The Program will build on the experience in 2006, but will be much enhanced with Charter Membership:
From January 1, 2007 until March 30, 2007 this is the temporary page for Providence & Beyond. We will have a more robust website for members and non-members. Please look ahead for more information.
Cafes: Friday, February 9th: John Abrams, author of The Company We Keep: Re-inventing Business for People, Community and Place, www.somoco.com Hear the audio from the session:
John Abrams media from January 9, 2007
Thursday, March 22nd: Michael Singer --a public artist shaping the public realm by making public works projects public art and interactive for learning www.MichaelSinger.com Audio coming soon
May cafe to be announced by April 3, 2007
Feel free to download the cafe notes and posters from the session, Go to our files page at: Shared Files
The Network Composition
As a player in “A Year in Providence,” you were invited to engage each other for these reasons:
You are a thinker and doer shaping Providence or the region.
You are passionate about this city and region.
You represent, as a node, a network you can go back and talk to. You also can bring ideas from your network into this larger public conversation.
You represent a diversity of sectors, ethnicities and disciplines. Difference is vital for design and innovation in Providence.
You are innovative.
You are a learner and a teacher.
We are about Thinking, Linking, and Doing
Everybody engaged in “A Year in Providence” is a thinker/doer in the city and region. Thus, we have a lot of doing happening. Hence, the reason for our earlier statement: We are not about creating new programs or an intergalactic action plan on the future of the city. This is not to say we don’t want action. But, perhaps we need better doing and not more doing among us. A key role of “A Year in Providence” is linking people together to collaborate on their thinking and doing. This is non-linear and very much a dynamic iterative experience. Each of these actions –thinking, linking and doing – informs the other two. The thinking determines the doing, which in turn shapes the links you create.
The experience, “A Year in Providence”
proposes we rethink how thinking, linking, and doing come together to produce results. For example, James Hillman says: “the ideas we have, we don’t know we have, have us” (and drive our doing). Using Hillman’s thinking calls for us to dislodge unusable ideas, doing or links and discover or unleash new ideas, new doing and new linking. Perhaps our ideas are tired and need refreshment. Perhaps our doing needs a new frame by moving away from the ways we have always done it. Perhaps our linking with the usual suspects needs to stop and new partners brought into a project. These are all key facets of “A Year in Providence.”
A Year in Providence and the Region
November 10, 2006 James Hillman responds to essays he selected from AYPR participants' submissions
