WEEK EIGHT
- What did you accomplish last week?
Celeste is traveling in the UK and toured the Somerset Levels drainage infrastructure. In Langford, a community riverfront park used recreational access and examples of how frequent and seasonal flooding was a normal part of life in local towns to encourage greater awareness of local climate change adaptation.
Danielle studied forms and tools of participatory processes.
- What do you plan to do next week?
- Research methods of evaluating the efficacy of informal participation methods
- Interviews scheduled with some organizers and academics
- Writing
- What (if anything) is blocking your progress?
Nothing blocking
- Fun insight/tidbit, link, or idea?
How does culture change?
We are researching flooding adaptations and the conditions that enable community investment and meaningful participation. I admit to being slow to apply the group conversation about punk to this work, but a few things have changed my thinking. (Including me, Celeste adds!) However, I have become very interested in the concept as a lens for examining techniques for changing culture.
I started to see participatory models along a spectrum of informal to formal. The paper, Making space: how public participation shapes environmental decision-making would label the spectrum “created” to “invited” spaces.
“Invited” spaces are participation opportunities where decision-making authorities invite the public to provide input (i.e., public participation as traditionally understood). But citizens themselves also create spaces for engagement rooted in shared identities and common interests (i.e., mobilization).
The planner we met with last week said that her group was not influenced by any advocacy and community groups, but later said that she had become passionate about the water through participating in street end clean up and other “weird” events held by the Newtown Creek Alliance and other community groups. This small anecdote means a lot to me. Celeste and I both make community events on the water in New York. I experientially know the value of this scale of activation but don’t have much to back up that emotional knowledge.
I believe that activations on the informal, created space, grassroots scale are integral to creating culture change. It feels important to dissect this assumed belief to investigate how culture changes, what methods are available, and what the opportunities are at each scale. (I’m looking at culture change through social and political movements not through calamity.)
I believe that action at all points of the spectrum is necessary, as the Making Space paper points out “nearly all contentious decisions today are shaped by both structured
public participation and mobilization.” I’d like to know how one informs the other. What are the conditions that enable people to become invested enough to participate in often arduous public process?
I believe that these more informal actions are necessary to initiate culture change on a small scale and then invest some people enough that they participate in more formal ways.
I’m curious to know what the steps are between informal and formal.
Do you all want to play?
I made us this collaborative excalidraw spectrum so we could lay out organizing methodologies and examples along it.
Some of it might be an exploration of language - is informal the same as invited space?
How will the placement of mid-spectrum methods be determined? What would a framework be? A protocol???
How do these concepts (methodologies/ideologies) get actualized in the world?
How to play
Go to the Collaborative Spectrum
Add methodologies, ideologies, and what-have-you to the top line.
Add examples of actions and projects that exemplify that position in the spectrum to the 2nd line.
- You can add links to text (highlight →2 finger click → create link)
- There is infinite space on the board so have at it with connective lines and comments.
- Feel free to move things around. If you are making large changes or reordering please screenshot the previous state and post it in the blog comments
- Group text with associated lines
- Try grouping concepts that tie together
- Feel free to include your initials so we can find out more about your idea
Characteristics to be considered
- Collective intent
- Desire for large-scale change (aka not invested in remaining counter-culture)
- Keep in mind some methods might act as a bridge between different levels of formality
Follow-up question
- Is this a valuable lens to consider through?
- How do these steps interact with one another and bridge?
- How did you determine where along the line something was? What’s the framework?
- Would it be possible to know the impact of informal interventions?
- What would methods of determining value be? If you have ideas, suggestions for who to talk to, or things to read please share.
One opportunity of this lens is that it frames culture change as happening even in small-scale acts, suggesting that anyone could choose to shape culture.
[Ideas in the blog come from both Celeste and Danielle]