What if all we had to do to change the world was to connect with kindred spirits and foster relationships? I’ve spent a lot of time pondering this over the last few months and I’ve been able to think of nothing else since yesterday. That’s when I spent a good part of a Saturday with 200 Calgarians for a conversation hosted by Alderman Bob Hawkesworth. Bob invited us to talk as neighbours about the community we want and how we can best get there, an invitation reminiscent of our own CivicCamp event in April. So it came as no surprise to me that when the time came for participants in the weekend “café” to choose topics for the day, many of the themes that emerged were echoes of those raised at CivicCamp. The day unfolded with an energy that was palpable and remarkably positive, as we talked about what was going right here in Calgary and the changes we would like to see in our city as we move towards our collective future.
Alderman Hawkesworth ended the day with the question “What if we had a conversation like this somewhere in Calgary every month?” The spontaneous and enthusiastic applause generated by that question told me that others found the day as productive as I did. The potential for real change is enormous if we continue to encourage these connections with kindred spirits. Yesterday reinforced for me what I had already seen at CivicCamp: there is a real appetite to connect at a grassroots level and to work for real change in Calgary. It is no longer enough to look to our elected leaders to move us forward. We want our civic leaders to have the courage to do the right thing for Calgary but each of us must also be willing to lead ourselves, through our words and through our actions.
Cafés like Bob’s and events like CivicCamp are great places for these conversations but we need more of them. We need to be talking to each other – monthly, weekly, daily – in coffee shops, over backyard fences, at work, online. We need to raise the level of public discourse, debate the issues, contemplate solutions to our problems and then get to work building the city we know Calgary can be. “The world doesn’t change one person at a time”, says leadership consultant and author Margaret Wheatley. “It changes when networks of relationships form among people who share a common cause and vision of what’s possible… Through these relationships, we will develop the new knowledge, practices, courage and commitment that lead to broad-based change.”
