Burlington, Vermont
Opened Space this morning along with my colleague Lenore Metwon with around 150 community planners who are interested in the heart and soul of place. You can follow along on the conference wiki at CommunityMatters07.
I’m on the road again, travelling to Burlington Vermont to Open Space at the CommunityMatters07 conference. This is a great conference, working with really interesting people focused on innovative and artistic practices for community planning.
It seems that I’m doing a fair amount of work these days with artists and with those who see themselves as practictioners of an art, whether it is my colleagues in the Art of Hosting, the community artists from the Art of Engagement or these community planners. I have a sense that there is an emerging consciousness around work: that people increasingly see themselves as practitioners and as artists, even in traditionally scientific disciplines like community planning.
I’m curious if you are thinking of your practice as an art, or, if you are an artist in other aspect of your life, what does it mean to bring your artistic sensibility to traditionally “non-artistic” fields?
Tomorrow I am facilitating the Open Space portion of the “Live in Public:the Art of Engagement” gathering in Open Space. In addition to the event running in meatspace, there is a live site on which you can follow along and play. The site is the primary harvest point for all that is happening at the conference and is a great example of a real time harvest.
See you there, either in person, or online!
Last week Dave Pollard, author of How to Save the World interviewed me for his first podcast. We had a lovely conversation about essential human capacities, Open Space, unschooling and leadership. Head over to Dave’s quite excellent and prolific blog and have a listen. You can also download the podcast here.
And thanks to Dave for inviting me in.
Harrison Owen – new age guru!
To celebrate the New York Times’ inspired decision to finally open up it’s archives to the public for free, here is a link to a famous article from 1994 on Harrison Owen, Open Space and Rockport shoes.
And as a bonus, here’s another from 1988, on the work of “New Age consultant” Harrison Owen who helped Owens-Corning Fiberglass find some spirit. This man has been ahead of his time for 30 years.
[tags]openspacetech, harrison owen, rockport, owens-corning[/tags]