Teaching People to Fail

All the questions I have yet to answer

In my last post, I explored how to create great skill-based courses (or at least, a brief overview of how to structure their learning). Secretly, the reason I wrote that this week was as an intro to a different contemplation…

(How) is it possible to create a course around failure, not success?

Let me explain.

The above photo is from a course I’m currently working on. And have been, for the past 5 months. It feels like a course I’ve wanted to teach my entire career - a Community Builders’ academy and makerspace, for creating hyper-local community.

Two weeks ago, my co-producer came to me crying. She said (condensed), “My community is falling apart, and I’m playing a role in it. How can I teach a course on community when I feel like a Bad Builder?"

As I was comforting her, I took a look at my own life, and realized:

I’m a Bad Builder too.

I can’t even say I have any community in my life right now, at least when defined the way I like to (as “an interdependent and interconnected group”). I have the 4 people I live with, but we’re almost more like family, and too few to feel like a community. We host events, but that doesn’t create a community. I have a womens’ group…that hasn’t met yet. I have dreams of creating a Games Night in Bastrop, but don’t have a venue.

I have many communities I’ve left in my wake; but none that I currently support, or that support me. So, who am I to teach a course on building what I do not contain?

The thing is: as Kaela and I zoomed out, we realized our experience was not that uncommon.

We are creating this course through interviews, and almost every community builder we interviewed has a story like this. A time when they moved away from the community they built; lost it; destroyed it; or were asked to leave. Years where they didn’t take part at all. A renaissance, and then a drop again.

Our metaphors for these changes have to do with static points in time. “My community failed.” “I lost my community.” “The group ended.”

But in reality, community, and our roles in it, are always in change.

I see community now as more like a building.

or, y’know, a temple at Burning Man

The community builder might be:

• The facilitator of the funders’ vision

• The architect who draws the plans

• The general contractor who brings the builders, or manages them

• The guy on a lift tiling the roof

Their role depends on how introverted or extroverted they are, their free time, their values, and how much they are planning their community versus being shoved into it by virtue of being at the right place, with the right desire and/or skillset, at the right time. (The latter case happens far more frequently than the former, in my experience. Which is another thing that’s weird about teaching a course on preempted community building.)

Over time, the roles change. As does the amount of permission we give others to change the space. We might become:

• The greeter, welcoming and showing people around when they enter

• The energizer, constantly finding a new project to draw people to

• The building manager, setting the rules and enforcing them

• The guy in the corner of the kitchen telling stories about the old days

• The grandpa in a rocking chair, teaching newcomers the ways of the world

• A regular or occasional visitor, showing up from time to time to see how things are going now