Tag Archives: Community Dialogue

What is the True Nature of Partnership?

Written by . Posted on March 8, 2013. Filed under Think. Tagged , , , . 1 Comment.

March’s DwD session was hosted by Mary Pickering of the Toronto Atmospheric Fund.

What is the true nature of “partnership”?

 Funders want it, social innovation demands it and professionals now “broker” it. With the rising clamor to establish partnerships within and across organizations to get people working together more effectively, the time has come to reflect on what a partnership really means in the social change context.
 
At this dialogue session we explored these questions:
  • What defines a true partnership?
  • Is there partnership potential in every working relationship?
  • When should – and shouldn’t – we create partnerships to advance our causes?
  • How might a partnership impact an initiative?
  • What are the key principles for making, managing – and breaking up – working partnerships?
Mary Pickering Mary Pickering has been with Toronto Atmospheric Fund since 2004, serving as VP Programs and Partnerships. Previously she worked for six years for World Wildlife Fund Canada as a major gift fundraiser. Her work with TAF focuses on incubating collaborations focused on local greenhouse gas reduction strategies. Mary has led TAF’s work on Solar Neighbourhoods, ClimateSpark, MOVE the GTHA, and the Collaboration on Home Energy Efficiency in Ontario (CHEERIO). She is currently undertaking Level 2 accreditation with the Partnership Brokers Association and is very interested in your experiences and views on creating effective partnerships.

Designing Occupation Dialogue

Written by . Posted on November 26, 2011. Filed under Act. Tagged , , . No comments.

We invited Occupy Toronto to kick off a DwD session, and continued with the dialogue engagement live at the camp, after it came down mid-week following the session.

Grad students and even president Sara Diamond from OCAD University were involved with sponsorship from the Design Exchange.  Two major community events were held, located (ironically enough) in the deco-era original Toronto Stock Exchange used by the DX.

The goals of these sessions were to evolve a common framing and voice for (meaning “with”) the diffuse and diverse core members of the movement.

What we seem to be missing are the connections between similar events in other Occupy communities. Pay attention to the shift of medium here – Occupy is an emerging and embodied social medium for civil change. It is not like the Arab Spring or other social media narratives. This is embodied (situated in place) and broadcasted (livecast) and not tweeted and FB’d to organize.

People are working things out F2F – not online – its a classic McLuhan media transformation in the making.

Occupy DwD: The Innovation of Disruptive Democracy

Written by . Posted on October 31, 2011. Filed under Act. Tagged , , . 2 Comments.

Across continents, people in the developed nations have declared a time-out from the economic ravages dealt to Main Street citizens and working families by merely placing their bodies and minds in visible public spaces. Whether  or not you have spent time at St. James or Zuccotti park, the message of this new medium of dissent is clear – people of all ages and walks of life have had enough. The mechanisms given to us to exert democratic change have proven insufficient to the extraordinary problems of the time. Politicians and their entrenched financial sponsors have perfected a parallel fantasy world where CEOs tell governments what to do.

This Occupy “movement of the people,” though started without a designed plan, represents possibly the most obvious call to systemic action we have seen in our lifetimes. Without presenting the media fodder of demands or talking points, a clear and common vision for creating a responsible political and economic system has taken shape.

For November 2011, DwD invited the emerging and expanding Occupy movement with global and local citizens to a dialogue on the future of responsive democratic governance. The call was to help frame the emerging democratic engagement, not as activism or problem solving, but as visioning and caring for a shared future.

(Video) Presenting the purposes of Occupy as visions for the long-term expression of the values, goals, and actions of the movement. (Below) Collaboratively constructing a field of purposes in a hierarchy from personal to the transcendent.

The purpose of this session was inspired by George Lakoff’s call for the Occupy movement to clarify its purpose through its shared morality:

“If the movement is to frame itself, it should be on the basis of its moral focus, not a particular agenda or list of policy demands…”

In a series of 4 fast cycles (circle, cafe, purpose tree, and circle) we explored the shared territory of several questions:

  • How might an Occupy moral vision inspire everyone?
  • What underlying forces do we all share as the 99%?
  • What are we really asking for?
  • How can Occupy lead with their story, so that all might hear?
  • Where might the movement go next?

Transilience: Adapting urban living for a changing future

Written by . Posted on March 6, 2011. Filed under Act, Think. Tagged , , . No comments.

A special Design with Dialogue event was held in conjunction with the 2011 McLuhan Centenary and U of Toronto’s KMDI, as a panel and participatory workshop in which the public is invited to engage the questions:

  • How are ecological changes moving us toward planning for urban resilience?
  • How might we make the transition to resilience as a community and not as competing resource users?
  • How is the city a medium, a media system? Can McLuhan’s notion of media ecology help guide historic changes in resource ecologies?
  • What are the risks if we don’t act, or we fail to cooperate in “transilience?”

Video by Gregory Greene, ResilientPLANET

Although starting from different perspectives and communities, both movements are coordinated, advance responses to near-future impacts to urban planning, transport, food and water supply, energy, ecology, and habitation. The big question remains for citizens and communities, that, if foresight is true, what ought we to do – today?

Two global movements have emerged in the last few years as a civil societal response to foreseeable constraints and societal shocks resulting from changes in climate and energy resources – Resiliency and the Transition Town.

Peter Jones (DwD, OCADU) hosted the session and workshop. Peter Rose moderated a one-hour panel discussion with three leading thinkers and planners.  (Presentations are now available)

  • Resilient City planner Craig Applegath (Dialog Design)                                  PDF
  • Jeff Ranson (Innovolve and OCADU Strategic Foresight & Innovation)     PDF
  • Transition Town planner Blake Poland (UofT Public Health).                       PDF

Many thanks to Patricia Kambitsch, whose live sketches provided visual reflection. And to documentary videographers Greg Greene (ResilientCITY, End of Suburbia) and Dexter Ico for their coverage and photos (all photo credits, Greg and Dexter).


Over 70 people from around the GTA joined us for an engaging, creative, hands-on thinking and doing workshop. Participants left the session wanting to know and do more. We planned this session with the hope that we might help our communities change values, habits, and communication to create and adapt to a more resilient future.