What are the important issues when you try and change your life, your neighbourhood, or help other people do that? Today the Scarman Trust launched a set of Can Do guides around just those topics ... but instead of the Powerpoint presentation we got a collaborative mindmap develop by everyone at the launch. (click above to enlarge)
We started off on tables discussing the practicalities of change, called out our conclusions, and saw the mindmap grow on a wall and on-screen with branches for vision, support, training, will power, understanding power, and so on. Then we all went and stuck some dots on the lines of greatest energy ... as volunteer activists, community or voluntary organisation workers, or agency staff.
Shirley Mason, from the Polar Bear Community gave me her personal guided tour through the map, as you can see here.
Click To Play or go to blip.tv
No surprises perhaps, but It was a great way to get everyone talking and achieve some shared understanding before moving on to the rest of the day.
The guides are based on years of work in local communities, and cover nine topics including Asset Based Community Development (think what you are good at), through community business, keeping going, training and technology. Shane McCracken of Gallomanor has done a great job on the marketing side, including a splendidly simple yet effective web site using Wordpress, so there's plenty of scope for commenting.
On the Scarman side, south west regional development director Jayne Hathway has been driving things forward, and she explained to me that the Trust are determined the guides won't end up as yet-another-toolkit.
Click To Play or go to blip.tv
Each guide is made up of activity sheets, presentations, facilitator manuals and feedback forms. The guides are linked to training and support, and come with Creative Commons licenses so they can be used and developed by anyone.
No excuses now, You Can Do It. Not sure what IT is? Try the What You Really Want guide.
Technorati Tags: empowerment, mindmap
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