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Neighborly Conversation
To see what community cafes and neighbors circles are forming in your area, go to our Neighborly Conversations Events pages.
Central to the success of neighborhoods and inter-neighborhood coalition building is neighborly conversation - all the ways we talk on a daily basis, and the deeper conversation and listening we can have when we make change together.
The processes of community dialogue are simple and complex: Simple in that talking with each other is what we do anyway; Complex in that the sorts of conversations that really make a difference, if they embody wisdom, will be as varied as the community we are a part of. real hot ukrainian brides pictures for love
Louisville has a long history of study circles, forums, community dialogues, potlucks, cafe societies and other ways for neighbors to talk with each other about what matters in their lives and in growing healthy communities.
Some of us have worked for many years with a variety of face-to-face, electronic, group and community dialogues.
You're invited to join in these conversations, here in Louisville and around the world.
In this section we will make accessible a wide range of resources for community conversation, as well as a variety of tools for combined face-to-face and electronic dialogue processes.
We are currently using Yahoo Groups for listserv and group email conversation and scheduling. Please be sure to sign up now with the Louisville Neighborhoods Group at:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Louisville_Neighborhoods/join
However we will soon migrate to more user-friendly and sophisticated face-to-face discussion and groupware systems. Several of us have experience with Caucus, Future Search, World Cafe , Open Space, Study Circles, Salons, Macro-Analysis Groups, Story Circles, Talking Stick, Green Maps, Sustainable Community Visionwork and many other group process and technology solutions for community dialogue, listening and decision.
One approach to Community Dialogue is the "World Cafe" developed by Juanita Brown and others in recent years as a large group dialogue process which is sometimes supplemented by virtual community tools and even permanent physical cafes. Louisville has several World Cafe and Neighborhood Circles working groups which are exploring a variety of dialogue processes. Meg Wheatley, one of the promoters of the World Cafe process, will be in Louisville April 3. For a list of upcoming Community Dialogue meetings and events, click here.
Watch this space for access to these and many other resources, and some great conversations.
Footnote: For those who enjoy this sort of thing: "Conversations that really make a difference, if they embody wisdom, will be as varied as the community we are a part of" is a lay metaphor and summation of what is sometimes called Ashby's Law of Requisite Variety.
Not shying away from applying the lessons of communications theory to ourselves is one of the challenges of community communications work with neighborhoods. Too often, the only experiences neighborhoods have with communications and social theory is the media soup we live in day to day, simplistic and distracting, rather than simple, complex and wise. What happens to the conduct of community communications if we start naming what we are doing, thinking through together how we want to speak, plan and dream together using tools normally reserved for major media campaigns, specialist retreats, archetypal groupwork governance, or systems research and planning? And how can that specialist language translate into plain speaking and honest listening? More than talking about talking; rather, learning to dream common waking dreams and works together.
Conversation, anyone?
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