villagevibe February 2011
News and views from the heart of Fernwood
Visions of a neighbourhood ›› Lee Herrin
I
n the spring of 2004, when the Cornerstone Building was a boarded-up eyesore in the heart of our neighbourhood, the Fernwood Community Centre Society (now Fernwood NRG) and the Fernwood Community Association invited the neighbourhood to the Fernwood Community Visioning Forum. Over seventy people responded to our invitation, and met for the day in the gymnasium of the Fernwood Community Centre on a Saturday morning in late May. Facilitated by Marianne Alto (who was elected to City Council in the recent byelection), we undertook a capacity building exercise, catalogued the assets we could bring to bear on solving some of the critical problems facing the neighbourhood, and moved into an open space visioning session in which participants were invited to write down their priorities, dreams and ideas for how to make Fernwood a better place to live. Each person was then given coloured stickers with which to indicate their priorities from all of the ideas on the wall. We then spent the afternoon talking through acknowledged high priority areas. Looking back from the perspective of 2011, the results are incredible: • Buy Robin Kimpton’s Building— done. • Community Café—done. • Generate business piggy-backing on the Belfry patrons—done. • Refurbished performance spaces—done. • Traffic calming at Fernwood and Gladstone—done. • Wider sidewalks on Fernwood Road—done. • A comfortable attractive square— done. • More affordable housing—done. Now, it’s true that not all of these have been accomplished to the same degree— the wider sidewalk on Fernwood Road is a short distance and not the entire length of the road—but considering the state of things in 2004, many of these “priorities, dreams and ideas” seemed at the time like pie in the sky. Well, that pie came down to earth, and we ate it, and now it’s time to co-create a fresh vision of what just might be possible in this wonderful neighbourhood.
Fernwood NRG will be undertaking its own internal strategic planning exercise this Spring, and a critical consideration is what you, our neighbours, want to see in your neighbourhood. For this reason, we’ve decided to host another Neighbourhood Visioning Forum. So come on out and share your ideas, hopes and dreams with us, no matter how wild. Who knows, come 2018 it might be your handwriting on the cover of the Vibe! And if you can’t make it, watch the Vibe this April for a re-cap of the day.
If you care about the futu re of Fernwood,
you’re invited!
Please join us for our Neigh bourhood Visioning Forum
Saturday, March 19th
The day will start at 9:30am for coffee and muffins, and will continue through lunch (which will be provide d). We will wrap up at 2:30 in the afternoon. Childminding will be availab le. Please RSVP to forum@fern woodnrg.ca if you will require childca re.
in this issue Buzz
Feature
Included with this issue:
A Taste of Taiwan page 3
Fiction Contest page 4
2010 Annual Report
To get the Vibe digitally, sign up at fernwoodnrg.ca