Great Events blog
Published Friday, July 31, 2009 at 6:52 pm | Permalink
by Jared Gardner
The Real Wealth of Portland
jared@realwealthpdx.org
We, of the Real Wealth of Portland (Oregon) at First Unitarian Church of Portland, believe food is central to creating community. We also know we have only nibbled at the potential for including food in our events.
Our Community Commons, a monthly gathering of 40-80 attendees with 4-10 organizations represented to explore topics like grassroots economy, alternative exchange, gardening, and local food. We always have snacks and a desert (evening forum) with coffee, tea and water. We create a time in the program to pause, eat some food and chat with others. It has worked ok and is a nice break for people to digest the first half of the content. It’s often hard to get people back to focus, but one of our goals is helping people make connections with others so we just flow with it.
At some of our larger, speaker events 100-300, etc we are more intentional about food. Since we have limited to know funds we invite community partners to have a presence at our events and ask for donations. We have usually had a good diverse spread. We like to have organizations that build real wealth in our town have a presence so it works well to invite local restaurants and producers to bring food/drink. It also helps us accomplish our goal of building connections in town.
As for content, one of our best received events was last November. We did a “100 mile thanksgiving” based on http://100milediet.org/thanksgiving. Attached is the promotional piece that outlines the four themes of the evening: Where to buy, where to dine, do it yourself, share the wealth. We highlighted a locally owned grocer committed to our bioregion, a couple food coops, some CSAs, locally owned restaurants that source locally, resources to grow your own food (became a separate forum in early spring), and a couple social justice organizations that deal with food. Our group is small, so rather than pull off content ourselves we focus on creating the space for the community dialogue to happen and we moderate the evening.
CONTINUED...
Published Wednesday, June 3, 2009 at 6:18 pm | Permalink
One of the pitfalls of organizing Community Forums is that we tend to create events--particularly speaker-based events--around serious and scary issues: the economic meltdown, peak oil, climate change, war, etc.
We've been struggling with this at the Jamaica Plain Forum. These are issues that need to be exposed. We need time and space to absorb the words of experts, and discuss their work. But how to avoid having a Community Forum become one long parade of emergencies? It takes its toll on organizers and audience alike.
We've approached the problem by remembering to lighten up. This year's JP Forum has included singalongs, potluck diners, and comic films in the roster of events.
We have also debuted something we call the "Urban Sustainability Series". After a long string of speakers on climate-change and the economy, we felt the need to focus on practical solutions to the problem of an uncertain future. So we found local experts on "urban farming" (vegetable gardening in small spaces), on beekeeping and backyard chickens. When these folks came to present their work we invariably had audiences close to 100.
JP Forum plans to continue the series next year, and future topics might include Time Banking as a community-building tool, "Whither the Suburbs?" and "Transition Town JP?"
Feel free to get in touch if you want to hear the details
Best wishes,
Andrée
Director, Forum Organizing Project
forumorganizing@gmail.com
CONTINUED...
Published Friday, March 27, 2009 at 2:53 pm | Permalink
We held a Global Warming Café here in Jamaica Plain (Boston), MA in March 2008, and it was energizing, inspiring – wonderful! The event was co-sponsored by the Boston Climate Action Group and the Jamaica Plain Forum, held at the JP Forum’s “home” – the parish hall of the First Church in JP (Unitarian Universalist), on a Saturday afternoon. About 80 people attended, including a reporter from the neighborhood newspaper, two city councilors, staffers from a state senator’s office, from City Hall, and representatives of various agencies with similar missions.
We had rented small round tables, and used a variety of tablecloths from our own homes, for a lively and welcoming effect. The local supermarket had donated flowers, which were on every table, and we had a feast of foods donated by local stores. The whole afternoon had a positive buzz to it, with people making new connections, exchanging information and ideas.
After some welcomes, some context about global warming and the world café process, and a spiritual message from the church’s minister, we launched into small-group discussions. Our first question was: “As global warming’s impact makes itself felt, what are your fears for yourself, your family, your community, and the planet’s future inhabitants?” We did one 15-minute round of discussion on that topic, and then did an immediate second round on the second question: “What signs of hope do you see or can you imagine that make you feel that maybe we can successfully address global warming?” We then had a large-group discussion where we shared what had come out of the small groups. Then a break.
CONTINUED...
Published Monday, December 15, 2008 at 9:21 pm | Permalink
A small church hosts a lively community forum that brings the neighborhood together
Posted by Chuck Collins, November 6, 2008
Jamaica Plain, MA
On a Sunday night in March, more than 200 people huddled together in a two-century-old stone church in Boston to hear Canadian activist Maude Barlow speak about the global water crisis.
“Water is a commons,” Barlow said. “We must reclaim this commons from those who would treat it as a commodity.”
On any given Sunday morning in the same church, an average of 60 congregants fill the pews for worship services. When the church decided to create the Jamaica Plain Forum, they envisioned it as both a way to strengthen the church and to serve as a crossroads for important “community conversations about the great issues of our day, locally and globally.”
Early programs featured a variety of topics including local agriculture, the Iraq war, effective parenting, and preserving the neighborhood’s thriving independent business sector. Speakers included national experts and authors, but also “local heroes,” residents doing interesting work in the world. One forum was a “report back” by six local building-trades workers who spent two weeks volunteering in post-Katrina New Orleans.
In the fall, the J.P. Forum added regular documentary films and became a community viewing site for PBS’s Independent Lens series.
“There are so many remarkable documentary films that never see the light of day,” said Sarah Schwartz Sax, the coordinator of the Jamaica Plain Forum. “You either see them during the four days they are in a theater–or rent them and watch them alone in your house. We bring people together to watch and discuss these films; it is much more powerful.”
In the winter, the Jamaica Plain Forum instituted “Cheap Date Jamaica Plain” with timely speakers or movies, $5 childcare, and free popcorn. In their first year, over 3,000 people have attended 25 different talks and films.
“We’ve created a commons,” observed Schwartz Sax. “And most of what we talk about is protecting and expanding the commons.”
CONTINUED...
