meeting summary 3.09.2010

Town Wide Learning Community Steering Team
Meeting Summary
March 9, 2010

Linda Rosasco, Karen Freedman, Tom Kenworthy, Dorothy Gould. Lisa Beaulieu, Donna Morelle, Ryan Pearson, Rosemary Reilly-Chammat

Karen shared information about The Villages, a planned learning community in Florida. The Villages are zoned as a Community Development District for adults ages 55 years and older. Residents pay a monthly amount to live there, similar to a condo fee. The Villages adopt core values such as hospitality, innovation and creativity. There are multiple websites and a printed newspaper with all course offered. There are several different villages in Florida. One has a population of 70,000 residents. Each village has a town square and nightly entertainment. One of the villages has a k-12 charter school for children of people working in the village. A local business supports some activities in a community. A Residents’ Academy is offered for people to learn about government and to meet elected officials. There are aspects of this learning community that could serve as a prototype for Cumberland’s Town Wide Learning Community endeavor. One example that we discussed is ease and accessibility of information regarding opportunities offered in The Villages.

Rosemary shared information about the World Café in Reading MA which we read about in a journal article. She spoke with Deborah Gilburg of Gilburg Leadership Inc. The World Café was held in response to tensions regarding growth and development in Reading. The Reading World Café was designed to engage residents in conversations about possibilities, dilemmas, priorities and next steps for Reading. An open invitation was issued to all residents and the café was held in an athletic field house. The results confirmed the direction of Reading’s strategic plan for its administrators. Also, sixty participants agreed to continue contributing to the strategic plan agenda via small working group process. Learning about this process was useful but it still didn’t help us to think about how to continuously incorporate the World Café data in our plans to move forward.

Debroah Gilburg shared some interesting information about brain research and the World Café. The power of the World Café is in the bonds that are created in terms of feelings and experiences. The bonding helps to break down the stress response inhibiting the neocortex which is responsible for higher order thinking, creativity, vision and strategy. It is the shared feelings that people want to recreate which probably explains why some people want to experience the World Café again.

The Transition Plan and Communications Plan are standing items on the agenda. Dee and Karen agreed to assist Lisa in the development of the website. There were no additional updates at this time. The group also discussed the role of a local education fund as a resource to town wide learning in the future. Lisa will explore the development of a fund for our purposes.

The group reviewed the agenda for the large group meeting. The draft agenda included:

Welcome and Introductions

Icebreaker (nine dots exercise from the Art of Possibility?)

Building the Context
Storyboard
Assets

Group Activity

Next steps including sequence of meetings and dates

We recognized the need to “ground ourselves” in the information before we proceed with this meeting. We also discussed the need to share information with the group to help them develop their context together with us. As a steering team we need to incorporate time to revisit the data from the World Café at each meeting. We discussed using the assets to reconnect and reengage the larger group with the World Café meeting. We discussed using the summary sheets from the three questions to begin a story board with the group as a group activity. At this time, based on our research, we are not opening up the meetings to other participants outside the World Café experience. As the work evolves, there will be opportunities for broader inclusion.

Before our next meeting we will:

Review and reorganize the assets into themes. Rosemary will start and the list will be passed in a predetermined order among all group members. Everyone will be included as the list passes from one member to the next.

Donna will prepare a working agenda with times.

Linda and Rosemary will type all of the index card information in a word file.

Ryan will check the availability of the Hayden Center on April 5, 6, and 7. Rosemary will determine Paul’s availability on those dates as well. We need to make our best effort to have all steering team members at the first large group meeting.

Once a date is confirmed, Donna will send out a save the date email to the larger group.

Our next meeting will be held on Wednesday March 24th from 6:30-8:00 pm. At this time, we cal all make it! Yeah!