Liz Joyner of The Village Square and Ash Hanson of Department of Public Transformation on “An Invitation to a New Civic Future”

Yeah.

Yeah.

Ash, how about you? What was your...

What brought you into this group?

Well, I'm so honored to be on this call with Liz, um, especially because Liz is very much a, a matriarch in this field, and I am a new kid on the block.

Uh, not a new kid on the block in terms of doing civic engagement, but of really thinking about my work in this way.

I mean, like I said, I'm a, I'm an artist, I'm an ampersand person, so we...

A lot of our work is, like, arts and fill in the blank.

Arts and civic engagement, arts and public health, arts and education, arts and community development.

Um, but all of that is within the realm of this, you know, civic renewal work, right? But I didn't have that language.

And what I loved about the invitation to come to this first gathering, it was also based on relationships.

I'm like, you know, if Richard s- whatever Richard and Savannah are doing, I'm there.

They have been a...

They've been big, um...

We've been friends for a long time in the rural-urban work.

And, um, so I already trusted what was happening, but then I was also very...

I'm, I'm on this journey of learning more about this, this field, this emerging field-And what was so great about coming together, these five principles were not laid out for us.

You know, it's not like Sam Pressler was like, "Here are the five princ-" He, he was looking around as somebody who's very well-connected in this emerging field and saying what Liz was saying, like, "There's something y'all are missing," or, "There's something that some people are doing really well, and I, I can't quite name it, but I know it's there." And so when we all got together for that first gathering and, and really started to discuss what is similar about the way that we're doing this work, it wasn't the, um, specific tool we were using.

Like, if we're using arts, um, it wasn't that, right? It was more like, what is the approach? What is the philosophy? What is the way? What's the special sauce? And that's where these five different pillars really emerged, that any one of us can s- can point to really concrete examples and really passionate testimonials about how, what this looks like in practice, and we do it with a lens of, like, with care and, and, and humor and play, and it's v- it is very much alive.

Um, and so that was instantaneous.

So it's like, "Oh, these are my people." Even though we are in very cross-sector, um, uh, fields, um, on, at the surface, we're actually just all doing the same work, um, in a, it, it, with the same kind of approach.

And so it felt like coming home in that way, you know, where you're like, "Even though I'm a new kid on the block, I'm also like, oh, I have been doing this.

I just didn't have the right language for it."

Yeah.

So-