Checking in, and new research on WC's...

[Rosa]

Hi all,

this list has been very quiet for a long time...
I've been remiss in stirring the waters.

I've been mostly working on my doctoral studies, and starting to work toward my dissertation,
which will be (of course!) on the Wisdom Councils in Austria.

As part of my research, I recently came across a great master's thesis by Katharina Toth.
Lucky for us who are not German-speakers, it's in English!!!

It's called "Public Participation, sustainability, and environmental awareness:
Case study of the effect of wisdom councils on participants in the region Bregenzerwald."

and it was submitted to the University of Copenhagen, Department of Food and Resource Economics.

Since Katharina is bilingual, she was able to interview the research participants in German,
while also writing her thesis in English.... I have not read it yet,
am very much looking forward to doing so, and, I imagine that she has a lot of great quotes. ...

***

I found Katharina's thesis on the partizipation.at website...  while that is a bilingual website,
with both an English and a German version, most of the material on WC's is only on the German version of the site...

If you search the English-language version of the site, there are 12 entries for "Wisdom Council", and many of them
are announcements for past workshops that took place.

But if you search on the German-language side of the site, there are 16 entries for Bürgerrat, 10 for Bürgerräte,
33 for BürgerInnenräte, and a whopping 60 for BürgerInnenrat..... (masculine singular, masculine plural, femenine plural, femenine singular).

Most of these entries are German-language descriptions of actual Wisdom Councils...
and, that's where I found the link to Katharina's English-language thesis.

***

I would love to have some help with the project, of translating some of these materials into English...
I've done bits and pieces here and there, but there is SO much more to be done!

At any rate, I am putting it on my wish-list for Christmas, and spreading the word...:-)  :-)  :-)
and in the meantime, enjoy Katharina's thesis!

I'd also love to hear from any of you, about what is inspiring you, these days...

happy holidays, and all best wishes,

Rosa

Rosa Zubizarreta
DiaPraxis: Awakening the Spirit of Creative Collaboration
coaching in participatory leadership • advanced group facilitation services & learning opps

[John Abbe]

I have a bunch of friends in Europe who may still be unaware of the WC scene in Austria. What's the best 'landing' page to point people to if they want to get caught up?

Life,

John

==

97.3FM KEPW - low-power community radio - kepw.org

(he/him/his, they/them/theirs)

"If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own."

    --Wes Nisker

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[Rosa Zubizarreta]

Hi John,

good question. One complicating factor is that there has been a major website reorg over at the official Vorarlberg website, possibly correlated with other larger changes as well.

Here is the Büro für Zukunftsfragen's new page... it is very elegant and minimalist now, and no longer has an English-language version. No links on it, either...

To find material on Bürgerräte, what you do is, from the official website homepage, in the top tab where it says "Themen", open up the drop-down menu and select "Ehrenamt & Miteinander", which means something like "Volunteering and Togetherness".

That will lead to all of the German-language documents that have been coded with those tags, which includes a few reports on the more recent Bürgerräte, or Wisdom Councils. I imagine that others may have been archived...

This page has a list of the ten state-wide WC that have taken place between 2011 and 2018, though the list is not hot-linked. As I mentioned above, the more recent ones will show up when you select "Ehrenamt & Miteinander" under "Themen"...

And, I have not been able to find a different list I'd seen earlier, of the many WC at the town and regional level, for which the ZUB (Büro für Zukunftsfragen) had provided technical assistance.

**

Some of the material that is no longer available on the vorarlberg.at site, might be available on the partizipation.at website, which I mentioned in my earlier email. That site also includes info on many of the WC's that have happened outside of Vorarlberg... and of course, other kinds of participation projects too, not just WC.

However, as I mentioned earlier, the WC info available on that website is primarily on the German-language side and it is primarily (though not exclusively) in German. Searching for "BürgerInnenrat" on the German side will give you the maximum number of useful entries.

**

With regard to English-language materials on WC's in Austria, there are two compilations that I am aware of...

One is Jim's site, wisedemocracy.org, which has had a massive upgrade recently and is looking great! Here is his page on Austria ...lots of good info there still, even though most of the links that connected directly to Vorarlberg are now broken.

Last but not least, there is a page on my website where I have been specifically collecting English-language materials on what has been happening in Europe re WC's.

I had also included some links to the original German-language sources as a reference, and those are now broken and need to be fixed. And, I also have some new material (per my earlier email!) to add. Yet there it is...  a perennial "work-in-progress"!

**

Ok, that's it for now... thanks for asking... would be lovely to have this info shared more widely.

with all best wishes,

Rosa

Rosa Zubizarreta
DiaPraxis: Awakening the Spirit of Creative Collaboration
coaching in participatory leadership • advanced group facilitation services & learning opps

[John Abbe]

Thank you! This is great for anyone who knows they want to dig in to it all. Sounds like there is an opportunity there to pull together some kind of index/overview (in one or both languages) with links, unfortunately I lack the bandwidth to get caught up and do so. Anyone else?

Life,

John

=

97.3FM KEPW - low-power community radio - kepw.org

(he/him/his, they/them/theirs)

"If you don't like the news, go out and make some of your own."

    --Wes Nisker

[Markus Goetsch]

Hello,

They are completely redoing the Vorarlberg state website. There is going to be a site under Buergerat.com and one privately run for bottom up Wisdom Councils called bürgerinnenrat.at (you’ll need to copy this because of the Umlaut Ü) - also there is a new association that was founded in Munich earlier this fall: dynamicfacilitation.org.

I guess the Büro für Zukunftsfragen Webpage will grow soon, once the transition is completed.

Good to hear from you,

Markus

Von meinem Smartphone gesendet

[Rosa]

Hi Markus! Any updates for the list on the new website? 

The http://buergerat.com/ link does not seem to be working.

However, your bürgerinnenrat.at  site looks lovely!

and anyone can put that address into Google Translate (https://translate.google.com/) to get an English language version.

BTW all, thanks to Markus, I had the opportunity to meet the lovely folks from DynamicFacilitation.org in Germany earlier this year,

right before I had to return home due to COVID restrictions. If any of you speak German (or even are just curious about it!)

I highly recommend that you join this group of DF & WC enthusiasts, practitioners, and teachers.

with all best wishes,

Rosa

[Markus Goetsch]

Hello Rosa,

As it is an international project I guess things are aking a little longer. I know people were working on the English version, (have been and still are) so it should be up and running soon. I am not directly involved in this web project though. The address is https://www.buergerrat.net/ for both English and German. The EN version is just not there yet. 

Thanks for promoting the Dynamic Facilitation Association in Munich  :-)

Markus

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