Meet Stefan Day
On Video-Making and the Power of Community
If you’ve browsed through the Presencing Institute’s (PI) social media, or watched the video clips on the PI website, you will have unknowingly already encountered Stefan. Stefan joined PI’s core team at the crest of the covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 when he was asked to help with video and media needs. As a videomaker, Stefan’s work is deeply intertwined with the question of community and community building.
Video Making as a Tool for Community Building
When Stefan’s younger sister was born, and Stefan was already fourteen years old, his parents handed him a video camera to help document her early years. Thinking back to these early days of filming and video-making, Stefan recalls how the most significant moments were always when the whole family gathered together to watch the films. Certain moments, which Stefan had happened to capture on the camera, then had the potential to become a collective memory once it was shared with the whole family in these screenings.
“That always was the sweet spot,” Stefan reflects, thinking back also to when he was making videos for school. “I would work on something, and then everyone would gather together to watch and experience it.” In this way, Stefan realized how video-making can bring people together, and allow for a shared experience.
The Power of Zoom
In this past year, where everything has been on Zoom, Stefan noticed how content can be captured much more easily. “People are meeting and having conversations, and it’s being recorded in a very intimate way, meaning: neither you nor I are experiencing the camera right now… we’re experiencing each other.”
From a filmmaking standpoint, Stefan shared the amount of work it usually takes to put a camera in front of someone while they still remain candid. The invisibility of the Zoom recordings has taken away the problem of the intimidating camera. Since the GAIA Journey,“we’ve really been experimenting, exploring, and prototyping with how we can leverage this ‘Zoom moment’ that we are in.”
The most recent example of leveraging this new potential are a series of facilitated group conversations from u.lab 2x participants (available on the Field of the Future Blog). These recordings were like a “well” of content, experiences, and sense-making. Yet many people probably won’t have the time to watch the full hour of raw footage…but “if we’re able to go in and pull some essential elements of that, which then give us a nice, quick deep dive into these things…it really helps the rest of the community have a sense of what’s going on.”
This is where the potential of video-making lies: allowing “a small spark of light move from one person to the next.”
For when such a large piece of footage gets cut down into its essential elements, the videomaker must become aligned with the intention, and impulse, of the storyteller. “It’s a fun, powerful, and sometimes challenging practice to be the space for what’s trying to emerge for that general video project.” Because generally, the intent of a story is to guide someone into a shared experience, where they have the same kind of mental, heart, emotional, or energetic state as the person who is transmitting the story. So, as the video-maker, “you’re setting up a pathway for the viewer to swim into and enjoy, or be scared by, or be warned by.”
One of the key questions that a video-maker must ask is: “how do we elevate what someone is trying to say?” Again, the video-maker must be able to align themselves with the storyteller, or that which is trying to emerge from, and through, the video.
Surfacing the Voices from the Edges of Community
Stefan’s driving intentions behind his video-making practices are, from the teaching perspective, to “make available tools, practices, teachings, and understandings, that help people connect to their truth and to who they authentically are.” This means, giving them permission to continue to explore that and become that in this life.
Right now, Stefan tells us, we’re coming out of an age where media has been run through a very central filtering system. The story of who we are as a community, and as a people, is coming from a narrow viewpoint. Interestingly, “social media starts to open that up a little bit.” But “we are still not at a place where we are really bringing in voices from the edges of community.”
Because, for a system to see and sense itself, we want to not only hear from those “who control the satellites, but from the perspective of people on the ground.” So Stefan is excited about surfacing these stories, and “helping people feel awesome about these stories!”
Sourcing Energy from Community
As an extrovert, Stefan sources his energy from the “joy of participating in a group, like PI, that has a massive shared intention.” Especially when that shared intention is built upon a foundation of shared curiosity, where “we’re not just fulfilling an agenda, but we’re discovering something together.” In this way, there’s “a collective leaning in from all parts, and this expectancy and this desire to create something wonderful.”
Stefan adds that he feels fortunate that he gets to work in such a way that his work is connected to his dearest intentions. This kind of work, and community, makes it so that “our experience of being human, what matters to us, what we feel in our bodies, what’s moving through our emotions…is all valuable data for the system and is part of the intelligence that we are all cultivating together.“
Creative Chaos, Humour and Structure
There is something about how Stefan manifests in his work environment, which blends rigor and seriousness with an exuberant sort of playfulness. He has an ability to swiftly bring structure, clarity and focus to complex situations whilst also speaking to sentiment and injecting humour into situations. When asked about where he may have gotten his playfulness from, Stefan remembers how once upon a time his grandfather made an unexpected quirky song-dance move that sparked in Stefan a certain “twinkle in his mind”. Also, he shares how the men in his family have always had a way of “keeping things silly and hopeful in the hard times” which has colored Stefan’s outlook and shaped his approach to challenges.
An inquiry into his capacity to organize things reveals that Stefan derives a lot of it from his personal response to creative chaos, as an “organic being who’s like spawning ideas, all the time”. The rigor and clarity he strives to bring into processes is for Stefan about structuring things “in a way that’s not leaving a mess for the next person who’s going to work on it, or for the incoming generations.” Stefan is very aware that he is “serving the continuum, serving the emerging future, and those next generations who are going to be tending to the emerging future.”
A Love for Star Wars
That a conscious, intelligent, but non-personal energy might be running through, and motivating, all things, is a thought that has fascinated Stefan since he watched Star Wars as a kid. “I used to study Feng Shui, to learn about Qi, or go to church and ask about the Holy Spirit…always trying to understand what this ephemeral force, that is running through all things, is,” Stefan says with a smile. He adds, “And how do we access, and align with, it? Like how the Jedi were aligned with The Force.”
Over the years, as Stefan connected more and more with the practices and experiences of Theory U and Presence, he realized how “when you start having The Force move through community and society, and you’re supporting where it’s wanting to go…” Stefan trails off with a laugh.
With a twinkle in his eye he adds: “On a large level, PI and Theory U is the closest I’ve found to a community of people dedicated to the living Force and how it’s trying to express itself through the emerging future.”
Looking Forward
Having felt this himself, Stefan notices how, when people come to u.lab or GAIA or even a Hub meeting, often a shift takes place in many people where they realize that: “Oh, I don’t have to give up.” Or: “Oh, I’m not alone.” Or: “Oh, there’s a way. This makes it possible.” Looking forward, Stefan is energized and motivated by trying to reach those people and letting them feel that “their life force, their intention, has a place and can be of service… and just giving permission to keep caring, and to find people that care as deeply as you.”
Video of the interview:
Thank you to Stefan for this interview, and the team of Randi, Rachel and Priya for interview, video & editing.
