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| <back | home Village Building Convergence 6: A Life's Lesson in Community Building by Bryan K. Kwee Talk about a whirlwind of existential bliss and thought-provoking inspiration. Back in 2005, I was first introduced to what City Repair was doing a few years ago when the Los Angeles Eco-Village was preplanning a public space intervention. I had no idea of how large of a scale the Village Building Convergence was until I made it to Portland with a few classmates and staff from New College of California North Bay. If it weren’t for HopeDance magazine offering a student scholarship, I doubt I would have had an opportunity to have made it out there during the school year. Many thanks and blessings to everyone at HopeDance for this great learning opportunity. From May 19 to 28, the Village Building Convergence is the epoch event for Portland’s City Repair and permaculture world in North America. City Repair is a grassroots-run nonprofit which aims to aid communities in reclaiming urban spaces and creatively transforming them into community gathering places. Permaculture activists and natural builders from as far as Venezuela and Ontario, Canada, honored us with their presence. I was only able to participate in the first five days of the event, but from among the States, I befriended participants from Alaska, Minnesota, Louisiana, and Florida. It is estimated that over a thousand participants converged on Portland for this momentous event. With 25 work party sites, I was amazed at how well everything was organized and how gracious and inviting Portland locals were. The site plan had five schools, a number of alternative community institutions, quite a few grassroots organizations, and a bounty of public-private collaborations. Amazingly, everything was entirely grassroots-driven. From what I could tell, it was obvious the local community wanted us there. I was fortunate enough to make it out to six of the worksites within my brief time there, and I wished I could visit the other nineteen sites. During day events, work parties built everything from cob benches and ovens, stained glass mosaics, wall murals, saunas, and timber framing, to creative reuse structures. Participants visited the various worksites in addition to helping with the abundance of city-wide placemaking projects. As for the ever-curious neighbors and visitors, they too were welcomed with open arms into the festivities. Block parties even erupted at some sites with live music. Each worksite graciously hosted lunches for all those on site, and one site even had chiropractic adjustments for those with aching joints. During afternoon workshops, topics ranged from heirloom fruit or edible flower culture, guerrilla gardening, bioremediating mushrooms, perennial forage systems, social permaculture, and bioswales. To put it all in a nutshell, I consider it the Mecca of all permaculture convergences in North America, hands-down. Looking back on the event, City Repair’s Village Building Convergence should prompt all of us to strive for that intimate connection with our neighbors in our own communities. We can look to City Repair’s Village Building Convergence as a microcosm of what can happen if we work together to catalyze our community to reclaim The Commons. We need not look far. Each city could strive to create its own village building convergence. City Repair affiliates have already began sprouting up in Seattle, the East Bay in California, and Ottawa, Canada, with autonomous public space interventions happening nationwide. With each city and town, the group dynamics are unique unto their own; it is up to all of the constituents of the community to define the means of placemaking. Placemaking is the redesign of a community space with the citizens’ collective needs in mind, empowering their “reinhabitation.” Interacting within our community creates the personal connection and accountability for our overall collective well being. Community building should be more imperative than anything else with our dwindling natural resources of water and hydrocarbon fuels. It is time we re-invest in the social equity of community and the spiritual equity within our lives, and reprioritize how we can create an environment worth living in together. For more information on next year’s Village Building Convergence, check City Repair’s website in early spring: www.cityrepair.org. Bryan K. Kwee is a listless student of life. A recent graduate of the weekend BA completion program at New College of California in Santa Rosa with a concentration in Eco-dwelling, he is currently taking on the reins of a construction lead with Habitat for Humanity East Bay. Bryan is a radical advocate of environmental justice, equal rights, bicycling, permaculture, creative reuse functional art, industrial arts, appropriate technology, and natural building. <back | top^ |