Developing holistic goals
Following two years of wonderfully fun and social experiments involving hundreds of people in everyday activism through invitations to make, grow, craft, learn, cook, repair, create, play and share in Dudley Town Centre, the CoLab Dudley team are taking some time to consider what next?
Informed by a rich and ever growing treasure chest of data, stories, collective thoughts, observations, reflections and practice based evidence (see Detectorism Insights #1 and our Lab Notes and stories), we are embarking on a deep design process. In addition to the many kinds of thinking, practices and tools we have used in our work so far (for example design thinking and systems practice), we are experimenting with a Permaculture Design approach and principles to guide our process. Permaculture is basically about design for sustainable living.
Our Lab Team watched a short video (below) on the three Permaculture Ethics (earth care, people care and fair share). In discussion about this we acknowledged that earth care wasn’t as explicit in our work to date as people care and fair share have been. However we felt it was there in practice through behaviours (including a focus on re-use and upcycling) and the focus of many CoLab Dudley projects (such as growing and repairing).
Jennifer English Morgan explains in a post on Permaculture and Emergence:
In Permaculture all designs get sifted through the ethics of earth care, people care and fair share (access to and distribution of resources.) Permaculture is an example of design that originated via ecologically literate thinkers. I define Permaculture as a whole-systems design approach that utilizes patterns found in nature to create human systems. Whole systems thinking is a holistic type of decision-making that looks at the interrelationships and interconnections of the elements of a system rather than singularly viewing the parts as autonomous.
We’re following the GOBRADIME permaculture design process developed by Heather Jo Flores, which begins with identification of goals. Using guidance from the Women’s Permaculture Guild online course we’ve started the process of articulating four kinds of goals.
1. Preservation goals
These are qualities that we already have in our ecosystem that we enjoy and do not want to give up. Giving weight to our preservation goals will help us to move closer to a holistic model.
CoLab Dudley work to date suggests that our preservation goals should include:
- keeping the warmth we have cultivated through an authentic welcome
- empathy, which facilitates an open to all invitation and involvement of people facing all kinds of challenges
- inviting and nurturing creativity (including creative thinking, creative spaces and creative practice)
- using / re-using / re-purposing the abundance of resources which exist around us
- paying attention to relationships; modelling generous, respectful behaviours and weaving networks
- a focus on doing; a tactic we use to inspire people to get involved and have active involvement in the ongoing co-design and iteration of projects and happenings
2. Achievement goals
These also have a positive quality to them. They are what we want. We can categorise them as being “towards” motivation. They include components and qualities we don’t currently have in our ecosystem, but would like to have.
Our initial discussion on achievement goals surfaced following range of aspirations:
- a culture of curiosity across the town
- a diverse range of linked creative spaces, places and happenings across Dudley town cente, along with many more doing and making social initiatives
- a shift in how local people view and treat public spaces, such that they feel co-ownership and responsibility
- more spaces and reasons for interaction and connection amongst strangers in Dudley town centre
- ways to sustain the work and platforms which support ecosystems and self-organising activity
- healthy, co-operative relationships with the wider social infrastructure actors and agents in the town, borough and beyond
3. Elimination goals
Elimination goals aim to remove something we currently have in our ecosystem which we don’t want. Ours include the vulnerability of our work and platform, and feelings of disconnect some people have in relation to the approaches we take to nurturing belonging, creativity and community.
4. Avoidance goals
Avoidance goals are qualities and components that we do not currently have in our ecosystem, nor do we want to have in the future. Our Lab Team has so far identified the following avoidance goals:
- passive engagement and consumption
- transactional / service-based interactions
- busyness - we avoid rushing to do things or visibly do work or activity for the sake of it; small and slow systems are easier to maintain than big ones, make better use of local resources and are more sustainable
We will be spending more time articulating and reflecting on goals for our design and will share as we go. We are committed to working out loud. This is an invitation to engage with us and our approach, to contribute your ideas, experiences and offers to help improve our work. That could be online or over a cuppa. We’d love to hear from you.
