabeth Murphy at emurphy[at]creativenj[dot]org.

Creative New Jersey’s leaders and partners are regular contributors to the Dodge blog

Introduction by Wendy Liscow
Program Officer

Laura Otten, Executive Director of the LaSalle University Nonprofit Center, has been the lead consultant working with the Dodge Foundation to design a comprehensive board training series, now in its fourth successful year. If you have missed a workshop or would like to share some of the key “take-aways” with your colleagues, check out the Dodge Foundation’s Board Leadership Training Video Series. There are interviews with each of the workshop trainers on key board development issues including: the most critical issues facing boards today; the importance of understanding organizational lifecycles; implementing assessment practices that measure what matters; strategic planning tips; and how to recruit and keep strong board members.

A sample video from our most recent Care and Feeding of Board Members workshop is below. However, if you are interested in the topic of improving your board engagement through the creation of more productive board meetings, we suggest you read the complete blog post…it just might be what you need to transform your board.

Want to rachet up your board’s performance? Change your agenda.

By Laura Otten

My 23-year old son has his first board meeting for a nonprofit coming up. He is so excited, so thrilled at the opportunity to help, a bit nervous that they view him as a finance “expert” but his joy at the prospects of this board service is palpable. I hope he’s equally excited after the meeting.

This fear is not just a mother’s fear; it is a fear I have for the vast majority of board members attending their first meetings. Though I’ve no scientific information to bear this out, my anecdotal information is overwhelming: nonprofits lose more board members through boredom at meetings than they do through fear of fundraising! Think about that. And funny thing about this is that you can turn a boring meeting into an engaging meeting in far shorter course than you can turn a reluctant fundraiser into a confident one.

Oddly, what makes board meetings so boring is the fact that the vast majority of boards do not do board work at board meetings! It is really that simple. If you look at a typical meeting agenda for most boards, it looks something like this:

XYZ Center Board Meeting: 20 January 2012

8:00am-9:30am

Approval of the minutes of the last board meeting

Reports

• Executive Director Report

• Finance Committee Report

• Committee A Report

• Committee B Report

• Committee C Report

• Committee D Report

New Business

Adjourn

This process, start to finish, can take anywhere from 1.5 hours to three hours, or even five or six (as I hear far more often than I should). Assuming a board is meeting every month or every other month, a typical board meeting should last no more than two hours, with 1.5 hours being an ideal. Obviously, grappling with a large or particularly contentious issue might force a board meeting, on occasion, to go beyond that time frame, but that absolutely should be the exception rather than the rule.

In following this agenda, however, a board is not doing board work; it is merely collecting data, albeit data that it needs to do good board work. But when board meetings focus on learning about things that have already happened, things over which board members have no control—as they have already happened—boards are not doing their work. They are being sponges, soaking up important data, but data they should be using to move an organization forward, not simply absorbing; they are learning about what happened instead of thinking about what could and/or should be. This data should be shared and absorbed in advance of a meeting, so that board members are equipped to use that data productively at board meetings. (Compounding the boredom factor is that far too often these reports are simply read aloud at meetings, taking away from board members any initiative they might have.)

I can guarantee you that no board member joins a board because s/he wants to be a sponge. Rather, they, as you might expect, want to make a difference, make a contribution, give back, help others, etc. In order for any of these to happen, we must engage people’s brains; droning on about what has passed just doesn’t do that.

So, what do you? There are multiple options, none of them scary in and of themselves; they are only scary in that each signals change. All, however, must address both form—or content—and function. Read the rest of this entry »

Martin Farawell, Program Director, Poetry

In his 1991 essay, “Slow Down for Poetry,” former U.S. Poet Laureate Mark Strand wrote that poetry invites us to step out of the pace of our everyday lives and slow down.  It requires we change the speed at which we usually absorb information.  We can’t skim over a poem the way we do newspaper or website pages.  With poetry, we pause to meditate over a line, phrase or image, rereading passages, stanzas, whole poems many times.  We don’t so much slow down for poetry as allow poetry to slow us down.

Speaking to students at the 2006 Dodge Festival, current U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine said that everyone needs to find their poetry.  Poetry, for him, was the one thing that engaged all the many aspects of himself, that made him feel most fulfilled, most true to his truest self.  He said that everyone needs to find something like this in their lives.  For some people, like Levine, it’s poetry, but it could be any art, or work, or hobby.

We’ve all had the experience of being so deeply absorbed in something—creative work, meditation, conversation—that we lose all sense of time.  We look at the clock and are shocked by how much later it is than we’d thought, or, we complete a challenging task and discover with focused attention it took a fraction of the time anticipated.

Perhaps we don’t need to slow down for poetry so much as to allow ourselves to make the time to forget time.  There is no better way to do this than to make time for our poetry, whatever that is: gardening, wood working, playing or listening to music, dancing, yoga, reading or writing.  It is particularly important to do this when we are certain we have no time.  During periods of my life when adding anything extra to my schedule seemed impossible if not downright insane, I would set the alarm a little earlier to create time for silent reading in the early morning.  I’m certain that’s how I got through those stressful times.

And let us not make “resolutions” to do this, as if to do what brings us joy requires resolve.  Instead, let’s make gifts, little gifts to ourselves of an evening here or there, or even fifteen minutes in the morning, to do something we find fulfilling.  You might discover it is poetry.  But whatever it is, allowing ourselves time for it is not a selfish act.  Doing what brings us fulfillment makes us less impatient, less frustrated, calmer and more centered.  It makes us easier to be around, which makes us better friends, partners, citizens, parents and co-workers.  Of course, we already know this.  Perhaps the first gift is to allow ourselves to act on what we know about ourselves.

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For more information about the Dodge Poetry Festival and programs, visit www.dodgepoetry.org
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Follow us on Twitter @DodgePoetryFest

By Randall Solomon
Sustainable Jersey

College Students’ Need for Experience Meets Green Teams’ Need for Staff

This fall, eighteen college students crowded shoulder to shoulder with Mayor Donnelly and members of the Green Team and Environmental Advisory Committee in the eclectic Jersey Made store in Mill Race Village in Mount Holly.

The students were given a pep talk before going door to door to talk to residents. The objective was to learn about community members’ attitudes and preferences for shopping local versus at the big box stores and elsewhere. The data collected provided the necessary information to help develop a planned Buy Local Campaign in town to promote the local stores.

Top: Students ready to go door to door in Mount Holly
Bottom: Students survey residents for Buy Local Program in Mount Holly

Just one month before, nineteen energetic students got down and dirty. They built two rain gardens in Mount Holly. The students dug a large hole and planted it with deep-rooted native plants and grasses to soak up rainwater. In this case, the garden will capture and filter water runoff from a huge parking lot, preventing it from entering the nearby creek. A rain garden can soak up to 30% more water than a traditional lawn. This will help protect the quality of water downstream by preventing runoff from getting to the creek and storm drains.

Perfect Green Swap

It was a perfect green swap. Mount Holly needed staff to get a long list of environmental projects started and the college students needed hands-on work experience.

Thanks to a grant from the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, Sustainable Jersey partnered with The College of New Jersey’s (TCNJ) Bonner Center for Civic and Community Engagement to form a team of Bonner/Sustainable Jersey scholars that help municipalities to achieve Sustainable Jersey actions. Towns were selected through a competitive application process. Bonner Fellows also help to mobilize TCNJ freshmen students engaged in Community Engaged Learning (CEL) to work with towns participating in the Sustainable Jersey program.

Students working on the Shinn Cabin Rain Garden

By helping to plan and execute green projects throughout the year, the Bonner Scholars are aiding officials from four municipalities—Mount Holly, Trenton, the City of Burlington, and Green Brook—in their goal of attaining the 150 points necessary to get Sustainable Jersey’s bronze level of certification by October of 2012.

This partnership extends the practice of student community engaged learning with service beyond typical non-profit community partners to local governments. The partnership has been beneficial all around, according to Heather Camp, senior program director at the Bonner Center. “The partnership helps us to connect to different communities throughout New Jersey in a meaningful, long-term way. What I think makes the Bonner Center a good partner for the project is that we have the opportunity to mobilize a greater number of students to help communities meet their Sustainable Jersey needs,” Camp said.

This arrangement is useful for towns. Dan Rita of the four-person Mount Holly Green Team said, “Mount Holly is really struggling right now. It has been incredibly helpful to have the students organize and get the projects off the ground.” Each project gave Mount Holly 10 points for a total of 20 points toward Sustainable Jersey certification, moving their total from 90 to 110 points.

Students complete work on the Burlington County Jail Rain Garden

The students get a lot out of the experience as well. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), new college graduates who had participated in internships did far better in the job market than their classmates who did not have that experience. The students gain experience, develop skills, make connections, strengthen their resumes, learn about environmental fields, and are able to assess their interests and abilities. In Mount Holly, Dan Rita of the Green Team makes sure that the students get a full experience.

This spring, the students plan to help Mount Holly install community gardens. The other towns participating in the partnership have some worthwhile projects in the pipeline with the students as well. Stay tuned for updates on the students work with the Green Fair in the City of Burlington, an anti-idling campaign in Green Brook, and asset mapping projects in Trenton.

For more about Sustainable Jersey®:

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All photos by Randi Rothmel