STORIES FROM THE FIELD
On March 22, Floricane and the Richmond Symphony will be bringing The Music Paradigm to Richmond. As many as 100 Richmonders from all walks of life will have an opportunity to immerse themselves in a joint lesson on leadership and performance – sitting in the orchestra as conductor Roger Nierenberg connects the dots between great music, great performance and great leadership. Tickets for the event are now on sale at http://www.richmondsymphony.com
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Our opportunity to partner with the team at the Community Idea Stations (public television and radio in Central Virginia) began exactly as my young daughter would imagine – a meeting with Big Bird.
A small, stuffed Big Bird that now sleeps in Thea’s bed.
A closet filled with toys and the station’s physical location on Sesame Street aside, the Community Idea Stations has serious ideas about their future. A small team has been working internally on the organization’s first iteration of its strategic plan, and we’ve been invited to come in to facilitate a creative session with the staff and board to ensure that the plan is both as ambitious and as focused as possible – and that there are measurable outcomes in place.
Sarah Milston and I will work closely with the strategic planning team at the station to design a full-day session, and will then facilitate the organization through a process to effectively “land” their plan.
Thea’s hoping there will be an Oscar the Grouch in it for her.
Last month, a few hundred friends of Floricane received postcards giving voice to an icon in American history. The postcards, designed by Floricane’s Juliet Brown, featured a photo of Martin Luther King Jr. and his quote: “Our very survival depends on our ability to stay awake, to adjust to new ideas, to remain vigilant and to face the challenge of change.”
The idea for the postcards came during the holiday season. As Floricane began receiving holiday cards from other organizations, the team began to think about the idea Floricane holiday card.
“My mind immediately went to Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Our work is so connected to the ideas of community and service – it just made sense,” said John Sarvay, Floricane’s founder.
During the research and design process, Juliet was inspired by Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision for a colorblind society.
“Whether it’s community, religion or race, we’re all in this together. So, from a design standpoint, I thought I should pursue this project subtly as something colorblind,” said Juliet.
As a result, the final design used a color palette that was optimal for colorblind people.
With this postcard, Floricane hoped to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr.’s powerful vision while showing an appreciation for the Richmond community and the people who are working to change it.
A new area of work for Floricane over the past year has been with community organizations and local governments. As a result, we’re particularly excited about the opportunity to facilitate a strategic planning initiative for the staff and Board of Commissioners of the Middle Peninsula Planning District Commission (MPPDC).
The MPPDC is one of 21 planning district commissions (PDC) in Virginia; these groups represent local governments on a regional level, and are made up of public officials and citizens. The MPPDC stretches from the Chesapeake Bay through the incorporated towns of West Point and Tappahanock to the west; it is
bounded by the Rappahanock and York rivers.
In March, we’ll spend a day with the staff and commissioners of the MPPDC talking about the region, and ways to strengthen the focus and effectiveness both of the staff and the board. We’ll follow that day with a working session with a smaller project team to build alignment and clarify details before submitting a full
report back to the MPPDC team.
The Richmond region has braced itself for a spike in tourism – driven both by economic recovery and by the 150th anniversary recognition of the American Civil War and the emancipation of millions of enslaved Americans. The organization responsible for representing and promoting the region outside of Richmond, the Richmond Metropolitan Convention and Visitors Bureau (RMCVB) has started planning for life after the CW150.
The entire Floricane team is on deck – along with our project partners Peter Fraser and Lauren Stewart – to create a regional tourism vision plan with RMCVB over the next several months.
We’ll be casting a wide net to help the RMCVB identify the region’s best opportunities to market to, attract and meet the needs of the next generation of tourists, who will visit Richmond and the region over the next decade. In addition to one-on-one conversations with 20 regional government officials and
cultural leaders, we’ll facilitate a series of brainstorming conversations with several hundred representatives from the local retail, hospitality, transportation,
sports and creative communities. RMCVB will also be surveying targeted groups outside of Richmond to deepen our understanding of what “tourism products”
make Richmond most attractive.
The vision plan will be a energetic, high-level document designed to help the region’s tourism stakeholders anticipate the next wave of visitors to Richmond,
and to continue creating the right tourism infrastructure to make their experience exceptional. Our hope is to deliver the final plan to RMCVB and their community of friends and stakeholders as part of National Tourism Week in May.
This month, Floricane joins the Greater Richmond Chamber’s HYPE program to help our area’s young professionals grow both personally and professionally.
On February 16, Floricane’s John Sarvay will guide participants through an abbreviated version of Floricane’s full-day Insights Discovery for Workplace Effectiveness workshop – which aims to increase self-awareness and strengthen work teams.
HYPE, short for Helping Young Professionals Engage, holds regular workshops as part of its Educational Series. Corey Humphrey, project manager with the Greater Richmond Chamber, said the choice to have John facilitate the workshop was an easy one.
“John is someone who is well recognized and respected in our community for his work,” said Humphrey. “Given his knowledge and reputation, it was a great opportunity.”
The Insights Training Workshop with John Sarvay will be held from 6:00pm – 8:00pm on Wednesday, February 16 at the Holiday Inn Express-Downtown. Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door.
For more information, please visit HYPE ED online.
In our first formal partnership with designer and planner Peter Fraser, we spent the better part of four months co-creating a community vision plan with the residents of the Greater Fultoncommunity in Richmond’s East End.
The draft plan – which was completed at the end of December – was largely built around the community’s strong neighborhood fabric, unique topography, rich history and solid recreational infrastructure. The plan was built by several hundred Fulton residents, who contributed their best ideas and perspectives along the way.
Over the next several months, work teams of neighborhood residents will be partnering with government and nonprofit stakeholders to prioritize initiatives, and to develop funding and implementation strategies. At that point, our team will briefly come back into the picture to transform the initial draft document into a
final vision plan for the community.
The community vision initiative was funded by Virginia LISC and organized by the amazing team at Fulton’s Neighborhood Resource Center. The grassroots
nature of the project allowed us to give voice to a wide variety of residents, and to create some unique partnerships between the Fulton community and a number of Richmond-based organizations.
Certainly, the best part of the Fulton project has been the people. In addition to working with a new team of contributors, I have had the chance to engage with
communities of people I never would have met – from the amazing leaders at the global Christian organization Youth With A Mission to the life-long residents of Fulton who continue to hammer away for the return to a vibrant neighborhood.
We may be finished with Fulton’s plan, but Peter and I both know that we’re going to stick around to see the residents cross the finish line.
I spent a recent Saturday at the Visual Arts Center of Richmond remembering why I enjoy working with groups.
“Climbing the Right Mountains: Creating Your Best Creative Life” is a full-day workshop at VisArts that attempts to walk creative individuals through some of the bigger creative drivers in their lives – their personality styles, their core values and their beliefs (about themselves, about their creativity, about the world). The
idea is that by helping people hit the proverbial pause button, and to reflect more intentionally on their lives, they’ll find different approaches to their creative life.
There were six participants in the most recent offering of the workshop – an ideal number for plenty of relaxed, small group exploration. This group came primed
for it – almost everyone was wrestling with specific transitions; one person was moving to Virginia Beach the next week, several were in or nearing retirement.
While we didn’t get to the genuinely visual part of the session – capturing their ideal creative life on paper with pastels and pencils – it turned into a reinvigorating day for me thanks to the energy of the group. They all seemed to leave recharged, as well.
I walked into the room that Saturday morning wondering why I had signed up to teach yet another workshop. I left six hours later wondering why I wasn’t teaching more of them.
That’s the definition of a successful day.
