Oh, how quickly Summer Institute approaches!
Welcome to you if you are perusing our program brochure for the first time, and Welcome Back if you have been eagerly waiting since last summer to hear information about this year's gathering! Your Planning Committee has been hard at work since early last August as we build another fantastic week of Summer Institute (SI) magic for 2013.
We are so thrilled to have Rev. Art McDonald returning to the Ohio Meadville District to join us as our Theme Speaker for the week. We will explore Social Justice as a Spiritual Practice: “A Central UU Path” with him during his morning theme talks, and will carry the theme through the week in many different pieces of our programs.
As you explore this brochure, we hope you will begin to get even more excited about our rapidly approaching week together in the hills of Gambier on the beautiful Kenyon College campus. We have worked to build a great slate of interesting seminars, workshops, and evening programs. ?ou will find some intellectual opportunities, some creative activities and spaces, lots of music and performance opportunities as always, and plenty of physical activity. You may even wonder what's new this year, and you will find many new things – including kickball!
Our Youth and Young Adult program planners have been hard at work this year as well, bringing all of their energy and experiences to their monthly meetings. The Planning Committee has found that it gets easier and easier to get excited about the things we're working on as we touch base with our younger planners each month. They have put together some really great plans for SI youth and young adults.
We are very excited to share this year?s gathering with you – and look forward to greeting everyone in a few short months so we can all kick off our SI magic together!
Alison Reed
SIPC 2013 Chair
 2013 Brochure.pdf | [ ] | 5384 Kb |
Greetings, Summer Institute Friends!
Here we are with just under 100 days to go until this year’s Summer Institute Magic really begins. Are you excited yet? If not, you should be soon. Registration opens next weekend on Sunday, April 14th. The brochure will go up on our website (www.omdsi.org) around Friday, April 12th, and you’ll see a handful of printed brochures and some snazzy new posters appearing in your local congregations that Sunday. This year you will even be able to navigate directly to our website and brochure with your smart phone and the QR code on the poster. I hope you plan to join us for Social Justice: A Central UU Path.
OMD Summer Institute 2013 is bringing a few changes to our campus experience at Kenyon as we will be sharing the campus with two other conference groups, both larger than we have shared space with in the last many years. Some changes that our community will notice the most include a few dorms and campus buildings that we have used in the past that will not be available to us this year. Please know that throughout Summer Institute’s rich and magical history of more than 30 years we have met many obstacles in this same vein and we have adapted, grown, and thrived through them all. (Who remembers two years of eating in the old gymnasium down the hill at Kenyon?) This year, we do not have access to three dorms that have been central in our housing plans previously: Old Kenyon and Hannah Hall on South Campus, and McBride Hall on North Campus. Additionally, Ascension Hall is not available to us this year. This means our children’s RE classes are moving to new “homes,” as well as our Youth program participants and many families who have likely stayed in the same dorms for several years.
“Kenyon gives us the space, but it’s us that make it sacred.” These are the words of one of our SI Planning Committee members, spoken during a recent meeting. We are engaged in active conversations and planning with some new Kenyon staff about the changes mentioned above and our community’s needs. We are extremely focused on maintaining intact residential communities at SI that have evolved over time. We are taking into account accessibility and mobility concerns for our community, as well as safety for every member of our community. Many of you may wonder when you will know where you are staying this year. Most likely, not until the day you arrive and check-in as we are still in the planning stages for all our new accommodations. This year’s SI Magic will happen, and your Planning Committee is feeling it already. We are becoming excited about these changes while we are working on solutions, and we thank the Youth Panel for their shared conversation and ideas about these changes. Great ideas have a way of energizing great people. We have begun to vision some new concentration in our community presence at Kenyon that will very likely enhance the experience we have all come to love so much. I would ask that everyone joining us this year know that changes are happening, and trust that we are working very hard to jump-start the magic. We can’t wait for everyone to arrive on July 14th, when we will attain a new level of Maximum Magic!
The 2013 Summer Institute Planning Committee is so excited about this year that we have begun some of our planning for 2014 and we’re thrilled to say that we already have exciting program news to share during SI this year!
I hope to see you on July 14th. Blessings and Magic to all until we meet in Gambier.
Alison Reed
OMD Summer Institute Planning Committee
Chairperson 2013
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Meg Riley used several resources in her talks at OMDSI 2012. Here they are organized by day:
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