What is your unique gift? – Do you believe in it enough to invest everything you have in it? – I once thought I knew what my unique gift was. However, I don’t believe I have a clear idea of what that is anymore.

What difference are you trying to make in the world? – How passionate are you about doing this? – I am not passionate about making a difference in the world. I’d prefer to make a difference in a person’s life. Maybe one day they’ll make a difference.

How do you define success for yourself? – What challenges do you face in order to create success? – I define success for myself by going to bed every day knowing I’m going to get up and experience something unexpected and face that challenge head-on. The challenges I face are the ones that I manifest for myself. I am my worst enemy.

Can you innovate and creates value and successfully communicate that value to intended audiences? – At this moment in time no I can not. I believe I have the capability. But I need to be honest about what I want to do in life. If I have to go far further beyond being an excellent musician and master at my craft then I don’t know what I’m going to do.

Do you have a positive attitude? At this moment in time no. As of right now, my attitude is not positive. I do not have a positive attitude about myself nor my career. – At this moment in time, I’m reevaluating my career choices.

Have you set your goals? What is your road map to success? Can you set inspiring and realistic goals? – I have indeed set my goals. My road map to success is to take the advice of my professors and figure out solutions for myself. Perhaps I will discover something that will take myself to new heights. The most realistic way to go about get getting better is baby steps.

Do you have and/or acquire the necessary expertise to actualize your vision? – At this moment in time no. I acquire them. I think I have an idea of what I need to gain from being in school. However, I need to be honest with myself about where I want to put my energy.

What are your priorities? Can you set priorities? – My priorities are unorganized. I need to work on setting parameters for priorities.

What opportunities are you looking for? What opportunities are you creating or intend to create? I am looking for performance opportunities. I am simply making myself a better musician in order to win those jobs.

How comfortable are you with uncertainty? What risks are you willing to take? – Man, I don’t care about uncertainty. We all die one day and to think that I can’t make a decision if I’m worried if I’m certain or not that it’s the right decision. As long as that decision doesn’t put me in financial ruin, kills me, or my family then I’ll know whether or not I made the right the decision.

When facing challenges, do you persevere or do you walk away? – I sometimes wish I would walk away. But unfortunately being an empath impedes my ability to not care or to take care of myself when push comes to shove.

What experience have you learned the most from? – If there is one thing that I have learned from this semester is that I need to be able to think things through. I care about a lot of people. However, I do not consider how my actions can affect the people I care about the most. When I make a mistake and it causes people issues I take Uber personally. I need to work on this. Meaning, I need to be so on top of my game that stuff like that ceases to happen.

What actions are you taking to realize your vision? Are you consistently taking action? – I tend to sit back sometimes and dig myself into a hole. This causes me to deny my own abilities and for that sometimes I face my own shortcomings that way.

How well do you put things in context? Are you able to easily respond to changes in your environment? What’s your best example? – I believe I learn from my mistakes. I was tape op during Deandre’s record and I did exactly what was expected of me. I help set up, break down and when it came to the in-depth stuff I stayed out of the way. I gave input when the group reached a halt in production in order to find a solution. I think I was successful at being tape op.

What is your plan to continually grow and evolve? How have you grown or evolved in there past year or three? Learn from my mistakes. I have one more year left in college and I need to make it count. In the next three years, I would like to be completed with Grad school and finally taking the music world by storm.

How easy is it for you to reach out to others to ask for support and to offer help? Easy as pie.

How are you inspiring others to join and/or support your mission in order to create a financially sustainable enterprise that allows you to live your gift and contribute something valuable to society? – If you aren’t currently, how do you intend to? I intend to do this by making people feel special for helping me out when I need it the most. I want people to know that I’m taking their support and putting it to something useful. Whether it be my art or someone else’s art. I believe in the power of community and I would love to build by creating a network of fans and supporters. To create a social family.

On March 22nd I and the rest of the students that make up Dolphinium Records went out together to the music venue Raindogs to see our fellow friend, Chris Smith, perform with his band Primary School. I decided to dress business casual in hopes to not only network with local bands to record but to also look halfway professional while I did it. I met with a band named, “Super Haunted,” and Chelsea Hart-Cantabeane. Super Haunted is an alternative rock group and Chelsea Hart-Cantabeane is a poet and artist who wrote the presskit for Taylor Neal’s band, “Bobby Kid.”

How did you prepare? – I decided that for this assignment I would go in as a representative of Dolphinium Records and share information. I ask President Mcswain, what she would like me to point out about Dolphinium and how I should approach each potential future client.

What was your goal? – My goal was to get potential clients connected with President Mcswain. To break the ice for so that when they got in contact with her, they knew exactly what questions to ask, and that she knew exactly how to answer them.

What worked best? – Walking up to one of the memebers of the band and introducing myself and the label I represent.

What are some interesting things you learned from the people you met? – They were all willing and wanting to seek out more information about Dolphinium records.

What seemed to spark the most interest in people you spoke with about you? – The fact that Dolphinium Records is a full service recording studio and that they had to speak to me before they could speak with the president. This shows tha DR is pretty organized.

How will you improve the next time you do this? I would like to have physical information to give to potential clients. As in, information regarding dolphinium and what we offer as a label.

What kind of events do you feel are better suited for you to network at? Definitly events that involve music people who make music.

-What is your unique gift? – Do you believe in it enough to invest everything you have in it?

My unique gift is my ability to identify what needs to be done to accomplish something and get it done. With this comes the gift of patience as well. I understand things take time and I am patient when it comes to accomplishing longer term goals. Whether this is in the context of music, work, physical labor, family, life, etc… I absolutely believe in this enough to invest everything I have into it. I’ve started to believe this more and more recently.

-What difference are you trying to make in the world? – How passionate are you about doing this?

I want to have a positive impact on the world. My passions that I will pursue revolve around music, travel, and adventure. I want to encompass all of these passions together to create influential work that will inspire others and the world around me. I am very passionate about doing this.

-How do you define success for yourself? – What challenges do you face in order to create success?

I define success by the experiences I have and create for myself. I also define success, to an extent, by the financial growth I experience. The challenges I face right now are just finishing school in order to have more time and opportunity to travel and make music. I also face the financial challenges of being young and not as established.

-What is your career vision and a mission?

My career vision and mission are to make it as far as I can with music and become as established and successful as possible. If I don’t become as successful as I’d like to be by the time in my late 20’s, then ill join the military or fire department or something like that and continue to do music on the side.

-Can you innovate and creates value and successfully communicate that value to intended audiences?

Yes

-Do you have a positive attitude?

Yes, in most situations. I am at least actively trying to stay as positive as possible.

-Have you set your goals? What is your road map to success? Can you set inspiring and realistic goals?

Yes, I have set goals. These goals change time to time, but I feel strongly about the goals I have set into place recently. My road map to success as of now, in short, is to give music my absolute best shot from now on, and after graduation. I’d like to get it all out of my system after graduation, have fun with it, travel, and if I don’t get as far as I’d like to, or don’t end up making as comfortable of a living as I’d like. I would be content joining the military, fire department, or something of that nature while still doing music on the side. Those are both things I’ve always been interested in, and environments I know I would enjoy being in. Having a consistent income with benefits would be appealing to me after getting the full-time music thing out of system. This is how I feel as of now at least…

-Do you have and/or acquire the necessary expertise to actualize your vision?

Yes, I have and will continue to acquire the expertise that will be necessary.  

-What are your priorities? Can you set priorities?

At this point in my life, my main priority and primary focus now is to put all my energy into establishing my artist brand and becoming as good of a musician as I can.

-What opportunities are you looking for? What opportunities are you creating or intend to create?

I’m looking for opportunities to play, record, travel, or any opportunities that could elevate me forward.

-How comfortable are you with uncertainty? What risks are you willing to take?

At this point, I’m comfortable with uncertainty and willing to risks.

-When facing challenges, do you persevere, or do you walk away?

I persevere and do whatever it takes to find a solution or a way through the situation.

-What experience have you learned the most from?

I’ve learned the most from the times that I messed up or failed at things.

-What actions are you taking to realize your vision? Are you consistently taking action?

I listen to so much music, every day, all day, all the time. This helps me realize and visualize my vision. What also helps with this is research, learning the history and backstories of artists/bands I like, records I like, genres, etc… I would say yes, I consistently take action towards it.

-How well do you put things in context? Are you able to easily respond to changes in your environment? What’s your best example?

I put things into context well, that’s a strength of mine I’d say. I am very adaptable and able to respond to changes in my environment, another strength of mine. My best example would be my job. As an Ocean Rescue lifeguard, things go from chill, hanging out, surfing, working out, whatever to, (radio call) “Ocean 73, Cardiac Arrest alamacani boat ramp.” In an instant we go from patrolling a beach, to responding to a water related emergency.

-What is your plan to continually grow and evolve? How have you grown or evolved in the past year or three?

My plan mostly consists of gaining as much experience and having as many experiences, in all fields of interest, as I possibly can. I have grown/evolved by starting to see the bigger picture in my life and thinking more long term about what I need to do in the short term to get my life to where I’d like it to be in the long term.

-How easy is it for you to reach out to others to ask for support and to offer help?

It’s become easier recently, I have been doing this more and more.

-How are you inspiring others to join and/or support your mission in order to create a financially sustainable enterprise that allows you to live your gift and contribute something valuable to society?

I’m not doing a whole lot for towards this one right now, it’s something I need to begin working towards.

– If you aren’t currently, how do you intend to? Establish my artist brand/name through word of mouth, networking, and social media. By doing this I hope to begin reaching more people, playing out more with more people. Biggest key to this one though I believe, and plan on doing, is traveling. A lot.

Holden Hackney

-How did you prepare?

To prepare for this networking assignment, first I had to decide where/what I was going to go to. I decided to write this on my experience playing at SXSW, and networking while I was in Austin.

-What was your goal?

My goal was to establish connections, meet other bands/musicians, and follow up with the connections after the fact.

-What worked best?

All of these worked well. It was good for me to set up my Instagram and artist brand before going so I had a platform to follow people on and for people to follow me on. I established connections, met many other musicians and bands, and I have since followed up with these connections. From a connection we made with a band from San Francisco called “Carpool Tunnel”, we (Faze Wave) have planned a west coast tour with them from July 10^th-27^th.

-What are some interesting things you learned from the people you met?

I met people from all over the country, and some from other parts of the world. It was interesting to me to meet these other musicians and bands and really recognize that they’re all just other normal humans with lives that just love music and have established themselves enough to be able to tour and travel all over doing what they love.

-What seemed to spark the most interest in people you spoke with about you?

What definitely sparked the most interest in other people I met and had conversations with was the background I have in music. I shared with people I attended middle school, high school, and college for music studies and had been trained classically, and in jazz studies. People were often impressed, interested, and intrigued to hear this. Many people I met had just picked up music by ear, or a few informal lessons here and there.

-How will you improve the next time you do this?

The next time I do this, I will have a much more established and successful social media/artist page setup. I will also just try and improve my social interaction skills, and make sure I can stay there longer. We were only able to spend about 36 hours in Austin.

-What kind of events do you feel are better suited for you to network at?

Events that are based mainly around music.

Isabella Martinez, Kristen Oliver, Angelika Robison, and Kelly Wolfe

Improv for Inmates: Reducing Prison Crime/Rates through Theatre

SECOND CHANCE ACT GRANT https://csgjusticecenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/July-2018_SCA_factsheet.pdf

Mass incarceration is a major issue in the United States. The U.S. has 20% of the world’s incarcerated population. There are many different contributing factors to this high rate of incarceration including extended prison sentences, high rates of recidivism, prison riots and crime. There are many institutional and legislative changes that need to be made to reduce the number of people incarcerated, but we believe that introducing improvisational theatre to inmates can have a positive impact in prisons, reducing prison crime and the recidivism rate. We would like to start with Lake City Correctional Facility and hopefully, grow the program and spread to prisons across Florida.

We will be applying for the Second Chance Act Grant, an initiative to reduce recidivism rates through the National Reentry Resource Center, in collaboration with the Bureau of Justice Assistance.

Why state prisons?

A state prison rehabilitates criminals by maintaining them in confinement. In many cases they are funded by state taxes. Those funds go towards food, clothing, hiring employees, and keep the program up and running.

Lake City Correctional facility is a private state prison in Lake City, Florida, with a capacity of 894 prisoners.

The prisoners at Lake City are men from the ages of 18-24 serving short sentences (a maximum of two years). We feel that our program will help them maintain their social skills and get them ready to re enter and re adjust to the outside world. With this program in place, inmates will be able to open up and come out of their shells which will prove useful after leaving prison. Further research shows that inmates using a program such as this will benefit them once getting back into society and readjusting.

https://definitions.uslegal.com/s/state-prison/

PROOF THAT IT COULD WORK:

In 2015, the Detroit Public Theatre launched a series of theatre classes for prisoners in jails across Detroit. Their program was well received, reduced violence in prison, helped those suffering with PTSD, and prepared prisoners for reentry into society.

The Marin Shakespeare Company started teaching Shakespeare at the San Quentin Prison in 2003. Since then they have expanded to 7 prisons across the state of California.

Both the Detroit Public Theatre and the Marin Shakespeare Company’s programs have been successful in rehabilitating prisoners and getting them ready to reenter society and the workforce through classes like “Drama for Reentry”.

Theatrical programs like these have not only worked, but they have become a keystone of success for California prisons, reducing their recidivism by 13% over the last 10 years. We believe that our program will bring similar success to the Florida area.

http://www.detroitpublictheatre.org/shakespeareinprison

Recidivism Research

https://www.cfc.wa.gov/PublicationSentencing/Recidivism/Adult_Recidivism_FY2007.pdf

https://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/18upr9yfup0514_sum.pdf

Sources and research:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180514-do-long-prison-sentences-deter-crime

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/2/12/18184070/maximum-prison-sentence-cap-mass-incarceration

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2015/07/07/yes-u-s-locks-people-up-at-a-higher-rate-than-any-other-country/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.751c581e36eb

Our plan for the program would be the introduce theatre to prisoners of the Lake City Correctional facility through base acting work such as monologues and scenes, theatre games, and an opportunity to perform in a fully staged show that we could write with the help of the men. Since our plan is very simple, we could get away with a smaller budget. All of the acting games are online and available to the public which would save some costs. As for scenes and monologues, we can pull from our personal collection and search online databases such as scribd which costs $8.99 a month. This cost would translate into $107.88 a year which is pretty great for the selection of plays we can pull from. Another cost we would plan for is gas to make it out to the correctional facility. From Jacksonville University, the correctional facility is around 116.4 miles round trip. We would make the trip to the facility once a week for a year which would mean 52 trips on an average of $3 per gallon gas. For a 2013 Hyundai Elantra, that would mean around $30 a tank per week and would equal out to $1,560 just for gas alone. One other large expense would be the budget of the end of the year performance. We would either write our own play or put together a showcase of the scene the inmates would have been working on over the year. Most of the money we would use for this performance would go to purchasing props, costumes, and some small set pieces if needed.  I would set aside $1,000 for the purchasing of these items which could be found in around goodwills and other thrift stores around the area. The best part about this is that we would be able to get things which we could reuse for future correctional facilities. In total, we would be asking for $2,667.88 just to cover the base costs.

LETTER OF INTENT:

Kristen Oliver, Board Member

Bards Behind Bars

2800 University Blvd

Jacksonville, FL, 32211

April 15, 2019

Dear CSGP,

Bards Behind Bars seeks support for developing an innovative theatre program that will reduce recidivism rates by preparing inmates for the social and communicative demands of the world awaiting after release. We are requesting $3,000 over a one-year period.

        Our organization has designed a simple, but effective program involving a variety of theatre-related activities, such as improvisational exercises, monologues and scenes, competitive games, and play writing. Each of these is chosen for specific purpose, intended to ready the inmate for the challenges of job searches, forming social connections, and other factors that have been proven to directly affect the likelihood of recidivism. Improvisation teaches inmates to think quickly, while monologues encourage the development of memorization skills. Scenes give prisoners the opportunity to create relationships and delve into their own emotions and how to process them. These skills, and more, are all part of the foundation of good and healthy communication, something that is often stifled in prison environments.

        Most importantly, we will grant these men a sense of stability after their release by encouraging them to stay involved with our organization. As an added benefit, this allows us to expand as well as confirm that Bards Behind Bars is keeping people out of prison.

Your generous support would fund basic costs, including gas, costumes/props, and acquisition of scenes and monologues, over the course of a year of weekly visits to the Lake City Correctional Facility. These 18-24-year-old men have short prison sentences and are at high-risk for returning to crime upon ending their sentence. We hope, with your assistance, to give them a greater chance at a normal life. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us. Thank you in advance for your consideration.

Sincerely,

                                                                                                                Kristen Oliver

My unique gift is the need for combining my passions for marketing, management, music, sports, and entertainment together to create the ideal entertainment experience for the consumer. I have already began investing all I have into my passion by spending time, money, and effort completing schooling. I also have spent countless efforts in looking for jobs in order to apply for the future position that I will create. By creating this unique position, I hope to inspire other individuals who have similar passions that I do. Defining success is synonymous with happiness and making money. I want to reap the rewards of my hardwork, both emotionally as well as financially. My career vision and mission are as I said earlier. I want to combine my passions for marketing, sports, and music to create and manage an exciting entertainment value worth paying for and attending. By creating this position is already a bold innovative move. Utilizing my networking capabilities allow me to experience already established events and observe how I can apply and alter the success of these events when creating events in the future. My first goal is to continue attending these high profile events, such as the basketball tournaments, NFL games, Jumbo Shrimp games, and Bonnaroo festival, as well as other smaller concerts. Due to this position not exactly existing exactly how I want, there is a huge level of uncertainty. I want to continue to invest myself in a fantasy position, and I am willing to do so. I am willing to persevere until I reach the success level I want. In order to make this fantasy a reality, I am going to continue to network and make connections that are able to be used as stepping stones to other valuable connections.