Once a month, people in the Greater Victoria region (British Columbia, Canada) who have professional and personal interests in community resiliency and sustainability get together for breakfast.
The Resilient Region Exchange is a pretty typical networking event – the intent is to meet people with similar interests. Yet more so than many such events, it is high energy and has a real bias towards action. The energy and focus is partly due to the superb hosting skills of Sarah Webb, who works in Environmental Protection with the Capital Region District. Sarah manages the self-introductions and idea-sharing circles with charm, pizzaz and a powerful voice.
Often, the meetings end with small clusters of people hatching plans – follow up meetings, outlines for projects and energetic paper-napkin style planning. I was engaged in just one such meeting of the minds when I was invited to step outside by Victoria’s story-catcher, Christopher Bowers. Christopher has a knack for asking great leading questions – with his video cam running.
Christopher asked me about the Rethink Urban focus on using creative arts projects to turn around a public space.
Here’s a bit with me talking about crime prevention through urban design, a special focus of Rethink Urban consultant Steve Woolrich.
And here’s a third video about the power of collaboration and inviting people to move outside their silos – their comfortable specializations.
Thanks to Christopher for ‘catching’ these stories. Much more important than my take on community change, however, is the fact that a number of the ideas discussed at the last Resilient Region breakfast are moving forward through ongoing discussions among participants. I expect that we will see at least two very creative community projects arise in 2013 as a direct result of that one breakfast.
Leave a Reply