Victoria, B.C.

I’m doing some work in Victoria at the moment. I am co-leading the Aboriginal engagement process for the Victoria Urban Development Agreement, and today we held a focus group on physical and environmental factors for success. One of the key ideas that has come forward this week has been the idea of creating a First Nations cultural precinct in Victoria, like a Chinatown for example, or more like the Jewish neighbourhoods around The Main and St. Urbain Street in Montreal, except a centre for First Nations business, services, community and culture.

In thinking about this stuff we were fortunate to hear a radio interview on CBC earlier this week with Fred Kent from the Project for Public Spaces.

I’m sure he’d be interested in some of the conversation we were having today, especially about putting First Nations culture and presence on the land. Imagine walking around the inner harbour of Victoria and knowing the Straits Salish names for the features you were looking at and the traditional and contemporary uses of the space? Imagine a vibrant and diverse First Nations market in the heart of downtown that was more than just a tourist trap, but instead acted as a hub for the community, celebrating the diversity and enterprise of the the folks who live here, and creating a safe home in the middle of Canada’s most British city?

As many of you know, I have been focusing a great deal of attention lately on the Four Practices of Open Space, namely opening, inviting, holding and grounding. At the moment I am putting the final touches on a resource manual for an Open Space practice workshop (it’s never too late to register!) and I’ve been tracking all over the internet assembling bits and pieces. The manual can’t be too big, and of course a lot of the stuff I have found and read over the years can’t be included. However, thanks to del.icio.us, I have set up four tags, one for each of these practices, and so now you too can join in the fun, tagging stuff out there that seems to relate to these practices and subscribing to the feeds to see what we are turning up.

Here are the links:

• Opening
• Inviting
• Holding
• Grounding

At the end of September I opened space for a group of citizens looking to support the Islands Trust here in British Columbia. The Islands Trust is a governance body that seeks to preserve and protect the character of the Gulf Islands, one of which is my home.

Along with a team of four other island-based OST facilitators we convened a 1.5 day Open Space on the topic of citizens supporting the islands Trust mandate. During the meeting I was interviewed for The Island Tides newspaper out of salt Spring Island and the resulting article is a pretty good summary of what happens in Open Space. If you want to see the article, you can download it here, which is a 4.3Mb pdf. The article is on page two.

My neighbour up the road, Spider Robinson, has penned a beautiful obituary for Paul Pena a blues singer who died on October 1st. Pena was a blues man, a didgeridoo player and a world champion Tuuvan throat singer. Spider’s obit contains a live recording of Kargyraa Moan which is pure ear candy.

The other day, courtesy of things magazine, I stumbled across an amazing site full of old Cajun music for the 1920s oward. I made a playlist at Webjay for your streaming pleasure, and have added the track below to the Parking Lot playlist.