Here are a few overall musings on the Liberating Voices Pattern Language and Civic Engagement, based primarily on conversations that occurred during and after the series of workshops I conducted at The Evergreen State College over the past two years, while also drawing upon my experience in community development with the Institute of Cultural Affairs and more recently with the Rainier Beach Community Empowerment Coalition.
These are not in any specific order, nor are they intended to be in any way comprehensive or complete. Several of these items have served part of my introductory context for the Liberating Voices Pattern Language at The Evergreen College practicums and workshops.
I plan to release them weekly over Twitter to provide me with an opportunity for spending a little more time with each, although I can’t guarantee that more extensive presentations will be released until after I get through my current workload and project planning.
- Liberating Voices provides a useful approximation of the whole of the communication ecology for civic engagement
- Each pattern suggests the whole and adds to the richness of the whole as it is unfolding at any given time.
- Patterns may be freely connected & sequenced in myriad combinations depending on prevailing challenges & opportunities.
- Cultivating one pattern at a time is all that is required to release the potential energies of the current situation.
- “Whole” and “Wholeness” are both the envisioned completed state and the broadest perception of the unfolding solution now.
- Pattern selection & sequencing is not objective; your capacities, resources, & propensities influence the solution.
- Pattern cultivation is intrinsically collaborative; the play of energies, intended & accidental, advances the situation.
- The essential “goals” for cultivating any specific pattern are to awaken, connect, and engage.
- Patterns transform social structures & institutions by holding them accountable to present human need & resourcefulness
- Pattern cultivation is practical consensus building that facilitates the realization of a common vision, step by step.
- The realization of a common vision is the increased clarity that follows a vision’s journey of manifestation
