Dear Clear-Villagers:
2011 is closing soon and it’s been an exceptional year full of travels,
adventures in and out of offices, and joining forces with great talents.
Just to mention a few of the highlights:
We opened the Dynamic Dialogues Lab series in Helsingborg in order to turn
the State Theater into a strategic social innovation hub that will create a
cultural bridge in a highly segregated city.
We gardened near east London during an open-air Lab to kickstart the
regeneration of a walled kitchen garden together with Havering Borough, with
the aim not just to restore heritage but also to raise awareness of food and
the environment, whilst also bringing in the arts with musician Imogen Heap
and myself collaborating on a music project.
We built a comprehensive Neighbourhood Identity Guide to salvage a
ghetto-prone housing estate in Kiel, Germany and we conducted several of our
tailored wellbeing analyses in the village streets of Atina in Italy and at
a tough site in Nicosia in Cyprus. And there’s much more to come with an
ever growing cast of municipalities, companies and fabulous local
entrepreneurs.
Our special thanks go to all of you who have made our efforts worthwhile:
our clients, partners, network, supporters and of course our team.
The result of all this is that we now work in 7 countries across Europe
offering communities co-design journeys and solutions through curated
participation inspired by best practice in alternative placemaking.
What we feel makes us different from IDEOs, Transition Towns, Participles
and other organisations that see the need to help communities and places to
achieve their full potential in these times of overwhelming complexity and
generalised crisis is our focus on micro-urbanistic intervention to seed
ripples in challenging situations where lack of funding, unclear stakeholder
contexts, and social degradation have so far stalled local improvements. We
are eager to work within difficult contexts and as a consequence aim to make
progress rapidly towards greater resilience and vitality.
We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, one in which we look
forward to continuing our endeavours with you all to sustain the pace of
growth of the organisation and help fund its mission.
Warmest regards in the freezing British winter!
Thomas Ugo Ermacora
Founder & Strategy Director
You want to join our network of visionary professionals, you need help
in your community or want to empower? Get in touch!
Copyright © 2011 CLEAR VILLAGE Charitable Trust, All rights reserved.