Holding Hands with Casa

Dear Friend of Unity Through Creativity,

Over nine days in May, Unity Through Creativity led seven Singing Tree® Mural workshops with the Casa Auto Group based in El Paso, Texas. Casa Auto Group was started in 1969 by Wally Lowenfield, the grandfather of current owners Justin, Luke, and Ronnie. The Lowenfields have been expanding their company rapidly in the last few years, and Casa has grown to thirteen dealerships in El Paso and in Las Cruces and Alamogordo, New Mexico.

Wally started the company with a culture of putting people first. The goal that Justin, Luke, and Ronnie have is to deepen that culture in their established dealerships and to extend it to the stores that have come under the Casa roof in the last three years.

The Lowenfields asked Unity Through Creativity to bring the Singing Tree® Mural process to Casa to reinforce this process. We took our starting point from the vision Casa Auto Group has of itself: Casa is home, and home is heaven.

The Casa Singing Tree project began with a Lead Design Team (above) that included the three owners and twenty managers and executives. They selected the theme of trust, love, and community, designed the mural, and painted the background.

Then the five UTC facilitators took the mural to six locations for employees to add leaves, birds, stars—and for this mural, acorns, because the tree the Lead Design Team chose is the Texas live oak, a favorite of Wally’s, a tree that spreads its branches wide enough to include everyone beneath it.

We worked with 419 other employees over the next week. These are co-workers who in many cases had never laid eyes on each other before, as their shifts and departments gave them little chance for contact. These are people who had little idea of what is going on inside the person working alongside them. These are people who did not know that many others in their department or their store were facing the same challenges and sorrows that they are and share the same hopes and dreams.

The 442 people at Casa Auto Group who created the Casa Singing Tree of Trust, Love, and Community experienced the depth of the connection they have with each other, many for the first time. They began building the wider community of Casa Auto through stepping outside their routines and seeing each other not as sales people, as service people, as accountants or managers or owners—but as human beings. They had an immediate experience that their contribution to the mural and to Casa Auto Group is unique and essential, that each one has something to give that only she or he can give.

At Casa they say: Casa is home, and home is heaven—and for the people at Casa, heaven is holding hands, creating connections with each other, building their community on a foundation of love and trust.

Laurie and the UTC Team

Árbol Cantante de Casa de Confianza, Amor y Comunidad

Durante nueve días en mayo, Unity Through Creativity impartió siete talleres de murales del Árbol Cantante (Singing Tree®) con Casa Auto Group en El Paso, Texas. Casa Auto Group fue fundada en 1969 por Wally Lowenfield, abuelo de los actuales propietarios: Justin, Luke y Ronnie. Los Lowenfield han expandido su empresa rápidamente en los últimos años, y Casa Auto Group cuenta con trece concesionarios en El Paso, Las Cruces y Alamogordo, Nuevo México.

Wally fundó la empresa con una cultura de priorizar a las personas. El objetivo de Justin, Luke y Ronnie es profundizar esa cultura en sus concesionarios establecidos y extenderla a las tiendas que se han unido a Casa en los últimos tres años.

Los Lowenfield pidieron a Unity Through Creativity que llevará el proceso del Arbol Cantante a Casa para reforzar este proceso. Nos basamos en la visión que Casa Auto Group tiene de sí misma: Casa es hogar, y el hogar es el paraíso.

El mural del Árbol Cantante de Casa comenzó con un Equipo de Diseño, compuesto por los tres dueños y veinte gerentes y ejecutivos. Escogieron el tema de confianza, amor y comunidad, diseñaron el mural y lo pintaron.

Cinco facilitadores de UTC llevaron el mural a seis lugares para que los empleados agregan hojas, pájaros, estrellas y, para este mural, bellotas, porque el árbol que eligió el equipo de diseño principal es el roble vivo de Texas, uno de los favoritos de Wally, un árbol que extiende sus ramas lo suficiente como para incluir a todos los que están debajo de él.

Las 442 personas en Casa Auto Group que crearon el Árbol Cantante de Casa de Confianza, Amor y Comunidad experimentaron la profunda conexión que tienen entre sí, muchos por primera vez. Comenzaron a construir la comunidad más amplia de Casa Auto al salir de sus rutinas y verse no como vendedores, personal de servicio, contadores, gerentes o propietarios, sino como seres humanos. Tuvieron la experiencia inmediata que su contribución al mural y a Casa Auto Group es única y esencial, que cada uno tiene algo que dar que sólo él puede dar.

En Casa dicen:Casa es hogar y hogar es el cielo—Y para la gente de Casa, el cielo es tomarse de las manos, crear conexiones entre sí, construir su comunidad sobre una base de amor y confianza.

Laurie y el equipo de UTC

Selfless Acts of Love - Holding Hands

Dear Friend of Unity Through Creativity,

There is a reason that, when the Beatles sang “I Want to Hold Your Hand”, the world erupted. Holding hands is the archetypal, most fundamental act of selfless love, and the world was yearning for selflessness and love in the years following the tragedies of the Second World War.

Now we are at a moment in history when the humanity living in each one of us yearns once more for selflessness and love, when people all over the globe are reaching out for the hands of others. Showing people that it is safe and nourishing to take the hands reaching for theirs is the purpose of the Singing Tree® Project.

It is not only human hands that are reaching for ours: it is also the hands of Nature. Nature reaches out to give us what we need; it is also reaching out to receive what it needs from humanity. A painting of this mutual dependence and the possibility of this selfless act is captured in the 2019 Lemon-Cherry Singing Tree of Peace, designed and executed by grade school students in San Francisco.

The conflict over whether to choose a lemon tree or a cherry tree was resolved when the students saw that life is not an either-or proposition: both things were possible. That embrace of unexpected possibilities, that reaching out from one heart to another, is symbolized by the trees holding hands. 

People and Nature holding hands is demonstrated in this year's Branches to Roots project. Singing Tree® Mural Facilitator Fernanda Lugo created a funny video of this NOAA-funded project, which has the practical results of propating native trees through sucker growth. Part of the project was creating the Desert Willow Branches to Roots Singing Tree of Propagation and Regeneration 

You are invited to take another hand we are reaching out to you and join us on Wednesday, June 11, at 6 pm MT, for a free webinar, From Turmoil to Teambuilding: Three Outrageous Keys to Accelerating Trust.  As we develop our Center for Innovative Team Building, we have already started taking the Singing Tree® Project into corporate settings.  Employees, management, and owners have been enthusiastic about the results they are seeing.

Let us take the hands reaching out for ours—our world and our collective well-being depend on it.

Laurie and the UTC Team