Enjoy catching up with what is happening in ICAs across the globe..... If you wish to SEND a report... please send to: inform@ica-international.org

To view past issues of Global Buzz: Please see here
To view past issues of Network Exchange: Please see here
To view past issues of Winds & Waves magazine: Please see here

 ICA International here

Global Buzz Report: July 2019

Most pictures will enlarge if you click them. Some have captions

The new Winds and Waves magazine

We are delighted to invite you to share your stories
via medium.com/winds-and-waves which is the public platform
we have moved to now, to publish Winds & Waves.
Please see the attachment which sets out how you can now
personally publish your stories for Winds and Waves magazine.


See here W&W@Medium PDF



TAIWAN:

This is part I of a radio interview Larry Philbrook did in Taiwan.

Program: "In the Spotlight,"
Host: Shirley Lin.

Quotes 
How do we help communities to make decisions about their own future? 

How do we help them develop themselves so that they see themselves as responsible for their development? 
in collaboration w/ government
in collaboration w/ private sector 
in collaboration w/ other NGOs
but the community itself sees itself as responsible. 

The responsibility is actually on the community. Our job is to facilitate their conversation, their commitment, their decision, So that they can decide what to do and how they want to create their future. 

There's a LOT of local capability in Taiwan. We're not riding in on a horse to save people. What we're doing is coming in to help them with things they're already working on. But to help them to add methodology, to add process and context, so that they can help themselves.

Our intention is to make our methods available and help communities and individuals to make more effective choices. 
What we were looking at was how they as a community could change their economy, change their social patterns, change their educational patterns so that that community could develop. 

How you help a community discover and create their own story and their own intention relative to how their community IS going to develop, but also to recapture their own history to see the significance of what they have already accomplished?

How do they remind themselves that this is not a sign to be of despair, it's just a simple sign of the current reality that we're in?

In Taiwan, community for a lot of people was their organization, so therefore  we spend a part of our time working for companies and other organizations and part of our time working for communities.

(reframed) In a developmental process, you learn from your mistakes as well as your successes.

What would it take for us to live in peace in Ukraine? 

Transcript 
Starts chatting. Various topics  ... Larry's recent trip to attend his daughter's opera performance.

About minute 2 is this:

SL: What exactly is the Institute of Cultural Affairs (ICA)?

Larry: Well, ICA is an international organization, but locally based in each country where we work. Our background is in community development. So we began working in urban & rural communities around the world.

When I first joined the ICA I was very young. But the 1st project, ...1st project was in Chicago -- an area on w side called 5th City. And our focus was on ... 
How do we help communities to make decisions about their own future? How do we help them develop themselves so that they see themselves as responsible for their development? 

in collaboration w/ government
in collaboration w/ private sector 
in collaboration w/ other NGOs
but the community itself sees itself as responsible. 

So that's the background of our work. 

SL:  Wow! sounds like big job and big responsibility.

Larry: Well, yes and no. Most of the responsibility is actually on the community. Our job is to facilitate their conversation, their commitment, their decision. So that they can decide what to do and how they want to create their future.

SL:  So it (3:27) is like you are the middlemen of the govt. and the community?

Larry: Uhhh, sometimes, but mostly what we are is the facilitator of getting them together to talk to each other. They have to decide what that means, cause government people have their priorities, communities have their priorities, private sector has its priorities, other NGOs have their priorities. 

Our priority is that conversation.

How do we promote civil discourse so that when people are making decisions they're making decisions with knowledge and with attention and with integrity. 

and so that's what we do, we try to help that facilitation take place.

From the 1st communities, we began to expand into other communities ... rural communities and other kinds of communities.

And here in Taiwan one of the things we realized was that community for a lot of people was their organization, so therefore  we spend a part of our time working for companies and other organizations and part of our time working for communities,

(4:34)
and for other NGOs. And basically the difference is we charge companies real prices, we charge communities, or whatever, what they can afford. 

SL:  Ahhhh

Larry: And so, our intention is to make our methods available and help communities and individuals to make more effective choices. 

SL:  Mmmm, can you give an example?
Larry: Sure. 
SL:  of a project here in Taiwan?
Larry: Sure. Well, the original project in Taiwan was a project down in PingDong County ...

SL:  you mean that's what brought you here?
Larry: No, no ... 
SL:  OK
Larry: ... that was (5:05) what brought ICA here ...
SL:  OK, OK.
Larry: ... which was before me. (rolling LAUGHS) 5:09

SL:  OK, got it.
Larry: ... so it was a rural community on the coastal part of PingDong County, called Hai Ou. And what we were looking at was how they as a community could change their economy, change their social patterns, change their educational patterns so that that community could develop. 

This was in the early 70's, so it was a long time ago, mid-70's sorry, mid-70's so it was a long time ago and so Taiwan was in a very different developmental state in those days ...

SL:  oh, yeah ...
Larry: ... in those days, and so we were working with the community, with (5:43) other organizations to look at education. So we started a pre-school to look at economics, so they started doing what at that point was a brand new experiment by Taiwan of fishery development and shrimp development (5:58) 

SL:  Ohhh
Larry: ... sericulture (5:59) which ultimately turned out to not be helpful (both laugh) because environmentally it had a lot of impact that was not foreseen ...

SL:  OK
Larry: ... and so this is 1 of the things that happens in a developmental process is you have to learn from your mistakes as well as your successes.

SL:  yes
Larry: and so, that was the initial project. 

Now we're doing more work in terms of working w/ other organizations to help them use our methods or other methods in facilitating community work and community development, so ... I just was doing a program with NCKU in Tainan, 

SL:  uh-huh...
Larry: where we were working with the urban planners group. They've got a group of urban planners together for us to train in community facilitation methods. So that as they're working with the communities that they're working with they can use more participatory process. 

For this group of urban planners, this is not a new idea, so I don't want to claim, 'oh, we came in and ...' This was part of their intention to improve the work that they'd already been doing with communities on what's called 'sense of place' -- 

how you help a community discover and create their own story and their own intention relative to how their community IS going to develop, but also to recapture their own history to see the significance of what they have already accomplished, ... cause often communities create a story for themselves that is negative, where they look around, especially in TW right now where you have a lot of rural communities that are doughnut communities, you know where there are no middle aged people, there's only little kids and old people, there's nobody else. 

SL:  yeah
Larry: and so they look around at their community and they see empty houses and empty buildings, this kind of thing. How do they remind themselves that this is not a sign to be of despair, it's just a simple sign of the current reality that we're in. (8:04)  Adding to that complexity is, of course, more the middle aged family, parents, now are realizing they WANT to be with their kids. 

SL:  uh-huh

Larry: So, no longer are they leaving their kids in the village in Taiwan, now they're taking their kids with them. So the impact on those villages is what? It means fewer and fewer children,  fewer and fewer middle ages, more and more elders. (8:24) And so this is a real challenge in Taiwan. I mean it's a challenge globally, 

SL:  yeah
Larry: ... but it's a challenge particularly in Taiwan. 

SL:  Really.
Larry: Because so many people here have gone to China to work, or have gone to the city to work, or whatever ...

SL:  Hmmm
Larry: that it's changed the rural dynamics dramatically. So, one of the communities involved in this project is, uh, Gong Guan, outside of Tainan, and ... one of the schools there is looking at how do they become a community learning center, rather than just a school. (9:00)

SL:  Oh, OK.
Larry: In other words, with elders being involved in education, with ... as well as the children, as well as recapturing the aboriginal culture that that community represents. So it's a very ... And this is, again, it's not ICA's idea. It's the community's idea, it's the headmaster's idea, it's the university ... uh, teachers working with those communities ... but we've been able to work with them to help bring in methodologies and stuff which they can then use in different ways with the community.

(9:31) Station ident.

(9:43)
SL: Well, this might be a stupid question. I thought wouldn't they have gone to the government for this kind of help? But they came to you guys.

Larry: Well, no, they CAN go to the government. And some of the projects we do in this context are funded by the government, some are funded by the school, some are funded by nobody and everybody just shows up. (10:01) 
(both laugh)
No, the, one of the things is ... yes the Taiwan government DOES want to figure out ways to support and help. But they also have a lot of priorities and complexity, and so, uh...

SL: That's why you guys came in. 
Larry: That's one of the places we can help. 

SL: Wow.
Larry: And so, if we do, if we, if we can help, we try to. But again, there's a LOT of local capability in Taiwan. We're not riding in on a horse to save people. What we're doing is coming in to help them with things they're already working on. But to help them to add methodology, to add process and context, so that they can help themselves.

SL: Now I'm curious. You said the very first project was in PingDong, right, when ICA started, even way before you came. Do you guys follow up with them? 
Larry: Well, actually, my wife and I went there a couple years ago to visit, and, the original project director came back to Taiwan again, I want to say 18 months ago ... anyway, I'd have to see when the actual ... and so he and  his wife went down to visit, cause his son was born in PingDong... 

SL: wow, while they were helping them, right?
Larry: while they were working in that community, so it's a very, they're very attached to that ...

SL: yeah.
Larry: ... community, whereas by the time we'd gotten here we had not worked in PingDong for ... well, we got here in '91 ... so, uh, it would have been at least 10 years since, 11 years since we had left that community and worked in other places.

SL: wow.
Larry: So, I didn't have any personal attachment, but we did go back and look, and there's still an ICA office in the community center in HaiOu, there's an office with a sign above it says ICA Office, and if you go in there's still a bed and there's a desk, and all this kind of stuff so if anybody from ICA wants to come back ...

SL: (laughs)
Larry: ... and stay they have a space for 'em.

SL: But, but ...
Larry: And they've continued <<unintelligible>> some of the the programs. The pre-school continued. Some of the ... several of the economic .... uh, structures, not the actual ... uhhh, agricultural work, but the economic structures have continued. And they've continued to use a lot of the participatory process and stuff like that. (12:22)

SL: Oh, OK. Wow. So, uh, ummm, what about in Taipei? Cause you are mostly in Taipei ...?
Larry: I live in Taipei.
SL: You live in Taipei, and...
Larry: Uh, we've done work here with several other NGOs, uh, working on different projects over time. I actually spend a lot of my time, not just in Taiwan but all over the world ...

SL: Yeah, well how ... 
Larry: by accident. 

SL: Oh!
Larry: Well, it's not really, that's not really our intention. That is, ICA Taiwan, our focus is Taiwan. 

SL: Yeah.
Larry: However, from Taiwan, people have gone other places, and then asked us if we could come work with them in those...

SL: Oh, I see.
Larry: ... places. So, all the projects that I do outside of Taiwan have a genetic connection ...

SL: Connection.
Larry: ... to somebody from Taiwan, and that's the reason I ended up there.
 
SL: Oh, I see.
Larry: So, for example, the work I do in Paris is with a facilitator there named Lan, and she is originally from Vietnam where we worked with her when she was working with a Taiwanese NGO in Vietnam. And so then she married a Frenchman, went to Paris and began doing facilitation, and so, asked if I would come and do some work with her, so then I've come there to do ... So, all the, all the connections .... the only one that doesn't really is the work in Ukraine, because I was asked, I was asked to go there to do work with the Peace Summit that was ... we conducted about ... 5 years ago. 

SL: Mmm.
Larry: And this was an ICA - Ukraine project that they asked for other peer organizations to come work with. It was a people's peace summit, so it wasn't all the important people that usually go to peace summits.

SL: Right.
Larry: It was actually community people, and teachers, and business people and local government people, coming together to talk about "What would it take for us to live in peace in Ukraine?" and so it was about ... it was about 300 people. Uhhhh, and so we facilitated a day and a half with them. They were able to come up with some specific plans of action. 

SL: Yeah.
Larry: ... that they would implement in their different regions, and this kind of thing, so it was, it was a really exciting moment. 

SL: We're going to follow up with the peace summit in Ukraine with Larry Philbrook next week. 

For "In the Spotlight," I'm Shirley Lin. 

Lawrence Philbrook, CTF CPF          icalarry@gmail.com


UNITED STATES:



FIFTH CITY REVISITED THROUGH
CHICAGO ARTIST’S INTERPRETATION

Meida Teresa McNeal is a performing artist with Honey Pot Performance, Arts & Culture Manager for Chicago Park District, and a self-described “artist-administrator-educator”. She grew up in the Fifth City neighborhood of East Garfield Park on Chicago’s West Side, where her parents participated in ICA’s Fifth City community development project in the 1960s.

Curious about her own memories and her parents’ stories, Meida began to explore the history of Fifth City. Her journey eventually led her to ICA-USA’s Global Archives, where she connected with colleagues Jean Long, Karen Snyder, and Pam Bergdall, among others. The wealth of information—records, reports, stories—in the Archives helped Meida develop her solo performance project, entitled Fifth City revisited / Imaginal Politics reimagined, which she performed four times in Chicago this past month.

Fifth City revisited weaves together interpretive dance, spoken word, symbol, audio, video, props, and dynamic lighting into an hour-long meditation on the implications of the Fifth City project on everything from her childhood and family to discriminatory policy, urban planning, and contemporary movements for social justice. It is a stunning work that presents an uncanny understanding of ICA’s history and values while effectively contextualizing them for a broader audience.

While there are currently no scheduled performances, Meida has expressed interest in bringing the performance home to the West Side for additional showings. Recordings were made of two of the performances, which she hopes to share in the coming weeks. In the meantime, ICA-USA has shared an album of photos from the opening night that includes the event program.

Photos

Andrew Clayton          aclayton@ica-usa.org




Published by The Institute of Cultural Affairs International,
401 Richmond Street West, Toronto, ON. M5V 3A8 Canada
All rights reserved.

For more information or to unsubscribe, email:
inform@ica-international.org