Flagship Master Class

WHAT MIGHT HAPPEN IF WE LET IT?

A Master Class in Designing Conditions for Artistic Emergence

Presented by Arizona Theatre Matters

Duration: Two Days

16 Contact Hours

INTRODUCTION FOR FACILITATORS

Before facilitating this master class, it is important to understand what this course is—and what it is not.

Participants may arrive expecting a course about accessibility, disability, inclusion, accommodations, or diversity. They may assume they are attending a form of accessibility training or professional development focused on compliance, support strategies, or disability awareness. While all of those topics may appear during the course, they are not the subject of the course itself. The subject of the course is possibility. More specifically, the course asks a simple but profound question: How do conditions shape what becomes possible?

Accessibility appears throughout the master class because it offers some of the clearest examples of how changing conditions can reveal possibilities that were previously hidden, suppressed, or unavailable. Participants are not asked to adopt a particular ideology, nor are they asked to accept a predetermined conclusion. Instead, they are invited into a process of observation, reflection, inquiry, and design. The learning arc is intentional. Participants begin by examining assumptions. They end by redesigning environments. The facilitator’s role is to support that journey rather than accelerate it.

This master class succeeds when participants leave seeing differently. It does not succeed because they can repeat a theory, define a concept, or recite a set of principles. The goal is not agreement. The goal is perception. Participants should begin noticing conditions they previously took for granted and recognizing how those conditions influence participation, creativity, communication, learning, and artistic emergence.

Facilitators should resist the temptation to become experts delivering answers. This is not a lecture course. It is not an advocacy workshop. It is not a therapeutic process. It is not a consulting engagement. The facilitator serves as a guide, host, storyteller, and fellow investigator. Throughout the weekend, participants will encounter uncertainty, disagreement, resistance, curiosity, and moments of genuine insight. These are not problems to be solved. They are often signs that meaningful learning is taking place.

The course relies heavily on inquiry. Participants frequently want to move quickly toward conclusions, solutions, diagnoses, or explanations. The facilitator’s task is to help them remain with the question long enough for deeper understanding to emerge. This often requires patience. It may require silence. It may require allowing uncertainty to remain unresolved for a time. Trust the process. Trust reflection. Trust discussion. Trust the intelligence of the participants.

Stories occupy a central place within the master class. Stories should not be treated as evidence for predetermined conclusions, nor should they be reduced to simple lessons or moral examples. Participants will often want to explain a story immediately. The facilitator’s responsibility is to slow that process down and return participants to observation. What did they notice? What changed? What assumptions are operating? What evidence supports a particular interpretation? What else might be true? These questions matter because the course prioritizes observation before interpretation and inquiry before conclusion.

Resistance should also be understood differently than it often is in educational settings. Resistance is not necessarily evidence that a participant is disengaged or opposed to the material. Often resistance indicates that a participant is encountering assumptions they have not previously examined. When resistance appears, respond with curiosity rather than defensiveness. Invite investigation rather than debate. The purpose of the course is not to win arguments. It is to cultivate better questions.

Facilitators should be particularly attentive to several common forms of drift. Discussions may narrow into disability awareness training, ideological debate, personal testimony, or abstract theory. While all of these may contain valuable insights, none of them represents the primary focus of the course. When conversations drift, gently return participants to the central inquiry: What conditions are shaping what becomes possible? When discussions become abstract, return to stories. When discussions become ideological, return to observation. When discussions become defensive, return to curiosity. When discussions become overly technical, return to possibility.

Some elements of this master class may evolve over time. Examples, case studies, activities, and discussion formats may change. What must remain consistent is the underlying philosophy. Participants should encounter inquiry before conclusion, observation before interpretation, stories before theories, conditions before solutions, and redesign before advocacy. These principles form the foundation of the Arizona Theatre Matters approach.

Above all, remember that the purpose of this work is not to persuade participants that a particular theory is correct. The purpose is to help them see conditions they previously took for granted. Because once people begin to see conditions differently, they often begin to design differently. And that is where new possibilities emerge.

MASTER CLASS PURPOSE

Most professional development teaches techniques.

This master class examines conditions.

Rather than asking:

How do we improve people?

it asks:

How do conditions shape what becomes possible?

Through stories, reflection, artistic inquiry, discussion, and design activities, participants investigate how communicative, sensory, spatial, temporal, and relational conditions influence artistic emergence.

This is not a course about accessibility.

Accessibility appears throughout the course because it provides some of the clearest examples of how changing conditions can reveal possibilities that were previously hidden, suppressed, or unavailable.

The course ultimately asks a broader question:

What becomes possible when we design conditions differently?

Before You Facilitate

Facilitators should understand the course deeply before guiding others through it. Preparation requires more than familiarity with the sequence of activities; it requires disciplined inquiry, comfort with ambiguity, and the ability to notice how one’s own authority shapes the room.

  • Who should facilitate this course?
  • What preparation is required?
  • What experiences are helpful?
  • What experiences are insufficient?

Not Every Excellent Teacher Will Be an Excellent Facilitator of This Course

This master class is inquiry-based rather than content-driven.

Facilitators must be comfortable:

  • delaying conclusions
  • holding ambiguity
  • managing silence
  • resisting the urge to teach prematurely
  • welcoming disagreement
  • returning participants to observation

The facilitator’s role is not to persuade participants that a theory is correct.

The facilitator’s role is to help participants notice conditions they may not have previously seen.

These capacities form the foundation of facilitator readiness and are considered throughout training, mentorship, observation, and certification.

SECTION TWO

Core Facilitator Competencies

Inquiry Discipline

The ability to return participants to the question currently under investigation.

Story Stewardship

The ability to hold stories without immediately analyzing them.

Discussion Architecture

The ability to structure conversations without controlling conclusions.

Resistance Navigation

The ability to welcome disagreement without becoming defensive.

Emergence Orientation

The ability to prioritize discovery over explanation.

These competencies are assessed through practice, reflection, observation, feedback, and demonstrated facilitation.

SECTION THREE

Common Failure Modes

Failure Mode: The Accessibility Workshop

Participants begin treating the course as disability awareness training.

Facilitator Response:

Return participants to the larger question:

What conditions are shaping possibility?

Failure Mode: The Inspirational Story

Participants conclude that the makeup story demonstrates hidden talent.

Facilitator Response:

Do not correct.

Return to:

What changed?

Failure Mode: The Debate

Participants begin arguing over whether a claim is correct.

Facilitator Response:

Shift attention from positions to observations.

Ask:

What evidence supports that interpretation?

What else might be true?

Facilitators should study these patterns before leading the course and revisit them whenever a discussion begins to drift from inquiry toward persuasion, simplification, or premature conclusion.

SECTION FOUR

Fidelity Standards

Fidelity protects the central inquiry while allowing facilitators to respond thoughtfully to context. Certification depends upon the ability to preserve the essential elements of the methodology without reducing fidelity to identical delivery.

Essential Elements

These elements must remain present and retain their central purpose:

  • Makeup story
  • What Changed? discussion
  • Environmental audit
  • Redesign lab
  • Inquiry stance

Adaptable Elements

These elements may be adapted to the participants, setting, and available time without altering the course’s essential inquiry:

  • examples
  • case studies
  • local stories
  • timing adjustments
  • discussion formats

OVERVIEW

Day One: Seeing Differently

Participants learn to recognize the often-invisible conditions shaping artistic participation, perception, and possibility.

Day Two: Designing Differently

Participants apply those insights to the intentional design of artistic, educational, and organizational environments.

DAY ONE

SEEING DIFFERENTLY

Welcome and Opening

45 Minutes

Participants introduce themselves through the lens of possibility rather than professional identity.

Prompt:

Tell us your name.

Tell us what you make.

Tell us about a time you surprised yourself.

We begin by examining assumptions.

Session One

What If the Problem Was Never the Artist?

75 Minutes

Participants explore the relationship between talent, ability, and conditions.

Through story, discussion, and reflection, they investigate a central question:

What changed?

The session introduces the possibility that what we often interpret as ability may sometimes be the result of compatibility between people and conditions.

Break

15 Minutes

Session Two

What Is a Medium?

60 Minutes

Participants explore how materials and artistic media shape possibility.

Using discussion and small-group inquiry, they examine:

  • What a medium makes possible

  • What a medium makes difficult

  • How limitations can generate creativity

Key Principle:

A material is valuable because it produces possibilities.

Lunch

60 Minutes

Session Three

An Uneven Mind

75 Minutes

Participants examine the relationship between visible competence and invisible cost.

Using selected readings, reflection, and discussion, they explore:

  • Adaptation

  • Compensation

  • Cognitive diversity

  • Hidden effort

Key Principle:

Competence and cost are not the same thing.

Break

15 Minutes

Session Four

The Room Matters

75 Minutes

Participants analyze environments as active contributors to outcomes.

Rather than treating spaces as neutral backgrounds, they investigate how rooms reward certain behaviors while discouraging others.

Topics include:

  • Participation

  • Power

  • Communication

  • Timing

  • Belonging

Key Principle:

Environment is never background.

Session Five

Stories of Misrecognition

75 Minutes

Participants share and examine experiences of misunderstanding, assumption, and incomplete perception.

Through structured story circles, they explore the consequences of being seen incompletely.

Key Question:

How many possibilities have been lost because someone was seen incompletely?

Closing Reflection

30 Minutes

Participants reflect on:

  • What surprised them

  • What challenged them

  • What questions they are carrying into Day Two

The day concludes not with answers, but with deeper inquiry.

DAY TWO

DESIGNING DIFFERENTLY

Opening Reflection

30 Minutes

Participants revisit their reflections from Day One and identify the questions that continue to resonate.

Session Six

Participation Is Designed

75 Minutes

Participants examine how systems, processes, and organizations shape participation.

Using real-world examples, they map participation structures and identify hidden assumptions.

Topics include:

  • Entry points

  • Expectations

  • Supports

  • Barriers

  • Recovery opportunities

Key Principle:

Participation is rarely accidental.

Break

15 Minutes

Session Seven

Accessibility as Medium

90 Minutes

Participants investigate accessibility not as accommodation, but as a possible source of artistic innovation.

Through case studies and discussion they explore:

  • Accessibility as creative practice

  • Artistic Sign Language

  • Integrated captioning

  • Multi-modal storytelling

  • Universal design

Central Question:

When does access become part of the art itself?

Lunch

60 Minutes

Session Eight

The Power of Limitation

75 Minutes

Using artistic examples, discussion, and design challenges, participants investigate the relationship between creativity and constraint.

Topics include:

  • Limitation

  • Constraint

  • Barrier

  • Innovation

Key Principle:

A barrier is not the same thing as a limitation.

Break

15 Minutes

Session Nine

Conditions of Emergence

75 Minutes

Participants identify the environmental conditions most likely to support artistic emergence.

Topics include:

  • Trust

  • Belonging

  • Feedback

  • Challenge

  • Curiosity

  • Recovery

  • Psychological safety

Key Principle:

Artistic emergence cannot be manufactured, but conditions can be cultivated.

Session Ten

The Redesign Lab

90 Minutes

Participants apply course concepts to a real environment they know and care about.

Projects may focus on:

  • Classrooms

  • Rehearsal rooms

  • Organizations

  • Production processes

  • Educational programs

Each participant develops a practical redesign proposal grounded in the principles explored throughout the course.

Final Session

What Might Happen If We Let It?

30 Minutes

Participants return to the question that began the master class:

What becomes possible?

Each participant identifies:

  • One thing they will stop doing

  • One thing they will start doing

  • One condition they will redesign

The master class concludes with a collective reflection on possibility, emergence, and responsibility.

EVALUATION

Participants complete a pre- and post-institute reflection examining how their understanding of artistic potential, participation, and environmental design has changed.

30-DAY FOLLOW-UP

Participants reconvene for a facilitated reflection session.

They report:

  • Actions taken

  • Outcomes observed

  • Surprises encountered

  • Questions remaining

The purpose is not accountability.

The purpose is continued inquiry.

Participants should not leave saying:

“I learned about accessibility.”

Participants should not leave saying:

“I learned a new methodology.”

They should leave saying:

“I see differently.”

And because I see differently, I may design differently.

And because I design differently…

something new may become possible.

FACILITATOR DEVELOPMENT PATHWAY

This master class serves as the foundation of the Arizona Theatre Matters Facilitator Development Pathway.

Certified Participant

Awarded upon successful completion of the master class.

Participants join a growing community of artists, educators, administrators, and leaders exploring how conditions shape possibility and artistic emergence.

Certified Facilitator

Available through additional training and mentorship.

Certified Facilitators are authorized to deliver What Might Happen If We Let It? within approved educational, artistic, and community settings.

Facilitators learn the principles, practices, and inquiry methods that support the course’s unique learning experience.

Master Facilitator

Available by invitation and demonstrated practice.

Master Facilitators are qualified to mentor Facilitators, support implementation, contribute to curriculum development, and steward the long-term evolution of the Arizona Theatre Matters methodology.

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