{"id":4604,"date":"2015-01-29T09:10:54","date_gmt":"2015-01-29T17:10:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/?p=4604"},"modified":"2015-02-10T06:22:22","modified_gmt":"2015-02-10T14:22:22","slug":"the-village-as-a-venue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/the-village-as-a-venue\/","title":{"rendered":"The village as a venue"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"How\u2019s

How\u2019s this for a conference centre?<\/p><\/div>\n

Last week, we hosted a group of 35 emerging and legacy leaders in the human services sector on Bowen Island to kick off our sixth Leadership 2020 cohort. \u00a0Hosting the group on Bowen Island is a powerful way to begin and end this ten month program, and there is tremendous value offered by hosting it on Bowen Island.<\/p>\n

We are a small island with a working village and we have evolved an inventive way of hosting gatherings. \u00a0We call it \u201cVillage as a Venue<\/a>\u201d a name coined by my friend Tim Merry to describe the way he hosts gatherings in Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia. \u00a0This is a way to reimagine the local economy of small villages who can compete in unorthodox ways with larger venues in nearby cities for conference and meeting business.<\/p>\n

On Bowen Island, our village as a venue model starts with one of the retreat centres on island We use the\u00a0Bowen Island Lodge<\/a>\u00a0mostly for our work (and sometimes we host at\u00a0Rivendell<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Xenia<\/a>\u00a0as well). \u00a0The Lodge is ideal because it is set up to host groups (as opposed to acting like a hotel), it is right on the water, and is only a five minute walk from the ferry dock and the village, meaning that people can actually arrive using public transit from anywhere in Vancouver. \u00a0It is located in a neighbourhood so we keep a careful eye on our noise levels at night, but if people want to socialize in a rowdy way, there are pubs nearby. \u00a0The Lodge is also perfect in that it is not a high end retreat facility, and it provides an incredibly affordable and accessible venue to accommodate and host people. \u00a0It has shared rooms and shared washrooms, but the beds are comfortable and when we are there we have the whole space to work in. \u00a0Overflow registrants are housed at the\u00a0Lodge at the Old Dorm<\/a>\u00a0and other local B&Bs.<\/p>\n

The Bowen Island Lodge is a dry rental, meaning that they don\u2019t have their own catering staff. \u00a0This means that we get to hire local friends to provide us with food. \u00a0Usually we have our events catered by\u00a0The Snug<\/a>\u00a0which is a little cafe that has always punched above it\u2019s weight in terms of quality. \u00a0Over the years, both The Snug and the Sam Trethewy, the manager at the lodge have come to appreciate to people we bring to Bowen, who are often social workers and others on the front lines of human services. \u00a0They treat them well, with good food and sensitive hosting which makes for a superior experience for people.<\/p>\n

Spreading the joy further, we always schedule a night out at\u00a0Rustique<\/a>, where our friend Thierry Morbach cooks us up a rural French feast. \u00a0We book the whole restaurant for this, and it becomes a raucous and memorable dinner. \u00a0On other nights we will head up to the pub for drinks (this past week a group of 15 or so invaded on a Tuesday night, which is no small boost to Glen\u2019s business on a January night). \u00a0On the Thursday night we usually have a celebration at the Lodge which necessitates folks walking up to the Beer and Wine Store for supplies.<\/p>\n

During the day, we give people a couple of hours at lunch to be hosted on the island. \u00a0Many folks end up going to the village to walk around, buy chocolate and meet folks. \u00a0They get to see our village for what it is, a friendly working commercial centre. \u00a0It is not set up to attract tourist dollars, and my friend\u00a0Edward Wachtman<\/a>\u00a0and his partner Sheree Johnson\u00a0has\u00a0just completed a study<\/a>\u00a0that shows that tourists are looking for something other than that tourist experiences that are sold in many other small towns on the coast. \u00a0What they find on Bowen is authentic community. \u00a0They notice the way we look after each other, the way people talk and discuss issues. \u00a0They often head out for early morning walks or runs on the nearby trails and stop in at The Snug and get to see a community as it is. \u00a0I hear story after story of these encounters and we often talk about the friendliness of the village and what it says about leadership and community. \u00a0What happens on Bowen becomes a living teaching for how it is possible to live and work together, and visitors SEE that.<\/p>\n

And finally, we use the island itself to host. \u00a0Bowen is a beautiful place and to get there you need to cross three miles of water. \u00a0this is an almost archetypal journey, and it marks a thresh hold to a different experience. \u00a0When you arrive you are received in Snug Cove, and when you leave again, it is as if you are birthed back out into the world. \u00a0While on the island, we often take people out on the land, to experience the serene calm of the place and to spend time in reflection about their lives. \u00a0There are so few places in the modern world, especially in the social services sector, where people can just slow down and reflect and pause, surrounded by forest and water and ravens and deer. \u00a0It becomes transformative, which is the point. \u00a0Edward\u2019s survey revealed that this is a primary reason why people come to Bowen Island.<\/p>\n

We are in a loose conversation with friends in Mahone Bay and in Ballyvaughn, Co. Clare in Ireland about this concept. \u00a0In Ballyvaughn a group called\u00a0The Burren Call\u00a0<\/a>has set up to host gatherings at the Burren College of Art and on the land around it as well. \u00a0This pattern is repeating and it takes these places of beauty and transformative potential and leverages what we already have to provide experiences for vistors that also benefit\u00a0us locals, both financially (and especially in the off-season) as well as psychologically. \u00a0There is nothing nquite like having your place seen through the eyes of visitors and reflected back.<\/p>\n

For Bowen that reflection is that we have a special place, a beautiful natural setting, a friendly and welcoming community and an authentic working village. \u00a0Locals are always curious about what our visitors are up to and Piers at The Snug or Paul Ricketts at the Beer and Wine Store are always curious and, its fair to say, appreciative of the folks who are \u201cin that workshop with Chris and Caitlin.\u201d<\/p>\n

Village as a Venue holds a lot of promise for villages like ours. \u00a0Having run more than 30 events on Bowen like this, I think we have hit a stride in bringing people over for 3, 4 and 5 days. \u00a0It is the unique and quirky local character of our community and the beauty of the land and seas that makes this possible. \u00a0These are strong assets and contribute to the visitor experience of renewal, restoration and serenity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, we hosted a group of 35 emerging and legacy leaders in the human services sector on Bowen Island to kick off our sixth Leadership 2020 cohort. \u00a0Hosting the group on Bowen Island is a powerful way to begin and end this ten month program, and there is tremendous value offered by hosting it on Bowen Island. We are a small island with a working village and we have evolved an inventive way of hosting gatherings. \u00a0We call it \u201cVillage as a Venue\u201d a name coined by my friend Tim Merry to describe the way he hosts gatherings in …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4605,"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":[56,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4604","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/My-hom-is-down-there.jpg?fit=3264%2C2448&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-1cg","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4604","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=4604"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4604\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4611,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4604\/revisions\/4611"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4605"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4604"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4604"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4604"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}