Get all three NCI charrette planning and management tools for one low price. Valued at $310 when purchased individually, the NCI Charrette Manager’s Binder Insert + The NCI Charrette Planner Forms Kit™ + The NCI Charrette Manager Forms Kit™ are now packaged and on sale for only $99. Start getting charrette-ready today! Learn more…

Our annual summer training at Harvard is definitely different. You will be one of a diverse group of students working in the unique atmosphere of the Graduate School of Design across from Harvard Yard. Stacie Nicole Smith from the Consensus Building Institute will be joining us again this year. Lunch with us at the Harvard Faculty Club; take in a game at Fenway (Sox v Yankees!) and head to the Cape for the weekend. Another difference, you will receive a Harvard certificate of completion in addition to the NCI certificate.

Learn more and register here.

Earlier this month, NCI led a 7-day charrette to create a vision for the 21-mile stretch of Michigan Avenue/Grand River Avenue from the Lansing Capitol through East Lansing out to rural Webberville, MI. In total, the charrette engaged hundreds of people through public meetings and 14 technical and stakeholder meetings. Several NCI training graduates audited the charrette as part of their continuing charrette education. NCI also used this opportunity to record the participation and design process. Here are few of the highlights:

• Day One: Public Hands-on Design session. Each table reports out, their drawings are projected on one large screen and their comments are transcribed on another screen so all can see the results.
• Day Two: “The Frankenplan.” Technical meetings begin while the Dover, Kohl & Partners design team synthesizes the main public comments on one document.
• Day Three: “Just-in-time” design. The DKP design team is stuck deciding on a street section. The city engineer is contacted and an instant meeting occurs that resolves the issue.
• Day Three: Getting the kids involved. Design team members head to the Pattengill Middle School to conduct a design session with 5th graders.

Read the day-by-day details behind these and the rest of the charrette days. Check out a PDF of the last day “work-in-progress presentation.”

Here is an update on a few of NCI’s notable accomplishments in recent months.  We would especially like to thank NCI members for their support in helping us to increase our influence in the world of community planning, which continues to grow.

We continue to provide specialized training and coaching for agencies and organizations that want to be more hands-on with charrettes. We are training and coaching non-profit organizations to conduct charrettes for development sites in New York’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood and we recently conducted an in-house training for the District Department of Transportation in DC.

Our work with Michigan State Housing Development Authority continues. NCI trainings have been a regular feature of the State’s placemaking curriculum. This program is part of the governor’s initiative wherein placemaking is a central strategy in an ambitious statewide economic development plan.

We are in the final stages of completing our Charrettes for Transit Oriented Development Guide under our grant from the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). This guide will be made available to all local transit agencies and regional planning commissions, and the public at large, later this year.

NCI succeeds through word of mouth recommendations and referrals from our members and the thousands we have trained and coached over the past 12 years.  Even during the recession, people continued to take our courses and call us for assistance. This is because people need to collaborative now more than ever and NCI builds the capacity to do so.

NCI certificate holders, here’s your chance to observe and perhaps assist at a 7-day charrette May 1-7 in East Lansing, Michigan. See the project website for details, http://migrand-charrette.com. NCI is leading the Michigan Avenue/Grand River Avenue Vision Charrette. All are welcome to attend the Charrette 101 Seminar on May 1^st. You are also welcome to attend the public meetings and open house.  Click here for the charrette schedule.  A limited number of NCI grads can shadow at the design studio and participate in “side-bar” discussions about the process. Depending on the need and your experience, you may be able to help in the production phase, coloring, or computer work in the final stretch.

If you are interested in attending or shadowing please email info@charretteinstitute.org

NCI Charrette System™ 101 Recorded Webinar

To provide you with a fast an affordable way to understand the NCI Charrette System™ and its effectiveness, we are now offering our introductory webinar for just $45. This gives you unlimited viewing of the 90-minute presentation for yourself and your colleagues.

In it, NCI faculty Bill Lennertz and David Brain describe the three phases and over 45 tools that comprise the NCI Charrette System™- a collaborative project management process with a multiple-day charrette as the central transformative event. In viewing this 1.5-hour webinar you will learn the time-tested NCI framework for planning for a successful charrette…order and view today.

NCI is facilitating two charrettes this year on the lengthy Michigan Avenue/Grand River Avenue Corridor from Lansing to Webberville for the Tri-County Regional Planning Commission. Stay up-to-date before the charrettes and during via the project website,Twitter and Facebook!