Communal Heirlooms : Join Us!
AC+DC 090
☀️🌤️ 18c
Queridos vecinos,
Feliz Día de la Tierra
Feliç Dia de la Terra
Happy Earth Day
Today we explore the setup for upcoming workshops for Communal Heirlooms. This is a thinking-out-loud, writing-to-think-in-public post. A kind of diary entry showing the work and thinking that can go into a community engagement workshop. Show the work to do the work. Share the work to join the work.
At the moment, we are plotting to have our first engagement in May. The shape of this engagement is in its early stages of development, aka a few sketched ideas. Today we are going to think through some alternative setups, framings, and contextual bits - the what, who, why now bits. The only thing certain is this will be one of many ongoing engagements. Communal Heirlooms is an ongoing community-led project. How that proceeds is up to us.
To begin, let’s consider possible triggers.
What’s being said and/or asked of participants?
Who is it from?
Why now?
We’ve learned there are numerous existing communal heirlooms. Exciting ones. The assumption is there are more and each community has their own! We need participants to help identify them. To do this there may be a need for practice in how to look for them because as we wrote yesterday, they may be intangible - they may be right under our nose. And if they don’t yet exist, what skills might we have and need to give them shape.
If you’ve been following along with this FIELD REPORT newsletter, you’ve seen speculations for numerous new Communal Heirlooms. Even how to make a zine out of the collection. They all take certain liberties to be provocative yet plausible as a kind of laying out the boundaries of a playfield for what it could be. When we say Communal Heirloom, we mean this 👋 broad variety of things.
In order to invite you in, we need to literally invite you, your community, and your neighbors. Considering the battle for our attention, ethics, and relevance, we need to be mindful of the design of this invitation. A balance needs be struck to tempt and challenge, while making it easy to say yes. What works here might not work there.
For example, what kinds of premise might balance plausible with provocative? If it is too plausible, there is the risk of boredom, lack of urgency, and lack of resonance. If it is too provocative there is the risk of skepticism and the need for time spent explaining it. Even if we successfully do this, the mood shift, the energy has changed, the suspension of disbelief deflated. A sweet spot is that the premise is familiar enough to foster comfort, but provocative enough to intrigue, lure, and push you’re comfort zone a bit. Below we go through some of these parameters to see if we can flush out opportunities and examples.
Plausible
Some triggers:
Holiday - Religious, School, Work, Cultural
Commemoration or Celebration - Earth Day, Birthday, Anniversary, Funeral, Closing, Opening, Re-Opening
Season - Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter
Scheduled Calendar Event - Conference, Expo, Concert, Meeting, Summit
Repeating Ritual - Solstice, Eclipse, Blooms, Tides, Phases, Fiestas, Rites
Result of a Process - Jury Duty, Taxes, Nomination, Customer Survey, Health Checkup
Call to Action - Marketing, Sale, Auction, Launch, Vote, Referendum, Protest,
Request - Demo, Trial, Pilot, Learn, Make, Do
Chance - Lottery, Nomination, Drawing
That’s quite a lot! In summary, we covered:
Top-down - sent by government, leadership, business
Bottom-up - sent by individual or group
Calendar-based - tied to a time or date
Process-based - tied to a sequence, including chance
Not trying to be exhaustive, just critically thinking through it. Did we miss something? Is there another way to frame it or couch it within plausibility?
Provocative
Ok, let’s think through the provocation side now. For any of the above we could invent a fictional version or graft some invention onto an real version. We, the Committee for Reciprocity and Care (CRC) are an example. We even have a history of invention which we wrote about. We are an invented organization grafted onto an existing process - jury duty - now called Citizen Action Teams. It’s inspired by Citizen’s Assemblies - which are real. What are some other provocations?
Some inventions:
New holiday enacted - these tend to be top-down,
Could be a recognition of a holiday heretofore not officially recognized by the government, but an established practice, requesting more official recognition. This is a Call to Action to support that recognition.
New commemoration - could easily be bottom-up, calendar or process-based. The rationale just needs to relate to inspiration for Communal Heirlooms. Might lack urgency or resonance depending on what it is.
Could be a commemoration of the existing communal heirlooms we’ve identified plus request to participate and identify more example worthy of commemoration.
Season - easy to invent a new ritual or provocation raising awareness of climate during seasonal changes.
Scheduled - needs to feel urgent and resonant
Repeating Ritual - easier to achieve urgency. Choice of ritual obviously should resonate with participants.
Could be a build on an existing ritual. Very common these days to have parallel events, alternatives to the mainstream event.
Result of a Process - this is CRC and Citizen Action Teams.
Could connect to health and planetary rhythms.
Call-to-Action - CRC exists here also with the previous Citizen Action Team nominating you to participate.
Could be a launch or opening which has urgency.
Could connect to beginning of a process which needs to connect to urgent issue, need or desires of participants.
Request - the thing, service, whatnot needs to be plausible, while the request could be quite provocative and inclusive.
Could connect to Commemoration, asking participants to nominate other existing heirlooms worthy of commemoration
Could connect to Season, Ritual, Process, offers teaching how to see and be in the world to identify existing communal heirlooms
Could connect to Process, asking participants to invent new communal heirlooms.
Could connect to broader need, similar to Near Future Labs “Imagine Harder” invitation
Chance - this is a default. There is always some element of chance introduced. It is maybe the easiest to include. Chance can be like play. It is an invitation, for some agreed period of time, to give yourself and others permission to behave, think, and feel differently.
In summary
There is something potent about connecting with planetary rhythms. Without saying much about it, it simply draws participant’s attention and awareness to the rhythm itself. A kind of tacit knowledge sharing. Learning without noticing it. There is also a potency of connecting to something larger. The scale of change can feel overwhelming. The present day volatility is overwhelming, oppressive and yet we see little by little neighbors coming together and through their persistence and sense of en masse impact. A good harbinger for the communal aspect of communal heirlooms. Lastly, the existing collection of Communal Heirlooms is itself provocative and personable. They are a reflection of the past embedded with our irrationality, flaws, aspirations and desires. Our acquiescence to their continuation is not the request, it is their undeniable infallibility which populates our toolbox for what could be.
Who? You!
We’re excited to announce we have teamed up with the Lab for Radical Museum Futures in Washington DC. There are many opportunities for you and your organizations to participate. Whether you participate as an individual, community leader, business owner, neighbor, member of government or all of the above, we’d love to hear from you. Please reach out if you would like to participate in Communal Heirlooms in your hometown.
Thank you for giving us your time today.
See you tomorrow,
[CRC]
Si te gustó este episodio, por favor, apoya el trabajo dejando una pequeña propina usando el botón “Invitar a un café”. Si estás en Barcelona, envía un mensaje y ¡podemos tomarnos un café!
If you appreciate this episode, please support the work by leaving a small tip using the “Invite for a coffee” button. If you’re in Barcelona, send a msg, and we can actually go for a coffee! ☕️🍷🍺
ABOUT US : Committee for Reciprocity and Care (CRC) : Possibility Hours : FIELD REPORT
FIELD REPORT es el nuevo canal adoptado por CRC en colaboración con Possibility Hours y Adventuring Ventures. FIELD REPORT is the new adopted channel for CRC in collaboration with Possibility Hours and Adventuring Ventures.