Envision Brighton World Cafe

In January of 2011 I hosted and facilitated a World Cafe in Brighton, MI. I am an elected city council member and on a city board called the Principal Shopping District. We wanted those that considered our downtown their downtown to help us craft a vision for Downtown Brighton. We sent out press releases, used Facebook, and sent out invitations using our utility billing department on the utility bills, although we did not limit attendance to city residents. We invited anyone in the area who considered Downtown Brighton their downtown to attend. We received 120 rsvp's. The night of the World Cafe the weather service predicted a snowstorm. In spite of that we had 110 people show up.

The committee that helped me put this together and I spent much time crafting the right questions. That resulted in a very positive response by the participants and did not produce what was feared by many a "gripe session". Out of this Cafe we were able to produce a very succinct vision for our Downtown after compiling the mounds of information produced by the Cafe.

After the vision was crafted we sent out the vision to all the participants to make sure we had captured their vision. It appeared we did as we only received positive responses from that email that contained the vision. Our next steps were to present this vision to all the city and non city boards, commissions and organizations that could help us produce this vision. We received much support from these groups to help make this vision into a reality. Much work has been done already and many parts of the vision have manifested. Other parts of the vision are still being worked on and will be for many years, but the bulk of it is now included in a Master Plan soon to be adopted by the city. I have kept the participants informed by follow up emails as to what has been done and by whom and what is still in the works. By the way, an unforeseen benefit from this was a pool of volunteers for any and all things to do with downtown.

Thank you to the World Cafe organization for providing all the necessary tools to be able to do this and garner such positive results.

Sincerely,

Claudia Roblee

P.S. I will add some more photos on the photos link to the right.