James: "We need these real places..."

My Morning Jacket's Jim James responds to ear X-tacy's closing via Facebook, finding relevance on many levels:

“there is a tear in my eye right now as i hear about the closing of one of my favorite places on earth- ear-xtacy. i send thanks and healing vibes to john and everyone who has worked so hard at the store over the years…the presence of that sacred place will be sorely missed. people- let this be a big wake up call to us…we need these places to gather as a community and share ideas about music and art and love and life and…. for the love of god…. it cant all take place online…or i fear that one day we will all wake up bleary-eyed and hung over from our technology binge and find the real world long gone… let us be inspired by places like “please and thank you,” “carmichaels,” “pops retail and consignment,” “heine brothers” and all the great independent ma and pa stores around the globe- leading us into a new era of what a creative business can be…we need to support these places and help create more…the mp3 has killed the idea of what a traditional record store used to be, but that should only be cause for us to re-invent and support things the computer can never kill…we need these real places… where you can still buy a record from a local band or a hard to find label or root thru stacks of used vinyl…or get a cup of coffee…or buy an old stereo system or a synthesizer or a pair of jeans…or learn a new skill…or teach a new skill…and love your fellow human in person and face to face and all in the same place. lets brainstorm. lets build more of these places. lets stick together. lets support each other. lets figure it out.” – jim james

A thought from a walk.

Just in walking around town, I regularly encounter architects, builders, growers, craftspeople, brewers, urban planners, retailers, artists, engineers, vintners, project managers, bankers, designers, and any number of others who are here now, engaged with the community, and ready to work. If anyone tried to tell me that, given the chance, those folks collectively couldn't come up with something better than what Carl Malysz negotiated behind closed doors, then I would tell them that they have a radically different view of this city and its capabilities than I do.

Coalition of the Willing: Beats the hell out of an unelected buy-state authority.

Coalition Of The Willing from coalitionfilm on Vimeo.

'Coalition of the Willing' is a collaborative animated film and web-based event about an online war against global warming in a 'post Copenhagen' world.

‘Coalition of the Willing’ has been Directed and produced by Knife Party, written by Tim Rayner and crafted by a network of 24 artists from around the world using varied and eclectic film making techniques. Collaborators include some of the world’s top moving image talent, such as Decoy, World Leaders and Parasol Island.

The film offers a response to the major problem of our time: how to galvanize and enlist the global publics in the fight against global warming. This optimistic and principled film explores how we could use new Internet technologies to leverage the powers of activists, experts, and ordinary citizens in collaborative ventures to combat climate change. Through analyses of swarm activity and social revolution, 'Coalition of the Willing' makes a compelling case for the new online activism and explains how to hand the fight against global warming to the people.

To find out all about the project and to join our Facebook page, follow us on Twitter, or get the iPhone App visit:

http://coalitionofthewilling.org.uk/

The Story of Stuff.

21 minutes and 25 seconds that can save your life. And mine. And your grandchildren's.

Heritagisation: A community will be as a community does.

From Cyril Isnart; Investigador Auxiliar Convidado; Universidade de Évora; Centro Interdisciplinar de História, Culturas e Sociedades; Évora, Portugal; to my friend and mentor Rory Turner to NAC:

The notion of heritage is surely one of the best tools social scientists have at their disposal to analyse how societies deal with their past, especially regarding their complex and ambiguous relationship with history and memory. However, heritage is also a way of constructing our present and locality, in transnational contexts as much as in local communities.

The recent concepts of Biodiversity, Cultural Diversity or Intangible Cultural Heritage proposed by Unesco to defend non-architectural heritage have met with considerable success, reinforce the centrality of such principles as loss, safeguard, and development that have already changed the social and economic landscapes of sites classified as World Heritage.

However, critical views on heritagisation are strikingly uncommon because heritage, either material, natural or immaterial, is often looked upon as authentic or irreducible civilisational testimony, as well as a real powerful tourism-related tool of economic development. Heritage is generally studied and used by specialists in charge of it (curators, politicians, economic agents or associations) as a «corpus» *per se*, to be considered and valorised as a mere ‘civilisational trace’ , cut off from the social, historical and cultural context that produced it. The constitution of museum collections or the publication of Unesco’s world heritage lists are nevertheless the result of an act of classification whose criteria are as much reliant on cultural and historical factors and the people involved in selecting and manipulating heritage, as it has been observed in other social phenomena, such as kinship, religion and economy.

In other words, the potential elevation of natural, material and immaterial items to a heritage status – and the effects this may have – must be taken and analysed as a social fact like any other. The recent development of heritage studies inside academia and the growing interest in heritage outside of it offer an ideal opportunity to think heritagisation as a social practice and a world view, inscribed in the bricolage dynamics that we find thriving between the global and the local, between history, memory and identity.

In other other words, "How does the idea of spending more than $500,000 on restoring the Cardinal Ritter house appear to the residents of the transitional neighborhood surrounding it?" It's not a harsh judgment. It's a question relevant to all of our futures.

Correspondingly, the Ritter House may be a convenient, recent example but the principles are readily transferable.

What do the neighbors think? How did they get to be neighbors? Who will be neighbors five years from now? Who will want to be a neighbor five years from now?

What are we doing to affect that wanting and is it specifically purposeful or disjoint and random?

Thoughts on making preservation and sustainability matter.

Tomorrow evening, a group of community leaders will officially meet for the first time to discuss the possibility of forming a new nonprofit aimed specifically at achieving historic preservation goals in Floyd County. For those interested, the meeting is at 7:30 pm at the Cardinal Ritter House, 1218 E. Oak Street, in New Albany.

As discussion around the topic has increased, a document has been circulated outlining some thoughts presented at the National Trust's annual Forum Luncheon by Donovan Rypkema, an economist well respected for his interest and research in preservation. Those thoughts, available at his blog here, challenge his audience to change attitudes about preservation by changing its focus from one of history to one of heritage, that is, less about bricks and mortar and more about the culture surrounding their creation and use.

Though I may quibble with a few details and word choices, it's a viewpoint I largely share.

Those who know me well know that, after much mind changing, nail biting, and a few beers to settle down, I'm in the process of applying to graduate school as an MA student in Cultural Sustainability. As a part of that process, I was asked to provide a brief biographical sketch highlighting how I came to be interested in such matters. Since it was involvement in New Albany that mostly drove me to it, New Albany, and its personal but universal challenges, quickly became the topic.

An excerpt from that biographical essay is below. I certainly can't claim the depth of knowledge or talent that Rypkema demonstrates but I was struck by our somewhat similar themes. Readers will notice that both neighborhood revitalization and historic preservation receive mention. They are topics that I do not separate. It's my hope that these initial thoughts, both from Rypkema and me, will help to encourage the blending of the two in the ongoing conversation.

Readers are of course encouraged to share their thoughts as well.

I am a neighborhood activist in New Albany, Indiana, a city of approximately 37,000 along the banks of the Ohio River that was once the largest, most prosperous in the state.

About the city, a downriver 1850’s newspaper in Evansville said: "the glory of New Albany is in her construction of magnificent steamers. In this noble art her mechanics stand unrivaled. She is second only to Pittsburgh in the number of tons launched from her shores; but in the size of her boats, their models and strength, beauty and finish, she has no rival. The mechanics that have framed the Shotwell and Eclipse, and given them their grace, beauty, and speed, may challenge the world."

Today, much of the infrastructure and building stock created to support steamer construction and related industries still exist, representing a standard of public investment and private entrepreneurship not often replicated in contemporary small cities. The mechanics and craftspeople that created and utilized them, however, have largely vanished along with the vibrant culture their activities generated. A friend jokingly refers to it as an open-air museum. If so, it’s a museum whose programming has been woefully insufficient for decades.

That was the problem with which several others and I started a few years ago. After a year of individual study and research, I was lucky enough to begin making connections with regional community development leaders, sharing knowledge and beginning to identify the cohorts of my more private community within the larger, more public whole. They in turn provided access to an even broader contingent of consultants, a national network of professionals affiliated with NeighborWorks America, a Washington, DC, based nonprofit organization “created by Congress to provide financial support, technical assistance, and training for community-based revitalization efforts.” That access culminated in my participation in a national pilot program for place-based training that brought the NeighborWorks Community and Neighborhood Revitalization Professional Certificate curriculum to the Louisville, KY, metro area. It was as part of that training that I became familiar with the Healthy Neighborhoods approach to community revitalization.

The Healthy Neighborhoods approach seeks to establish neighborhoods (or communities) of choice, places where it makes economic sense to invest time, money, and energy; where neighbors have the capacity to successfully manage day-to-day issues; and where they have confidence in their investments and their futures.

The methodology involves focusing on four primary factors as defined by David Boehlke, a major proponent of the approach:

Image: In an asset-oriented strategy that builds both household and neighborhood equity, it is important to promote a positive identity. That for older neighborhoods to compete successfully, they need to draw on their assets and tell their unique stories (for example, historic homes, urban parks, and so on). Residents and outsiders will see the neighborhood as attractive.

Markets: Each neighborhood has a unique market niche. All investments must reinforce the housing market and increase home values. Investment in one property improves the value of all properties within the neighborhood.

Physical conditions: We need to target outcomes, not outputs, because numbers don’t tell the story. Outcomes measure whether the neighborhood is improving as a place for residents to invest and to build equity and neighborly connections.

Social connections (neighborhood management): Prospective homeowners and residents – not community development corporations, government agencies, or other funders – are the most important neighborhood decision makers. Traditional approaches often subsidize households with the greatest needs and provide housing as an end itself. Instead, we need to work to create and improve social connections by engaging residents in their neighborhood and community.

In essence, each of these factors deals with a notion of value— a sense of worth that can be experienced individually, shared with others, and promoted for the greater good. While Healthy Neighborhood outcomes are often discussed and measured using the type of market-based language most often associated with real estate, the ideas of believing and belonging are central to their resident-driven success. It’s that understanding that helped my initial exposure to cultural sustainability make sense.

As mentioned previously, the physical bones of my geographic community are largely intact. We, along with many other similar cities and towns, enjoy the type of built environment that those with New Urbanist leanings are currently investing millions to recreate under the guises of Smart Growth and environmental sustainability. Historic preservationists have also taken an interest in the structures that have long provided us a sense of place, more recently tying their efforts, too, to wider ranging environmental concerns via concepts of adaptive reuse.

Those interests are certainly important if we’re to make the most of the limited natural and financial resources available to us. Simply put, they will help allow us to continue living. What’s missing from those respective equations, however, is the less tangible but more important proposition of what constitutes “living” in the experiential sense. Though the relationship between people and their built environment is one of mutual impact and can serve to inform legacy, a community’s culture is not limited to products. As such, it’s not the products themselves but rather the endeavor to create the products out of a shared understanding of and desire for potential benefit that’s key to cooperatively striving for betterment.

It’s that type of camaraderie, that shared belief in the possibility of the better - whether it takes the form of preserving the old or initiating the new - that forms the basis of community and culture and allows us to sustain ourselves in new and not-so-new meaningful ways.

Artist, author, and copywriter Hugh McLeod said, “The market for something to believe in is infinite.” From firsthand experience, I know that to be a tough market. But it’s not so much the mechanics and craftspeople themselves that have been missing from my neighborhood but the passion, creativity, and general spirit they brought to the place. Fostering belief in those assets, both within the community and as a marketing function directed toward external audiences, is the problem I have now as revitalization efforts move forward.

Still saying it: It's about community.

I met Rory Turner in Bloomington when I was nineteen. He was working on a PhD and I was working on becoming a human being. He was and continues to be a teaching assistant in that endeavor, even though the titles may have changed. His is a way of being heavy without being hard to carry.

When I wrote what was for me the first collegiate piece that I felt went beyond rote academic exercise, it came back from Rory with a letter grade and a three-word addendum: "Say it, man."

Eighteen years later, he and some friends have started blogging and it's nice to return the favor, in response to a short introductory treatise that we'd all do well to consider.

Communitas and social value

May 18th, 2009 by Rory Turner

Community is one of the great mysteries of human experience. In what ways are we or are we not connected with other people, and other being, animate and inanimate? The notion of communitas proposes that a sense of fellowship is primary to human beings, that through the gifts of presence, resonance, and sharing, we can and do find deeper relationship with one another. A key element of cultural sustainability is to foster that urge to come together in culturally meaningful ways to share through play and other forms of cultural performance, a place to discover and feel communitas. What are some of the ways that you have been able to witness or participate in communitas? What moved you about the experience? What impact did these experiences have for your life?

I believe that such experiences are defining of human life, culture and community. I believe that by helping encourage the human capacities and condition that make communitas possible, we significantly improve the quality and value of life.