The Homebound Halloween Ropenspace

A general note on this page: Upcoming events will be posted at the top of this page when we make our board! Anybody can add to it, and instructions on submitting a card are below. Don’t forget to refresh the page on occasion to make sure you are looking at the most current information!

What is a Ropenspace?

This is What it Looks Like

Graphic facilitation courtesy of Graydancer, this is what a Ropenspace is at its heart. All those little areas were sessions, some taking a little time, others lasting hours of deep dive education and discussion.

This is What We Plan

On or before Friday the 16th, we collect cards of session ideas from folks. These can be things you want to teach, things you want to learn, and things you want to discuss! Physical things, emotional things, thing-like things. Rope meditation? Kink+Wasabi? Pressure Points, Suspension Points, Main Topic Points….Anything you like.

This is How the End Feels

At the end of the day, you’ll have enjoyed exactly the kind of day you chose and everyone will have had a unique day of teaching and learning and ropey camaraderie that can never be replicated.

The Formula of a Ropenspace

Here’s What’s Up:
Social scientists came up with methods to facilitate this kind of Unconference. It is governed by 4 principles and 1 law.

Principles
1. WHOEVER SHOWS UP ARE THE RIGHT PEOPLE. There is no set slate of presenters – though instructors from the overall Ropecraft event are welcome and encouraged to attend, they are not expected to do anything more (or less) than anyone else. Y’all could show something new that you’re excited about, or just be a participant with no pressure to be anything else. People who have never presented, this is an opportunity for you. Take the step out of your comfort zone and show people the cool thing that you know. People who want to LEARN something can make a space for that. “Please Teach Me (fill in the blank)” is an excellent name for a session. Get creative.

2. WHENEVER A CLASS STARTS IS THE RIGHT TIME. We’ll have a big “board” (actually an excel sheet) that will show when each session starts. We’ll create this Friday night before the event, and have it ready on Saturday morning. WHEN IT’S OVER, IT’S OVER. We’ve built in 30 minute blocks. A session can be set up for 1 or more of those blocks. But if, you’ve said everything you want to say and the session is done in fifteen minutes, that’s cool. Take that time and do something else. (See more on this in the Law of Mobility) If a session takes MORE than the allotted time, we’ll probably have to come up with something technologically creative, but we’ll try to accommodate.

3. WHATEVER HAPPENS IS THE ONLY THING THAT COULD HAVE. This is y’all’s event. If there’s something you want, make a session for it. No complaining later about what would have been better. In the past, these Ropenspaces have been somewhat ephemeral. If you weren’t there, you just weren’t there. You could ask friends that were there to tell you about it, and hopefully they would. We’re here to spread knowledge after all. But this time, the technology may allow us to record some of this. So, that will be new.

4. The LAW OF MOBILITY The law of mobility simply states: if you are neither benefiting from nor contributing to a conversation/presentation, use your mobility and go somewhere you can. This is with all respect to the presenter and other people, and there is no offense intended or taken. In this case the “mobility” is simply the click of a few buttons. You can leave or enter any of our sessions at any time. (Don’t be disruptive about it, please.) If you can figure out the technology on your end, you could watch more than one session at once.

Sounds great, right? It is, and we have one of these on the last day of every single one of our in-person events. This is a unique teaching and learning environment and it’s not to be missed.

Here’s what we need: 
1. Any time between the time you read this and 6 PM Central on Friday 10/16, just send us a “card”.
This “card” will include:

  • Name of the session
  • Name of the presenter/host(s)
  • Length of class (in half hour blocks)
  • Preferred Time
  • Time that you CANNOT do it

Here’s where you send it: [email protected] And we’d like to encourage creativity with these. They don’t have to be “classes”. They can be anything you like

2. Then on Friday evening, we’ll look at all the “cards” and we’ll build our “board” which is a schedule of all of the activities for the day.

3. We’ll post our board on Saturday morning in Discord and on Homebound Today. On Saturday there will be several online presentations happening simultaneously and you can join whichever one piques your interest. You can drop out of one and join another. Watch more than one at once on different devices. It’s OPEN space.

4. Then we’ll have a closing circle, all in one virtual space. Then we’ll call it done.

The Ropenspace Board