Children know that failure is part of life. No one ties his or her shoes perfectly on the first attempt.
Little by little, we improve; tying a shoe, impossible at the first try, soon becomes easy enough that we don’t even have to think about it. Failure, never comfortable, was necessary to get from there to here.
But we get a little older. Failure, always frustrating, starts to become embarrassing. Mortifying, even. So we avoid it. Can’t sing? Just turn down that karaoke invitation. Can’t dance? Don’t try. Thus the walls of the world, so distant when we were young, begin to close in on us.
Brad and Kristi Montague, authors of Fail-a-bration, want us to push back against those walls. Their debut exhibition, We Hope You Fail Better, will grace Saugatuck Center for the Arts November 9th through May 16th. Taking place 1 PM to 4 PM on November 9th is “Fail-a-bration,” an event meant to encourage all of us to fail, whether toddlers, oldsters, or anyone in between.
“We wanted to have a big community celebration for all ages,” said Whitney Valentine, Director of Education and Exhibitions. “Fail-a-bration” will represent SCA’s first time using all the spaces in its building; each space will have multi-sensory engagements designed to drive home the exhibition’s message in as fun and memorable a way as possible.
There will be an outdoor obstacle course for bicyclists, in which participants are encouraged to (safely) fall. Attendees will have an opportunity to participate in karaoke, except that the lyrics to the dozen songs on offer—classic, recognizable songs—will have been changed to be about silly failures. In another room, you can write a letter to your self about a time you experienced failure. The event’s been designed thoughtfully, providing a variety of options, some loud, some quiet, in order to appeal to everyone.
From 3 PM to 4 PM, the Grand Finale, featuring music, stories, and more, will take place. The Montagues will host a special address, sharing stories of their own failures. In recognition that not all children can sit still in a theater for an hour, audio from the event will be piped throughout the building: one example among many of the thoughtful attention to different stages of life that the exhibition is paying.
The exhibition itself pulls back the curtain on the creative process, revealing the bumpy, trial-and-error process by which a picture book is made, including through preliminary sketches, animated shorts, and papier-mâché sculptures.
But it’s more than that, too. An 800 number will be available for people to leave messages about their own failures, or to provide encouragement. Many of those messages will be made available for listeners, a reminder that, while our failures can cause us to feel cut off from others, we’re in fact part of a larger community of people trying to get things right. While this is the only exhibition of its kind currently planned in Michigan, there will be others taking place across the country and even the world.
In talking about the importance of the exhibition, Valentine pointed out that nearly 1 in 3 children have anxiety. “We wanted to provide a platform for the fact that failure is crucial.” There are safe ways to try new things, she points out, one of which is learning to recognize that failure is not just not the end of the world, it’s a positive thing. “We all have to remind ourselves of that,” she said. “Kristi Montague herself will tell you she’s a perfectionist.” Brad Montague has described how he used to see mistakes as catastrophic.
“I fail almost every day,” Valentine said. “I’ve missed appointments.” Parenting, too, can be a common source of anxiety about failure. “Haven’t we all promised we’d be different kinds of parents than we ended up being? You want to show up a certain way, be a certain way, and it just doesn’t happen.” This can be devastating. In these instances, she said, the example children set is one we should follow. “Some kids think nothing of saying, ‘Look, I peed my pants!’”
The Montagues’ hopes for the exhibition, and the SCA’s, extends beyond the hope that people will have a great time. It’s that those people will return to their communities and allow themselves permission to fail, and then to fail better: to try new things, and to discover they love them.
Even when you fail, Brad Montague has written, “you are not a failure. Failure is an experience, not an identity.” And it doesn’t have to be catastrophic, or embarrassing, or traumatic. As We Hope You Fail Better and “Fail-a-bration” remind us,” it can be a blast.
We Hope You Fail Better
Saugatuck Center for the Arts
Nov. 9-May 16
sc4a.org
