I am shooting a whiteboard, time-lapse, video this week for World Outreach church in Murfreesboro.
Enjoying collaborating with my friends Mark Demel, Kelly Dolan and David Vosburg!
It feels like old times shooting with Kelly and Mark in our old studio!
To all of my creative partners, friends and colleagues, I sincerely hope this holiday season is one of hope, peace, joy and love.
Here are a few of my favorite photos from Smashing’s photo contest “holidays around the world”. To see the collection go HERE.
Michael Novelli and I are heading to Atlanta on Friday to the National Youth Workers Convention.
We are teaching a session together entitled: Story, Experience, and Collaboration: New Approaches to Youth Ministry For more info click HERE.
Let me know if you will be there and would like to grab coffee!
We wanted to let you know about some exciting changes happening at IMAGO over the next month.
In the nearly 7 years IMAGO has existed, we have consistently asked ourselves what it is that we are most passionate about, and how we can best serve the organizations we partner with. That process has continually led us to get clearer on what IMAGO is about: partnering with world class, world-changing organizations in order to provide the most creative events and media possible.
As we’ve gotten clearer about the increased focus of IMAGO, I (Kelly) have also personally gotten clearer about my own future. For many years, I’ve felt a strong desire to work within the film & television industry, producing creative media within the world of entertainment. This passion probably goes back much further, to the days when my dad and I would often spend a weekend creating stop motion and special effect films on his old Super 8mm camera!
So, at the end of August, I will be leaving my position at IMAGO in order to pursue this life-long dream, and Mark Novelli will become the sole owner of IMAGO.
I couldn’t be more excited! Not only for myself, but for Mark and for IMAGO as well. The time Mark and I have spent talking about my transition away from IMAGO has provided some wonderful conversations about the role we believe IMAGO can uniquely play in the organizations it serves. Not only do I think IMAGO won’t miss a step, I actually believe this process has been an important step forward for IMAGO and its ability to serve our clients.
My departure will have very little impact on the services and partnership IMAGO provides. Mark and I have been extremely fortunate to work with a broad and talented group of people on a regular basis who have helped IMAGO produce many of the media and marketing campaigns I have helped oversee during the past 7 years. Those folks will continue to serve IMAGO, and provide these same incredible services. I, too, look forward to continuing to contribute to IMAGO projects from time to time in the future.
It is of course with some sadness that I leave. I will miss connecting with you as regularly as I have, and I will miss being a part of the day-to-day work IMAGO does. Launching IMAGO and co-leading the company with Mark was a dream that he and I shared since our time in college together, and the past 7 years have been extremely rewarding for both of us. I am grateful for our partnership at IMAGO, but even more so for our friendship, which will continue for a long, long time.
If you have any questions, or want to know more about the future direction of the company and how IMAGO might be able to more fully serve you and your organization, please contact us.
With Many Thanks and Much Gratitude,
Kelly
In a few weeks, we will be moving into a new studio space. Data cables are in, electrical is in place and drywall started yesterday. We are so excited!
For those of you who are interested, here is a a little more information about the space:
We are excited that the build-out is underway for our new studio space! We have loved our current spot – but while filming for the Zondervan Story Project we discovered a space that we liked even more. It’s just 2 blocks away from where we are now in downtown Elgin, IL. The most exciting part of the new space is that we got to custom design everything about it.
We’ll be moving in this fall and will keep you posted on the progress.
The clip above is a photo highlights video of our time at MERGE last week. We showed it Saturday morning in our final gathering together. Watching students and leaders respond to the video was a lot of fun, and instant nostalgia was definitely in full effect.
Every day of MERGE is packed with interconnected experiences from the time students wake up until the time they go back to the dorms at night. We’ve found that it’s really important to give them moments throughout the day to simply stop and reflect on what they’ve experienced over even the previous few hours. But it’s for more than nostalgia’s sake. At MERGE, we tried to help students become more aware of those moments in each day where they found themselves wrapped up on God’s amazing story, or made a real connection with God, learned something new, or heard from God in a specific way.
Then, we had the joy of sitting back and listening to students share those moments with each other. Some students used art to share. Others wrote spoken word pieces. Others simply wrote a letter to God, then read it for all of us.
For every image we captured at MERGE, and for every moment a student shared with us, we know there are countless more moments where God was at work in students’ lives.
We are grateful to have witnessed some of those moments, and to have been a part.
Tomorrow, we head up to Cornerstone University with Michael Novelli and the rest of the team for MERGE 2011. Students and leaders will arrive Monday of next week, and we’re so happy to have a mix of new and returning groups joining us. As we’ve said on the blog before (and pretty much any time we talk about it), MERGE is one of our most favorite things we do each year.
One of the main reasons is that MERGE is a chance for us to take all that we are learning about narrative, experiential learning and creative communication, and use that learning to inspire us to try new things, new ways of learning and gathering. It’s the kind of stuff we think about and help other organizations with year round. But at MERGE, we get to personally be with student ministries for a week and do everything we can to help them truly experience God’s story, and find themselves in that story.
Another reason MERGE is a highlight for us is that the entire week is shaped by the students themselves. We don’t have a central communicator for the week. No one tells students exactly what they’re supposed to learn. Instead, we provide a wide range of creative experiences and a learner-centered environment where we trust God will speak directly to students throughout the day. As they go through the day, we have specific times when students share with one another what they are learning and how God has been speaking. In doing so, the students become the teachers of one another.
It’s really an amazing thing to watch, and we couldn’t be more grateful to be a part of this event!
You can keep up with us throughout the week here, and on the MERGE Facebook page, or by following us on Twitter.
We’re very excited to show you our new updated gallery on the IMAGO web site. On it, you can find samples of a lot of the web, print, video and event planning work we’ve done recently. In the training/consulting section, you’ll also find a description of the ways in which IMAGO comes alongside organizations to help them in areas like marketing & social media, creative brainstorming and planning, re-thinking teaching methods and learning models, and a whole lot more.
We’re so grateful for the work we’ve been a part of over the past 6+ years, and we’d love to find ways to serve you and your organization in the future. Let us know!
