There has been some great conversation generated amongst the household members and visitors to the Big House, regarding Dragonfly’s direction. For now, Wayne and Olathe have developed (and discussed with other residents) a mandate! I think it is a great launch pad. It goes as follows:
To provide a geographic resource to facilitate community-based projects.
Well, go ahead and let us know what you think…
I thought i saw more than that on the bulletin board.
What does “geographic” mean?
There was some more brainstorming by Olathe. It goes like this:
Healing
Agriculture
Cultural – art/dance/video
Conferences, Meetings, Gatherings.
Wayne can speak to “geographic” more, so I’ll get him in on this…
The short answer is “a place to do stuff”.
In coming up with the wording I was looking back at the variety of things to come out of DF over the years. The main strength I see is that it has been a physical space for things to happen-
There’s the gardens and greenhouse right now, as well as animals previously and probably again (agricultural projects).
There’s the gatherings and workshops (from Hand in Hand to Back to the Land 2.0 (Pride anyone? ;-))) (social projects).
There’s also arts and publications (cultural projects).
The primary resource provided for all of these is geographic (a place), with the participants in the projects providing (pretty much) all of the other resources required- equipment, bodies, funding, etc..
The projects that happen here also seem to lean towards collaboration and community building.
So those seemed to me to be the 2 common ingredients- place and community. I used the phrase “geographic resource” in order to be specific about it being right here- DF as an entity isn’t creating places elsewhere for doing things.
Let me know if that resonates or if you would like to see anything changed/added, I feel that if we have a simple but flexible mandate to start with we could start fleshing out a process for project proposals.
Hey all…
Don’t know if this would affect yr mission statement along with the geographic resource bit as well.. But it’s definitely a way that I see dragonfly over e years as a visitor and neighbor.
‘community anchor’
While ppl who have or are living there may take it for granted, or not realize its affects. Dragonfly, regardless of what is happening at any given time and who is living there, serves as a physical space and persistent concept that holds a lot of connections. A central point, a hub, where information and connections to each other are passed through. In small towns, people come and go, and spaces grow and disintegrate. But dragonfly persists and holds those memories and connections.
Blackfly would have never bought land here if not for df. The people around df brought us to it, but the wealth of experience and experiments (failed or successful) are invaluable in our learning and growing process.
Spending time there, reading grubs, getting hints of history and random stories. Meeting people. Df has facilitated my experience here in maynooth and helped me connect to a community that is more than just what is present at the moment. It has also been great to unravel other connections, and to have a space that remembers other communities that have come and gone.
These things can all happen organically through the way people interact, but having a physical anchor of all this is so much more.
So yeah .. Wanted to throw that out there as a concept for you all. To me .. When I think of things I want to do at dragonfly to help it… I think of giving people tours of it, of the archives, of events that happen on it, of stories that I’ve learned through it.
I’m an archivist of sorts of course, but I think recognizing this meta idea might be useful … And a different way to gauge success and impact over the years than the immediate. 🙂
Well there’s 2 cents from a neighbor. Look forward to reading more.