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
