When Integral City works with a city like Durant, we design with a framework based on Values and the 4 Voices of the Human Hive.
Our methodologies are designed around the principles for collective impact embedded in:
The 4 Voices include the Citizens, Civil Society, Civic Managers and Business. But we also seek contributions from the 4 Voices through other dimensions, including:
- Multiple generations.
- Multiple Cultures – such as in Durant, the Choctaw Nation and the many lineages of other American cultures.
- All genders.
Integral City Values Assessments are designed to collect data on the Quality of Life in the city through discovering people’s Values, Actions, Visions and Systems. We collect the data from individuals, based on the key questions that release the potential of the city. Then we are able to analyze it into the 4 Quadrants that align the Quality of Life and the 4 levels of complexity that people value in the city (which are based on the Master Code):
- Self-centric – which shows up as care for Self
- Other-centric – which shows up as care for Others
- Place-centric – which shows up as care for Community or City
- Planet-centric – which shows up as care for Planet
Dialogue plays an important role in Integral City designs because it brings the whole system into the conversation about change. We design for multiple rounds of Dialogue to bring different collectives together around core themes of city change.
In the case of Imagine Durant, after our first Discovery Round of Dialogue we embarked on 3 Rounds Dialogue focused on 3 Themes:
- Economy & Community
- Health & Environment
- Education & Culture
Each of these Dialogue Rounds included 3 types of participants:
- Thought Leaders (purposively invited from the 4 Voices and related to the Themes)
- Public
- Policy Makers
In addition, in order to make the Dialogues as accessible as possible we situated each gathering in a different location – including the museum, the high school, the Choctaw community centre, the casino, the art gallery at the university, and the Food Bank.
Importantly, local sponsors donated space, accommodations, food and beverage and volunteers to work at the events and ensure they are well run.
When people gathered, they had received an invitation, were registered and taught the basic guidelines for Dialogue. Then the Integral City Team facilitated the discussions using Collective Impact Methods such as Open Space, World Café, Circling and Art of Hosting.
As a result of designing from assumptions about the wholeness of the City (aka human hive), collective impact becomes a natural outcome from the very first invitation and offer to engage, to the last word recorded and scribed into a report for collective sharing. (Check out the next blog for an explanation of how we design the process of communicating results.)
This blog series celebrates the launch of Book 2 in the Integral City Book Series: Integral City Inquiry & Action: Designing Impact for the Human Hive.
In this blog series, we share a case study that we presented at Tamarack’s Collective Impact 3.0 conference to tell you how Imagine Durant has used the Integral City Placecaring & Placemaking tools for the Human Hive.
The series includes:
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