tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9059435406439404827.post4118939613756320475..comments2012-04-13T21:41:26.870-07:00Comments on Gard Foundation Blog: WHAT ARE WE TRYING TO DO, AND WHY?Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9059435406439404827.post-81659897189732842662010-10-05T07:55:02.156-07:002010-10-05T07:55:02.156-07:00Such inspiring essays and comments, I wish I were ...Such inspiring essays and comments, I wish I were able to be there for what is sure to be a vibrant dialogue! With a background in education and social work and, more recently, working for a foundation, I've been thinking a lot lately about our societal tendancy towards compartmentalizing, well, just about everything, and the possibility that true solutions lie in integration and collaboration. Hooray to you for getting the ball rolling. If I were there, the first questions I'd pose would be:<br /><br />1) It seems that a true sense of "belonging to a community" is predicated on an emotional experience of empathy for other members and thus a willingness to give of oneself. If that is the case (and the hope is to foster greater community involvement), how do we compete with people's perception of (and time dedication to) membership in online communities which are, in actuality, at least twice removed from another human. Check out this snipet on the impact of technology on our brains: "Digital Overload: Your Brain on Gadgets" http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129384107)<br /><br />2) Can an online "community" be a community that fosters health?<br /><br /> 3) Experts on a multitude of social and environmental issues (carbon footprinting, collapse of oil reserves...) recommend "making it local" as one common solution to slowing a variety of social ailments. Is it possible to foster a commitment to a geographical local movement as the perception of a "global" community grows? If so, how?<br /><br />4) Whether in the work sphere or social realm, our communications seem to be getting quicker and quicker and (arguably) less meaningful as the pace and quantity of information pick up. Many spiritual and art traditions are based on a slowing down; of the senses, of thinking and doing. How might we utilize the tools of the internet to inspire individuals to slow down? This pithy article said it well, "The Information Superflood..." http://www.oprah.com/spirit/Life-Coach-Martha-Becks-Tips-for-Managing-Your-Tech-Life<br /><br />timara freeman youngAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9059435406439404827.post-30318918631916879772010-09-28T12:42:33.561-07:002010-09-28T12:42:33.561-07:00I am working with four small, rural communities in...I am working with four small, rural communities in Pennsylvania and two of them have seen the need for the Arts to be in their community. One just had a gallery opening and the other has both a vibrant gallery and a theatrical presence. These two communities are not close in distance, yet they share the same values and ideas. They will be linked via the internet with larger, more established galleries and theatrical enterprises and thus will benefit from the collaboration. I feel this is important to their economic growth and future. Thank you for all the work you do for the Arts.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9059435406439404827.post-72201716057702158372010-09-21T07:39:49.666-07:002010-09-21T07:39:49.666-07:00These essays are inspiring and lead me to reflect ...These essays are inspiring and lead me to reflect on the themes that are presented – technology, health, sustainability, spirituality and politics–in the context of Robert Gard’s writings. I just completed work on The Robert E. Gard Reader, with talented book designer, Shawn Simmons from Kent State University. So, I have in mind the context that Gard presented on developing community-based arts organizations to value life experiences and nurture individual expression.<br /> I had thought of Gard’s work as being focused on rural folks, not in cities, but in small towns and villages. That may, indeed, cover the type of stories he gathered and told; however, these essays bring forward themes that generalize Gard’s work and make it applicable to American culture in cities or in rural areas. At the core of it all is “community” and how healthy each community is.<br /> It is this concept of “community” that I want to talk about. In strong communities one finds the essence of democracy about which Gard wrote – respect for the common good, selfless service and creative actions and expressions. <br /> For over six years I’ve lived in Cleveland, Ohio, moving from Appleton, Wisconsin to live in Cleveland EcoVillage, a redeveloping neighborhood on Cleveland’s near west side. It is the first time, since my childhood on LaCrosse, Wisconsin’s north side that I have experienced community where I live. To be sure, there are warts here in the form of drugs, prostitution and boarded up, foreclosed houses; however, there is community in this multi-cultural, multi-income, multi-aged neighborhood. I love it!<br /> What is it about this community (Cleveland EcoVillage in the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood in the City of Cleveland) that makes it community? I think it is a combination of ingredients that range from individuals to the city itself--individuals who want to make the community vibrant; a community development organization which works hard to bring residents together for a variety of activities; a city which invests in the infrastructure that makes the community a pleasant place to be. These are also the elements that I found in the essays.<br /> For my part, I am a market gardener in my community and a librarian at Cleveland State University. With my partners, John and Margaret, we formed a small business called EcoVillage Produce, LLC. We raise vegetables and herbs on four contiguous city land bank lots, which have been licensed to us for five years. We grow the best mixed greens in the city, I’m told, which we sell at the fledgling, local Gordon Square Farmer’s Market. And, we’ve developed relationships with neighbors.<br /> This neighborhood isn’t just about urban agriculture, but also about retrofitting older homes to be more energy efficient, or about the Near West Theater’s drama presentations with young people acting in plays at Hermann Park, or about Hector Vega’s ceramic tile depiction of the neighborhood mounted at the new Rapid Transit station, or twenty block clubs in Detroit Shoreway who meet to talk about issues from safety to yard sales, or renovation of an old movie theater to a triplex movie theater, or abundant local restaurants with a wide range of offerings, or about the neighborhood supermarket. It is the acknowledged richness of a community that Gard was talking about--finding identity and owning it. At this time, technology, health, sustainability, spirituality, politics and artistic expression are all part of the mix.Barbarahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17104007372904283874noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9059435406439404827.post-20951362631340725722010-09-19T14:20:46.606-07:002010-09-19T14:20:46.606-07:00Hello Maryo & Colleagues! What an interesting ...Hello Maryo & Colleagues! What an interesting and though-provoking group of essays you have all prepared for an exciting event this week!<br /><br />It seems many of us have used the term "healthy community" for years in our work through our individual sectors, but to examine that phrase/idea from so many different perspectives is timely and necessary.<br /><br />As I read each essay, two concepts continued to come to mind - value and personally meaningful experiences. Each of the sectors - technology, health care, sprituality, the arts - are working tirelessly to contribute value to the community as a whole. Why is each sector important, really? What "unarguable value" do they contribute toward a healthy community? Will the community be less healthy when one or more sector is struggling or lacking in value?<br /><br />In large part, this value is generated on individual and collective levels as the result of personally meaningful experiences. If I have experiences that are personally meaningful with the school district, my church, local businesses, in the parks, with neighbors, etc. it seems I will most likely believe my community is healthy and valuable. However, we rarely ask people to share qualitative information about their experiences in/with a community. City leaders tend to make decisions without checking in with their residents/constituents. And, in the age of technology, it seems that part of the "healthy community" experience might take place virtually.<br />As humans, we're wired to seek purpose and meaning. If we find that in our community, we may perceive it as "healthy", when in reality, there may be issues. I think the health of a community is connected to the personal, social, relational and economic value it provides its residents.<br /><br />I look forward to hearing more about your discussions later this week!Christy Farnbauchhttp://www.strategiclinks.infonoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9059435406439404827.post-79379186215911863472010-09-12T06:03:03.438-07:002010-09-12T06:03:03.438-07:00Maryo: I've just read the essays and all I ca...Maryo: I've just read the essays and all I can say is WOW! It has been a long time since I've seen such thought-provoking, innovative thinking. Congrats to you for putting all of this together. You have honored your father in a most special way.Terry Bushnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9059435406439404827.post-89162727551805521402010-09-10T18:45:18.029-07:002010-09-10T18:45:18.029-07:00Arlene Goldbard #3……….Finally, from what I have ob...Arlene Goldbard #3……….Finally, from what I have observed, we human beings, in addition to our basic needs, have a powerful desire to see and be seen, to know and be known. Beyond the necessity of banding together to face life's basic challenges, it is this desire that creates community. All aspects of community life and infrastructure are improved when this desire is met. I have never seen a better way than participatory arts practice to meet it: when people share and make music, share stories end enact them, move their bodies to express what words cannot, create the images and sites of public memory that inscribe their experience on the world, they embody the gaze that creates community. It is not the assessing gaze of the outsider, weighing and measuring. It is not something secondary to a practical goal, but the reciprocal gaze that in itself helps people to feel seen, held, and supported. My own desire for this is fierce, and I do not think I am an exception. Without it, I don't see how we can claim to value community health, but I don't much hear it brought into the conversation. So my final comment is that we who desire and work for healthy communities have to risk the embarrassment of advocating the importance of things that can't be quantified. As Einstein famously said, "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."Arlene Goldbardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9059435406439404827.post-35313253887800142352010-09-10T18:38:05.342-07:002010-09-10T18:38:05.342-07:00Arlene Goldbard, continued #2…The thing that somet...Arlene Goldbard, continued #2…The thing that sometimes worries me now is the way extremely smart and well-intentioned people continue to believe that we can plan and measure human happiness by the numbers. More often than not, when this hope rules the practices of community, developers, economists, or anyone else, before long, human beings are asked to serve the numbers: people choose those interventions easiest to measure, precisely because they can be measured. I don't think we have to look much further than our current national obsession with "teaching to the tests" to see the way human possibility is thus sacrificed. <br /><br />Underlying such ideas is a sort of idealism that easily asks others to sacrifice in the interests of a greater good. So in the current educational debate, we hear that students can do without arts education (or even without certain types of play) if that is the price of better test results, eventually leading to better jobs. In the face of this way of seeing the world, I have come to understand that the number one criterion should be whether an intervention is enjoyable, satisfying, engaging, and supportive for community members in real time. In other words, is the activity or program one is prescribing worth doing for its inherent pleasures and satisfactions? If the answer is no, I would reject it regardless of how great the promise might be of yielding measurable long-term results. So this is one place that the arts (which can also be seen as sacred play) can transform experience, as in any circumstances, people enjoy making and listening to music, dancing, and dozens of other such practices. If our schools, medical facilities, and other social institutions are infused with a sense of sacred play, an intention of making beauty and meaning, our experience of them will be so much better than is typically the case. <br /><br />I also worry sometimes about a reluctance to call out the obstacles that impede healthy communities. We can all design our ideal polity, peopled with altruistic and wise public officials, for instance. But what about the political corruption and self-dealing the news reports each week? No matter how you analogize health, it's hard to see how healthy communities can develop and persist without a willingness to notice, rebuke, and apply antidotes to the poisons in their midst. We are in a time that seems to throw up tremendous contrasts in economic and political power. Google current figures on the differential between CEO compensation and line workers' wages: how can people whose access to power and privilege is so different together create a community? One essential role of community-based and socially conscious artists' work is to notice these things, to expose them, and to call for wrongs to be righted. Without that independent voice and vision, I don't see much hope of social well-being. And I don't much see it coming from other sectors. Arlene Goldbard … CONTINUED IN NEXT COMMENTArlene Goldbardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9059435406439404827.post-38518507110342240482010-09-10T18:28:53.655-07:002010-09-10T18:28:53.655-07:00I had a chance to read the essays defining a healt...I had a chance to read the essays defining a healthy community that you have posted at the Gard Foundation Website, and salute the authors. Thanks for inviting me to share my thoughts. If you want to post this open letter, please feel free. <br /><br />One way of understanding your question is as an opportunity to envisage what might come to pass if fundamental moral and ethical principles were lived in practice with as much force as they are commonly advocated. If even half of the humane, caring, and ethical measures your essayists advocate were adopted as everyday practice in a community, I would give serious consideration to moving there! <br /><br />Implicit in all the essays is the metaphor of community as a human body or ecosystem, a complex of interdependent and relational systems that can't really be understood as separate components. In this kind of system, every part is different, all are necessary, and none can replace the others: the liver can't do the heart's job; the river can't take the place of the forest. Recognizing and valuing each relationship to the whole is the essential principle. To me, the Golden Rule covers it pretty well (as stated by Hillel): Do not unto others that which is hateful to yourself. <br /><br />So what I have to add to the conversation has to do with the gap that sometimes opens between intentions and actions, and how we might respond. First, I would observe that the law of unintended consequences seems to be the only one human efforts never escape. Our society is littered with the wreckage of ideas that sounded fantastic in the laboratory but played out very differently in real life. I like the way Kant said it more than two hundred years ago: “Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.” <br /><br />In community development conversation now, certain beautiful words pop up again and again: sustainability, resilience, systems thinking. I want all of these things too. I just don't have tremendous faith that we know how to get them when it comes to human lives. In environmental systems, for instance, we can assert with confidence that a community that recycles will increase sustainability to the extent that it prizes re-use and minimizes environmental waste and pollution. But with the felt and relational side of human communities, it's much harder to know. Of course, we can point to past experience and hypothesize that this or that community's resilience (or evident lack of it) is due to this or that factor. Sounding smart is hindsight is really easy; but being able to extrapolate from the past doesn't necessarily improve our ability to construct the future. We are now living in a moment when the impact of randomness on our lives is awe-inspiring, and our superstitious belief in human ability to control the future is becoming evident in both its magnitude and falsity. (I'm astounded, for instance, at the extent to which financial forecasters are still turning out predictions based on past performance, and still trusted, despite their dismal record to date.) Arlene Goldbard…. CONTINUED IN NEXT COMMENTArlene Goldbardnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9059435406439404827.post-50255147055358792582010-09-06T09:12:51.165-07:002010-09-06T09:12:51.165-07:00I have read with interest the introductory essays ...I have read with interest the introductory essays to the upcoming conference celebrating the legacy of Robert Gard; while I can't be in Madison in person, I look forward to an on-line conversation. My comment today is to note a psper that my colleague, D. Lagerroos and I wrote (http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/2006/11/converging_stre.php) in which we analyzed foundation documents from the community arts and sustainable community movements. Our conclusion was that, although the 2 movements are imperfectly integrated, they share a common set of organizing principles: equity, diversity, democracy, learning, and spirituality. To the degree that we are able to (re)build healthy communities, it is imperative that each group work openly and effectively across sectors.Patricia A. Shifferdnoreply@blogger.com