January 2011 Community Cafe

Replies to This Conversation

Permalink Reply by Ben Roberts on December 6, 2010 at 8:06am

This topic seems related to the classic "what can we do together than none of us can do alone?" In that regard, I suggest thinking more about collective possibilities/gifts rather than "needs."

I'm thinking about the scope of this inquiry as well. It is very broad in your initial framing. I imagine a conversation where a great diversity of conceptions of "vision" emerge. What will help us connect them? Perhaps we might also include a narrower inquiry for one question--maybe one focused specifically on our vision for this WC community?

I would also note that there is an assumption being made that we all have a vision for ourselves or our communities. We could also be asking if that is the case, or perhaps what might support further development of that vision? Or why we feel that having a vision matters?

Permalink Reply by Amy Lenzo on December 6, 2010 at 1:53pm

I love the question about why vision matters, Ben...

This last summer I co-taught an intensive month-long workshop on Storytelling and Media down in Salinas, California (the lettuce bowl of the world! :-). We led some exercises to evoke students' stories and taught them how to share them using video. We focused the storytelling entirely on vision - first a warm-up focusing on their vision for themselves and then more specifically they formed small groups and created a shared vision for their communities to co-create a video about. The juiciest part of the whole workshop for me was watching these young people find their own visions ... you could literally see how that opened up whole new worlds for them.

For most of them, this was the first time they'd ever been asked what their vision was and my experience was that they just needed to be asked. For some, there was a short period of grappling with the idea but then they were all off and running!

When Benjamin and I were first imagining this topic, and granted we are both people with a lot of visioning interest and capacity :-), what was fascinating us most seemed to be the relationship between our personal visions and a collective vision... how one becomes the other in one sense, but also what the relationship between the two might be.

If we were going to follow that thread, I think the first question would be something about personal vision. What is your vision for your life? Or, if you had one, what would your vision for you life be (for those who have not yet thought about it :-). I wonder, does having a personal vision lead into a collective vision? And if so how...

But we can frame the Community Cafe around whatever the community here is interested in, and I appreciate the way your questions start to tease those ideas out for us... Thanks, Ben!

Permalink Reply by Kathleen Quinn on December 6, 2010 at 3:04pm

And even tho' we have ownership of our own vision, we wash it through so many others' or join it to other collective visions. So vision maintenance might be an interesting thread to pull also...kq

Permalink Reply by Amy Lenzo on December 8, 2010 at 11:33pm

Ooooo, those are a couple of interesting thoughts, Kathleen! Can you say more about "vision maintenance", and what questions might bring that conversation forward?

Permalink Reply by Kathleen Quinn on December 10, 2010 at 2:50pm

First, all personal visions are community visions of a sort, even a cave dweller has a community of bats to consider.

Ten years ago I had a vision that included myself and friends and how we would/could keep our lives enriched even into our golden years--and all I needed to do was get a certain degree of education to share. It was true, and what an amazing education! But I had merged with a community of study that, as with most courses of study, had its own outwardly-reaching circles. My original vision had become a carrot on a telescoping stick. It has taken a couple of metaphorical blows to the noggin to realize that I had long since reached my educational goal. Fortunately visions seem to wait patiently for us, even if the community changes. And amazingly the very things that excited me about that vision 10 years ago still excite me about it today. It is nice to have the feeling back!

So what questions or processes would have served to keep me on 'purpose'? Perhaps annually renewing my vision statement and ask "if what I am doing is moving toward my vision or becoming one of Emerson's "hobgoblins"? Create a personal story board? That is an intriguing idea.

I look forward to the conversation...kq

Permalink Reply by Amy Lenzo on December 15, 2010 at 7:31am

Brilliant! Thank you Kathleen.