Archive - July 2018

From determining how best to receive refugees to reviewing a large urban development project, Wisdom Councils offer a unique way to engage the insights of citizens on local, regional or state issues.

First used in 2006 in the Austrian city of Wolfurt, Wisdom Councils now take place primarily in Vorarlberg state, Austria, though they have also been held in other places in Austria, Germany and Switzerland.

In considering the broad topic of reimagining democracy, the element of education is absolutely vital. “What happens in our school systems is a result of a demand by large systems for numerate and literate workers more than 150 years ago,” writes Axiom News founder and CEO Peter Pula. “That we still educate that way is atrocious. Schools too can to be reimagined and integrated into community life in much richer ways.”

While the cofounders of a unique city-building effort in Vancouver talk about its big and far-reaching possibilities, two students who took part in it have a lot to say about what it has done for them in small, deep and lingering ways. They say they walked away with a bolstered sense of confidence in themselves, in a certain set of skills and in a particular way of relating to people around them.

The level of cognitive, energetic and creative surplus that is unleashed when undergrad students are asked to help build their cities has happily astounded Duane Elverum. It’s also swelled his sense of urgency around shaping the conditions to spur this unleashing more and more.

“I feel a vibration. My heart beats faster, my hands start to sweat, when I think about how do we move faster, how do we get this going, how do we put this on the big wheel so to speak,” Duane tells Axiom News.

Seven years ago Duane launched CityStudio Vancouver with his colleague and fellow Simon Fraser University professor, Janet Moore. In very simple terms, the studio matches universities’ capacity with civic needs. Besides activating the unleashing mentioned above, the studio is shrinking the gap between higher learning and municipal government. It also represents a new way of distributing problems.

A bold match-making project in Vancouver peels away the mist on what’s possible for creating our preferred future as a society. Pairing universities’ capacities with civic needs, City Studio Vancouver unleashes cognitive and creative surplus in students that see their energies making the city better.

“In the past, the problems we have in society have typically been given to some experts or some narrow groups to solve,” says City Studio Vancouver co-founder Duane Elverum. “They really are not distributed to the demos or the democracy in very effective ways, other than voting.”

But that’s changing. A new and more effective way to distribute societal problems might soon be called a global movement.