We thought you may be interested in this grant opportunity. Let me know if you choose to apply. NCI is available to provide training and facilitation support for your projects. Please contact Bill Lennertz, NCI’s Executive Director at bill@charretteinstitute.org or 503-233-8486 ext 1#

RFP now available for Local Sustainability Matching Fund
Deadline March 5, 2012
In partnership with the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, the Funders’ Network is pleased to announce the formation of the Local Sustainability Matching Fund. The Fund has been created with leadership support from four Network members: the Kendeda Fund, the New York Community Trust, the Summit Foundation, and the Surdna Foundation.

The purpose of the Local Sustainability Matching Fund is twofold: to catalyze partnerships between local government sustainability directors and local, place-based foundations, including community foundations, and to advance important community-based sustainability initiatives. The Fund will provide partnership investments between $25,000 and $75,000, with a 1:1 match required by one or more local foundation. The Network anticipates that the Fund will support up to ten partnership projects in the first year in two rounds in the spring and fall of 2012.

The application deadline for the first round is March 5th, and you may download the Request for Proposals here. Applications must be submitted in MS Word and use the application Cover Sheet. The Network will host a conference call to provide more information on the fund and review the selection criteria. The call will be held on January 24th, at 2:00 p.m. Eastern, and you may register for the call by clicking here.

A selection committee comprised of foundation representatives and urban sustainability directors will make selection decisions on behalf of the matching fund, and awards will be announced on May 5, 2012. For more information on the Local Sustainability Matching Fund, please contact Ann Wallace at ann@fundersnetwork.org or 617-524-9239.

Ann Fowler Wallace, Director of Programs
Funders’ Network for Smart Growth and Livable Communities
745 Centre Street
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
617-524-9239
ann@fundersnetwork.org

We have scholarships for the NCI Charrette System™ Training and the NCI Charrette Management and Facilitation™ Certificate trainings. These are only offered for our Portland, OR, Washington, DC and Vancouver, BC trainings. You may apply for just the NCI Charrette System™ Training or for both trainings in the same week. Please note that the NCI Charrette System training is a prerequisite for the NCI Charrette Management and Facilitation training.

The scholarship deadline for the Portland, OR trainings is 2/3/12. The Washington, DC deadline is 4/27/12.

For more information please contact Heidi Haberbush, Program Coordinator at heidi@charretteinstitute.org

Charrettes and the Next Generation of Public Involvement and Budgets
February 2nd, San Diego, CA

Moderator: Bill Lennertz, Director, National Charrette Institute

Speakers:
- Ken Snyder, Director, PlaceMatters
- Darin Dinsmore, President, CrowdBrite
- Jason Lally, Director, Decision Lab, PlaceMatters

This session will present the latest tools, techniques and the trade-offs of social media and web-based participation tools within the context of the face-to-face public design charrette format. Learn how to safely use social media and the web to increase and broaden community support. Learn how and when to effectively use web-based distance participation for projects that feature public design charrettes.

For more information see the New Partners for Smart Growth Conference website.

The recent New York Times opinion piece,The Rise of the New Groupthink, poses a challenge to the rising trend of increased collaboration in business and schools. Susan Cain reminds us that creativity requires solitude and discusses at length the growing lack of autonomy and privacy in open offices and schools that seem to encourage group learning at all times. We couldn’t agree more that meeting for the sake of meeting and collaborating for the sake of saying you collaborated is not helpful or productive. Ms. Cain does make reference to recent studies that “suggest that influential academic work is increasingly conducted by teams rather than by individuals” and calls for a “more nuanced approach to creativity and learning.” The challenge is in how people can come together, bringing their unique skills and talents to the table in service of solving complex problems without an endless string of meetings.

One answer is to use charrettes to bring together specialists for selected compressed periods of time to develop overall solutions for complex problems that require this multi-disciplinary effort. The time before and after the charrette is used for in-depth individual or team specialty work. Stakeholders with unique information and perspectives can then offer guidance and input that the team of specialists use to integrate into their solutions. Some of this work happens in a large, open environment and some in focused solitude. One key to success is the single-pointed, focused team effort on the problem throughout the process.

NCI recently conducted trainings for the Office of Economic Adjustment (OEA) at the US Department of Defense. One of the case studies involved local communities coping with the termination of a Defense program that resulted in 2000 lost jobs. The OEA staff designed a process that began with the major stakeholders holding a project assessment and organization meeting to co-author a project approach. This was followed by a period of market and economic research to provide the base of information required for decision-making. The creative moment will occur at a three-day charrette where a core design team will create an economic development strategy for the community. Stakeholder review during a charrette is provided through a series of carefully-timed feedback loops, not at a seemingly endless string of meetings. This approach combines the necessary isolated, specialized base data work with the collaborative, creative burst in the form of the charrette to solve the core problem.

The answer to complex problem solving is neither to “Groupthink” everything nor to leave it to the specialists in their cubicles. Both approaches have their time and place and can be used most effectively when strategically combined, such as in a charrette. The NCI Charrette System™ is a way to balance individual work done in isolation with the cross-disciplinary teamwork necessary to solve complex problems.

Watch NCI recorded webinars today. We have partnered with a range of experts on each topic to bring you fresh perspectives on these current issues.

- Challenges and Solutions for Sustainable Stormwater Management
- High-Touch/High-Tech Charrettes with a Focus on Social Media
- Charrettes for Healthcare Planning
- Social Media for Planners, Advocates and Consultants
- Charrettes for Form Based Codes
- Public Agencies Running their own Charrettes
- NCI Charrette System 101
- Sustainable and Resilient Communities

Recorded webinars can be ordered anytime for unlimited viewing on your computer. All webinars are 90-minutes. Order and learn more here.

Havana Urban Design Charrette: 19-25 February 2012.

Havana Study Tour: 26 February – 3 March. 2012.

INTBAU Cuba and INTBAU Scandinavia invite you to the 2012 Havana Urban Design Charrette.

The 2012 International Charrette will build on our work from 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2011. International architects and planners are invited to join Cuban experts and local communities for a one-week charrette to develop proposals for the regeneration and development of the waterfront area of Centro Havana.

The charrette will fit both educational and professional purposes and will give participants an introduction to the history of Havana’s cultural heritage through close contact with its traditions, architecture and urbanism. The charrette seeks the participation of individuals who share a respectful attitude to new interventions in historical contexts, and who value the creation of places humans can live in, work in and enjoy.

For more details on the charrette see here: http://doityourself.no/intbau/?p=327

For more information on the tour see here: http://doityourself.no/intbau/?p=311

For tour information and registration, please contact Audun Engh, audun.engh@gmail.com

NCI Charrette System™ Certificate Training
- January 11-13: Miami, FL
- March 19-21: Portland, OR **Early registration ends 1/14/12
- June 4-6: Washington, DC **Early registration ends 3/30/12
- July TBA: Harvard University in Cambridge, MA
- October TBA: Vancouver, BC

NCI Charrette Management and Facilitation Certificate Training
- March 22-23: Portland, OR **Early registration ends 1/14/12
- June 7-8: Washington, DC **Early registration ends 3/30/12
- October TBA: Vancouver, BC

For more information on all NCI trainings see here.

These trainings and all live webinars are all accredited with the AIA for continuing education system (CES) units, with the AICP for certification maintenance (CM) credits, the ASLA for LA CES professional development hours (PDH), and the Congress for the New Urbanism for CNU-A continuing education credits.

Below are links to two recent articles describing how charrettes are making a difference in healthcare. Dougal Hewitt, Senior Vice President for Bon Secours Richmond Health System writes about the East End Neighborhood Charrette in Richmond, VA where Bon Secours literally took facility planning outside the walls of the hospital.

Joanna Lombard and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, Professors of Architecture at the University of Miami, write about participatory planning for health care in Health Progress magazine.

Hospital Design: From Barrier to Connector
By Joanna Lombard, M. Arch. and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, M. Arch.

Bon Secours Asks Neighbors to Help Redesign Community
By Dougal Hewitt

Read the pdf of these articles here.

Thanks to our most recent donors, we only need $700 more to reach our goal. Please join them in this final push to raise the $10,000 needed to update our curriculum. We are grateful for the support!

This is our biggest update yet and we need extra resources to do it right. The new trainings will add hands-on learning in high-tech tools for meetings and distance participation plus a module on tools for pre-charrette conflict resolution and consensus building. We will also add a regional scenario planning case study to the curriculum.

Why is this important? Our influence is growing. We are now training FEMA, EPA, HUD and DOD staff. We must provide the most advanced tools to these policy-setting agencies and others.

We need your help to do this. Your tax-deductible membership donation through the end-of-the-year will help pay for an intern and the staff time needed to take our curriculum to the next level.

New special benefit! As a curriculum supporter you will get free access to a webinar on this content of the update including high-tech public participation tools, conflict resolution and approaches to shrinking budgets.

Learn more about the curriculum revision in detail. To support this important effort with your membership donation click here.

The community design world is going through a major change. Budgets are smaller, agency staff are being called upon to do more and high-tech tools are making it possible for people to connect and collaborate in new ways. In response, NCI is working on changes to our curriculum that will offer a broader range of tools for design collaboration.
Starting with our Portland courses next March, the NCI toolkit will include a wider range of charrette and non-charrette approaches to fit a range of budgets and project factors. Trainings will include social media and web-based distance participation with hands-on training in public meeting tech tools, such as touch tables and keypad polling.

These exciting changes will provide a big collaborative toolkit to address every community planning situation. Training registration is available now for Spring 2012.