Reflecting back on a recent iteration of 'Public Dreams'

  Public Dreams, Rituals and Prototypes was a two and half week residency investigating shared urban futures...addressing complexities of social engagement, collaboration, self organisation, personal development and wellness. An open, adaptable public space at B-Part Exhibition (Berlin) was created to support practices of personal embodiment, presence and the emergence of authentic stories. This was a space inviting the fullness of our human experience to somatically and socially sense together our futures. The hope was to be able to host a space of social inclusion and human diversity. A space for creative, artistic process while at the same time moving past the artistic context to involve and engage neighbours and other local residents at the level of simple everyday concerns of life. 

    The hope for such diverse and complex participation did not prove to be realistically possible within the two and half week time frame. Building community trust, consistency and reliability takes time. It was a constant balancing act between inviting people into a clearly programmed event space and the hosting of a more open, free and improvised space that would appeal to other forms of creative imagination (without pre-condition and limitation of usual social assumptions). 
    The main conclusion here is that of time. The choice of time in various possibilities of daily opening hours and the number of days made available for this project to evolve. A small group of repeat participants was starting to form community. People were committing resources, skills and time in very diverse personal offerings and inputs. The ‘open space’ supported the creation of various spontaneous forms. New emergent structures were being recognized and began to gain ground, creating new forms and prototypes of social interaction, ritual and meaning. It was a space becoming known and appreciated for it’s unique qualities and possibilities, but then so soon, having to close up. This is an idea that in the end deserves a 6 to 12 month process to come into full potential. For now we continue the work of exploring and sensing into futures together in one and two day events around Berlin. 

Public Dreams. Rituals and Prototypes....

If you're near Berlin there's still a week left in this residency....a space to play, with space, with time and space, space for time...

https://www.facebook.com/events/460728078015851/

It's a Small World... March 2019

 I’ve not felt inspired enough here to keep this blog updated, mostly because I don’t consider myself a writer. I prefer the realm of dreams, play, spontaneity and action which is a challenging world to keep track of and document for me beyond instagram or facebook. Anyways, in deference to staying connected to those of you beyond my day to day improvisations of life I am going to try and work a bit at what to me seems to be a chore…these few words…  So, here goes trying to catch up on some past years….

   The democracy word is a tough place to start any conversation and even tougher to keep it rolling, to stay inspired. It’s such a broad and general term. How then to keep it personal and relevant to each of us and in the case of my preferred learning style…keeping it embodied, physical or active? And to then keep such personal needs in balance with the social there must be ways to keep it light and relevant enough to stay moving and engaged for all. 

   To begin somewhere though…what if democracy was to be some kind of playful, personal DIY project for each of us? Taking an improvisational, experimental outlook we could agree to try (this democracy) thing out as a personal curiosity, something to initially amuse us and potentially engage us, ongoing and evolving (possibly to no end). No matter how small, obscure or obtuse our initial actions, we take them. We play with democracy, somehow staying connected to the simple and obvious for each of us within the larger, more complex backdrop. 

    We simply begin by creating a small circle of space within which to feel inspired enough to explore our own story, develop the language or process that somehow represent the dreams we carry about within ourselves. By slowly expanding this circle of meaning making, we develop a voice, we begin to be seen and heard by others also pursuing a similar path or process.

    Ok, so well enough for now. I’ll try to continue modeling what I’m talking about and feel inspired about myself. I’ve jotted down enough words for now. A circle of space is open…

slow democracy

Democracy (whatever that word means to you) seems to have lost it's meaning for most of us. It's still a great sounding word at times. Still having the potential to inspire within us some future ideal world that we'd all like to live in eh? But at this point it's in need of help and in need of reintegration with who we are as humans, as bodies as much as minds.

Another title for this quick post here might have been the body-mind of democracy. Returning democracy back to a more intuitive, felt sense that leads from within each of us somewhere. Being able to slow ourselves down enough to actually feel what that might be and where it originates from within our spirit and soul.

In order for this type of sensing and being to occur will require a reconfiguration and maybe even redefining of our public spaces. If we're to accommodate a slower (more sustainable, more authentic) body-mind approach of being together we've got some place and space design and curation work to do....     

improvising, learning how to learn...the global struggle...

      Though I won't agree with the authors conclusion this article does present a nice synopsis of the desire of a people to participate in the future of their nation. http://www.opendemocracy.net/rattana-lao/eight-years-of-thai-madness-make-sense-not-war
      What a daunting task and yet an utter inspiration to want to change an outdated way of organising and governing a people. Sure such a path can only bring chaos (and maybe some hell) with so many competing forces at odds with one another, but is this not the price of real innovation? To me as long as people are learning through it all, it can't be a wasted process. We're potentially talking a completely new form of democracy here.
    The only thing that stands in the way of such innovation and change is a people not learning how to learn. You can't head-butt your way into change (the hell in Syria for example). Yes action is necessary but it's not change solely on your terms, it's about making space, allowing time for the growth and evolution of ideas from all sides, a listening and hearing without attachment to outcome. Getting that right balance is not easy, but maybe the Thais have the right mix of ingredients to pull this one off.

a blog or a log?

When is a blog a blog

And when is a blog a log...

A big, long, decomposing thing

Idling, waiting, de-composing itself 

Finding a new pose for itself,

In order for new prose to emerge and declare itself?

a moment to catch up on the past year

      Toward the end of July last year it seemed that I was running out of steam trying to stay engaged in some sort of meaningful work or project in Seattle. Yes I was doing a little community development work for Sustainable Seattle but I was starving for real action, and preferably for something closer to 'home'...ideally my own neighborhood of Capitol Hill.
      I had been poking around as usual, going to community meetings, various open houses, meetings of arts organizations, developers, architects and city planning groups only to find myself feeling more and more beat down by what seemed the shear inevitability of what these people were all up to. This sense of 'powers that be' along with my inability to find any kind of 'voice' in the face of them, to find some way to contribute, be some small part of the solution, was getting to me...
      Finally at the end of one of these many meetings (what a bore so many of them were) a conversation with what happened to be a neighbor and our shared frustration of this mechanized beast of progress lead us to follow up with more discussion over coffee somewhere. We tried a couple of times to meet until I raised the stakes for the both of us by suggesting we bring our chairs and our own coffee to a street corner in the neighborhood.
      The simplicity and obviousness of this act sparked not only further meetings at that corner but also an active invitation for others to engage...to join in matters that only our local community had the wisdom to come up with any adequate answers or solutions to.

      This social setting that we created for two or more hours at a time, once, twice or more times a week at that corner sparked enough interest among people either walking by or being invited, to develop into a facebook group that we called 'stories from the corner' that went on through to the end of that summer.
      Simple, obvious and yet revolutionary for those of us who continued to show up for this cause with no name.

improvising...

improvisation often looks like nothing much going on...

...scratch, scratch, squiggle, squiggle....

...i'm just saying....

social improvisations back in seattle

After months on the road I'm finally settling back down to my Seattle life and working on a platform from which to continue my social experiments and improvisations. I'm currently on the look out for 'community space' here on Capitol Hill. Nothing can happen without a stage to work upon, a space cleared and ready, just like any artist has the studio.
An opportunity to help plan and program something in the empty space of a recently vacated business that's actually owned by a church has come across my path these past few days. The church is interested to turn the space to some sort of neighborhood benefit. I've made a short proposal for a multi-use 'community center' that will help 'facilitate and develop collective neighborhood knowledge, wisdom and resources'. It would have similar qualities (and more) to this share space in Santa Rosa that I recently found about http://bit.ly/c183Mk

The 'learning and social innovation space' that I envisage would try to strike the right balance between casual café-like, art gallery space (for spontaneous conversation to occur) and more organized or facilitated dialogue and learning to occur on an ongoing basis. I see room for co-working, hacker space and a partnership opportunity for some sort of adult learning extension or coaching institution to do their work there, maybe working with the Seattle Library System to push their edge of themselves http://www.infogramme.org/index.php/2010/02/25/le-coworking-un-modele-davenir-pour-les-bibliotheques/ ?
The co-working area would be a way to stimulate an interesting mix of opportunity for independently motivated freelancers and artists to find a way to meet with curious neighbors who have spare time and motivation to get involved with and benefit a worthy project or enterprise.

I see this as a project in learning and improvising just how to create environments that arouse and incubate people's curiosities, interests and commitments by tapping their inspirations, dreams and ideas...creating healthy spaces to seed and grow their (spiritual, physical and mental) awakenings and activities. I believe that if stories can be heard and the human journey shared, serendipities will develop and with them the building of strong local neighborhood sense of purpose and meaning.

With all our various internet and virtual technologies we seem well connected and yet these same mobile and global networks now contribute to some weakness in communicating and connecting face to face. There are big gaps in how we meet (especially at local, neighborhood levels) that cry out for quality physical space to bring together the learning that virtual worlds stimulate. At local neighborhood levels our abilities to communicate, to share talents, resources and strengths have some catching up to do, there's much potential between neighbors waiting to be developed...learning to truly communicate, collaborate and create who we are, sustainably, together.
Our various different ways of doing things, our differences in how we like to learn and find satisfaction from life around us are what keep us somewhat separated within certain social spheres and boundaries of work and play. In creating a 'multi-use' space, by 'mixing it up', throwing some of those differences into a bit of chaos, my thought is that some interesting dynamics (and hence innovations) will develop. Those who come to use the space, are stimulated by it's diversity of activity, taking bits and pieces from it all, will in the end generate enough flow to keep it going and then inspiring others to join in where they can. The strength (and challenge) of this space will be in it's ability to hold various opposing forces of diverse neighborhood energy...

some more useful links in thinking about this community learning and development stuff here....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifelong_learning

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coworking
http://www.theschooloflife.com/

http://www1.cpinst.org/

http://www.artofhosting.org/thepractice/

http://www.goodnewsgooddeeds.org/

http://www.themeltingpotedinburgh.org.uk/

http://motivespace.org/about-2/

http://www.schoolfactory.org/Main/HomePage

http://www.urbancraftuprising.com/about.html

http://rhizome.org/editorial/3281

http://catalystinstitute.com/vision/