NICA Fall Gathering: Saturday, April 25, Duwamish Cohousing

 Event Planning  No Responses »
Mar 022015
 

When: Saturday, April 25 10am to 5pm
Where: Duwamish CoHousing, West Seattle, 6000 17th Ave SW Seattle WA 98106

$10 suggested donation; potluck lunch – please bring a dish to share

Common Space – Defining and Building Community

Communities are made of people, but the Common Space can play a strong role in bringing people together to build a community. Common space can be a place for meals, meetings, parties, entertainment and much more. At the Spring Gathering we will discuss some of the creative ways people in community use and design Common Space. Some suggestions:

1) Opening common space to neighbors – What are the Opportunities and Obstacles?
2) How can Community space be used for personal growth or healing – for individuals and for the collective community?
3) Does the concept of sacred space have a place in community space?
4) How do you make space for people to share different forms of expression
5) How does your community use common space in unusual ways which other communities might want to know about?
6) The value of meals as community building activities, and the use of Kitchens in community
7) What goes on the walls of your community space – How do your walls reflect your
8) How does maintenance/cleaning of community space get managed?
9) How do you use outdoor community space to further community goals?
10) How does community space support harmony in community meetings – how to encourage comfort, safety, consensus
11) Children in common space: what are their roles, restrictions, lack of restrictions, food, toys
12) How do you support the needs of the growing # of elders in community – how do you make community space accessible?

Hope to see you there!

3-day Sociocracy Workshop with Diana Leafe Christian, Jan 31-Feb 2 at Windsong Cohousing, Langley, BC

 Announcements and Alerts  No Responses »
Jan 172015
 

3-Day Sociocracy Workshop
- Sociocracy overview
- Experiential exercises:
– Proposals – Plan/Implement/Evaluate feedback loops
– The linked circles governance structure
– Aim of each circle
– Consent Decision-Making, Proposal-Forming
– Selecting People for Roles, Role-Improvement Feedback
- Implementing Sociocracy in your group

Location: Windsong Cohousing
20543 96th Avenue, Langley, BC, V1M 3W3

Sociocracy (also called Dynamic Governance in the US) is an increasingly popular governance and decision-making method based on the principles of transparency, equivalency, and effectiveness. When a community uses Sociocracy correctly, their governance process tends to become far more effective than when using consensus.

“We’ve made more decisions in the past two months than we have in the past two years!” —Davis Hawkowl, Pioneer Valley Cohousing, Massachusetts.

A visitor said she’d never seen a community meeting be so effective, efficient,
and fun!” —Hope Horton, Hart’s Mill Ecovillage, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, US.

Sponsored by The Sociocracy Consulting Group.

Cost: $335. Bring your lunch or sign up for a catered lunch for $15.00. Shuttle service to Windsong Cohousing from King George SkyTrain station.

For more information about this three-day workshop at Windsong Cohousing in B.C., click here.

Register for Workshop

Learn more about how Sociocracy can benefit businesses and nonprofits, see this workshop description written especially for people in businesses and nonprofits.

Dynamic Governance Workshop, Seattle, January 25, 2015

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Jan 172015
 

Jerry Koch-Gonzalez will be doing a one-day workshop on Dynamic Governance (aka Sociocracy) on Sunday, January 25th in Seattle. Cost: Sliding Scale $120-$40 (median $75)

In this workshop you will practice the essential elements of dynamic governance (sociocracy) and learn some theory along the way.

This experiential workshop will be facilitated by Jerry Koch-Gonzalez of The Sociocracy Consulting Group and the Institute for Peaceable Communities. Jerry is a founding resident of the 20-year-old Pioneer Valley Cohousing Community in Amherst MA (sociocratically governed) and a certified Trainer in both Sociocracy and Nonviolent Communication (NVC).

For full information

NICA Fall Gathering on Sat, Nov. 8, 2014

 Announcements and Alerts, Event Planning  No Responses »
Oct 102014
 

We’re pleased to announce that the NICA 2014 Fall Gathering will be at Songaia Cohousing Community near Bothell, WA on Saturday, 11/8/2014 from 10:00am to 5:00pm.

Creating Community Anywhere

Many involved in the Intentional Communities movement use the phrase “community where you are” as a code phrase for community building outside of the context of residential intentional communities. We all live in community and we all benefit when our communities are more effective.

In this NICA gathering, we’ll step beyond Intentional Community and explore community building in all forms of community or groups, whether they be residential, within the workplace, churches, political action groups, clubs or any other group. At the 11/8/2014 NICA Fall Gathering, we’ll consider many subtopics within the broad sweep of this topic. Topics we choose to explore will be based on the interests and experiences of those who show up. As is our tradition, in preparation for the event, we pose a number of questions to help stimulate your thinking:

  1. What creates bonding, or the glue that connects and builds community?
  2. What challenges the building of community?
  3. How do you encourage participation in your community?
  4. How do communities weather the storms?
  5. What celebrations, events, or rituals help build community?
  6. What single event in the past year would you want a potential new resident to experience?
  7. If you were looking to join a community what kind of event would you want to experience?
  8. How do you build and strengthen the community bonds in groups you are now part of?
  9. How does working together on a community project or in your job help build community?
  10. How do challenges/tragedies/problems bring people together?

At the event itself, we’ll form subgroups and learn and teach with each other. Those with experience at NICA events know this will be a lively and engaging experience.

Do you have other ideas or questions that you’d like to see considered? Just log in and post them in the comments section below - or bring them to the event.

Schedule

10:00am  Opening circle, announcements
10:30am  Group discussion about the topic
12:00pm  Potluck Lunch
1:00pm    Afternoon circle, song, Discussion
1:30pm    First set of Afternoon workshop/discussions
2:15pm    Break
2:30pm   Second First set of Afternoon workshop/discussions
3:15pm    Break
3:30pm   Final circle discussion and closing
4:00pm   Community Tour

What: 2014 NICA Fall Gathering, with Potluck lunch and Songaia tour

When: Saturday, November 8, 2014 from 10am to 5pm

Where: Songaia Cohousing Community: 22401 39th Ave. SE., Bothell, WA 98021 (map link)

Why: To learn, to teach, to do our part to grow a more vibrant, sustainable culture.

How: Bring yourself and food for the potluck lunch to Songaia for the event. Please label any dishes to help those with special dietary, e.g., vegan/vegetarian/omnivore, dairy/non-dairy, gluten-free, etc.

Ananda Community Open House & Solstice Celebration

 Across the Northwest  No Responses »
May 152014
 

Intentional Communities: sustaining and celebrating life! 

Saturday, June 21, 3 to 7:00pm    Free!
20715 Larch Way, Lynnwood WA (I-5 Exit 181)

Ananda Community hosts its annual Open House and Solstice Celebration in cooperation with other local intentional communities. All are welcome. Please come to all or part…

3:00 to 4:30pm

  • Tours of grounds, gardens, homes

3:00 to 5:00pm

  • Live Music
  • Art gallery
  • Refreshments
  • Demonstration of healing treatments
  • Products for sale and display
  • Activities for children

5:00pm

  • Solstice Celebration with guest speakers from local intentional communities

6:00 pm

  • Vegetarian dinner – free!

We hope to see you there!

Facilitation Training: Sat, May 24 at Cranberry Commons Cohousing, Burnaby BC

 Uncategorized  2 Responses »
Apr 292014
 

DEEPENING YOUR FACILITATION PRACTICE:
WORKSHOP IN BURNABY, BC – MAY 24

Calling all project leaders, teachers, facilitators, coaches, public engagement practitioners, non-profit board members, and others whose work involves empowering people to participate in groups, workplaces, and communities in a more dynamic and effective way!

We invite you to attend a professional development session where you will have the opportunity to:

  • Reflect on your practices
  • Share dilemmas with colleagues
  • Get support on upcoming meeting designs
  • Storyboard events (past and future) to identify opportunities for more effectively employing the patterns of excellent group process
  • Integrate exemplary patterns into your professional life (and start to speak the shared “pattern language” of facilitation)
  • Engage with others who care about these things

We’ll be using the deck Group Works: A Pattern Language for Bringing Life to Meetings and Other Gatherings as our lens. While familiarity with the deck will be helpful, it’s not essential–you’ll recognize the patterns from your own practice and pick it up quickly.  If you participated in the last workshop Group Pattern Language Project offered in BC, we expect this session will be sufficiently different to make it worth your while to join us again.

When: Saturday May 24, 10:30am to 4:30pm. A simple soup/salad/bread lunch (vegan & gluten-free) will be provided.

Where: Cranberry Commons Cohousing, 4274 Albert St (at Madison just north of Hastings), Burnaby BC.

Cost: Sliding scale $25-$150.

Registration: Please register in advance so your hosts can plan appropriately; sign up at http://groupworksdeck.org/event_reg/GPL_Reg.php. If you have any further questions contact Daniel Lindenberger at daniel@smallboxcms.com.

Pre- and post-event Work Sessions: The day before and the day after the workshop we’ll be hosting work sessions for those committed to supporting this work:  growing the language, articulating potential new applications, and promoting and nurturing the project. Some of the issues we’ll be exploring are developing curricula for self-guided study of how to use the cards,  new “e-versions” of Group Works, and outreach activities to spread the word. If you’d like to participate or learn more about this, please email Dave (dave.pollard@gmail.com).

Led by: Sue Woerhlin, Daniel Lindenberger, & Tree Bressen. To learn more about them, check out the following:
Sue  http://www.antiochseattle.edu/contacts/sue-woehrlin
Daniel  http://sourcefacilitation.com/our-team/daniel-lindenberger/
Tree  treegroup.info/services

Come participate! and let others know too: This should be a great networking and peer learning opportunity. Hope to see you there!  Please forward this invitation to other people you think might be interested in attending.

­-Daniel Lindenberger and Dave Pollard
Group Pattern Language Project

NICA Spring Gathering, Saturday, April 26, 2014

 Announcements and Alerts  No Responses »
Mar 242014
 

Food in Community

growing, buying, cooking, sharing and bonding

NICA is pleased to offer another intentional community gathering. This highly interactive event begins with the full group sharing, followed by a potluck lunch. Given the topic, you won’t be surprised to learn that some of the food will be created at different communities,. After lunch are two breakout sessions on the topics we select before lunch. We will then gather and close together.

Breakout sessions will be based on our interests – some questions…

  • How often does your community have shared meals?
  • Are you comfortable cooking for 20?
  • Why do we bond so much over eating together?
  • How do communities share cleanup? cooking? buying?
  • What is the balance between healthy food and comfort food? Kale vs ice cream?
  • How do communities use food to celebrate special events, like birthdays, holidays, etc?
  • How do we balance meals for kids and adults?

Location:

PRAG House (on Capitol Hill near Aloha)

747 16th Ave E
Seattle WA 98103

Time: 10am to 5pm

Food: Please bring a dish to share – include a label showing ingredients.

Suggested donation: $10 for the day

Parking: Free street parking is available, but time limits vary. Near Prag House, on 16th Ave E, there is a four hour time limit and you’ll need to re-park it during the day. A little farther away, one block North on 16th, between Aloha and Prospect, there is no time limit. If this block is full, you can find street parking one block east or west on either 15th Ave E or 17th Ave E on the same block north of Aloha.

Bus Routes:

  • Bus #10 from downtown stops at the corner of 15th E and Aloha (1 block from our house)
  • Bus #43 and #48 from the U-District stop about 7 blocks away at 23rd Ave E and Aloha

About PRAG house

Prag House, located on Capitol Hill in Seattle, was originally purchased in 1972 by a collective of University of Washington graduate students and professors of sociology. They put the property into Trust in 1976 to maintain it as a cooperative house in perpetuity. The purposes of Prag House are to encourage communal living as a viable alternative to private ownership of property and to encourage the growth of cooperating communities and non-polluting technologies.

We are a multigenerational community of individuals ranging in age from 5-65. Our interests and occupations include cooking, gardening, sailing, camping, pottery, and art. We enjoy sharing meals, watching movies together and maintaining the wonderful home we live in.

Currently we are working on some long term planning and projects, the most visible of which is our yard. We hope to be starting a blog soon to share our effort to steward our property in ways that reflect the values of our Trust Agreement and Use Agreement with the Evergreen Land Trust while also reflecting our personal tastes and values. Other long term projects are more structurally oriented.

HOLD THE DATE: NICA Fall Gathering, Nov. 2, 2013

 Announcements and Alerts, Event Planning  No Responses »
Oct 042013
 

Sharingwood Cohousing Community has graciously offered to host this year’s NICA Fall Gathering, with the theme, “Living in Community.”

DETAILS

  • What:  NICA Fall Gathering, focusing on “Living in Community”
  • Date:  Saturday, Nov 2,  2013
  • Time: 10am to 5pm
  • Where: Sharingwood Cohousing Community (22105 E Lost Lake Rd  Snohomish, WA 98296, about 20 minutes east of Woodinville)
  • Who: People interested in the intentional community lifestyle, both people from IC’s and those wanting to explore the many new directions of IC’s.
  • Cost: Suggested donation of $10
  • Food: Coffee, tea, and soup will be provided – please bring something to share for a potluck lunch
  • More Information: Call Frances Parks, 206-390-5855

Join us as we explore some of the following questions:

  • What is it like living in a community?
  • What kinds of people do well in community?
  • What are the qualities of a good communitarian?
  • Why do community residents like living in community?
  • What is the balance of privacy and community?
  • What are the important annual events/celebrations in your community?
  • What qualities are communities looking for in new members?
  • How does a community transfer its vision, history, and culture to new members?
  • If you live in a community, how did you discover it?
  • If you live in a community, what was your entry process like?

MAP AND DIRECTIONS

For directions from your specific location, click on the marker and select “Directions to.”

Sharingwood is about 10 minutes past Woodinville, northeast of Seattle, about 30 minutes from Microsoft or 40 min from Seattle with no traffic. If there is heavy traffic it may take up to another 20 minutes.

From Seattle or Bellevue

  1. Take Hwy 520 or I-90 to I-405 (north)
  2. Go NORTH on I-405 (EVERETT)
  3. Take EXIT 23 to HIGHWAY 522 EAST bound towards MONROE (stay on right side of exit).
  4. Move to middle lane of HIGHWAY 522 and continue. After the highway become single lane, go straight through the first stoplight at Paradise Lake Road (hwy 524) past Texaco/Chevron.
  5. At the second stoplight, turn RIGHT onto ECHO LAKE ROAD. This is a mile past the “mile 18″ marker. There is a double yellow flashing sign just before this turn. This is half a mile past the “18 mile” marker.
  6. Stay on ECHO LAKE ROAD for 1.8 miles. Go past Echo Lake golf course, and past Rainbow Grocery General Store (on the left), and go about half a mile.
  7. Turn LEFT on LOST LAKE ROAD. There is yellow sign on the right-side before the turn, which you can see clearly at night. The actual turn is hard to see at night.
  8. Continue on LOST LAKE ROAD for 1.9 miles. The road takes a sharp 10 m.p.h. hair-pin curve becoming W. LOST LAKE ROAD for another half mile. You’ll see the lake to your right if it’s daytime.
  9. The main road turns sharply to the left just past a 15mph yellow sign. At this point, turn RIGHT onto EAST LOST LAKE ROAD (which has a DEAD-END sign clearly visible) and follow it to the end of the road – half a mile.
  10. You’ll hit a speed bump. Slow down there. In a few yards you will enter the Sharingwood Community. The common house is on your left when you get to the first Y in the road.

Summary Notes from Diana Leaf Christian’s August 2013 Presentation at East West Bookshop

 Community tales and trails, Reports  No Responses »
Sep 022013
 

Thanks to the 25 folks who joined members of the NICA Board at East West Bookshop on August 21  for a presentation and discussion with Diana Leaf Christian on “Three Aspects of a Healthy, Thriving Community.”

The three aspects are:

  1. Community Glue: taking time to do shared enjoyable activities that tend to generate feelings of gratitude and trust
  2. Good Process and Communication Skills: the ways members gather together specifically to get to know each other better, consider ideas, understand each others’ emotions or upsets, or discuss and resolve conflicts and the ways people talk with each other, both in groups and meetings and one on one
  3. Effective Project Management: the ways a community creates and maintains its legal entity(s); the ways it finances, purchases, and physically develops its property; organizes and tracks its internal community finances and member labor requirements; attracts, processes, and orients new members; and maintains the community’s documents, policies, and decisions

Effective community governance, according to Diana, is at the center of all three aspects of healthy community — and benefits and enhances all three.

She was also kind enough to provide a printed summary of her talk (excerpted above), which can be downloaded from the following  link:

[download id="495" template="button"]

Diana is writing a series of articles in Communities Magazine on sociocracy and will be returning to British Columbia in February. Watch for future updates; we may be able to catch her on her way through again.

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