Listen to co-founder Lane Clark share her story about starting Project Knotwork
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Lane Clark is an unschooling parent living in Marquette, Michigan where she and two friends started a very cool micro school called Project Knotwork. In this episode of the podcast, Lane shares her experience building out a community space that was designed specifically for self-directed project-based learning but in a unique way brings together community members, the arts, education, and a hardcore DIY attitude. You can find out more about Project Knotwork at https://www.knotworkstudio.com or on Instagram @projectknotwork.
Lane also shared her experience in the first issue of Novitas Magazine and you can read her piece, along with others, in that first issue. There are a dozen or so copies still available if you’d like to order one.
You can support this project and podcast by becoming a paid subscriber on Substack.
If you have a person or project who you think is doing really awesome work in their community, please recommend them by emailing me at kel@novitasmag.com.
Thanks for listening!
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Welcome to Novitas, a podcast exploring stories that show us how to live outside the capitalist paradigm towards collective liberation. My name is Kel Smith and I’m excited to be joined by Lane Clark to talk about Project Notwork, a self-directed project-based learning space and artist collective in Michigan. Project Notwork is an amazing example of folks coming together to build intergenerational community from the ground up. I hope you enjoy the conversation.
Kel: Do you want to jump in and start off by doing just a basic introduction?
Lane: Okay, so I am Lane Clark. I live in northern Michigan up on Lake Superior, and I am a parent to two unschooled children who are ages 13 and 10, and they have never attended school other than nursery school when we lived abroad. And we have been navigating creating community in unschooling since we returned back to the US six years ago. And one of the projects we landed on in the last year and a half is a self-directed project-based learning group called Project Network, which is learners from ages 10 to 15, 16, gathering together in a shared space in an adult-facilitated but led by them session-based group learning. So they have a theme and they choose where the theme will go and what will happen next, and myself and two other adults facilitating and support them in that, as well as a group of adults that share that studio, that are adult creatives who come and give them support and workshops and tools, literally sometimes physical tools that we don’t have, and also teach them skills that us as the primary three facilitators don’t have. So that’s my focus. right now with their self-directed learning, but of course every day is an adventure and we are figuring it out as we go.
Kel: Awesome. Is it a full-time program or is it like a certain number of days a week?
Lane: No, it’s not a full-time program. It’s one day a week. It’s on Thursdays. We are very lucky to have a pretty robust, one, a very large homeschooling community in general where we are and a pretty robust self-directed community. wide range of meaning. Part of the reason it’s only one day is because myself and other many other adults have been creating community in other ways for them throughout the years. So I was part of creating well a co-op of self-directed learners that does meet two days a week one time fully outdoor in the woods and one time indoor in a kind of space that’s rotating and in borrows basements of churches and things like that. and spend time in community with a much larger group of people. There’s, you know, anywhere from 30 to 50 people, you know, at our gatherings on that day week. Our library provides programming for our kids on Wednesdays where there are book clubs that are facilitated there. And then on Thursdays we’re at Project Network. So they have a kind of, in my opinion, full schedule, obviously. Not full by school standards, but… But pretty robust.
Kel: Very full by my family standards.
Lane: By my personal standards, full too, yeah, for sure.
Kel: That’s cool. So why do you think that there is this community that’s kind of come together where you live? It’s Marquette, right?
Lane: Yes, yeah, we’re in Marquette. That’s a really good question. And my friends and peer adults here, and I have discussed that over the years. I think there’s a couple of reasons. Where we live is physically very remote. We don’t have any city nearby. There’s no suburban kind of access to a lot of resources that might be available in urban or suburban areas. So when people move here, or stay here, either move here or don’t leave, it’s a choice. It’s like a very intentional choice. You can’t kind of access things accidentally. So a lot of the way people live is very intentional, whether that be their schooling choices, whether that be them being. somewhat off the grid, whether that be them being very like, there’s a lot of people very outdoor sport focused here. And that’s what drew them here. So I think living intentionally is a common thread of people I’m in community with in general, even outside of unschooling. And the piece about unschooling, I think one, I guess, very practically in Michigan, there are very few regulations around homeschooling. So just to put it plainly, there’s no testing. You don’t have to register with your school district. There’s nothing like that. So there is more freedom to do things in a self-directed way than there might be in other places In addition to that, there’s a very Midwestern kind of like live and let-liveness happening here There are more pointed school at home homeschooling communities here There are more specifically religious homeschooling communities here for sure. But outside of that, there’s a very eclectic group of kind of Everyone has maybe different motivations, whether that be that it began with, you know, kind of anti-establishment kind of libertarian thinking, whether that be more, I wanted a more natural rhythm to our day. And those people kind of come together and overlap in the ways that we share value, which is in children having autonomy over their time and over their interests.
Kel: That’s really beautiful.
Lane: Yeah, that manifests differently for all these families. And honestly, in Knotwork, we’re navigating that a little in terms of finding that my children specifically, who are part of the program, are very used to controlling their own time and having autonomy over it. We’ve also invited children that we don’t know as well and have a more school at home experience, and they are very disoriented by that freedom at first. And so that’s been a beautiful challenge for me as an adult to recognize like, Yes, we can form all sorts of loose and close bonds in community, but until we’re in direct relationship with kids and learners, we don’t really understand the impact of what they’re experiencing at home and how we can learn from that and also how they can learn from us. So that’s been a challenge, but also really fun.
Kel: Right, yeah. And I think a lot of spaces that I’ve at least make or break a space. So that’s cool that you’ve identified it and are dealing with it rather than trying to avoid it, which I think sometimes happens.
Lane: Yeah, one of my co-facilitators, her name is Amber, she’s an artist, she brings a really, and she’s a former educator, and she brings a really cool, intentional, philosophical point of view to things that sometimes my overachiever doer brain doesn’t pause on, and I appreciate that. We’ve had some interesting conversations recently as we’ve introduced new learners to our group who we weren’t in community with previously. And they’re all great and we’ve been enjoying it, but there is conflict is obviously a really wide ranging word. It’s not actual conflict in terms of anything unsafe, but it’s new tension. And we’ve been talking about like the way that having conflict can be a form of intimacy if you’re comfortable with conflict. It can be a way to… really learn more about people because especially kids, when they’re feeling some stress, that can come out as behaviors that in typical society, we want to stop or control instead of ask questions about. But when we do ask questions about it instead, you do see like a guard come down. It’s obviously not exclusive to kids, but I think in the way we treat adult to child hierarchy in our culture, we don’t tend to get curious, we get controlling. And that’s been a really nice reminder to me of the way that conflict can actually bring connection everywhere in my life, not just-
Kel: That’s what I was going to say. It feels like a beautiful representation of a lot of the challenges that us adults are dealing with, definitely post pandemic. As we’re all coming, we’re trying to come together from different lived experiences and different backgrounds. So I think that’s beautiful that you guys are exploring that with the kids, but also hopefully they can take that experience towards- the rest of their lives as well.
Lane: Yeah, hopefully we all can.
Kel: So you’ve got other like the is it a co-op? So you’ve got the co-op. What inspired you to start Project Notwork above and beyond what you already had going on?
Lane: Yeah, I know. Sometimes I ask myself these questions. You know, so as my kids have gotten older, they’ve been able to be more specific about. what is and isn’t working in our flow and in our daily life. And it’s been less about, when they’re younger, you’re kind of intuitively trying to follow their cues. But now they have lots of language. And my kids, as we came out of the more acute phases of the pandemic, were asking for some more structure in terms of not like evaluation of learning, but just like progression. So initially this began as a very kitchen table project where they were gathering with the families of the two other facilitators one day a week, a specific day we were rotating houses and they were planning projects and completing them together. You know, Amber’s children and my children built a board game that took them a couple of months. They did some building of marble runs. They did, you know, a few things like that took them longer, took them a little more planning but they really enjoyed. And then I just happened to be visiting a friend in San Francisco whose kids do attend school, but attend a project-based learning school. And as the universe does, you know, put weird things in our path that happened to be that in her education experience, my co-facilitator Amber was in relationship with the principal of that school. And we ended up in these conversations. And I started literally impulsive in the middle of the night when I don’t sleep text to… Amber and Jamie, our other facilitator, who are just parents that have similar-aged kids as mine, are similar in philosophy, but also have way different skill sets than I do. And I just was like, here’s the school I visited. Here’s what they’re up to. My kids are kind of wanting a little more anchor in some of their life. Is this something you think we could make? And they both just responded that night like, yeah, let’s do it. And we started some asynchronous conversations over Google Documents. And then we ended up going to just, we took ourselves on a little trip. sleepover in the woods with our kids. And we got out a notebook, I mean, a literal pen and paper, and wrote our kind of our philosophy. We thought about who might be up for the invitation in terms of people in our community, thought about pricing, which I know that the capitalism conversation is part of what you’re trying to get to, but how to make it accessible, but also affordable to. the space that we wanted as a dedicated space. That’s one thing different from our co-op. We wanted a space that the kids could actually feel ownership over, because I think that’s something that they miss from a school experience. One positive of school is just kind of this, like, this is our building feeling. And we also wanted to be able to have at least the goal of compensating ourselves for the labor of supporting our kids, but also other kids.
Kel: Yeah. Do you mind if I ask, what was the, you’ve talked about it a little bit, but like, it sounds like there was already something going on. with you and these families, and then it took this jump into being something more structured and organized. And what was the motivation to get it from casual hangouts to something like here’s our space, here’s our community, here’s our tuition prices, etc.
Lane: My motivation personally was my kids to start with in terms of them wanting that. And while I in our family at least, the philosophy is just sort of it’s year to year, kid to kid in terms of like whether we would investigate them trying school or not. I want to, I’m not anti-school in a dogmatic way. Like I understand why it exists. I understand why we need it still, even though we don’t like how it’s formatted. And I understand why there might be reasons some of my, you know, that either one of my kids, one in particular might be curious about it. And secretly, I want to make every opportunity for them to not feel that’s where they need to explore their needs, if possible. And I won’t stop them if that’s what happens. So like, but what can I do? On the other hand, like to zoom out from my own micro, you know, situation, I wanted to test what it means to be physically together in a way that is less chaotic than our co-op. I’m not using the word chaotic negatively there. I actually think that it is like, you would probably love it and some kids hate it, but one of my kids in particular really thrives there. It is, we are outside. Everything is made into a sphere. There is a lot of shouting. There is world building. There is team making. There is, you know, I think it’s really great for my kids. I think it’s really amazing that, you know, that our co-op has kids up through 18 who are still doing wild play and I love that and both of my kids in their own ways despite their very different personalities. We’re really craving some like start to finish completion and like understanding process and feeling a little bit accomplished in the way that I don’t want them to be attached to school like a sticker chart, but I do think like as a business owner and as a person in the world like, skills I want to give them are not memorizing dates, but I do want them to understand how a project works and what goes into completing something. And building an accountability is different than building in like punitive structures around arbitrary curriculum. And they were definitely craving that without those words. Even just like legitimately asking, can we have like a workbook? And I was thinking, nobody really workbook. What is it that you want? What do they want? So the reason to take it out of our kitchens and bring it to something else was because I do feel that like anti-excellence is something I’ve like made up and I joke about a lot, but I’m also very serious about which is like doing things that are important to us, doing them to the best of our ability, but also doing them in front of other people when they’re not fully done and they’re not perfect. I wanted to invite other families that were in community with to do that. we have a lot of relationship here that has given Amber, Jamie and I trust from other adults with their children and I don’t take that lightly. And I thought that my kids could benefit from that community and other kids could benefit from it and I’ve learned so much from it. So I guess the second answer besides my kids is just like having a more concrete exhibition of what unschooling is in our physical community for other people to see. and for other kids to enjoy. I think the space being physical was important. I also think, you know, part of our model that we borrowed from this school that I visited in San Francisco is that at the end of every session, we have a public day.
Kel: Yeah.
Lane: Parents can come, but we also invite the community. The building that we, the warehouse that we’re housed in is kind of a commercial space for artists and creative people. many of them come and support our kids. People from the community have started to come. And that’s another piece. Like sometimes when I think what can I do to bring the parts of school my kids might be missing into their life, it’s, you know, you get these concerts or you get these science fairs or you get, and I don’t again want that for arbitrary reasons, but it feels good to share something you’ve made.
Kel: Yeah, for sure. I was going to ask you because it does look like you guys have a connection with the, excuse me, with a larger community. not just them coming to your space, but you also going out into the world and out into community to participate in different spaces as well.
Lane: Yeah, you know, I have, Amber, Jamie and I have spent a lot of time learning about how to invite people to interact with us through this process. And we have like basically a standard operating procedure or like a set message to give to adults who want to come connect with our kids. That being said, we did make it an intentional part of that, that woods retreat we took ourselves on that we wanted to not be the only adults that our kids were connecting with. I think, again, when I’m thinking about what can I bring from school to real life that my kids might appreciate, I’m sure you feel that I may, well, maybe you don’t, but I have like teachers that are very dear to me in my memory of like being someone that encouraged me or understood me in a way my parents didn’t. I think when we’re talking about capitalism or systems at… dismantling in a positive way this isolation of a nuclear family is really important. And that’s one thing that school can in a way provide, which is like adults that kids trust that see them differently than their parents. I don’t see my kids in every single way, and that’s not my job. But I have to trust that there are other adults who can see them differently and who can bring other riches to their lives. So we live in a really, really cool community. There’s a lot of people doing really awesome stuff. And I… was really glad that Jamie and Amber were on board to create a space and a group that would invite them in and that they would invite us to their spaces. So that was an intentional decision. And we’ve been blown away by the reaction of adults who interact with our kids. Even though I’ve been doing this for 13 years, even though I have a certain amount of confidence in my kids in general and in what we’re doing as an experiment, You do get a little self-conscious sometimes being like, here’s 15 weirdos. Come talk to them. Weirdos in the best way. But like, sure. It’s like the homeschool stigma. Yeah, it is. Because they are absolutely not socially isolated. They are not, you know. kept from information. They’re not like, there’s many stereotypes. They do not fit. However, the weirdo. Like they’re dressed like a Wes Anderson movie on drugs.
Break: You’re listening to the Novatos podcast. And today we’re listening to Lane Clark talk about Project Notwork, a community-minded space for young people and creatives to come together and learn from each other. Project Notwork is about building community and experiencing alternative education outside the modern schooling system. It is designed to honor the needs of young people, breaking down barriers around adult-child hierarchies and dismantling the silos of education, life experience, and mentorship, creating a space built on respect. You can read more about Project Knotwork in the latest issue of the Novitas Magazine, a collaborative project exploring stories about how we might live in a post-capitalist society. You can find more about the magazine at www.novitasmag.com And now back to the conversation with Lane.
Lane: You know, one thing I’ll say that I notice very differently than some school kids I interact with is just like, they do not see adults as authority figures. They see them as peers and they’re very comfortable asking questions and they’re here.
Kel: That’s what I always say, like, whole school kids know how to talk to grownups. And I’m not sure if it’s just because they don’t have that, the relationships that are built up in a school environment, or if it’s because they are weirdos, like that just. You know, I don’t have those kinds of inhibitions, but it’s really cool to walk into a space and have other adults recognize that the kids are comfortable talking to them and being a little bit taken off guard by it, right?
Lane: Yeah, and it’s great because one of the things that I learned, you know, I sort of mentioned that we made sort of a standard operating procedure of how to invite people to connect with us is I genuinely say in our internet when we email people and say, like, here’s what we’re doing. Here’s how you could support us and support these kids in learning. I say, These children do not need a worksheet. They are not looking to be talked down to. They are asking.
Kel: Not taught, right?
Lane: They’re not. They’re not looking to be taught. They’re asking for you to share something you love, and then they might have questions. And they’re in. they’re in community with adults who welcome their questions. And so they assume that of the people who join our space. And we’ve just had a really great string of people being able to introduce. It’s like, I’m actually introducing some of these adults to being their own self-led learners and saying, like, Here’s what I really love. I’m really into mushrooms. I really love theater. And then the kids cling onto that. Because one… Because as we know, when you see someone sharing something they genuinely are interested in, it’s interesting.
Kel: Yeah, for sure. Especially for our kids who may not know anything about that. Like this is their first introduction to it. So seeing them see adults be passionate about stuff encourages them to be passionate about it as well.
Lane: Exactly.
Kel: I was going to come back. There was one thing I was thinking about when you were talking about the relationship between kids and adults in this space and taking it, the intention of taking it out of your kitchens and into a more formalized space where the kids… as adults we are very close to our children but we also know that the kids often will come out of their shells in different ways when they’re with different adults right and so that’s another thing that I really admire about what you’ve done with project not work is create that kind of environment where it’s not always the same parents and so that and find their space in different ways or find their groove kind of, their flow, whatever, in different ways with different adults based on interests and stuff like that.
Lane: Yeah, I think that’s been for me an important part as a parent. Even though I’m there every third week, I think it’s really nice to experience my kids through another adult. One thing we do is take a video of them at the end of every session. We ask, What did you do today? They pretend to be annoyed, but I think they like it. And one of the reasons that I find it so interesting is who they’re answering to. It changes how they answer. If Amber’s asking, if Jamie’s asking them, if we’re asking them the same question, but it changes how they answer. And that’s just been a fun little archive of their process, but also the kind of proof of like relationship dynamics being so… different and that being really important to like development of community and of connection.
Kel: For sure. I wanted to also cycle back. You talked a little bit at the beginning about some of the challenges around. having different people with different homeschool experience or maybe do you have any kids that are coming one day a week like from the school system or is it all homeschoolers?
Lane: No, so everybody at this point is a homeschooler. We have had, it’s funny you bring this up, I had an inquiry from someone last week who has a childhood be like in the end of elementary here which is fifth grade asking like could they come if they got you know them out one day a week. I for me it’s an absolute I’ve not been in the school system in the US, so I don’t know how flexible that would be realistically. In my mind, it’s completely reasonable, but of course I don’t really know. There are kids, a couple of kids, we have 15 kids right now, who are very much a school at home family. They’re on the curriculum. They’re really great kids, and they’ve actually pushed us a lot to think about how we… Assume things first of all, which you know isn’t usually that helpful as it turns out. And then how have we, in our own way, created this bubble for our kids, who are really self-directed learners all the time and are used to that? And then bringing in kids who learn differently even though they still don’t go to school has challenged our kids to find new ways to interact with peers. I’m really grateful for that experience. And the other thing that we started doing was in service, so when the public school here is on a, you know, teacher development day or whatever, it might be hosting play days in our space. Of course, that’s more kids in the space getting to enjoy it. It’s a warehouse so they can be, of course, that we have standards of keeping it together so everyone can respect materials. But it’s a messy space. We don’t have to be precious about it. And I really appreciate that. But also because we. The three of us genuinely do not believe that self-directed learning is something for homeschoolers only to explore. We also don’t believe it’s only for children to explore. And it’s been a mix of, we filled our play days every time and my kids will help facilitate. And it’s been a really interesting experience for them, but also for me to think about wider ways to talk about what we’re talking about that don’t immediately have people turn off their brains because they don’t homeschool. Homeschooling is almost beside the point of what I think you and I are talking about. It’s some way to access what we’re talking about, but it’s not the way. And little things, like when we hosted the play day, that I didn’t anticipate, which I should have. I know plenty of kids who go to school. And I went to school the whole time, and I liked it, or whatever I thought I did. They didn’t understand what I meant when I said, This is the table where we eat. We’re going to eat here. So for safety, we have allergy concerns and whatever. But whenever you’re hungry, you know. Just go eat. And like many kids, including one who is genuinely my nephew, came up to me and were like, I’m hungry now. And I was like, no, no. And I, that’s, and so now you can go eat, you know? And they were just like, right now? And I was like, really? Whenever you need to, yeah.
Kel: That’s funny.
Lane: Or a child who we had on one of our play days, some sewing materials. And they were like, I don’t want to do the other things. I just want to do this. I said, That’s great. And she said, kind of like, Well, what if I just want to do this today? And I said, That’s fine. And she said, What if I want to do it all day? I was like, yeah. That’s okay. And you and her sister—she was just kind of like, What time does this end? You know? And I was like, Oh, I just kind of forgot that even on their days off. when you’re used to a schedule, when you’re used to things having an end time, when you’re not actually used to being able to access flow state, which kids are actually so good at getting into. Um, you can’t; you don’t have that muscle built up. There’s places. I’m happy to be in a place where they could try to build that up.
Kel: Yeah, and I think even in our self-directed worlds as well, I think sometimes we forget that our kids are different in that respect, which some of them really love having that kind of structure of, okay, now we’re going to do this, and now we’re going to do this, and now we’re going to do this. I have one kid in particular who, if I give him open-ended options, kind of freezes because it’s too much for him.
Lane: Right.
Kel: And some people forget. I know a lot about the forest school where my kids go; they kind of have to remind them to eat throughout the day because they get so enraptured.
Lane: And especially if you get enough kids with things like ADHD or something else, you know, they will absolutely cruise through eating for sure. Yeah.
Kel: But yeah, it’s funny, my youngest. Every time he goes to school, I’m pretty sure every day he gets there, and the first thing he eats is his chocolate granola bar before he does anything else. And I love that there are spaces that allow him to do that and are comfortable with him during that. Maybe someday he’ll grow out of it. Maybe not. That’s okay, too.
Lane: Maybe not.
Kel: One question I wanted to ask you is: How do you feel like the project has changed from those initial days of sitting down at kitchen tables and imagining what it might be like? become?
Lane: Yeah, I mean, it’s changed in a few ways. I think, you know, we just had dinner a couple weeks ago to celebrate our first year, and we’re reflecting on that a little and planning for the fall. And I think it’s changed in… a couple ways that are the most important. I mean, one thing I don’t think we’ve had time to talk about yet is that there was a little pushback from some of our own community about what we’re doing, not because they don’t want us to do what we’re doing, but because, for the reasons of the literal physical constraints of the space as well as our comfort level, we’ve decided on a numbered cap for our comfort level because we’re facilitating alone each time and it can’t include everyone. has been hard. I understand that from their point of view, but I also feel that it’s been hard for them to be generous in understanding what we’re doing as a test of trying something and that we are also just people with capacity limits.
Kel: The feeling is that it’s become exclusive?
Lane: Yes. Yeah. You know, the other feeling being like that is, from our side of it, how do we continue to evolve? in a way that centres the children, centres their interests and their desires, but also as we want to make it more sustainable for us as facilitators who also are, all three of us work, all three of us parent, all three of us partner, all three of us whatever, that we have to plan ahead. And that doesn’t always allow for real-time pivoting on kids’ preferences. All of us have ideas all the time, and we’re the people who actually brought this idea to fruition and are doing it. And it is our responsibility to try to understand how that might be received in our community. And I think maybe we didn’t predict that well. And it’s a reminder that in this world of having to create communities where it’s not naturally encouraged and facilitated, we also have to respect our own capacity and limits and be okay with people feeling that way. And that’s been. That’s been. an important part of this conversation because while it hasn’t, I don’t think, overall harmed our community, it has just reminded us all that there are all these ways, even in this beautiful community we’ve built here, that because of capitalism and because of hyper individuality, we’re pushed onto these islands and forced to make different choices, and that’s been a little hard. And then the other, you know, piece about the pivoting is just that I’m not a purist in anything that’s against my nature, and I just kind of try to put me in a box and I’ll rip the box apart. But I think it’s just an interesting exploration for us of how to encourage kids to be self-led even when they don’t get to choose everything about an experience. And to me, that’s really hard for some people who are in our physical community here, but also in the online community of unschooling, who are a little more dogmatic about autonomy. But it’s also me trying to bridge the gap in the real world, where we’re all looking for more autonomy all the time. and we live in systems and situations where we can’t control every variable.
Kel: So the balance between autonomy and living in community with other people—that’s a lot of variables.
Lane: Living in community with other people and living in systems we might not agree with but that we can’t exit.
Kel: Right.
Lane: So that’s been a little place for us to give ourselves grace. You know, we’re planning ahead for the fall and the winter, and the kids give us input, but they can’t control every aspect because, one, some of them may not continue, and two, you know, their interests change so much because they… are in a more fluid part of their lives. Whereas we’re like, we have to also pay this rent; we have to also get people to agree to support us, and they have schedules. And then within that being, like, okay, this isn’t exactly what you wanted; what can we make it into from here?
Kel: Right. And that piece at the beginning that you were talking about as far as your kids having that desire to have that kind of continuous flow of a project that starts and finishes. And that can be challenging sometimes because you get halfway through the project and then you’re like, I’m not digging this. I want to go in a different direction. But there are real values to seeing it through to the end. So again, the balance of autonomy and personal choice with the commitment to complete a project.
Lane: And again, we do have some membership agreements that we send to the parents when they’re looking into it and making a choice, which is about, like, we do expect engagement. We do expect participation. So if this is something your kid may not want to do, please don’t send them up against their will. Because that is now, are there going to be days where a kid doesn’t feel like doing something? Yeah, of course they’re a person. But in general, we want it to be like a choice they made because those are the parameters of that session that we decided.
Kel: Yeah.
Lane: And within that, they could choose any topic they wanted. There was no limit. So that’s where we’re looking at the self-directedness meeting the project parameters. We did a session in the winter that was for 10 weeks, and half of it was making zines, and half of it was making a podcast episode. And the goal of that, obviously, was the project completion piece and also some skill building around those. There were some very specific technical skills there that they were working on. And when I tell you that we were down to the wire, on our expo day, where we were inviting the public, we had kids finishing their podcast recording. I’m uploading it to Spotify as people are going to get in the door. I’m printing out QR codes. We laughed about it later, a few days later, because we were just all sweating. That is actually how a lot of projects end.
Kel: I was going to say that sounds pretty accurate in the real world. I feel like all your way through university, it’s like, I have six weeks to write this essay, and the night before is when you’re finishing it. So that sounds pretty accurate.
Lane: Yes. And I think we were balancing. We had a conversation about it as adults later, where we were like, What’s real? What’s procrastination? And what’s the process? Some of their procrastination was because they were genuinely not ready. And they needed to get to this point. And then they needed this time of pressure. And not trying to shame them for not being ready, but also trying to help them get a more real sense of time, which you don’t have as a child, which is great in terms of building in plans for things going wrong, not affecting everything to be smooth. So we laughed about it because, on one hand, we were like, OK, how do we make our next arc not end like this? And there’s some level to which it’s always going to end like this.
Kel: Yeah, for sure. And because you are creating an environment that mirrors the real world, And when the kids have that kind of control and decision-making power over the process, I guess the good kind of chaos is there, and the bad kind of chaos is there as well.
Lane: They’re there together, for sure.
Kel: Yeah. Do you want to share one or two big highlights?
Lane: You know, I think for us, the highlights have been, you know, some of the more, you know, maybe camera-worthy moments. We have all agreed that the kids and the adults like the feeling when you finally get to the expo day, where we get to invite people into our space physically and see what they made. Even when we’re, you know, just talking about the chaos that leads up to it, when it hits three o’clock, which is the time we always start the expo and the doors open, there is kind of this just like joy and excitement of kind of like bringing someone into your clubhouse or getting to show, you know, getting to show like your project off. You really can’t beat it, and I will just say that Amber and I have both reflected that our co-facilitator Jamie is like an expert at bringing us into that feeling after we might have just had a really chaotic couple of hours preparing for it. Jamie is just this like a living bubble, and she is just really happy and full of sunshine when you need it, and she just gives this really welcoming feeling and brings the kids into that. You know, that joy of hosting when you want to host—that feels really good. So those are just highlights for me of, like, you know, after our first arc, like having people in our space for the first time, after our solstice arc, where we did a very intentional, like community invitation where people really joined us, we had community come and bring musicians and do, you know, we did this really cool solstice spiral and just feeling really the kind of magic that can come from inviting people into a space, but not expecting anything perfect to happen to our most recent one where the kids created, wrote, created, and produced a play themselves, which was in a truly three-week period, which meant three meetings only, was so fun because their feeling of accomplishment was like coming out of them. Those are, you know, kind of scrapbook moments of accomplishment. But I think some of the other ones are just, honestly, for me. It’s been really exciting to see my kids see me make a project and witness the work that goes into it. My paid work, which, you know, pays for our groceries, is sort of invisible to them. They kind of know what I’m up to, but they’re like, She’s over there on her computer. So having them be part of seeing Jamie and Amber helps me build something physical and also invisible in the community. One of my daughters makes the reels. They’ve helped me write the emails, you know, just kind of seeing what goes into again that real-life thing of starting a project and completing it and all the invisible work that goes into that, and then to connect to that is that it’s given me a new type of relationship with Jamie and Amber. You know, I’ve known them both for a decade, but you get to really see the way their parenting that I always experienced kind of alongside them can support my children and our community as a whole. I actually just got goosebumps. It just makes me really proud of them. And also just reminds me, you know, when we were starting the studio, one of our themes was that we can mine our own community for gold. We don’t need outside experts and, you know, fancy tools to make our own community better. We… We have been able to, you know, mind ourselves in that way and provide that support to our kids, but also, you know, all these other people from, you know, local farms, like, you know, local startups. We have had someone come and support them to make podcasts; someone taught them how to do hand lettering for zines. We’ve been able to just show our kids who’s in community with them when we’re out on the street, and they have all these ways to recognize other adults that have supported them. It just… I’m really proud of us for that, honestly. I’m from the Midwest, so it’s hard to say that, but I am proud of us.
Kel: That’s awesome. If other people read your article or listen to this podcast and are inspired and interested in starting something similar, would you have any words of encouragement or, like, a laundry list of what kind to get started?
Lane: Yeah. You know, I think I would say. At least from my point of view, where I am a non-shy introvert, which is how I would describe it, it’s okay to start small. The year we spent doing this between our kitchen tables was not time wasted. It gave us a lot of direction, data, and confidence, and it gave our kids a really cool energy and starting point. So I think sometimes it’s hard. You know, because even me, like, we have this project going and we feel really proud of it, but I look at people that can do it every day of the week and people that can serve 30 kids instead of 15. And you know, there’s always a way to think I could do this bigger, I could do this better. But I think, you know, even when I was writing the piece for you, like literally these tables that we took sometimes off the side of the road are a metaphor for how simple it can be, and that the simplicity does not necessarily… correlate with the impact. I would also just say from a very practical level that, and the piece we learned a little bit from having to navigate within our larger community is that it’s okay not to be able to make something that works for everyone. I do want to have a bigger impact on our community, and I do want to be part of a conversation in our culture about self-directedness because I think it has a lot to do with ways we’re going to disentangle ourselves from systems that are harmful. However, I… I also know that right now, in this season of my life, my kids are my main focus, and that might not always serve the largest number of people or have the biggest impact on the community. And as people who want to be part of change, I think that can feel stressful sometimes. Like, am I doing enough for everyone? No, probably not.
Kel: You never really can, right? But, right. And so, like that small number of people can sometimes be more meaningful.
Lane: Yes, and like the learning I’m doing in this smaller way, I think it will be a way that I can support more people when my kids are more independent and maybe don’t live with me or maybe don’t need me in the facilitation of their day-to-day lives in the same way they do now. But I also want to not underestimate as cliche as this. Isn’t it pains me to even say that we teach our kids that things can be different than we did? It is a butterfly effect of some kind. We do not know what kind. And we don’t really know how big, and it’s kind of irrelevant, and it’s again about the anti-excellence of not needing perfection; I don’t need my kids to have a perfect childhood. I don’t need them to have, to love everything about not going to school. I don’t need them to ever, to not ever go to school. For this to have been a worthwhile way to spend our time together, I do need them to understand how much I trust them to make choices for themselves. And… from that maybe affect other people that they want to affect and connect with. So being generous with yourself about your capacity when you’re raising children is important. And there’s a reason why we get to a point of being elders in community and we have more time for supporting people. But we’re just like not there yet and that’s okay.
Kel: I feel that very much. Thinking about all the ways that I wanna get out into the city and I wanna be a part of things. also remembering that I have this very specific role that I need to fulfill for the next, you know, five to 10 years kind of thing. Maybe not that long, but for the time being, kind of holding my horses and remembering.
Kel: Yeah, and it’s funny because it’s very much like, you know, I don’t know about you, but in my experience, like a lot of the parents and families I’ve connected to through self-directed learning are absolutely former top students who… were very burnt out on their own life experience and don’t want their children to have to experience that. And when we then start to unconsciously impose that perfectionism on the way we’re doing this.
Kel: Right, on self-directed education.
Lane: Policy-making perfect life, that’s a really tricky moment you find yourself in. So just giving people permission to do what they can with what they have and not feel inadequate about it in any way they need to. But I also would… The last thing, I guess, if it was a laundry list is just to not feel you have to do it all. Asking for help and telling the community whatever that means, that means that 50 people around you means that’s a thousand people or whatever, what you’re doing. I think I’ve been surprised at people’s enthusiasm for it and what time and resources they’re willing to give even if it’s like they think it’s nothing, oh, it’s just an hour. That’s huge to these kids and to me. So Sharing what you’re doing and accepting help or accepting expertise is really important. It’s part of this piece of getting away from the silos that hyper individualism and capitalism put us into.
Outro: Thanks for listening to Lane Clark on the Novitas podcast, talking about Project Knotwork, a self-directed project-based learning space in Marquette, Michigan. Lane is one of three founders and facilitators at Project Knotwork. You can find out more about the space on their website at knotworkstudio.com or on Instagram @projectknotwork. This is the first podcast episode in a series that interviews the contributors to the first issue of the Novitas Magazine. You can read Lane’s story along with others in the magazine, available from the website NovitasMag.com. Stay tuned for more episodes coming soon by subscribing to the Substack at novitas.substack.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, please consider becoming a paid subscriber on the Substack.
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