Wendy’s blog

Chocolate Chip Cookies

July 24, 2009 – 2:26 am

I was visiting a city friend recently.

We have no oven in our shed in the bush, so the sight of someone preparing to bake was deeply satisfying.

“What are you baking?” I asked Bill, as he patted the lumpy, brown blobs. Knowing he was a vegetarian, I was prepared for lentil burgers.

“Chocolate chip cookies,” he replied, hand-shaping the blobs on the baking sheet.

“Those aren’t chocolate chip cookies”

“Those aren’t chocolate chip cookies, Bill,” I offered. “Where I come from, we never make them that way.”

‘I’ve done my research and this is how they were originally made,’ he retorted, slamming the oven door.

I explained what a cookie was. He said he knew all about cookies.

“Bill,” I implored, “if we were talking about chapattis, you’d be interested in my opinion. It’d be ethnic food and you’d be fascinated if I explained the tricks of making them ‘properly’, authentically. I am sure of that. You’d be so respectful of me as a migrant, with my distinctive culture and cuisine. It’s because they’re American and I’m Canadian that you figure they are not important to me.”

He kept his back to me, intent on his dishwashing.

North Americans are not really ‘migrants’ in this country

Retreating to my room, I remembered what I’d known for decades. North Americans are not really ‘migrants’ in this country. I was about to celebrate 40 years of living in Australia. That very week. Forty years!

I could imagine what Bill was thinking: chocolate chip cookies are just part of a global market conspiracy. They are not any one culture’s food. They are certainly not anyone’s ‘cuisine’. A ‘generic’ thing that you make. Or make from a packet. Or buy in a shop.

I remembered learning to bake Toll House cookies as a child, in home economics. I sort of didn’t have a mother (least not one who could cook), so I had to learn to cook at school.They were ‘invented’ in the 1930s by an American cook and the idea took off like a rocket.

Hamilton Junior High School

I learned how to prepare them properly, in the home ec. lab at school, wearing the starched apron I’d made in sewing class. That was in the 1950s at Hamilton Junior High School.

For soft drop copies, all ingredients had to be at room temperature; cream the butter and sugar. Add the sifted dry ingredients. Drop from a spoon using another spoon to guide the dough onto the cookie sheet. Cook only till chewy.

Never crisp

Never crisp.

Before the cookie fiasco, Bill and I were discussing my research into cultural diversity.

Blessedly, the cooking goddess delivered me from any further relationship with the mounds.

Bill rushed out to his yoga class and forgot to turn off the oven.

The charred black mounds went into the compost.

And I took a trip into the city for some Mrs. Fields.

After we finish the roof and get the floors down, and build a toilet and get a shower happening… then I will have a kitchen and an oven.

It’s been 3 1/2 years since we had those luxuries.

And the first thing to come out of that oven will be my old favourites.

Here’s the original Toll House recipe: http://www.verybestbaking.com/recipes/detail.aspx?ID=18476

What They Should Look Like

By Wendy | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Evaluation: Must the Messenger Always Be Shot?

July 22, 2009 – 2:39 am

A few months ago, I was lucky enough to have to write a short piece on evaluation for a consulting report. I reviewed what I had in my library, did a quick Internet search and decided it was time to bone up on the latest. So I took myself off for two blissful days in the university library in Lismore. It was vacation time and I had the “evaluation” section all of the library to myself. The whole floor, in fact.

I loved what I read in recent publications, many in the esteemed Sage series. Wise old practitioners warning newcomers. Traps for young players. Helpful hints. Political and strategic advice. Not what I had expected, actually…

As I read, I remembered my own (often painful) forays into formal evaluation, especially the large post-occupancy evaluation (POE) of public housing in Minto, Sydney in 1983 (see Minto POE questionnaire 1983 for the 1983 POE questionnaire).

And an equally challenging but very different study of False Creek North in Vancouver in 2007 and 2008.

I realised that evaluation is a highly political and sensitive realm. Often messengers get shot.

Do we have to get shot?

You can download my notes from my reading and other sources by clicking on this link: Evaluation of Community Engagement Processes

And there’s lots of information, methodologies and findings about the False Creek North study in this website as well. See:

http://kitchentablesustainability.com/housing-density-and-sustainability-what-works-and-what-doesnt-work/

Hopefully, by keeping abreast of the excellent advice available nowadays, none of us will have to face the firing squad for trying to evaluate programs, projects or policies. Or community engagement.

I’d welcome your comments and suggestions.

By Wendy | Posted in Community engagement | Comments (0)

Local Wisdom about Apartment Storage

July 20, 2009 – 2:25 am

When I lived in Vancouver in 2007, teaching and managing a housing research project at the University of British Columbia, I had several interesting accommodation experiences. The first one was terrible: a chronically ill middle-aged couple with a dog who was dying of cancer. They slept with the dog and spent all day in their pyjamas with the curtains drawn. In Vancouver’s dark winter, that was too depressing. I had to escape.

Living with Tessie

Then I had a couple of months living with Tessie. What a change that was! A brilliant and bubbly Phillipina women who worked in the insurance industry as a senior manager. She was searching for an apartment and had a gaggle of female friends who worked in the real estate industry. Tessie was, herself, a qualified realtor.

So our conversations over dinner and glasses of wine always turned to the design of apartments. She and her friends knew everything about what was on offer in Vancouver and the weaknesses of different developers’ designs. Tessie said that lack of interior storage was a widespread problem.

It might seem like a small thing..

How right she was! It might seem like a small thing but people moving to inner city apartments from houses in the suburbs always have problems with storage! Seasonal items (like fans and blankets, space heaters, blankets and quilts) take up a lot of space. (I know because I’ve spent the day sorting just those items in our new storage room as winter tightens its grip on our mountain locale.)

Bulky items

Residents also need places to store bicycles, exercise equipment, toys, ski equipment, golf clubs and all the paraphernalia that goes with a home office. That new printer may be compact but it still needs somewhere to sit. And that paper needs to be stored somewhere. Those tax files you need to keep for at least five years… I could go on.

And the modern Vancouver kitchen has lots of gadgets that need to be packed away: bread makers, blenders, grills, toaster ovens. Not all of them can stay on the counter top.

So the humble storage question was asked in our POE study and responded to with strong comments by apartment residents. Tessie was right. Her friends knew what they were talking about. In-suite storage certainly WAS a problem.

Window privacy

Floor-to-ceiling windows are all the rage in Vancouver apartments. But what about the things that have to be stored under the BED? Ikea makes those nifty boxes for just that purpose. But do we want the whole neighbourhood to see what’s stored there?

Bedroom Privacy?

After a long search, Tessie found a new apartment with adequate storage and the other amenities she sought. And I had to move again. And this time it was to the location of my dreams: Southwest False Creek. But that’s another story.

For more information

For detailed information about the False Creek North post-occupancy study, just go to another part of this website: http://kitchentablesustainability.com/housing-density-and-sustainability-what-works-and-what-doesnt-work/

By Wendy | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments (0)

Stories from the Great Turning

July 17, 2009 – 2:21 am

This story was prepared in response to the Durham University Colloquium/Workshop, FAITH & SPIRITUALITY IN THE CITY: Towards a Post-Secular Urbanism?, in March, 2007. The event was convened by Philip Sheldrake. As far as I know, no report has been made of that event.

It forms chapter 14 of my forthcoming book (with Dianna Hurford and Christine Wenman), Creative Community Planning: Transformative Engagement Practices for Working at the Edge (London, Earthscan, 2010).

So . . . here we are and there we were . . . once upon a time . . . or below a time, or under a time or beside a time. It doesn’t really matter — in a place far and not so far from here . . . in a time long ago . . . and not so long ago . . . our grandmother was calling us —to hear a story.

Gran’s story, as my story, was about the time of the Great Turning. My grandmother’s Nana was living in a large city like this one and she saw and heard all these things herself. And these changes were not just happening in the cities, though they started and spread from the cities to multitudes of communities all over the Earth.

The first time I heard this story, us children were sitting with my Gran around the campfire in a little community garden just like this one full of pea shoots and berry bushes. Old as the hills, my Gran leaned forward with that look I loved in her tanned, lined face. And she whispered the same words I say to you now. These things I am about to tell you…

My children. What a time it was!

In those days, people in the cities had lost touch with the living Earth and all the important things. Things like their place in the local and global community and even the inner scared parts of themselves. It sounds ridiculous, after all of us here and those before us have been through, but that’s how it was in those days. Cities were contradictory and confusing places, with really rich people and really poor people. Many people felt isolated, though they lived right next door to someone.

People were really separated from the land, too. They depended for their lives on the living Earth around them but gave nothing back. They had forgotten that the Earth was alive or where they came from or who and what they were connected to. They were frightened by the Earth Changes and many of them refused to believe they were happening. It took the Time of the Great Storms to convince some of them. Read More »

By Wendy | Posted in Posts from the bush | Comments (0)

Living with a Gypsy

July 15, 2009 – 5:48 pm

Today the Gypsy and I were sorting hardware. Nails and screws. It’s been a rough week in community engagement and I had to do something else than listen to bureaucrats and aggrieved residents.

I had to get my hands dirty. Get grounded.

Living on a building site generates a massive amount of mess. It’s hard to manage from day to day, particularly with few dry places to store things. Today we were sorting roofing screws from other screws from nails and clamps and tools of all descriptions. Rusted saws (it’s humid here), worn-out paint brushes. Dead paint tins. Odd unidentifiable objects.

Very therapeutic.

Gypsy’s work bench

I have attempted to clean up the Gypsy’s work bench a number of times in the last sixteen years with little success. He’s always tinkering. Genuinely of Romany blood (probably about one-third), he’s a tinker by nature and genetic disposition. There is nothing he cannot fix. We discovered that the solar garden lights you buy at the hardware store have a life of about three months and then they start to decline into fickleness, eccentricity, dementia and finally death…

But the Gypsy keeps at them. Resuscitating them. His table is littered with carcases of globes and pickets as he revivifies them one by one. He recharges their yellow batteries and cleans their connections with my nail file. The he gently sets them back to glow along the gravel path.

There are knives to be sharpened and electrical equipment to be repaired. And when the rain took out the phone, endless tinkering with a huge range of cords and adapters to make the phones work again.

Birkenstocks glued back together

I grew up in a household where everything was broken. So I love this quality in the Gypsy. He’s glued my favourite Birkenstock sandals back together so many times they were mostly glue. He’s taken to collapsing Ikea furniture with an artisan’s disdain and made it stand upright again. He’s built, maintained and endlessly repaired our tarpaulin “hootchie” where we lived for the first few years.

: The “hootchie” 2001

His garden is a marvel. His tomatoes to die for. And those chillies!

Old skills

HIs are the old skills. Resilient skills. Like mending and sewing. Knitting. Chopping firewood. Canning peaches. Putting up jams.

Skills we need for the Great Turning: persistence, repair, restoration and loving care.

From my office, I can hear the sounds of kindling being chopped. My chilled limbs predicting another fire in the chiminea.

I am blessed to be the beneficiary of these old skills.

Blessed to be with the Gypsy.

By Wendy | Posted in Posts from the bush | Comments (4)

Why is Community Engagement Central to Achieving Sustainability?

July 15, 2009 – 2:38 am

“Sustainability Fatigue”

I’m getting the feeling that our communities are being engulfed in a wave of “sustainability fatigue”.

“Don’t talk to me any more about climate change,” a friend says over coffee in the Village. She cradles her coffee and mumbles, “I’ve had a gutful of all that pessimistic talk!”

Two small Aboriginal children are playing in the courtyard of the Rainbow Cafe. I look past them to the mountains, the landscape, our home…

Deep breath. I turn back to my friend.

“I mean it, Wendy,” she groans. “A gutful!”

Breathe again and think… I’m worried that her response will translate into wider community overwhelm, frustration, even apathy.

We cannot afford to have that happen!

So why is community engagement central to achieving sustainabilty — and the other way around? We write about this quite a bit in Chapter 3 of KTS. Here’s a short summary:

First good reason

First are ethical and practical reasons: in a democratic society, those whose livelihoods, environments and lives are at stake should be engaged and involved in decisions that directly affect them. Community-initiated projects and processes empower people to take action in local community development. Canadian planning academic and practitioner, Peter Boothroyd, recently reminded Nancy, his student, ‘To participate is to be human’.

Second good reason

Second, community engagement provides opportunities for developing a holistic sense of sustainability, where people make decisions using local wisdom, values, information and knowledge.

Third good reason

Third, community engagement contributes to the efficiency of a project or program. Targeting local needs and preferences always saves time and money.

Fourth good reason

Fourth, by addressing local social and cultural needs, community engagement processes can help develop micro-scale policy approaches that fit the community and its particular resources, skill sets and preferred approaches.

Fifth good reason

And finally, community engagement helps to build local accountability. (1)

Perhaps these arguments will be helpful when you are encouraging communities to engage with sustainability.

And sustainability practitioners to engage with communities.

I am sure there are lots of other good reasons.

Please tell me your ideas. I welcome your comments.

Reference:

(1) Sarkissian, W., Cook, A. and Walsh, K. (1997) ‘Core Practices of Community Participation in Practice’, in Community Participation in Practice: A Practical Guide, Murdoch University, Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy, Perth, pp. 33-82.

By Wendy | Posted in Community engagement | Comments (1)

What’s best practice in community engagement?

July 9, 2009 – 12:45 pm

The other day I went to a local community workshop in my small rural village. The topic is not important for my purposes and it’s not my intention to embarrass anyone.

Rather I want to make a point: there’s more to community workshops than a conversation at tables, participants scribbling down a few ideas and facilitators writing down a few points on some large sheets of paper.

Going over old ground

In our local workshop, a group of community members and some professional advisors sat around for three hours going over old ground.

I thought: what if the consultants had summarised all that “old ground” (previous plans and policies) and given us an updated summary to work from.

“Nobody else complained”

Subsequent conversations with one of the facilitators yielded the comment that “nobody else complained.” Omigod! How often do we hear that in community engagement? Yet we well know that “not complaining” does not equate with “satisfaction”.

That conversation reminded me of another local conversation a couple of months ago, this time with a municipal officer, who said that their “peer review” of their draft community engagement policy had confirmed that “children and young people are not our customers.” I had smoke coming out of my ears after THAT conversation.

(re)visioning Footscray

That got me thinking about my friend, co-author and colleague, Andrea Cook of Red Road Consulting in Melbourne (see: www.redroad.com.au). Andrea went over old ground, all right, for the (re)visioning of Footscray in Maribyrnong, Melbourne in 2004.

See: http://www.maribyrnong.vic.gov.au/Files/Final_Executive_Summary_Revisioning_Footscray.pdf

We called the Footscray planning and community engagement process ”(re)visioning” for a particular reason.

The participants at the Footscray stakeholders’ workshop in 2004 were gobsmacked by the amount of tedious and thorough background work Andrea had done before she met with them.

“We are not going over old ground,” she exclaimed. With a hundred local people, I sat patiently through a good hour of detailed PowerPoint summary of over a dozen planning publications. Everyone was completely satisfied that the consultants were up-to-date.

Then we moved on. With everyone satisfied that their earlier contributions had been acknowledged.

Here’s the PowerPoint presentation Andrea used in the workshop: Footscray Vision Consolidation Presentation 27-08-04

So many ways…

I am not proposing a “one-size-fits-all” solution to this borning workshop problem. There are so many ways to run an effective workshop, even a small, humble one. It need not be complex.

Prioritise your issues!

At one point, we were asked in the workshop to “prioritise our issues”. We had lists — each of us — that were jumbles of issues, concerns, policies, initiatives… and we were asked to collectively prioritise them.

How hard was that?

Actually, quite hard. We had no tools, no props, no help… Our attempts were unsystematic, apples sorted with pears, hierarchies ignored… a real mess… No weighting, no real content analysis was possible…

A sticky wall or some sticky dots would get us out of this sticky situation

I kept thinking that a few sticky dots — or better still, some Post-its and a sticky wall – would have made the whole thing a dream. They are not an expensive option. You can buy sticky walls as a kit online from leading Australian community engagement consultants.

See: www.twyfords.com.au/twyfords/Twyfords-our-store.html

Using some props would have made it much more fun, less frustrating, less boring, and much easier for the consultants to analyse the outcomes. And to analyse them using our community weightings and categories — without the intervening bias of the researchers.

Why don’t we use these simple tools?

Why don’t we use these simple tools, these practical props? They are not expensive, they require no “equipment” (or not much, anyway) and they are so much more fun that endless, formless, unsophisticated brainstorming and discussion sessions.

I’d be interested to hear your responses.

Visioning or brainstorming?

My other concern with my local workshop was that we were supposed to be “visioning” but hardly a “visionary” or creative word was heard.

I’ve written two chapters on community visioning in my forthcoming book, Creative Community Planning (with Dianna Hurford and Christine Wenman). It was helpful (if dispiriting) to be reminded that this sort of non-visionary “visioning” still occurs. This is a big topic on which I will write more later.

So I need to ask, where are our “facilitators” getting their training? Who is helping them learn about what’s available?

Asking two simple questions:

I’d ask: Can these practitioners be encouraged to act out of real care for communities? Real care might be asking two simple questions:

“What’s the very best we can do here in this community?”

and

“How can we give something back to this community?”

There’s so much help out there to guide facilitators. So many hundreds of published and online manuals of methods and techniques. So many simple and creative tools that communities love.

“Oh dear, here come the butcher’s paper and the felt pens.”

It used to be said, “Uh, oh, here come the plans!” about community engagement.

Now, it’s “Oh dear, here come the butcher’s paper and the felt pens.”

There has got to be more to community engagement – and visioning – than that!

Nimbin in Festival Mode

By Wendy | Posted in Community engagement | Comments (1)

Community Engagement with People with Disability

July 6, 2009 – 2:38 am

This week, I’ve been reflecting on the responses I’ve received to my recent blog post about Mary Ann Hiserman, my friend in Berkeley who was a wheelchair user and activist for people with disability. I’ve been thinking about the actual experience of being “locked out” of an environment. And comparing it to being “locked out” of community engagement processes.

Mary Ann had a challenging life but I am confident that she would not have considered herself “disabled”. I believe that was largely because of her courage but also partly because of the culture of Berkeley and northern California in the 1970s. With its mild climate, California has always been an attractive place to live for people with mobility impairments. It’s much easier, year-round, managing in a wheelchair, with a cane or walker than it is in the snow of the Midwest or the eastern United States.

Separate is not equal

As our communities age and more of us live longer and with disability, we will finally have to accept what Mary Ann taught me in the seventies: separate is not equal. As with accessibility, so with engagement.

Two principles can guide our engagement policies, planning and design. Read More »

By Wendy | Posted in Community engagement | Comments (2)

Helping Sally at Dinner: What to Say at the Dinner Table When Sustainability Comes Up?

July 5, 2009 – 7:49 pm

I spent the afternoon with the Will of the People people in Byron Bay, talking about Kitchen Table Sustainability. What a wise and special group they are! This was our first monthly workshop on the principles of the book.

See: http://www.willofthepeopleproject.net/oms/oms.php?&loc=gov1bb

We spent some time discussing the values and opinions of “our communities” and I realised (again) that my community is far from a “geographical” one. My friends are all over the world and some of them I have known for sixty years!

That got me thinking about a dinner party in Vancouver not so long ago…. Read More »

By Wendy | Posted in Community engagement | Comments (0)

Will of the People KTS Workshops at Byron Bay: Sunday, 6 September at noon

July 1, 2009 – 7:52 pm

I will be conducting monthly workshops in collaboration with the Byron Bay-based organisation, “Will of the People” at the monthly Sunday market in Byron Bay from 12 noon to 2 pm.

For market details, see: http://www.byron-bay.com/markets/

For the local weather, see: http://www.byron-bay.com/weather/index.html

At the workshop each month we will work on one of the six components of the KTS “EATING” menu.

“Education” is up first.

The first session was attended by about 20 enthusiastic and articulate local people. What great ideas they had!

We discussed the community education and capacity-building components of “Education” and explored how an engaged citizenry can learn about sustainability issues and take action on matters of importance to local and global sustainability.

Here are some notes about the first workshop: KTS Educating for Sustainability

And here is a summary of “Education for Sustainability” points: KTS Education 14 Points

For more information, see:

http://www.willofthepeopleproject.net/oms/oms.php?&loc=gov1bb

The second workshop was held at 12 noon on Sunday 2 August.

Here’s Chapter 6, the reading for the August 2nd workshop: KTS ch6

The third workshop will be held on Sunday, September 6th. The topic is “Trust”.

This workshop will be attended by me but community-run and initiated.

Here’s the chapter for the September session: Kitchen Table Sustainability chapter 7 Trust 2009

By Wendy | Posted in KTS Events | Comments (0)

Kitchen Table Sustainability