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.
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....
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://www.artofhosting.org/thepractice/
http://rhizome.org/editorial/3281
http://catalystinstitute.com/vision/
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