Hi folks: Bowen Island, off the west coast of Canada is where I live and we are at the end of day one of a two day open space community dialogue on how to make our little village, Snug Cove, an inviting place to live, work and play.
We are really blessed to have with us here Michael Herman who opened the space today, and Avner Haramati from Israel who is visiting and giving us good advice and contributing some lovely stories and sorting through what of all of this he might take back to Israel. I love it that we have that energy supporting our little village planning process. We had a little more than 20 people in the circle today and issues ranged from traffic problems (a big issue, as Snug Cove is also where we load our ferry a new marshalling system has been recently imposed upon us) to supporting self-employed people in the local economy to seeing the Cove through a child's eyes, to writing and mapping stories of Snug Cove onto an aerial photograph and soon to the digital database at http://www.bowenisland.info. We opened space in the heart of the Cove on a lawn behind the little cottage that is used to support lifelong learning on Bowen Island. We used clothes pins to stick our issues to a cedar hedge. We have been writing up proceedings on poster board for use at our big community festival on August 23rd where others will read and add to them. We'll slowly have the proceedings living at the wiki space attached to the website of the Ashoka Institute for Community Practice, where you can read more about the event (see http://www.chriscorrigan.com/aicp/snugcove.html) Having both Avner and Michael here is a treat. Avner and his family gave a talk on Wednesday night on his work in Israel and about 20 people came out to hear that. We're off in a half hour or so to a local Shabbat service conducted by a visiting rabbi, and held here to welcome Avner and Sarah and their girls to Bowen. So it's good times here...engaged deeply in local thinking and talking about how what we are doing might have some application in Jerusalem and Chicago and Vancouver and elsewhere. Feeling really strongly at the moment that I am living in the think globally, act locally mindset. Cheers, from Bowen. And more later, if I get a lull in enjoying myself! Chris --- CHRIS CORRIGAN Bowen Island, BC, Canada http://www.chriscorrigan.com [email protected] (604) 947-9236 * * ========================================================== [email protected] ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of [email protected], Visit: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html
