I’m taking all my highly tuned community development skills (just joking) and applying them to my own community.
There’s something about doing community development as a job – you don’t tend to bring it home. I hate to be preaching what I don’t practice, and practicing what I’m preaching gives me a chance to learn from the job, from the inside out as it were.
So, with all these CD skills tucked under my belt, and with my LinkedIn feed stuffed full of professional interests, when a documentary popped up with a dilemma attached (the guy had no one to screen his film!), I thought: “well, I’ll do it.”
So I set about doing it.
But, just as this guy (Martin, as it turns out. Lovely fellow) had no idea how to go about getting a film publicly screened following production, so I really had not much of an idea of how to get something like this off the ground in my own suburb, as an individual.
So I pulled out tool number 1
Tool #1: Talk to everyone you think might possibly be interested in your idea – about your idea.
I talked to friends, colleagues, associates from long ago and people I bumped into in the street, basically anyone I thought might actually have an interest in the film. It was that last one that actually got me a lead.
Talking to people is a good trick. It commits you. So, I said I was going to screen a film and now I have to do it. If I didn’t talk about it then it would just be another one of those, “oh yeah, I was going to do that” (but was I, really?) No, it’s only when you talk about it and commit to it that you get half way there.
Then I came across problem #1: find a venue! Which took me to tool #2.
Tool #2: Find a venue!
Community needs a place to meet! This is essential and it is HARD TO FIND! This is the learning of years of community development. Venues just are hard to come by. In our case a very much-loved local watering hole turned out to be the ideal venue. Warm, hospitable, cozy, and staffed! It beat a community hall hands down. Why? It was free! Sales of drinks and dinner would help cover their costs. A cut from ticket sales would help if needed. Tables, chairs, sound system – all already there. Promotion – sorted through their existing platforms and loyal following.
So, a lesson there, something we probably all already knew, but something to keep on hand as a not-so-secret tool in future. Cafes are our modern day meeting places our community hubs, our oases, our promenades, our clubs. If cafes knew this then maybe they would be more adventurous in extending their events schedule to welcome more community driven initiatives.
*note that a cafe is not suitable for many community run initiatives such as yoga classes, get-fit-quick groups, educational type workshops, capoeira and the like, but it suited this one.
Date and time have been set, bringing me to Tool #3 of How to run an event using Community Development principles.
Tool #3: Talk, a lot. Have lots of conversations.
Leading us nicely to tool #4.
Tool #4: See what arises. This is a new kind of project management. It is project midwifery.
First, we found our people, then we found our place, now we need to find out what the people and the place bring into being. AND THEN, VERY IMPORTANT (hence the CAPS) we need to sit back a little and watch the magic. Occasionally you might urge someone to PUSH or breathe, but you are not the one doing all the work. You are midwifing.
The Community Development way is to trust the alchemy of people. First you connect the people, then you leave them to it. Conversation births ideas. Ideas can then become action. Place is an important container of these ideas and action. We are physical beings constrained to our locations (though it doesn’t always seem that way on the www, but take away the roof over your head and you’ll soon feel the effects of place while you scroll).
So I had conversations. There were two people who were interested in bringing the intellectual and passive experience of watching a film into a bodily experience. I brought them together to talk about how we would bring a physical experience of the film into the room. We talked about table set up, about using tech (pen and paper) to create a personal connection with the ideas from the film, we explored a non-verbal, low contact activity to break the ice. We also spoke about putting too much pressure on the audience (I mean, they probably just want to get back home to put the kids to bed), so we tried to cover as much territory as possible, thinking about who the audience would be, how much time we had to explore, what we should be asking people to commit to (nothing, was the answer!). Rich conversation, bringing forth ideas. 90% of which will be scrapped or left for another time, but in the midst some gold. Brainstorming is like gold mining, you’re sometimes just picking up the flecks. It’s still worthwhile, just for those flecks.
We’re now at this point in the puzzle. Let’s see what CD tools I’ll need to pull out as we lead into the next two months. The film shows on 13 November!
Tulitha King 