We met for a 5-10-5-10 evening listening to Bob Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released” performed by Jack Johnson (with the Animal Liberation Orchestra) from the album “Endless Highway – the music of The Band” (2007). Each of us visited a highlight from the week: these included appreciation of Louise Nicholas at last finding some justice re. the suppression of evidence in the earlier trials; a good case being put to council for the interest of pedestrians and cyclists in local roading decision making; a wonderful week spent in wananga in Tauhara.We decided to check in with progress on our 10 goals, and we also reviewed the format of our evenings and discussed the place of the 20 minute videos. We thought they were great for generating dialogue from us and also for keeping us aware of big picture thinking and the interconnectedness of work for the common good. Some of us felt there was less focus on our actual 5-10-5-10 projects this year and others reported doing a lot more for their projects than in previous years. It was generally agreed that the group was functioning well as a place to find inspiration, feel connection and think together.
We heard about the activity of the national trust of Changemakers and the establishment of the national coordinator position. We need to attract more funding to make this position sustainable and we hope to generate more Taranaki contributions to this fund. If you as a reader are interested in contributing funds you can go to the Changemakers website or you can download the bank deposit details. Nationally there are a number of people wanting to start 5-10-5-10 groups and there is a lot of potential for this position to inspire change-making and even attract funding for social entrepreneurship projects. It is hoped to make this a young-person's position so we can encourage and educate the next generation of change-makers.
We also looked at and discussed this blog: the editing that needs doing to get it ready to go public; its role as a window into a local Changemaker group, the variety of issues we discuss and the types of work we are engaged in. We hope other Taranaki Changemakers might contribute a blog post on your projects and the progress you are making and what you are learning from the work you are doing. It would be great to see some local stories as well as the videos and our responses to them.
We talked about the future of Changemakers, the desire we have to engage other people and to find a way to include them and to transition from this group to the next one. One interesting suggestion was to finish our group with a weekend which could also function as an introduction weekend for the next group. We had in mind workshops on our local projects as well as perhaps revisiting the videos we found most compelling and useful. We thought perhaps a shorter group of maybe 6 sessions could be something that new comers might commit to more easily.
Endless Highway: The Music of the Band featuring Jack Johnson is available from Amazon
