The introduction of Rope Bottom School at Studio Kokoro has been received really well, not only by attendees but also internationally on social media taking part in shaping the event content by responding to questions and stories.
The idea behind rope bottom school is to bring all voices of rope together, so you can join in if you are a bottom, top, switch, self suspender, and admirer or finding out if you are even interested in rope. Everyone is welcome as long as the focus remains on the bottom side of rope.
The inaugural Rope Bottom School event was free to attend as it was more of a collaborative discussion through the day and together shape what the community would like from a rope bottoming school. I asked attendees to bring ideas, their voice, we I broke the day up with breaks and some exercises in between discussion. We finished by doing some bottom focused lab time.
Some suggested topics were to look at things like, communication, vetting, personal responsibility, discuss problematic ties, what skills are valued for rope bottoming and how Rope Bottom School could support with providing that.
We put ideas on post it notes (which are starting to become a feature at the studio) for what everyone would expect and hope to see on a Rope Bottom School Curriculum. I have already created a lose plan of a curriculum before this event but wanted to open this to the community to ensure I am meeting expectations and desires.
We picked some popular topics from the final list of posit it ideas to work through during the workshop, which I facilitated with support from the Kokoro Team.
You can see some of the points captured in the file below, please note there was a lot of discussion in the room around each of these points too, so this is not a complete representation of what was captured on paper.
Rope Bottom School – 18th January 2020
To round the day off, I asked everyone ‘What drives them, what to they pursue and what do they want rope to bring to the surface? These questions we’re inspired by Natasha of Discover Kinbau and Miho Ikeda.
In the file below you will see some of the responses.
I would love to hear comments below…
What drives you in rope? What are you looking for? and what do you want brought to the surface?
I have not put up the final curriculum for the year for Rope Bottom School and I definitely think the combination of what I would like to offer, some guest speakers with the ideas from the class we will have a couple of years worth of classes alone.
I am excited to see this develop and would love to hear your thoughts….
Rope Bottom School Inaugural Event 18.01.20