July Director’s Journal

“Start from the end,” Kim Murton instructs during her Stop Motion Animation workshop. Around the room, participants spend the morning creating what Kim calls “elaborate layouts” from shells, feathers, driftwood and other materials gathered the day before along the Salmon River estuary. Working backward from the ending, objects move, interact, cluster, disperse and make dramatic exits.

“Do you remember Super 8 films that kids used to make, where they’d freeze the shoot and people would suddenly disappear or appear into the movie?” Kim recalls, smiling. “It’s the oldest trick in the book. “One filmmaker nudges a crab through the frame, helping it scavenge and swallow bits of flotsam and jetsam. Another arranges a chorus line of pebbles into a question mark that slowly unfurls in search of an answer. Nearby, a mandala of tiny crustaceans closes in on a spruce cone.

Everywhere I look, tiny worlds are being assembled, dismantled and reimagined. Stones disappear. Mussel shells flit away like butterflies. Sand dollars fan outward. Seaweed recoils.

At Sitka, the pace and direction of time are not fixed. When the animators play back their test footage, everything comes alive. Someone asks, “How do I play this in reverse?” “I think the growing could happen a little bit slower,” Kim coaches. “Do you want to try again? ”What if we could edit our own lives the same way? If I could play my own life backward from today’s elaborate layout, where would I stop? Where would I linger? What would I rush through?What would I slow down? What would quietly leave the frame, and what new elements would enter? Watching it unfold again, what moments of humor, gratitude or grace might I discover that escaped me the first time?

When I was five years old, I watched a segment on the PBS children’s show ZOOM about kids making stop-motion animation movies. I was captivated. When the segment ended, they invited viewers to write to the show’s post office box for instructions, so I did. Weeks later, the envelopearrived. I tore it open. The first instruction required a movie camera. We didn’t own one. What’s stayed with me isn’t the disappointment I felt about the camera. It’s how it felt realizing that some creative possibilities were just beyond my five-year-old reach.Fast-forward to Kim’s workshop: some dreams have long attention spans.

They also have a way of changing shape. I didn’t grow up to be a stop-motion animator, but I did grow into work—alongside Sitka—that strives to move creative possibility a little closer to people.

K–8 Create places cameras into students’ hands. Artists and ecologists receive the time, space and support to experiment, reflect, create and share their work. Free public events bring leading voices into communities where cost might otherwise become a barrier. Different programs. One continuing experiment. Some of Sitka’s growth has been incremental. Sometimes we’ve leapt playfully forward. Many hands work together to arrange the next frame.

“We played all day yesterday,” Kim shares. “I was thinking about it last night… how often do we get to do that? Wake up and just play? There’s a lot of experimenting going on in here, and we’re definitely not getting precious. I’m happy about that. “This may be some of the best strategic planning advice I’ve heard all year.

This month, with help from across the Sitka community, our board and staff team is working on our next five-year strategic plan. Like Kim’s workshop, we’re envisioning where we hope to arrive and working backward, building on what so many people have created together. Kim is right. There’s a lot of experimenting going on around here. I’m happy about that.Thank you to everyone who continues shaping this shared work and community with us. And if I could play life in reverse and freeze one frame, along with the letter, I’d make that movie camera magically pop out of the envelope.