Annual Reporting (2012-2013): the Arts and Craft of Facilitation
Upon checking out my LinkedIn profile from last year, someone recently told me candidly that I scan as ‘high risk.’
I LOL’d.
On one hand, yeah: even in the midst of unemployment, I’d been cavalier with my engagement of this social network for professionals.
But on the other hand, also yeah: ‘high risk’ sounds about right.
The work I do involves risk-taking. At the core of my work is the asking of questions, and the questions I ask sometimes pose a risk to the honest answerer. The risk of speaking inconvenient truths. The risks of commitment that come with some truths. I try to be straight with people when I work with them: we’re gonna venture into uncertainty, and things could get weird.
But if your true objective is to change things, how can you afford to not take risks?
Of course, on the other side of risk is reward — the payoff. A better future. I usually suspect that the true risk of stepping towards a different future is less terrifying than it appears in the mirror. (And once or twice, I’ve even paid in full for the risks I’ve taken; these suspicions survived intact.) The best way to manage these risks, or at least the perception of them, is through strong relationships with others who share your vision and join together in venturing into the unknown. As the possible new future and its associated risk becomes more real, it takes more work to establish and sustain those relationships. This is the work that I do, or at least aspire to.
I often refer to this work as ‘organizing,’ or ‘facilitation,’ or ‘development.’ It’s an unusual line of work to specialize in. It shouldn’t be. Continue Reading →
Annual Reporting: (2013) Other Elsewheres
Throughout 2013 I rarely spent more than a couple of months in one place, as I hopped around on a semi-intentional loop between DC, Wisconsin, and North Carolina — where I had formal and semi-formal residencies — and New York City, California, and the United Kingdom, where I had good friends and new professional contacts. These trips were partially funded by travel stipends for conferences, and other speaking engagements or consulting gigs; otherwise just squeaked through hella cheap and on the good graces of lovely hosts. Here’s a recap of (most of) what I saw.
Annual Reporting: (2013) Elsewhere, Greensboro NC
My most delightful residency of 2013 was at Elsewhere, a “living museum” in Greensboro, NC.
The phrase “living museum” does sum up Elsewhere’s relationship to art. Elsewhere is a place containing a lot of stuff — the voluminous and multifarious and kitschy and quaint residue of its former proprietor’s habits, which shifted over a period of decades from shopkeeper to hoarder. Today all of that stuff remains in the space, yet the place is like a mill churned by a flow of people who remix the stuff and the spaces, creating a kind of funhouse performance of art-as-life/life-as-art.
Annual Reporting: (2012-2013) Madison, Wisconsin
I visited Madison, Wisconsin three times over the past year, with two different purposes: to train as a “cooperative developer,” and to study the practice of “coproduction.”
Cooperatives
The first purpose for my visit to Madison was the CooperationWorks! Cooperative Business Development training. This program consisted of three intensive week-long training sessions that explored the history, principles and practices of cooperative development. Continue Reading →
Annual Reporting: (2013) Residency in DC
For much of 2013, I traveled to sites where I could learn firsthand about cooperative organization, co-productive labor, and the commons. Some of this work was through formal ‘residency’ programming designed to support social research and creative practice. Some of these travels were ‘residencies’ only inasmuch as my work was being supported by generous people who shared their time, homes, and insight; in exchange, I offered them what skills I could in terms of facilitation, research, and strategic analysis.
Provisions Library: COPY RIGHTS
My first and most formal residency of 2013 actually took place right at home. I participated in the COPY RIGHTS fellowship at Provisions Library, a center for arts and social justice based at George Mason University. During this three week residency, I had access to a wealth of knowledge about digital justice matters, among Provisions’ network of advisors and my awesome fellow residents. Continue Reading →
Annual Reporting: (2012) Digital Justice in the District
Throughout most of 2012, I worked on a couple of projects that I’d started while at Bread for the City. (I left Bread in March of 2012, but in both of these projects I saw the promise of opportunity to develop powerful information technologies for marginalized communities in the District of Columbia. It seemed like a good opportunity, so I did what I could — which was unfortunately just not sufficient. But through failure, I learned.
In this work, the framework of ‘digital justice’ shaped my perspective.
Annual Reporting: Two Years of Useful Unemployment
In my professional life, I wrote Annual Reports. It was one of my primary responsibilities. Continue Reading →
Case Studies of Cooperative Development: New Vision Renewable Energy
I just posted a series of reflections on the CooperationWorks! co-op development training, and I’ll wrap up here by sharing a series of case studies on different kinds of cooperatives in development. During this research, I found the array of models and issues to be fascinating — yet the challenges appear to be quite similar.
This one actually isn’t technically a cooperative: New Vision has members with rights and responsibilities, but they do not participate in the governance of the organization. However, I think the model is interesting enough to be considered alongside other more formal cooperative models.
To my delight, this case study (which I’m cross-posting from the Community Power Network) was featured by David Bollier on his blog.
About New Vision
Renewable energy is far from common in West Virginia. But in the heart of coal country, low-income residents often struggle with utility bills that (at about 10 cents / kwh) can sometimes add up to be almost as costly as rent itself. One church in Philippi, WV has recently mobilized its community to meet its own need for alternatives, through a radical experiment in grassroots greening.
“God provided minerals, water, wind, and sunshine all to be used in a healthy balance,” says Ruston Seaman, pastor of Philippi’s People’s Chapel Church, and co-founder of New Vision Renewable Energy. Through New Vision, Ruston and his cohort are applying that same holistic sensibility to the development of green energy: by rallying the many human resources in their community, they’re building and installing their own solar arrays. Continue Reading →
Case studies of Cooperative Development: Food Hubs
I just posted a series of reflections on the CooperationWorks! co-op development training, and I’ll wrap up here by sharing a series of case studies on different kinds of cooperatives in development. During this research, I found the array of models and issues to be fascinating — yet the challenges appear to be quite similar.
This one’s about food hubs.
Introduction
Last September, I attended the CooperationWorks! cooperative development training in Madison, Wisconsin. It was a great workshop that I recommend to anyone interested in developing cooperative enterprises. One of the training’s strengths was the presentation of a variety of real-life examples that illustrate the many different possibilities for cooperative solutions, and the many benefits and challenges thereof. In particular, I found a set of food cooperatives (at all different points of the chain, from growing to eating) that suggest a growing array of viable and desirable alternatives.
In the world of cooperatives, two of the most familiar models are agricultural coops and grocery coops. Even as over the last century the percentage of people employed in farming in the U.S. has shrunk dramatically, the cooperative share of the agriculture economy holds strong, and today is estimated at about a third of all inputs and sales. Cooperative grocery stores experienced a boom in the 70s (which saw an estimated 3000 cooperative stores and buying clubs in North America); by the 90s those numbers were decimated, but in the past decade that trend has swung back into rapid growth.
However, E.B. Nadeau notes in The Cooperative Solution that these agricultural and retail components of the cooperative food system have historically been separated from each other, and that they even “sometimes work at cross-purposes.”
Much can be gained from strategies that integrate different branches of the food system, from production to distribution to retail, etc. In the course of the CooperationWorks! workshop, we saw several exciting examples of new cooperative models that bring together multiple stakeholders from across a food system, organize resources and actions around clearly defined needs, and work in solidarity for mutual benefit. Continue Reading →