Common Ground: Process for the Development of the Landscape Master Plan
- Executive Summary
• Purpose of Contracting with Visionscapes: Landscape Architects
• The Contract between Common Ground and Visionscapes
- The Master Plan
- The Process
• Before the Open Space Technology Meeting: the Theme and the Givens
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
A master plan was developed for 20 acres of land in Oberlin, Ohio, United States of America for land owned by the Sisters of the Humility of Mary and known as Common Ground, the Cindy Nord Centre for Renewal. The master plan was accepted by the community of stakeholders as incredible, capturing all of their dreams for the use of the land in keeping with the Mission of the Centre. Total time from the start of the contract beginning with a community meeting to the completion of the Master Plan was 40 days. Virginia Burt, landscape architect has partnered with Birgitt Bolton, organizational consultant to ensure that process for meetings with the client and community deliver for her the data that is needed to create incredible designs that are truly reflective of what the community wants and envisions for themselves. Further, the process delivered by Birgitt Bolton enables Virginia Burt to deliver a Master Plan to a client group in record time, while passion for the project is still high in the community.
Purpose of Contracting with Visionscapes: Landscape Architects
Common Ground required a Master Plan to be designed for their 20 acres of land in Oberlin, Ohio, United States of America. The Master Plan was to capture the essence of the spirit of the community who would be using the land, and the essence of the spirit of the land. This land was purchased a few years ago by the Sisters of the Humility of Mary for the purpose of having a place of retreat where people could reconnect with their spirit by reconnecting with the earth. Prior to this contract, members of the community formed a Board of Trustees to oversee this place of retreat called Common Ground. They had achieved funding for the purchase of the land and for the creation of a building for community meetings. It was now their intention to bring programming beyond the walls of the building and to involve the twenty acres fully, to realize the original vision.
The Contract between Common Ground and Visionscapes
Use of the land was to be in keeping with the Mission of the organization. Community input for the Master Plan was essential. A traditional Master Planning Process takes between one and two years. The traditional process usually involves a committee, several drafts by the landscape architect, vetting by the committee, several more drafts by the landscape architect, and back and forth and so on. And then there is an unveiling to the stakeholders. And quite often, a "selling" to the stakeholders of the design. A great sorrow of designers is the number of designs that are accepted, and then put on a shelf and not implemented, sometimes being dusted off a few years later to consider implementation that is then greatly changed
Common Ground was not interested in the traditional Master Planning Process. They engaged Birgitt Bolton (organizational learning consultant) to conduct a weekend long Open Space Technology meeting with the community including all stakeholder groups to determine what the community had passion for regarding the Master Plan. They engaged Virginia (landscape architect specializing in spiritual healing gardens) to do the Master Plan, based on the community input and using her skills and passion for designing spiritual healing places. Total time from the original Open Space meeting to the completion of the Master Plan: 40 days.
THE MASTER PLAN
The Master Plan for the landscape of twenty acres of Common Ground was designed to assist Common Ground to fulfill its mission and vision. The overall concept was governed by:
- attention to seven vortexes of earth energy including use of the Cosmic Spiral and Labyrinth
- attention to the Medicine Wheel of indigenous peoples of the world cross culturally since the beginning of time; and
- attention to Seven Spiritual Landscape Archetypes (Messervy, 1996)
The Master Plan has three rather than the usual one layer of a master plan. One must think of the following in three layers, much like a hologram. The three layers are the key elements of the richness of what is possible with the site to fulfill its purpose for Common Ground.
The first layer addresses healing for the land itself, creating and acknowledging "acupuncture" points in the earth. By focusing places for ritual and meditation where Virginia found energy vortexes, by placing a physical element on these points, the vortex of energy and earth healing is enhanced. This in turn enhances healing energy for people attending these physical spaces.
The second layer honors the four cardinal directions of north, east, south, and west and makes full use of our knowledge of the healing properties of the Medicine Wheel both for the land and for the people. Where the lines from each of the four directions intersect, Virginia placed a navel stone or omphalos (from Greek mythology) to enhance the energy vortex. These were placed as intentional acupuncture points for the land.
The third layer is that of naturally occurring attributes of the site itself, the river, the forest, Dead Man's Mountain, the pine grove. Virginia used this layer of the Master Plan to produce awareness and development of the seven spiritual landscape archetypes. Again, the intention was to create physical spaces, or enhance existing physical spaces for personal healing.
THE PROCESS
The design process began with a community stakeholder meeting involving 70 participants, as invited by Common Ground. The format of the meeting is one from the practice of Organizational Development known as Open Space Technology. It was from this meeting that Virginia obtained enough data to enable her to create a Master Plan that was truly in keeping with the wishes and dreams of the community. She stated certain criteria "up-front" as described below. Beyond these initial criteria, including the seven landscape archetypes and use of the Medicine Wheel, Virginia obtained enough data from the group that she was able to use their input, and mix it with her creativity to design the Master Plan. She did not need to add new concepts of her own but used the concepts generated in the process based on the passion of those who participated.
Before the Open Space Technology Meeting: the Theme and the Givens
When Birgitt is commissioned to facilitate a meeting in Open Space, she is very particular about clarifying what the space is about, sorting out what the field is that we have to operate in. She sees this field, or the open space, as the place in which those involved in the process are open to creativity, innovation, play, spirit, and whatever comes regarding the purpose for which the stakeholders are gathered. The action/movement within this field comes from that which the participants have passion for and are prepared to take some responsibility. The amount of responsibility required is the naming of their issue or opportunity and then leading a discussion and ensuring we have a record of the important points.
This action/movement does not mean that the person with passion for a topic knows very much about the topic—they could simply have a question. In something as technical as the design of landscape, it is likely that participants do not have the technical knowledge, but would certainly have passion and questing for what was possible. However, in order to achieve maximum movement forward with the purpose at hand, Birgitt and the sponsor need to define the boundaries of the field. Birgitt does this by painstakingly identifying the organizational "givens" or "non-negotiables" that are in place. This is done with the senior leader of an organization or preferably with the management team. And it is much harder than it sounds! It is amazing how many assumptions are made, and how many items named as "givens" in the original list are really goals or objectives. Clarifying "givens" addresses what is assumption and what is goal or objective. Usually by the time the task is done, there are far less "givens" in an organization than at first thought. We think of this as de-mything the organization. At Common Ground, a great deal of effort had been put into clarity about Mission and Purpose and so on, resulting in an easier identification of "givens". Sister Rose met with Birgitt for several hours a few days before the Open Space Technology event to ensure that this was all in order to ensure the best possible results from the Open Space meeting. Birgitt says "the good news is that Open Space works, the bad news is that Open Space works" which means simply that once started, it will work so we better be sure that what we have set up is right in order to get our needed results.
When partnering Open Space Technology with Landscape Master Planning, the task is more complex. We needed to identify the "givens" of the organization itself in relation to this community meeting and the "givens" of the landscape itself (it is counterproductive to set up expectations that are outside of the field, or to discuss matters that are already "given" or "non-negotiable"). It is highly productive to name these before the event, and by doing so, give clarity to all participants about just how big the field is that they are working in, how big the open space is (or is not, whichever the case may be).
There are several features to an Open Space Technology meeting as created by Harrison Owen. Chairs are arranged in a circle to facilitate communication and there are no tables in that tables are barriers to communication. The role of facilitator is to open the space and hold safe space open. There is no defined leader, which encourages anyone to come forward to take leadership and acknowledges the potential for leadership in every person. The agenda is created by the people in the room. Passion and responsibility are the two keys to the success of an open space meeting.
By noon on the Sunday, it was clear that there was more than sufficient material to do a Master Plan of the 20 acres based on the passion and wisdom of those who had participated in the Open Space. In the afternoon, everyone read their reports of all of the discussions and were given five "votes" each so that we together could determine what captured the passion in the room. The group was determining what their collective wisdom was in what should be acted on first. In originally putting up topics in the Open Space, we had determined individual passion and responsibility. In discussing these in small groupings, we had determined small group passion and responsibility. And now in this portion of the Open Space, we had the chance to determine where the collective passion and responsibility was. This was all critical data that Virginia would take away with her as she did the landscape design.
Seven topics were identified as being priorities for the group. The items which were not top "vote getters" would also be included in the plan and everyone was comfortable with the understanding that they were very good ideas but that they were not the areas for which the group had collective passion at this time to be enacted first. Everyone understood that each item was important and would be worked with in its own time.
Virginia was overwhelmed with all of the ideas that had arisen and would now design the Master Plan with these ideas. She would not need to sit at her design table and wonder what people might like in an area. They had clearly told her as individuals and as a collective. |
