Discover Your Place in The Great Turning
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Image by Remixed from NASA Goddard Photo & Video
With 40+ presenters exploring topics from oil tankers to backyard beekeeping and guerilla gardening, the Great Turning Unconference is the place to discover your role in Vancouver's movement for change
News of the latest environmental disaster got you down? Too busy for a passion project? Feeling kind of apathetic and disconnected? If you answered “yes” to any of these, you need to be at the Great Turning Unconference, on Saturday, April 30, 2011, at the Maritime Labour Centre in Vancouver.
Attempting to piece together the puzzle of our emerging future—amidst rising food prices, peak oil, wilderness destruction, child obesity, water contamination, climate change and so on—the day-long event brings together local change agents from a broad spectrum of organizations and backgrounds to connect, explore and collaborate on ideas about how to strengthen our communities while striving to achieve sustainability.
The Great Turning Unconference
Saturday, April 30, 2011
9 a.m.–5:30 p.m.
Maritime Labour Centre
1880 Triumph St, Vancouver
Tickets $75; youth/student/underemployed $55; fixed income $65; or volunteer
Granville Online is a proud media sponsor of this event.
Sessions will be organized around issues in three distinct streams pivotal to Vancouver’s health and resilience: Action, Innovation and Consciousness.
Taking the format of an unconference (a participant-driven meeting with an agenda defined by the people that attend), The Great Turning will play with the World Café model, engaging eight to 10 participants around a table through facilitated dialogue segments.
Each table will feature a community leader presenting a specific focus—for example, oil tankers on the BC coast, neighbourhood food networks, urban streams or the Gateway Project; participants will then explore the personal and collective actions that they can take to move the issue forward.
The event is important for Vancouver and the city’s future, says Maureen Jack-LaCroix, producer of The Great Turning and founding director of Be the Change Alliance, which is producing the event.
“We need to start putting all our amazing ideas and intentions about community resilience and sustainability into being.”
She points out that our fast-paced lives and hectic schedules don’t allow us “the space, time and energy to start developing connections and nurturing our amazing ideas.”
However, the Great Turning offers a unique opportunity to step-back from our busy day-to-day and focus on ideas for improving the communities we live in. More than inspiring participants, leaving them with a warm and fuzzy feeling at the end of the day, the event has been purposely developed as an entry point to action.
“This is an event that will provide people with the opportunity to carry that inspiration forward,” says Jack-LaCroix.
Beyond The Great Turning: Post-event programming
In order to build on enthusiasm and inspiration sparked from the event, Be The Change Earth Alliance in partnership with What’s Your Tree, the Wilderness Committee and Village Vancouver will be supporting people to act on their good intentions in the weeks and months following the event.
For individuals still searching for a purpose, What’s Your Tree circles will be hosted. These sessions help people uncover their unique purpose and personal focus in the movement for change.
The Wilderness Committee will be giving workshops for people ready to get started on a particular issue or common cause, assisting them to form advocacy circles.
At the same time, Village Vancouver will be actively introducing individuals to existing initiatives in their neighborhoods, helping them to make their personal lifestyles more sustainable.
If the success of the first Great Turning event in 2009 is any indication, there will be some exciting initiatives emerging from the day. At the last Great Turning, the Wild Salmon Circle was created and has been very successful in building public support to curtail the damaging practices of fish farms.
More than talk: Arts, culture and food at The Great Turning
Organizers are expecting more than 400 participants at this year’s event, a day that will be enhanced with morning coffee, yoga, an organic vegetarian/vegan lunch, spoken word, local musicians and storytellers.
For those feeling energized at the end of the day, an innovative evening event, titled The Quickening, invites attendees to experience the quickening of cultural transformation through a fusion of world music, dance and spoken word.
There’s sure to be lots to learn, valuable connections to be made and, really, it just sounds like a lot of fun. Take the day to get engaged, connected and organized—our collective future depends on it.
Buy tickets and learn more at the Be The Change Earth Alliance website.
The Great Turning speakers list
(click on an individual's name for more information)
Action:
- Miriam Palacios, Oxfam Canada: Women & Food Justice
- Ben West, Wilderness Committee: Oil Tankers on the BC Coast
- Jessica Wilson, Greenpeace Canada: Alberta Tar Sands
- Tyee Bridge, The Wild Salmon Circle: Fish Farms
- Carmen Mills & Alec Doherty: Join the Wave, Stop the Pave: Stopping The Gateway Project
- Taina Uitto, Plastic Manners: Living Without Plastic
- Karl Perrin, Pilgrimage to Burns Bog
- John Vissers, Fraser Valley Conservancy: Community Rail
- Joe Foy, Wilderness Committee: Clayquot Sound
- Inge Mueller-Langer, Save The Elms of East 6th: Valuing Our Urban Forest
Innovation:
- Andrea Reimer, Vancouver Deputy Mayor: Community Resiliency
- Jeff Chiu, BC Hydro: Community Energy Conservation
- Ross Moster, Village Vancouver: Neighborhood Food Networks
- Jordan Bober, Village Vancouver: Community Currencies
- Ann Pacey, Village Vancouver: Emergency Preparedness
- Louise Towell, Stream of Dreams: Urban Streams
- Rosemary Cornell, Be The Change: Neighborhood Plastic Depots
- Chanel Ly, Winderemere Secondary: Windemere & School Gardens
- Andrea Morgan, UBC Farm: Farmers and Farmland
- Susan Maxwell & Helen Spiegelman, Zero Waste BC: The Zero Waste Project
- Grant Watson, Grant's Gourmet Gardens: Edible Landscapes
- Anna Chase, Backyard Beekeeping Group: Backyard Beekeeping
- Gregory Almas, Be The Change: Action Circles
- David Tracey, Eco Urbanist: Engaged Ecology
- Olive Dempsey, City of Vancouver, The Greenest City
- Amy Tran, Cedar Cottage Seed Savers/Environmental Youth Alliance: Seed Saving
- Joanne Bays, Food Policy Council: Local Food in Institutions
- Nickolas Grabovac: Vancouver Permaculture Meetup: Permaculture: Design for Sustainability
- Erin Nichols, FarmFolkCityFolk: Local Food Online
Consciousness:
- Rex Weyler, author & Greenpeace co-founder: Shambhala Warrior Today
- Ajay Puri, Rangi Changi Roots: Bringing Color to the Green Movement
- Suzanne Barois & Anne Thompson, What's Your Tree: Finding Your Purpose & Passion
- Jeffrey Armstrong, Vedic Academy: Wisdom of the Avatars
- Mia Amir, Transformative Communities Project: Arts for Community Empowerment
- Kate Sutherland, author: Make Light Work
- Naomi Steinberg, Vancouver Society of Storytelling: Community Storytelling
- Conrad Schmidt, Work Less Party: Work Less
- Tara Mahoney & Fiona Rayher, Gen Why Media Project: Activating Gen Why
I would like to thank you for writing your blog on this important topic. I will discuss this important topic with my friends and search more about this.
the conference were $35 at the door with an extra $10 for the dance.
Why I wonder did I have to pay $65
for a ticket beforehand? Sounded like pay what you can but the bottom line was $65. Not a good feeling.
The conference was run on the speed principle without any thought for the human component regarding real discussion, and real needs. Had to pay for glass bottled water which was expensive. I was told to drink tapwater. Nice.How to stuff as many speakers into as little time as possible was not appropriate. You could take lessons from Power of Hope which knows how to genuinely empower real people.
Recognizing that glass is one of the most sustainable alternatives to plastic water bottles, the glass water bottles that were available for purchase from "The GlassRoots Initiative" were to encourage people to reduce the number of plastic water bottles used in the future. The ionized water that was put into the bottles was free and free refills were also available throughout the day. No one paid for the water, just for the bottle. Tap water was also a free option for people who didn't want to purchase a glass water bottle but wanted to fill their own water bottle or cup, which is common at other large events. Free organic juice, coffee, and tea was also available for event participants to consume throughout the day. We also served a freshly cooked organic vegetarian lunch to all participants, at no extra charge.
There is no doubt that the day was packed full of speakers and multiple dialogues. But we received incredibly positive feedback about how smoothly the agenda unfolded throughout the day. The human component of the event and the needs of participants were deeply considered in creating the event. This process included input from experienced group facilitators, many of whom are connected with Power of Hope. The many diverse dialogues featured at The Great Turning were designed to offer a range of experiences: from gathering information, to in-depth group dialogue, to focus group Action dialogue.
Be The Change Earth Alliance gave all event participants the opportunity to provide feedback with feedback forms which were available on each table towards the end of the event and upon exiting past the registration desk. We would have appreciated your feedback on one of these forms in order for The Great Turning Un-Conference to continue it's evolution into the future. The feedback that we received about The Great Turning has been overwhelmingly positive. We're very sorry that your experience of the event was not as positive as the rest of the participants. We would very much like to hear your feedback officially on a feedback form. If you would like to receive one, please contact us at admin[at]bethechangeearthalliance.org.
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