Beauty in Our Community Gathering
Host a Beauty in Our Community Gathering
A ritual for bringing people together
“We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community... Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others, for their sakes and for our own.”
Cesar Chavez
There is beauty everywhere, to those with an appreciative mindset. This includes the wonderful things present in our local community that we may overlook or take for granted.
This ritual is about extending an appreciative mindset to your community, showing friends and neighbors that there are good things to be found right under our noses if we take the time to look. It is also a ritual that brings people together, forming and strengthening bonds.
Building community can be a key to personal wellbeing, too. When we gather with our community, we are building bonds that help us experience fun and belonging. These bonds may serve us and others when unexpected events happen, like the pandemic of 2020.
Purpose
A small community gathering is one starting place for deepening connections. This ritual may serve as a creative activity among friends, a bonding activity for activists or colleagues, or as a springboard for civic improvement efforts.
HOW IT WORKS
Time needed: 90 minutes for the session itself, plus time to schedule and invite others
Materials needed: Post-It Notes and a surface on which to stick them. (If you happen to have a large map of your community this makes an excellent backdrop.)
1. Make a plan. Determine the size of the group you’d like to gather and set a date and time. Think about a place that is suitable for quiet conversation with one another, for example after a potluck dinner at the host’s home.
2. Invite participants. If you know community members by name, you could invite them via direct contact. You might post flyers, or place invitations on front porches of neighbors. You might also begin a Meet Up group using the app in your locality. Whatever seems right for your intended community.
3. Facilitate the gathering. This activity works best with Post-It notes. If possible, arrange chairs in a circle or semi-circle.
Use or adapt the agenda that follows:
10 minutes: Introduce yourself by name and length of time you’ve been in the community.
10 minutes: Pair up to share one thing you LOVE about being part of this community.
10 minutes: Give a small stack of Post-It notes to each person (5-10 sticky notes each). Each person writes what they find good in the community – 1 idea per sticky note. You might play music in the background.
10-30 minutes: Ask participants to share some or all of what they wrote down. If placing sticky notes on a map, try to put them somewhere where they make sense. (‘Good public transportation’ might go on the main train station for example.) Place similar sticky notes together to see what categories emerge.
15 minutes: Now ask participants to reflect on what would make the community even stronger.
Break into groups of 2-4
Each group identifies their top TWO ideas
Small groups share ideas with the large group
5 minutes: Takeaways. Go around the circle in a round-robin, with each person sharing a reflection on the experience.
Identify next steps (if any).
Notes
This agenda can be adapted for any size group. For your first gathering, a small group of 6-8 is ideal. Some participants will have done similar Post-It note activities in the workplace. They will help the process along. The most important thing is creating a friendly environment for connection to form. The number of Post-It notes or quality of ideas is secondary.
Adaptations
Make this a once-a-quarter activity. Perhaps there are participants who would be willing to host, too.
Conduct a follow-up session that turns the ideas to make the community even stronger into action.
Footnotes
Block, Peter (2008). Community: The Structure of Belonging. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc. San Francisco, CA.