{"id":1657,"date":"2008-10-13T19:38:38","date_gmt":"2008-10-14T03:38:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/?p=1657"},"modified":"2008-10-13T19:47:24","modified_gmt":"2008-10-14T03:47:24","slug":"patterns-for-building-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/patterns-for-building-community\/","title":{"rendered":"Patterns for building community"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Finally settling into \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.peterblock.com\/\">Peter Block&#8217;s book, Communit<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.peterblock.com\/\">y: The Structure of Belonging<\/a>.  \u00a0My partner has been hoarding it since it arrived a couple of months ago.<\/p>\n<p>In the opening chapters, Block takes inspiration from the likes of John \u00a0McKnight, Robert Putnam, Christopher Alexander and others to crate some basic patterns for collective transformation.  \u00a0These are beautiful and quite in line with the work I do and the things we teach through the Art of Hosting.  \u00a0In fact, I&#8217;ll probably add this list to our workshop workbook.<\/p>\n<p>Here is the list, with my thoughts attached.<\/p>\n<div>From \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.sesp.northwestern.edu\/abcd\/\">John McKnight<\/a>: \u00a0<\/p>\n<ul>\n<blockquote>\n<li>Focus on gifts. \u00a0Look at what people are willing to offer rather than what people are in need of.<\/li>\n<li>Associational life.  \u00a0There is great power in the associations that people form to come together to do good work<\/li>\n<li>Power in our hands.  \u00a0Who do you think is going to change things? In doing Open Space action planning, I sometimes make reference to the fact that there will not be an angel that parachutes in and saves us.  \u00a0It&#8217;s up to us to find the way to make things work.<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/ul>\n<p>From \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.wernererhard.com\/\">Werner Erhard<\/a>:<\/p>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<blockquote>\n<li>The power of language.  \u00a0What we say about things and people makes a huge difference.  \u00a0Speaking and listening (and therefore conversations) is the basis of changing things.<\/li>\n<li>The power of context. \u00a0Contexts are the worldviews which we employ to see things.  \u00a0Powerful contexts enable powerful transformation.  \u00a0For example, in First Nations the context of self-government vs. Indian Act government represents a powerful context for community development.<\/li>\n<li>The power of possibility.  \u00a0Once a possibility is declared, it comes into being and with skillful invitation, work can organize around it.<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/ul>\n<p> \u00a0<\/p>\n<div>From \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.bowlingalone.com\/\">Robert Putnam<\/a>:<\/div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<blockquote>\n<li>Work with bridging social capital.  \u00a0Social capital is the relatedness between citizens  \u00a0We express this through \u00a0bonding social captial, which helps us find others like us, andbridging social capital \u00a0which helps us find relations across groups.  \u00a0Bridging social capital \u00a0is the holy grail that takes us from insular groups, to true communities.<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/ul>\n<p> \u00a0<\/p>\n<div>From \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Christopher_Alexander\">Christopher Alexander<\/a>:<\/div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<blockquote>\n<li>Work with aliveness and wholeness.  \u00a0One of my favourite ways to think about work that changes minds is to ask &#8220;How does a forest change a mind?&#8221;  \u00a0How do you react in a forest?  \u00a0How does it happen so suddenly?  \u00a0Why do old growth forests leave a permanent mark on us?  \u00a0How can we transform minds like a forest does?<\/li>\n<li>Transformation as unfolding.  \u00a0What is known by the whole of a group or community cannot be exposed all at once.  \u00a0You have to journey to the centre of it, one small step at a time.  \u00a0As you go, you harvest more and more of it, and as it becomes visible, it accelerates the collective consciousness of itself.  \u00a0<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/ul>\n<p> \u00a0<\/p>\n<div>From \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.pib.net\/bio_peter.htm\">Peter Koestenbaum<\/a>:<\/div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<blockquote>\n<li>Appreciating paradox.  \u00a0Paradoxes help us to see the creative tension that lies in complexity.  \u00a0Chaos and Order, Individual and collective, being and doing, work and relationships&#8230;all of these contribute to our understanding of the kinds of questions that take us to collective transformation.<\/li>\n<li>Choosing freedom and accountability.  \u00a0Freedom is not an escape from accountability.  \u00a0&#8220;the willigness to care for the whole occurs when we are confronted with our freedom, and when we choose to accepts and act on that freedom.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/ul>\n<p> \u00a0<\/p>\n<div>From the founders of large groups methods like \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.openspaceworld.org\">Open Space<\/a>, \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theworldcafe.org\">World Cafe<\/a>, \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.futuresearch.net\/\">Future Search<\/a> \u00a0and others:<\/div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<blockquote>\n<li>Accountability and committment.  \u00a0What I, and Harrison Owen, calls &#8220;passion and responsibility.&#8221;  \u00a0Don&#8217;t just ask what is important, ask what people are willing to do to make it come to pass.<\/li>\n<li>Learning from one another.  \u00a0Co-learning rather than experts preaching to students is the way to build the capacity for collective transformation.<\/li>\n<li>Bias towards the future.  \u00a0We leave the past where it is and focus on now, and the conditions that are arising to produce the futures we want.<\/li>\n<li>How we engage matters.  \u00a0Or, as we were fond of saying at \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.viatt.ca\">VIATT<\/a>, the system is the conversation.  \u00a0How we relate to each other in every instance IS the system.<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/ul>\n<p> \u00a0<\/p>\n<div>From \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.howtochangetheworld.org\/\">David Bornstein<\/a>:<\/div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<blockquote>\n<li>Small scale, slow growth.  \u00a0Big things begin from very small ideas.  \u00a0Cultivating the Art of Calling, whereby we learn to issue and embody invitations, and find the people to work with who will bring these into being, is the key practice here.<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/ul>\n<p> \u00a0<\/p>\n<div>From \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.allancohen.com\/practice.htm\">Allan Cohen<\/a>:<\/div>\n<div>\n<ul>\n<blockquote>\n<li>Emergent design.  \u00a0Everything is in flux, and constantly adapting.  \u00a0Ask why the organization hasn&#8217;t been moving naturally in the direction that it desires and convene conversations on what you discover.  \u00a0Feed those back to the whole and the course corrects.  \u00a0Cohen also says that he CAN herd cats&#8230;by tilting the floor.  \u00a0Deeper contexts often have more leverage.<\/li>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/ul>\n<p> \u00a0<\/p>\n<div>I realize that I have just provide a precis of Peter&#8217;s first chapter, but it is such a cogent summary of all of these ideas, that I couldn&#8217;t resist the temptation to add thoughts and links to his synthesis.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Finally settling into \u00a0Peter Block&#8217;s book, Community: The Structure of Belonging. \u00a0My partner has been hoarding it since it arrived a couple of months ago. In the opening chapters, Block takes inspiration from the likes of John \u00a0McKnight, Robert Putnam, Christopher Alexander and others to crate some basic patterns for collective transformation. \u00a0These are beautiful and quite in line with the work I do and the things we teach through the Art of Hosting. \u00a0In fact, I&#8217;ll probably add this list to our workshop workbook. Here is the list, with my thoughts attached. From \u00a0John McKnight: \u00a0 Focus on gifts. &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[22,20,16,7,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1657","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-collaboration","category-invitation","category-leadership","category-organization","category-practice"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-qJ","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1657","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1657"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1664,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1657\/revisions\/1664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}