Overview of the MRCSE 2010 Summer Conference Agenda

The goal of the MRCSE 2010 Summer Conference is to co-create our shared story of sustainability. Our central theme this year will be the role of gifts and assets identification and exchange in sustainable community development. 

 Therefore, we aim to create the conditions for the following:

• Communion with self and others through personal and community visioning 
• Shifting paradigms around sustainability and sustainability education
• Acquiring specific tools to support community-based sustainability education initiatives
• Capturing and celebrating our emerging shared narratives through multiple modalities such as music, art, movement and poetry
• Connecting with the MRCSE wise elders and story tellers in ways that help us broaden our thinking and imagination in ways we might not otherwise be able to do on our own
• Empowering participants personal ownership for fostering meaningful learning experience for self and others
• Honoring equally all ways of knowing and the unique gifts and diversity of perspectives of all
• Building comfort with ambiguity and remaining close to the actual messiness and serendipity of ideas, processes, and change
• Regenerating ourselves and our community

We see the following central habits of mind as essential to the success of our work:

1. Critical reflection and dialog
2. Participatory and integrated design
3. Complex systems thinking
4. Creativity and whole body learning
5. Paradoxical thinking and mental models for ecological citizenship
6. Semi-permeable self (a broadened sense of self understood through the interconnectedness of all levels of scale within a system)
7. Personal and community restoration, resilience, and regeneration
8. Building shared narratives, transformative visioning and ongoing feedback loops
9. Emerging positive possibilities through personal and community gifts and asset identification and exchange

The Main MRCSE Conference Activities

We envisioned the MRCSE conference as an important time and space for us as a collaborative to co-create our shared story of sustainability.  Therefore everyday, we committed time to:

• Reflective journaling and continuing friends circles
• Active communion with nature
• Sharing of our emerging stories through music, art, movement, writing, photography and more.

The activities for each day vary and are co-developed by the participants.  This year’s daily activities included:

• Pre conference sustainability workshops
• A “Tranformative Learning for Sustainability” training
• A half day “Ideas and Tools Marketplace” that allows interested participants to share 30 minute sessions on their sustainability work
• Gift and assets identification and exchange activities
• An extended excursion into the beauty of the Land O’ Lakes ecosystem
• An exploration of questions that matter using a World Café  format
• A Two-day Open Space Forum that allows attendees to co-create discussion topics, explore convergent themes across our conversations, and determine action strategies.

Evenings are a time of celebration and socializing and include an outdoor BBQ and gatherings around a campfire.  This year we will also be highlighting the work of Story Teller Ed Lemar with a performance of his Renewsical: A Renewable Energy Musical.   Everyone is encourages to join in the show.  There will also be opportunities to join evening small group sessions with MRCSE Wise Elders and Story Tellers on topics such as systems thinking, sustainable capitalism, sustainability story telling tools, sustainability curriculum development and social artistry skills.   Most importantly, throughout the week time is set aside for teams and individuals to work together to create and/or evolve sustainability education projects and draft a proposal for MRCSE seed grant funding.