Facilitators: Ieva Notturno and Jeff Prudhomme
The Center for Lifelong Learning is hosting the Interactivity Foundation for two classes Mondays, March 4 and 18 at 1:00 PM in Clubhouse 1 to conduct a discussion of: Shaping Our Towns & Cities. The round-table discussion will be facilitated by Ieva Notturno and Jeff Prudhomme. There is a fee of $15.00 to attend, With a limit of 24 participants, residents are requested to register early with E&R.
The discussion will address why do we live where we live, what attracts us to certain towns or neighborhoods, and why are our communities designed the way they are. All lead to the concern about what might the future hold in store?
The discussion explores the forces and decisions that shape our communities. It ponders whether these could be altered or redirected.
People often tend to think of the development of our communities, of our towns and cities, as something that just happens. It’s just the way things are. Or we think of these decisions about urban planning as decisions that are too complex for us as average citizens. Yet these decisions hit us where we live. They impact housing, transportation, and economic development. They affect what we think of as “home” and how we are able to live our lives. These are public policy choices that will impact our pocketbooks and our quality of life.
The Interactivity Foundation works to enhance the process and expand the scope and health of our democracy by bringing people together in small group discussions of broad topics of societal concern. Their goal is to engage more people in the exploration and development of more possibilities for public policy. They use a facilitated discussion process that is oriented around the notion of collaboration by difference, engaging a group to work together to uncover divergent perspectives on the discussion topic and to develop divergent approaches to that topic. They collaborate with certain college faculty and other educators to develop and support facilitated, student-centered classroom discussions. Their efforts have focused on helping students learn to facilitate their own discussion teams, where these teams are charged with developing diverse approaches to the course content.