In addition the many Institute workshops there were a number of additional means for dialogue offered to participants which included Conversation Cafes and a 30-foot long “Graffiti Wall” – a stretch of blank paper on which anyone was free to write their thoughts or draw their inspirations. This is a selection from that wall.
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I am intrigued by the notion of connecting vision with action. I know that there are plenty of actions/campaigns out in the community that are issue oriented. I would love the opportunity to connect with folks this year specifically about community development – to develop a vision of what that means to a group of people and move that into action excites me! I can’t help myself. I just need to sing. “You say you want a revolution…”
Deborah
Connecting vision to action is a perpetual challenge and one that think we’ve generally been very poor at doing. I know through so much of the organizational development and community organizing work i’ve done over the years that every group talks about vision this and vision that – so much so that there is a veritable abundance of visions. But i don’t see them tying together into a grander collective vision. And it’s never felt more urgent to me that this needs to happen. This is some of what was on my heart in a blog post i write here in response to some talk about socialism and the economy. I, likewise, hope that we can develop some more collective vision. One that isn’t simply managing the crises better, nor simply attending to our various organizational self-interests (which, nonetheless deserve respect), but are, rather, transformative and, yes, even revolutionary. I see a key challenge with this is how well we can practice democracy with each other by which i mean how we share power. And, of course, this takes resources which, when it comes to social change, are scarce. Finding resources for ameliorating the worst effects of the inequitites of our world are, by comparison, easy to find. We need a new economy. We need better connections with each other. And i see our wee TCDI as an important opportunity to do just this! Sing on, sister, sing!