Community Matters Heart and Soul Conf Call Notes 12.15.10

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www.communitymatters.org Heart & Soul Community Planning Conference Call Notes 12/15/10

Heart & SoulCommunity Planning

Conference Call Notes

Wednesday, December 15, 2010, 4-5pm EST

We used a live version of this document to collaboratively add questions, collectthoughts, transcribe important talking points, before, during and after the Heart & SoulCommunity Planning conference call. You can access this document via this link:

http://bit.ly/eOXyGU AttendingMany thanks to the nearly 50 people who were listening in and participating on the call.Your insight and feedback was invaluable.

Moderating Bonnie Shaw, Partner, BYO Consulting, LLC

Speaking

Betsy Rosenbluth, Northeast Director of Projects, Orton Family Foundation Jane Lafleur, Executive Director ofFriends of Midcoast Maine and

Damariscottas Heart & Soul Project Coordinator

o e-mail: [email protected]; tel: 207 237-1077Agenda

15mins Introduction to Heart & Soul Community Planning, call protocol, etc.

35mins Open for questions/discussion

10mins How can CommunityMatters continue to support this conversation?

Questions

How do you see applying this kind of approach to different communities

around the country?

Are there key results that Heart & Soul program want to see? What are the

outcomes of H&S planning?

How does a community articulate its heart and soul?

What are some specific examples of how the values of a community can

influence the physical place?


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Are there other communities out there (on the call today or not) doing this

sort of work under a different name? (Rebecca/Orton)o Jane: sees this as community building - it could happen around any

issue, like farms to schools or other issues. Its really just about getting

people involved and participating.o Betsy: Weve looked for best practices from community development and

land use planning, but weve also looked at some very different fields likestorytelling, arts. Were trying to just adapt and re-adapt.

o Irvington : Sustainability project working with local leaders, training

community groups and civic leaders to address sustainability issues from

food to water, etc.o Jan Blaire: Holding roundtable disucssions and inviting neighboring

communities to participate. Started as a small project and now expanding

to include people from far away.o Lane McLelland: They are in partnership with 2-3 groups already doing

community histories with high school students and elders. They are tryingto work with a deliberative democracy program to combine, so theyre

watching this process.

The next round of Orton H&S RFP projects will include a more significant

youth engagement component. Are there people on the call who have

experience in that area?o Tony DeLucia: Found that working with college and graduate students in

public health and urban planning helps them really go beyond classesand allow them to see how this will play out in the future. They see a

great future around active transportation arena, greenways and trails.o Jane: Damariscotta has had a great experience in this area. In working

with high school students they developed a list of needs and priorities,including finding that students want a place to be downtown where they

are welcomed to hang out with a youth friendly menu. A local restuarant

jumped this opportunity.o Betsy: Biddeford and UNE have been part of the Downtown planning in

Biddeford. The students were trained to facilitate some of the communityconversation groups and to collect community stories. UNE is looking to

contribute to downtown vitality with greater University programming in the

historic theater and gallery space.

Huge amount of work - cost and what resource help available to towns? -

and partnerships?o Betsy: Important to see what stake local organizations have in projects.

When projects are collaborative, it invites people to participate and co-create. Partners have stayed at the table because they have a stake in

the outcome. The Foundation also offers training and funding for thisprocess through our RFP, which will be issued late spring 2011. TheFoundation is also drafting a Handbook which will allow people to pick

and choose pieces that would work best for them.o Jane: Damariscotta did a very extensive project with the Foundation, but

that level may not be necessary for every town. The important thing is justto get people involved. The people know best and they know what they

want for their community.


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What action do you want community members to take? How do you refresh

the resilience of the community?o Betsy: Important to let people enter and leave projects as their interest

dictates. Some people will be in it for the long haul and have morecapacity to help while others might want to work on a single project. Key

question is whether there is a core that can fill in when there is turnover in

volunteers. Were looking at ways to keep people informed, onlinecommunication vehicles like i-neighbors.org, school newsletters and anarray of tools, along with an open opportunity for people to join at any

point. If you implement as you go, people can see that all the talk really

does lead to action.

o Jane: Damariscotta and all towns need to celebrate more. It always feelslike one is in the thick of the project but we should pause to celebrate allthe accomplishments. We need every single person who has something

to give to the process. and celebration often helps keep people involved.

Dont legitimate comments become cheapened because they are combinedwith the fringe or extreme comments in an open/social networking

environment?o We have not found to be the case. We have found that extreme or fringe

comments are sometimes a silent majority that is heard only at the lastminute so it is better to know these early. The people need to know all

the comments and we find ways to test whether there is support for a

comment such as through dot-voting or key pad polling.

Is there are a list of other organizations offering grants for this sort of

community building work? (Paul Fixx, Hardwick, VT [email protected])o Betsy: We dont have a list but have had great interest from many

Community Foundations.

Listening to Betsy & Jane I am wondering how involved Orton is in themanagement of the grants scope of work.

o In Damariscottas case, we worked closely with the foundation at the

beginning to identify needs, ideas, etc and they offered a great array of

assistance. We had weekly calls just to stay connected.

Does it work that when you apply for a grant you have to know that Ortondirectly participates in management for success or does Orton provide

TA upon request, etc.?o Betsy: As an operating Foundation we function as active advisors in all

the projects. We also provide yearly training around key steps and issues

(like facilitation, stoytelling, communication, etc), and we often provide TA

in unique situations, such as the integration of CViz Visualization toolsand the Design Charrette in Damariscotta.

What tools were you able to use to bring together with conscious intention

people who didnt agree with each other for the purpose of bridging

divides?o In Damariscottas case we got people out to meeting or we went to them

and it was the committees job to make sure a range of opinions was part

of the mix.


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o Betsy: Most of the Community Conversations were based on bridging

these various viewpoints - bringing conversations to the neighborhoodlevel, hosting in familiar gathering places, sometimes using story circlesor interviewing. The neighborhood and individual conversations then

culminated in larger community forums where people could see their

opinions feeder into a larger effort. I think all projects found individual

phone calls the most effective for a diverse turn out, so the composition ofyour citizen advisory committee is key.

I joined the call late, but it seems that the sort of thing being discussed is

very similar to what weve been discussing in our Hardwick, VT area

transition town planning. Do you have any experience with how the H&Sprojects could fit in with reaching the sort of goals identified in transition

town planning? (Paul Fixx, Hardwick, VT [email protected])o Betsy: I think these processes are very complementary with the

community articulating whats most important and catalyzing both

partnerships and individual action to make it happenResources: Projects, additional reading, great examples, links that you recommend...

Start with this blog post: Communities nationwide are recognizing thatplanning processes need to change. Its no longer enough for a few people tocreate a plan that sits on a shelf and gathers dust. If we want to live in uniqueplaces full of local character and spirit, places with strong economies and vibrant

streets, places where we know our neighbors and have a say in governance,

then we need a better system. Heart & Soul Community Planning is one wayforward.

o http://communitymatters.posterous.com/bringing-heart-soul-community-

planning-to-you

The Damariscotta Heart & Soul final report is available at

http://www.friendsmidcoast.org/towns/documents/DamariscottaHeartandSoul.pdf

Read about more of the Orton Family Foundations Heart & Soul Community

Planning Projects at http://www.orton.org/projects/current

Read about the Heart & Soul Planning Initiative at the Foundation:

http://www.orton.org/sites/default/files/resource/919/H&S%20Approach%20White

%20Paper%202%2012%2009%20Final.pdf

Check out the Planning Tools Exchange database

(http://www.planningtoolsexchange.org) for lots of great tools, project examples,resources and organizations related to Heart & Soul Community Planning. And

please feel free to add your own!Notes/Concepts from CallBetsy Rosenbluth:


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Heart and soul community planning is wider and deeper than traditional planning begin with connections with community - why you live here, why you stay here,

whats important - helps to get to the heart of whats important to the community. storytelling - using local language thats familiar, using multimedia approaches to

share stories in different ways - this should be a fun way to express community

pride. social aspects getting elevated. the process of telling and sharing stories builds

connections across groups

tools allow us a wider distribution of processJane Lafleur:

Damariscotta, ME: first step was storytelling and listening to people. They then started to pull out themes and values that resulted in a values

statement, which they validated with citizens (values included working locally,

living locally, a high level of community involvement, etc.) Theyve used a wide range of methods: Neighbor to Neighbor Chats, community

potluck dinners, etc. Many methods to get feedback as well, including newspaper

and paper survey, interviews with high school students, 4-day planning charrette. So many groups should/can be involved in planning, from students to

snowmobile club....

Damariscotta now looking at Form-based codes, with a big series of veryinteractive workshops, now that they are starting to implement their planning

Lyman Orton: This is indeed a bottom-up process, but elected officials have to be highly

involved and have buy-in because they will be able to turn the H&S into code and

town plans. The more communities can do this process with greater specificity, the easier it

will be for communities to act on it.

Would like to see towns make a stronger commitment to retain coordinator

because it cant stop 2-3 years after the initial process. There is a need for a paidposition to help volunteers keep going.

o Jane: In response to Lymans suggestion for making this long term

commitment to community values, Damariscotta Board of Selectmen isconsidering a resolution of endorsement of the community values as away of doing future business, measuring future town decisions and is

considering having these values a part of the update of the

Comprehensive Plan.

Documents

Community Matters Heart and Soul Conf Call Notes 12.15.10