How to Avoid Disempowering Yourself with PowerPoint

June 29, 2009 – 2:23 am

 

Video Conference

The other day we abandoned the shed to the rats, the python and the floods and drove to the University at the Gold Coast. I was a bit early for my lecture so I enjoyed listening to the students making their presentations about a planning project.

They were sophisticated postgraduate students and very articulate. Great research and fine ideas.

But, oh, the PowerPoints!

In my new book, SpeakOut: a Step-by-step Guide to SpeakOuts and Community Workshops (see www.speakoutplanning.com), released by Earthscan last month, my co-author Wiwik Bunjamin-Mau and I dedicate part of a chapter to this issue because it’s such a massive problem in community engagement.

It’s bad enough in professional forums to have people reading long lists of bullet points or making the audience plow through dense text. But in community meetings, this can be the kiss of death. It can bring an otherwise lively and thoughtful event to a dead stop.

What are we to do to liberate this technology?

It’s very helpful and handy to have the handouts and the various features PowerPoint offers. I’m not debating that. It’s about trying to keep it straightforward and simple and interesting.

And not having every single slide “badged” with a corporate logo and a title that’s endlessly repeated. Blessedly, the features of flying wedges of text have now pretty much disappeared. But the dreary bullet points continue.

I suggest that if you are using PowerPoint, do not override the recommended font size unless you are making the font larger. For example, for a slide with a few major bullet points, PowerPoint suggests 32 point for the text and 44 point for the title.

For one with more detail, the recommended point size for the text is still 28 point.

I also suggest that you keep the number of words to a limit and use the opportunity provided by the software to make handouts for distribution to workshop participants. That way they can read along and make notes for their own use.

There are, fortunately, many excellent books to help ensure that your presentations (and especially those by technical ‘experts’) are appropriate for workshop and meeting audiences and participants.

Presentations for Dummies (2004) by Malcolm Kushner is an excellent start, as is Brilliant Presentation by Richard Hall (2007). Kushner has a particularly valuable section called ‘Avoiding Common Mistakes with PowerPoint’ (pages 235-243).

I have summarised below some important pointers from both of these books:

Dos:

  • Follow the ‘4 by 4’ rule: no more than 4 lines and 4 words to a line.
  • Maximum: 6 words per 6 lines.
  • Make the ending look good.
  • Be careful that sounds and transitions don’t become annoying.
  • Check carefully for misspelled words.
  • Be careful to talk about what’s on the slide and not something else.
  • Write a contents page to begin with.
  • Make a heading for every slide.
  • Use Notes pages for your own notes (do not use the PowerPoint as the speaker’s notes).
  • Consider using no bullets at all.
  • Remember to practice beforehand.

 Don’ts:

  • Don’t use too much text.
  • Don’t over-emphasize your logo.
  • Don’t mix different types of clip-art.
  • Don’t use too many colours.
  • Don’t emphasize everything.
  • Don’t ‘prettify’ without a purpose.
  • Avoid including too much information per slide.
  • Avoid too many special effects.
  • Don’t read slides out word for word.
  • Don’t become obsessed with the pictorial side of things.
  • Avoid large slabs of text.
  • Not more than 5 bullet points or 30 words total per slide.
  • Do not use sub-headings or sub-bullets.
  • Avoid animations, transitions and sound without expert backup.
  • Avoid complex charts (best to have more charts than one complex one).
  • Avoid animations, transitions and sound without expert backup.

Please can we start a conversation about this? I need support in my quest to liberate PowerPoint in community settings.

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Am I being too harsh here? Is there more to life than the “rules” of presentation?

Please respond!

Sources:

Atkinson, Max (2005). Lend Me Your Ears: All You Need to Know about Making Speeches & Presentations, Oxfor University Press, Oxford and New York.

Hall, R. (2007) Brilliant Presentation: What the Best Presenters Know, Say and Do, Pearson Education, Harlow, UK

Kushner, M. (2004) ‘Mastering the power of PowerPoint’, in Presentation for Dummies, Wiley, New York

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

Criticisms of Community Engagement

June 26, 2009 – 2:04 am

 Ach, du Schreck

It’s a worry!

I’ve explained before that community engagement — especially with sustainability — is not an easy task.

Many people argue that it is problematic and can actually hurt those it is most intends to benefit.

So let’s just have a quick look at some of the major critcisms. I’d love to hear comments back and maybe we can prepare a good list of responses.

And then figure out how to make better processes happen in our communities.

Please make a comment in the box below or contact me at wendy@sarkissian.com.au 

or this email address for Canadians (for whom I seem to be on a Canadian spam list): Wendy.Sarkissian@gmail.com

Thanks!

Valid criticisms of citizen involvement include:

  •  Lack of political and technical prowess among community groups makes them easy prey for co-optation by politicians or bureaucrats;
  • In engagement situations, a non-representative interest group may be able to manipulate the decision-making process towards its own ends;
  • Lack of expertise, inertia and fear of the results of new or novel ideas may induce opposition to whatever is proposed and only preserve the status quo;
  • Interest groups may veto each other’s proposals because it is always easier to organise resistance than to reach agreement;
  • The short-sightedness of local groups may prevent or delay formulation or implementation of broader plans; and
  • Non-participants will always form the bulk of the population. On these grounds, radical planners suggest that engagement is a diversion from the primary goal, that of changing society’s institutions.

What do YOU think of this list?

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

The Wheel of Participation (or Empowerment)

June 25, 2009 – 2:32 am

I was speaking about Sherry Arnstein’s Ladder of Citizen Participation the other day to a group of students and I said that I thought it’d been eclipsed (in the past forty years) by other, better, models. I noticed an embarrassed look on the teacher’s face. Perhaps they had not updated their model?

Well, in South Lanarkshire (which is Glasgow, actually), the Scots have nailed it and come up with a much better model.

I can just imagine them, on a frosty Scottish night, putting another log on the fire and dreaming up this elegant model. It’s called “the Wheel of Participation”.

You can download the full 1998 article in the British journal, Planning, by clicking on this link: Davidson Spinning wheel article1998

The authors are local municipal practitioners working to redefine the ‘ladder’ of citizen participation originally proposed by Arnstein by offering an innovative approach to conceptualising the various dimensions of communication and engagement processes. They argue that a correct approach to public engagement could revitalise the planning system. To engage local communities effectively in the planning system, new and innovative approaches are required. The Wheel of Participation helps to minimise ambiguity associated with consultation, including reliance on inappropriate techniques and unclear objectives (see the illustration below).

The Wheel highlights four overarching approaches to community involvement:

  • Information

  • Consultation

  • Participation

  • Empowerment

The concept is that, with community involvement, a decision would be made as to which quadrant of the Wheel the project belonged. Then the appropriate strategy or strategies would be selected. The Wheel will only work equitably as a model if this pivotal decision is taken collaboratively. Otherwise, in the hands of cautious proponents, all projects could be deemed as ‘information-only’ projects and only limited approaches selected. The various categories of communication and engagement processes identified in the four quadrants of the Wheel are summarised below.

 

The Wheel of Participation
The Wheel of Participation

Drawing by Steph Walton

INFORMATION

Minimal communication

Council deciding on all matters itself, without community consultation (except when legally required to do so, via the minutes of committee meetings.

Limited information

Telling the public only what you want to tell them, not what the public wants to know.

Good-quality information

Providing information which the community wants and/or needs, e.g., discussion papers/exhibitions for development plans, guidance notes for conservative area development.

CONSULTATION

Limited consultation

Providing information in a limited manner with the onus often placed on the community to respond, e.g., posters and leaflets. 

Customer care

Having a customer-oriented service, e.g., introducing a customer care policy, providing a complaints/comments scheme.

Genuine consultation

Actively discussing issues with communities regarding your ideas before taking action, e.g., liaising with tenants’ groups, customer satisfaction surveys.

PARTICIPATION

Effective advisory body

Inviting communities to draw up proposals for the department to consider.

Partnership

Solving problems in partnership with communities, e.g., a formal partnership.

Limited decentralised decision-making

Allowing communities to make their own decisions on some issues, e.g., management of community halls.

EMPOWERMENT

Delegated control

Delegating limited decisions–making powers in a particular process or project, e.g., tenant management organisations and school boards.

Independent control

Council obliged to provide a service but chooses to do so by facilitating community groups and/or other agencies to provide that service on their behalf, e.g., the delivery of care services contracts by the voluntary sector.

Entrusted control

Devolving substantial decision-making powers to communities, e.g., tenant management.

For information:

Davidson, S. (1998) ‘Spinning the wheel of empowerment’, Planning, vol 1262, 3 April, pp14–15

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

Community Engagement with Older People

June 24, 2009 – 2:00 am

 

I have something to tell you

I have something to tell you

I guess everyone who’s been a speaker has had an experience like mine. But when it happened I was initially devastated. I’d been asked to speak to an aged care organisation’s conference. I’d written a story about a feisty older woman who was moving about her future community with ease and independence.

The story was part of a consulting project I’d been doing about ageing in the City of Brisbane and I closely identified with the progress of my heroine, whom I described as part-Aboriginal.

You can click on the link below for the whole story: A Vision for Brisbane

The speech was a disaster. Angie, my assistant, was the only one who clapped in an audience of maybe three hundred.

What had gone wrong?

Later, after we visited the conference sponsors’ displays and stalls, we figured it out. I had been talking about community engagement, empowerment and the independence of older people to the wrong people! These, it seemed to me, were the people who traded in dependency. The people who made walkers and special beds to raise you up so the carer does not wreck their back hlepign you back into bed. Admirable folk. But not much into what I was talking about. Or so it seemed to me at the time.

My friend Shelagh, a retired academic, who did the first copy-edit of Kitchen Table Sustainability, lives in high-quality retirement housing in Vancouver. She recently reported that she has been able to give up her walker (at 83) and walk with a cane again. After some months of hydrotherapy.

Expressing my delight, I countered that I had noticed that almost all the people living in her establishment seem to have walkers. I thought perhaps it was the retirement village organisation’s risk-management policy in action?

Guidance for People Working with Older People

So, to the topic of this blog: community engagement for older people. People like me and my Baby Boomer friends. And the “Veterans”. Like Shelagh.

There are a few tips in the material that follows. Just click on the link below to download a summary:

Community Engagement with Older People download

It boils down to respect, respect and respect. And not expecting to exploit or foster compliance and dependence.

We Baby Boomers are a stroppy lot, used to getting our way, being the taste-makers and having influence.

We are not likely to be content with the sorts of weak and tokenistic community engagement that often passes for the real thing.

Just ask Shelagh.

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

Community Engagement: 18 Considerations

June 23, 2009 – 8:05 am

 Brian describing visualisation OBD

 

Don’t let anyone tell you differently. Community engagement is a tricky matter.

We need to be flexible and still keep our eyes  on the ball. It’s a changing landscape. A bit like navigating white water rapids in a small canoe.

When we add the issues of “sustainability” to the mix, things become more complex.

Here are eighteen good ideas to help keep us afloat in difficult times. They’re based on my practice and reading over the past forty years. 

1. Distinguishing between community consultation and communication.

THIS MEANS: Making a clear distinction between the work of public relations, communication and marketing personnel and those undertaking community engagement and not allowing a “PR” approach to dominate the approach of the team.

 2. Capacity building: developing community knowledgeability and literacy about complex technical and environmental issues:

 THIS MEANS:

 Helping local people understand the implications of the discourses about sustainability and growth issues and to relate them to this project

  • Building community capacity about options

 3. Beyond identifiable stakeholders (the “usual suspects”)

THIS MEANS: Reaching much deeper into communities and using a much wider range of approaches than is usually employed with identifiable stakeholder groups. This has significant resource implications.

 4. Addressing issues of cultural diversity by actively engaging culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) communities

THIS MEANS: Finding ways to target non-English-speaking and other cultural groups and to build bridges between and among cultural groups to open up a community conversation about options. This has significant resource implications in terms of translation and interpretation of all processes. It will be essential that processes employed with non-English speakers not be seen as abbreviated or lesser than processes for English-speaking community members.

5. Tempo

THIS MEANS: Finding ways to maintain community interest and involvement over a long period, perhaps by tying processes to established community events and activities. Whatever processes are used to maintain pace and tempo, they must not smack of “tokenism and must be related to real target dates and deliverables.

6. Link to specific Council community engagement plans/protocols and successful modes of operation

THIS MEANS: A full inspection of each Council’s preferred ways of operating and reference to government protocols.

7. How can we ensure that consultation outcomes are actually fed into the feasibility study process?

THIS MEANS:  An integrated design for the feasibility process which clearly indicates when and how community information and opinions will be taken into account to influence decisions at key target dates and deadlines. Feedback loops must be established so that the community can see how their views are being taken into account in the refinement of the approach taken.

8. Representativeness and tracking of community engagement activities and successes

THIS MEANS:  Ensuring that participants in community engagement processes are representative of the wider community; developing and using deliberative democracy and other emerging processes that enhance representativeness; regular monitoring of representativeness issues and including ways to increase representativeness.

9. Relationships between and among various advisory groups and the servicing of these groups.

THIS MEANS: Developing clear draft terms of reference for each advisory group, including draft working protocols, assisting groups in refining these terms of reference and protocols and establishing clear reporting and liaison relationships between those groups and the project management, the ongoing community engagement strategy, as well as between those groups.

10. Skills and experience of engagement personnel, including experience with complex projects

THIS MEANS: Ensuring the personnel are selected and/or engaged who have a wide range of relevant successful experience and that senior personnel are employed, so that the community engagement function of a study is not seen as a “poor relation” with little real power to influence outcomes.

11. Evaluation proposals for community engagement:

THIS MEANS: Creation and maintenance of clear evaluation frameworks for the community engagement and precise use of outside evaluators (if engaged). In particular:

  •  The work and results of external evaluators must be made available to the project management  (this will require details of their contributions and findings);
  • Regular summaries of evaluation outcomes to enable ongoing monitoring; and
  • Clear processes for responding to the results of evaluation processes.

 12. A wide range of proposed approaches to be used (not simply a few old-fashioned approaches)

THIS MEANS: Community engagement processes should reflect the wide range of available approaches and not be limited to the traditional modes (often limited to public meetings, focus groups and exhibitions). Approaches should be selected for their relevance to the task at hand and the stage of the process, as well as the degree of community empowerment and partnership envisaged. A wide understanding of available methods should be demonstrated.

13. Encouraging the sustainability debate (to counteract NIMBY responses)

THIS MEANS:  Actively pursuing community education options so that local people are offered genuine opportunities to explore the implications of automobile dependence for the sustainability agenda and develop an interest in exploring options. This will require a much richer model of community engagement than has been used on some projects.

14. How reports from community engagement personnel will be presented and how qualitative data and the emphasis participants place on issues will be depicted.

THIS MEANS: Employing sophisticated ways of analysing qualitative information so that it does not get treated as inferior to so-called “hard” data from engagement (or other) processes. Including the raw information for all processes so that participants can track how the material they provided was reported.

15. Intergenerational participation: involving children and young people

THIS MEANS:

  • Developing discrete, creative, tested and appropriate ways to engage children (up to 18 years) and young people (up to mid-twenties) and incorporating the results of those engagement processes into reports. This will require a deep understanding of the field of engagement with children and young people.
  •  Helping adults understand the wisdom of children and young people and ensuring that their contributions are treated with respect are key considerations.

16. Opportunities for creativity, where local people can become engaged at a deep level.

THIS MEANS:

  • Using appropriate and tested creative approaches from community cultural development realms, community visioning and creative visualisation and refining approaches to ensure that they are fully inclusionary.
  •  Using these approaches with discretion so that those familiar with more traditional approaches are not inadvertently excluded.

17. Electronic means of engagement: what methods work best and what methods are feasible for this project?

THIS MEANS: Working with all levels of government and other specialists and advisors to develop appropriate electronic community engagement methods and monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of any selected methods or techniques.

18. Reaching and engaging hard-to-reach groups and individuals.

THIS MEANS: Developing specific approaches to target hard-to-reach and marginalised groups (older people, people with a disability, Indigenous people, young people, members of CaLD communities, isolated and/or rural residents….) and monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of those approaches.

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

Appreciating a Mentor: Clare Cooper Marcus

June 22, 2009 – 8:06 am

I met my mentor, Clare Cooper Marcus in 1973. So we’ve been friends and colleagues for over 35 years. She and her husband, Stephen, were visiting Australia from California. “You’d like my wife,” Stephen remarked.

Stephen was right: I liked his wife. Finding a shared interest in almost everything from spirituality to medium-density housing, we formed a friendship that endures today.

I’m the one who decided that Clare was my mentor. It doesn’t detract from “friend”, in my view. It just deepens it.

Sometimes I feel that Clare is my “tester”. Now a retired professor, she discovers something, explores all its dimensions, tells me about it and how to “do” it and then I follow along, somewhat shyly and perhaps reluctantly, in her footsteps.

In the late seventies, when I spent a couple of years teaching at her university in Berkeley, we’d launch forth on our famous “site visits” (mostly for fun but ostensibly as research for our book, Housing as if People Mattered, University of California, 1986), complete with a full kit: thermoses of tea, china cups, cloth napkins and homemade biscuits. Morning tea was as essential ritual. We’d camp in a dingy courtyard of a public housing estate or an equally depressing open space in a new gated community, unpack our treasures and share our repast.

wsccm final

 

Clare’s “Space Cookies” a chocolate-and-oatmeal shortbread delicacy, were a great incentive for me to trudge with her through boring housing estates and display villages with (what we deemed to be deceptive) three-quarter-sized furniture. We were rarely polite to those we found responsible for some of the abominations of that housing form we discovered between 1973 and the present day. (I look forward to another round of “site visits” in September this year when I visit Clare.)

In my new book, co-authored with Dianna Hurford and Christine Wenman, Creative Community Planning: Transformative Practices for Working at the Edge (Earthscan, 2010), I say this:

The blessings that the courageous and poetic Clare Cooper Marcus continues to bring to my life are chronicled in many places in this book. We’ve been friends since 1973. We wrote a book together, Housing as if People Mattered, in 1986 and it’s still in print! I can attribute most of my journeying in creative and spiritual realms to her spirited encouragement.

Although I was never, formally, Clare’s student, I am that student. And I bow deeply in gratitude to my mentor.

English-born Clare’s lived in the same house in Berkeley for thirty-five years. Her kitchen is a marvel of “house as a mirror of the self”, as is her bountiful garden. I’ve memorialized both in a story called “The Warm Kitchen”, which you can download from this link:  The Warm Kitchen

 ws clare's kitchen happy 

One of the things Clare taught me is about guided visualisation, a topic I’ll explore in future blogs. I learned what this process can be and how a rich and deeply moving engagement with the past or the future is vastly different from the boring and “rational” so-called “visioning” approaches used by most planners and engagement practitioners. Clare’s work on the “Environmental Autobiography” is legendary and a must-read for design students and those in environment-behaviour research.

Some of us are blessed with family. Others have wonderful friends. I belong to the second category. The family I have is great but there’s not many of them and most live far away.

A wise friend once told me when I was feeling lonely for “family” that “spirit is thicker than blood”.

Clare Marcus is not my blood relation.

But after 36 years of friendship, her spirit is in my blood. 

 

Clare on her birthday, 2009

Clare on her birthday, 2009

Some reading:

Marcus, C.C. (1978) ‘Remembrance of landscapes past,’ Landscape vol 22, no 3, pp34–43

http://iurd.berkeley.edu/catalog/Reprint_Titles/Remembrances_Landscapes_Past

Marcus, C.C. (1979) Environmental Autobiography, Working Paper 301, January, Institute for Urban and Regional Development, University of California, Berkeley http://iurd.berkeley.edu/catalog/Working_Paper_Titles/Environmental_Autobiography

Marcus, C.C. (2006) House as a Mirror of Self: Exploring the Deeper Meaning of Home, second edition, Nicolas-Hayes, Inc, Lake Worth, Florida

http://www.amazon.com/House-As-Mirror-Self-Exploring/dp/0892541245

Marcus, C.C. and Sarkissian, W. (1966) Housing as if People Mattered: Illustrated Site-Design Guidelines for Medium-Density Family Housing, University of California, Berkeley

http://www.amazon.com/Housing-People-Mattered-Medium-Density-Development/dp/0520063309

Sarkissian, Wendy, “The Warm Kitchen”. Downloadable from this link:  The Warm Kitchen

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

Smoke on the Horizon

June 21, 2009 – 8:12 am

We’ve had the man from the Country Fire Service around to look over the property.

“Don’t plant any more trees,” he said. “Don’t you know how dangerous it is to live uphill from a gully?”

No more trees.

A hard ask when it’s so hot in the summer.

We’re doing what we can.

When there’s smoke on the horizon, as there was earlier this week, I get to remembering how frightening fire can be in the bush. All my neighbours know this, of course. And my “fire” experience has to do with a very different bioregion: the Top End of northern Australia.

Everything is different there from this subtropical paradise: dramatic thunderstorms, fierce winds, endless periods of rain and dry in strongly defined seasons. The Aboriginal people say there are six: Yegge, Wurrgeng, Gurrung, Gunumeleng, Gudjewg and Banggerreng.  

My first bushfire was in August 1991. In Humpty Doo.

I can still smell the fear of it.

I remember the dramatic differences in the “before” and “after” landscape. 

Before and after the Fire, 1991

Before and after the Fire, 1991

 
 
And I still sense in my body my own terrified response:
In the middle distance I spotted dark smoke rising above a wall of orange. The horizon, formerly hidden by a rich woodland understorey, trees and shrubs, now expanded for acres, revealing the scarred landform’s idiosyncrasies: stream banks, hillocks and depressions. Scattered across this moonscape were burning and smoking stumps, charred skeletons of acacia, woolly butt, kapok bushes, ironwood, carallia, billy goat plums, some without leaves or branches. Only the tallest retained a thin green canopy crowning their blackened branches.

The black, twisted stumps of leafless cycad ferns like amputated limbs. Large birds I’d never seen before spiralled overhead, wheeling and diving on insects and small animals seeking refuge at the fire’s margins.

And the sound of it: the tearing and thudding of huge trees crashing into the earth.

I feel like my life is about to be burned down. With me inside.

That day a hundred acres of neighbours’ bush burns a quarter-mile from my house. Cause unknown. Spot fires burn everywhere, as far as I can see.

Spot fires burn in my heart, burning all my raw places, burning away my shell, exposing vulnerable new places.

Flames are spreading with every breath, spreading throughout my being.

Our neighbour to the west, Trevor, has just planted twenty new shrubs to give us a bit of privacy from each other.

Neighbour Lis, a horticulturalist, bought the plants and Karl helped Trevor with the mulching. I hope they won’t be a problem because we really need to shade the western wall of our new house.

Like Robert Frost, we believe that “good fences make good neighbours”. In this case, trees, rather than fences.

So we try to be prudent and meet our other needs. It’s always this way for us new ones on the block: a sort of awkward, inexperienced, balance … a searching for some sort of equanimity in this rural place …

I try to be reasonable. But I know I’m not reasonable when I smell gum trees burning.

I was too close to that once and it really frightened me.

 

You can download the full (true) story of  ”Watching the Fire” by clicking here:  Sarkissian Watching the Fire 2009

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

Saying Goodbye to a Partner: A Souvenir

June 20, 2009 – 6:06 pm

This week, when the storms came and the rats and python got into the shed, I had to do some quick work to rescue my scrapbooks. I was unprepared for the emotional impact.

But the urgent task became a meditation and yielded a great blessing.

My father’s American Green Card (such a valuable treasure for a Canadian!). His Maui driver’s license with his photograph dated 1973. Yellowed newspaper obituary clippings about my great-grandfather, the charismatic Armenian preacher, Rev. Harootune Sarkissian, describing what could only be called a “triumphant death”, surrounded by family, singing Armenian hymns. He was in Connecticut, aged 96. I remember visiting his grave.

Then I discovered the letter from my former partner.

It was only a few lines and printed in pencil. I remembered the circumstances. I was standing at the table sorting papers and had to sit down as sweet memories washed over me.

It was a mutual decision to part after eight years and we were both grieving for what we had lost. We engaged a Sydney therapist for four sessions to say our goodbyes.

This tiny scrap of paper was my partner’s letter to me, written as a child would write to a dear friend who was moving away. Printed in his non-dominant hand. That’s what the therapist instructed us to do.

The letter said we’d soon be parting and he would miss me greatly. He asked me to remember the good times we had and closed with an expression of love.  I’d printed a similar letter to him, I recalled, tears now streaming down my cheeks.

Yes, I remember the good times and I missed them — and him.

I bless the friendship we have shared since those painful sessions. I count him as a dear friend. In over twenty years, I doubt we’ve said one harsh word to each other. In fact, the therapy sessions were so powerful and effective that, other than a small altercation about lending the car, we never argued or disagreed. From places deep in our broken hearts, we told each other what was important – what needed to be said.

We sang songs to each other and each gave the other a small gift.

Our therapist showed us great kindness and compassion. He even cried with us, perhaps for his own losses…

I carefully folded and packed away the tiny letter, more cherished than photo albums and other treasures.

A plea from the heart for love to be validated and remembered.

My heart opening a simple — and undeniable — recognition of that reality.

An unexpected blessing in the midst of chaos.

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

Remembering Mary Ann Hiserman

June 20, 2009 – 8:08 am

My friend, Peter, the local real estate agent, came over the other day to see how the building was coming along. He’s been cheering us on, especially during the storms and floods. I found a plan and we walked around the building site. 

“Great that it’s all on one level,” Peter smiled, pointing to the ramp on the drawing. 

“Retirement housing”, I whispered, but I was thinking of my architect friend, Mary Ann.

Mary Ann Hiserman, 1979

Mary Ann Hiserman, 1979

Had she still been alive, this house would have been for her, with its elegant wheelchair-accessible ramp and spacious turning circles.

We’re not planning a retirement in wheelchairs. But you never know.

At least we know how important accessibility is.

When I was teaching at Berkeley in the seventies, I had a teacher myself, a young woman who was a wheelchair user: Mary Ann Hiserman. She died at 49 after a remarkable life of activism. She transformed my life, teaching me by example and direct experience what I know about accessibility and Universal Design.

Mary Ann Hiserman was the first wheelchair user to graduate from the Berkeley Master of Architecture Program and one of the first wheelchair users to become a licensed Architect in California. She was an expert on disabled accessibility codes and a tireless advocate for accessibility rights. She worked from 1979 until her death in 1997 and wasresponsible — more than any other person — for the evolution of physical accessibility on the Berkeley campus.

Long before it was mandated or fashionable.

Mary Ann reminded me that an accessible environment is one that’s comfortable and convenient for all. And, when we think about sustainability in our housing, public spaces and buildings, the ageing and increased disability of our population must be a major consideration. Sure, we’re living longer, but many are living with a disability.

In her capacity as campus access coordinator, Mary Ann saw that all campus buildings at Berkeley met handicapped compliance codes. She coordinated the Chancellor’s Committee for the Removal of Architectural Barriers and was an access consultant for two local municipalities.

Mary Ann spent nearly her entire academic and professional career at Berkeley, was a member of the staff since 1977 and received both her BA and master’s degrees in architecture from Berkeley.

What a woman she was!

Unable to walk and severely crippled by polio and childhood arthritis, she nevertheless drew and painted beautifully, traveled widely, campaigned furiously for the rights of people with disability and for accessible environments. And yet she could not walk, dress herself, cook or perform basic hygiene activities without an attendant. She needed five hours’ of attendant care a day.

When Mary Ann left me in a borrowed wheelchair in a so-called “accessible” Berkeley park for an afternoon, I was in tears when she returned. Half a dozen people had come up to pray for me, offer access to miracles and speak to me as though I was a child.

Helf-Handicapping, Berkeley, 1978

Self-Handicapping, Berkeley, 1978

This “infantilizing” experience reminded me of how the able-bodied members of our community make the rules and define the priorities. The story of our lunch in a Reno casino is apocryphal. I screamed back at the waitress who asked “what the wheelchair wanted for lunch” and Mary Ann just smiled.

It’s not always easy building an accessible house in the bush. But it’s not impossible, either. Our house is a metaphor for the values we hold true.

And accessibility, honouring the memory of my fearless friend, is one of those values.

For photos and stories about this remarkable woman: 

 http://disweb.org/cda/memorials/Memory_p1.html

http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt2c60199h&chunk.id=c000022&brand=oac

By Wendy | Posted in Posts from the bush | Comments (5)

Community Engagement with Children and Young People

June 19, 2009 – 10:05 am

 

Secret Kids' Business, Eagleby, Gold Coast, 1999

Secret Kids' Business, Eagleby, Gold Coast, 1999

 

A few weeks ago the communications officer of a local council responded to my plea to include children and young people in their community engagement strategy.

“Children and young people are not our customers”, she retorted.

I said that where I come from, we don’t appreciate that sort of language.

(“Wash your mouth out with soap” was what I had in mind, but with Karl nearby, I didn’t say it. No need to antagonize people, he says.)

But it’s an important issue that needs more discussion.

If I had a dollar for every time someone has told me they don’t engage with children and young people because they have nothing to say or there are no available methods, I’d have long since retired to the Gold Coast.

What rubbish!

There’s no end of brilliant advisory material. The issue is political, not practical.

The question, I feel is, “Are children and young people citizens or citizens-in-the making?”

If we truly believe in intergenerational equity, we need to think twice about excluding children and young people from community engagement processes.

Young people require opportunities to participate and contribute to a sustainable future. If anyone has a stake in the future and a concern about long-term consequences and the sustainability of communities, it is young people. Working directly with young people can be practical evidence of our commitment to intergenerational equity. Nobody knows better than today’s children and young people what it is like to be young today. Young people themselves are most knowledgeable about their own lives.

I believe that outside ‘experts’ should facilitate, not dominate, democracy. Importantly, considering children and young people, our position must be that that they are citizens and not citizens-in-the-making.

Young people are not always easy to reach, as they are a complex, individualistic, busy and media-savvy group. I have found them to be open to a variety of engagement methods and most likely to respond to small group face-to-face situations. They are looking for a sense of trust in the process, as well as a serious commitment from organisers to listen to their views and to respect and value their views.

Anything we can do to avoid wasting young people’s valuable time will send a strong message that we care about them and understand their needs.

Good ways of working are not very different from good ways of working with adults. Respect and autonomy are key factors.

In future posts, I’ll offer some of the processes I have used over the years to engage with children and young people. You’ll be delighted at how much there is.

Two Great Books

In the meantime, I’d recommend two great books, both from our publisher, Earthscan, in London:

Driskell, D. with the Growing up in Cities Project (2002) Creating Better Cities with Children and Youth: A Manual for Participation, Earthscan, UNESCO Publishing and MOST, London

Hart, R. A. (1997) Children’s Participation: The Theory and Practice of Involving Young Citizens in Community Development and Environmental Care, Earthscan, London

See: www.earthscan.co.uk

Photograph by Kelvin Walsh, 1999

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