CONNECTING OUR COMMUNITY FROM MANY DIRECTIONS

WITH THE APPRECIATIVE INQUIRY PROCESS IN BROWN COUNTY

Introduction

In 2012 a two-day Brown County 20/20 Envisioning the Future Conference created a vision and supportive action plans to address challenges identified in the 2011 LIFE Study. Working groups were formed to work on different issues, including Health, Education, Self-Sufficiency, and Overcoming Divisions.

The visionary 2020 goal for Overcoming Divisions was “working together to build our community by overcoming political, cultural, social and economic divisions.”

Following the conference an Overcoming Divisions working group was established. The working group met with issue experts, listened to personal testimonies, and studied how other Wisconsin communities were dealing with similar concerns. Unfortunately detailed knowledge of social and cultural problems did not provide a process for building and overcoming divisions.

After exploring different alternatives, the group adopted the Appreciative Inquiry Process as the means to overcome divisions.

What is Appreciative Inquiry?

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) is both a perspective and process for accomplishing any critical organizational or community task.

As a perspective, AI focuses on assets, strengths and the most positive experiences rather than the problems, challenges and threats. Instead of analyzing what is wrong with social and cultural relations, making a diagnosis and trying to fix it, AI looks at what is working and attempts to amplify and build from the positive and affirming.

  • Assumptions of AI principles include, that for any community or organization something is working well.
  • The language we use creates our reality and what we focus on becomes our reality and that of the community.
  • The very act of asking questions stimulates dialogue and somehow influences the outcome.
  • If people and organizations in a community carry parts of the past into the future, they should be the best parts of the past.
  • It is important to value differences.

As a process, AI utilizes a variety of techniques, included structured personal interviews, facilitated small and large group conversations, consensus building activities, sharing personal stories of risk taking, developing trusting relationships with people who are different.

Here are the stages of the AI process we are following:

  1. Definition: Defining the topic of inquiry. The Overcoming Divisions group, working with an AI facilitator defined the topic of inquiry as Connecting Our Community from Many Directions. Our Community consists of the residents of Brown County, with a commitment to cultural, social, economic, and political inclusivity. Our Community consists of urban, suburban, and rural residents, and with special attention to involving youth, working age, and seniors. The goal is to reach out to and engage people in the AI process that tends to be overlooked in conventional community surveys. The Definition stage has been completed.
  1. Discover: In the discovery stage the core planning group will begin to inquire into the exceptionally positive and affirmative experiences and stories from the community and look for themes from those stories. The planning group has developed structured interview guides for youth and adults. The plan is to train interviewers and conduct interviews throughout the community. Through the interviews and stories we will discover the strengths and positive core about Green Bay and Brown County. Through affirmative stories about community life we will discover community bonds of Connecting Our Community from Many Directions, as well as hopes and dreams the community has for the future. Stories from the interviews will be shared and be widely available throughout the community. The Discovery stage throughout the community will run from 2014 to the end of 2015!
  1. Dream:At the dream stage community stakeholders meet and engage in the processes to envision the future of the community. Dreaming brings out what has been best and invites people to imagine it as becoming even better. They discuss what was learned in Discovery and then go a step further – to imagine a more inspiring, positive, and life enriching community. The status quo is challenged and the process moves to the next stage. We are planning a half-day Dream session. The Dream stage will be held in the spring of 2015.
  1. Community Summit: The AI process will culminate in a full-day community summit, a couple weeks following the Dream session, where a much larger group of Brown County residents and community stakeholders will meet to discuss and make decisions on how to make Connecting Our Community from Many Directions a reality. At the summit, we will work through the final stages of the A-I process -- Design and Destiny. In the Design stage we clarify what we are designing and make commitments based on the connections between our change agenda, interview data and stories from the community, and Dream stage. The Destiny stage involves a recognition and celebration of what has been learned and transformed in the process. The Design has provided action-oriented plans and projects; at Destinyresources will become available to initiate the changes and projects.

For more information contact David Littig, 920-432-6603, .

To schedule an interviewer training session contact Sheri Mealy, 290-448-6464, .