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Access Services had an opportunity to have a day long retreat on Wednesday, July 8.  Over the course of the last few years we’ve gone to many places up and down Reynolda Road, (cultural institutions that have spaces that are available for free.)

This year we spent the majority of our day at SECCA, (SouthEastern Center for Contemporary Art) just across Reynolda Road.  The tour coordinator, Alex, provided us with a terrific space in the Potter Attic. I’d never visited the place before and I highly recommend it as a place to have a retreat, and as a place to just visit to tour their exhibits.

We began the day with a team building activity, namely, building houses of cards with teams of two.  The goal was to build the highest house in 20 minutes.

The winners (after a fashion) were the teams of Peter and Marcus, and also James and Patrick, but in the end nobody really won anything but glory and gloating privileges. Both teams did “creatively apply” the use of their available tools, and both houses fell down before I could get the winning pictures.

The business meeting was productive as we problem solved, set goals, and planned for how we’ll manage our ambitious goals for the year.  We began with a discussion of the findings from the Assessment in Action project that was just completed, and reviewed the renovation plans for the building. This allowed us to set goals that will allow us to meet the needs of the students and strategically determine where our efforts should be placed in shifting and moving collections in the coming year.  We focused our conversation on:

• the building (shifting and MUVZ)
• our services (Holds, ZSR Delivers)
• student training (perpetual topic)
• maximizing student study spaces

Lunch was at Mama Zoes where we had our team picture.

We returned to SECCA for a very interesting tour of their current exhibit and an exercise that allowed us to insert ourselves into art, and change the displays with the use of mirrors.  Fascinating and fun!

We ended the day with an open conversation about other issues that we need to address in the coming year and concluded.  It was a terrific day filled with great planning, team building, communication, and camaraderie.