Social Creator nutrition event goes Olympic

 Fresh-faced Carolina Kostner won bronze at Sochi this year.

 

​Dear friends,

Twenty-seven year old Carolina Kostner of Italy (on the right, above,) will be with us on Monday November 24, 2014 at 7pm.  Carolina will be answering questions about what is in her Olympian diet. 

In a very memorable women's singles figure skating event in Sochi, Carolina won the bronze becoming the first Italian to win a medal in Olympic figure skating singles. Adelina Sotnikova of Russia (centre) won gold and defending champion, Yuna Kim of South Korea (on left), won silver.

Kostner placed 9th in her first Olympics in 2006 in Turin, and placed 16th in Vancouver. She almost quit skating but instead came from her values by "learning to skate for the passion & the pleasure".  This seemed to make all the difference. 

This presentation will lead into developing our proposal to organize for a More Lively and Loving Toronto.  We will look at educating ourselves, engaging local growers, coordinating purchases among participating neighbourhoods, and negotiating big discounts through bulk purchasing.

We want input from people involved in all aspects of food, from the beginning.

Join us this Monday on the third floor of the beautiful Columbus Centre. Take the elevator to the right of the restaurant and follow the signs.

The Columbus Centre is an Italian cultural centre just west of Dufferin on the south side of Lawrence.  (Use the Allen Expressway or take the subway to Lawrence West Station and take a bus a few blocks west to Dufferin.)

Our latest Social Creator event is this Thursday November 13, 7 - 9.30p.m. 

Bring a friend.  This is the third 'no-charge' Social Creator event of 2014.We will be on the third floor of the beautiful Columbus Centre.  Take the elevator to the right of the restaurant and follow the signs.

The Columbus Centre is an Italian cultural centre just west of Dufferin on the south side of Lawrence.  (Use the Allen Expressway or take the subway to Lawrence West Station and take a bus a few blocks west to Dufferin.)

We will feature health and nutrition.  Healthy living is not rocket science.  It is more about making informed food and lifestyle decisions. 

Come learn, and share what you know that can help others, so we can move towards a more lively, vital and loving Toronto.  

We will be opening the discussion with a presentation from nutritionist, Gianna Berretta!

Gianna Berretta has worked at U. of T. and Mount Sinai hospital studying the relationship between diet genetics and cancer.

She has been teaching and promoting preventive health care for the last 19 years, specifically the importance of daily intake of fruits and vegetables in maintaining a healthy diet. Ms. Beretta will discuss vitamins vs foods, the organic alternative health craze, and the silent killer 'inflammation' and its relationship to disease.

We will serve refreshments and have our exceptional free dessert table catered by Mama D'Aleandro!

At 7.10 p.m there will be a 20 minute introduction to Social Creator network for people attending for the first time. 

Speed Futuring:  Sharing our ideas about a technologically-assisted, loving society.  Applying what we've seen and heard earlier in the evening.

After a presentation on Organizing our Neighbourhoods in support of Healthier Living by Andrew Owens we will break into smaller groups to share ideas about assessing new innovations based on a big picture, international approach.

This promises to be another busy, fun and delicious evening. 

Let's enjoy a healthier Toronto - having fun, where we have influence, in our immediate neighbourhoods!

Changing to a Culture of Mutual Fulfillment

We are all heavily influenced by the various cultures we move within and perpetuate: corporate culture, industrial  culture, popular culture, media culture, school culture - you name it.  Cultural activity is ongoing at the office, in factories, homes, and schools.  This activity reinforces what we believe, think, do - and ultimately, what we have been taught to value.

There is a crisis in society currently.  So many of the things we have been programmed to like and want can be immediately satisfying but we soon find that these things do not fulfill our longings.  This crisis can be addressed as we change the culture.

In the same year as the first moon landing, Swiss philosopher and child psychologist, Jean Piaget said -

"The principle goal of education is to create men (sic) who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done."  

So education is key to breaking from our programmed behaviour instilled in us by the dominant cultures.  The goal of education can be to get us outside or 'see beyond' our cultural conditioning.

The tendency in institutions when changing a culture is to focus on, or emphasize instilling new values in people.  People are instructed on 'how to place more value' on things that were less important to the institution in the past.

However, different values are somehow registered in the heart of each individual.  We formulate our values, perhaps based on individual life experiences or heart-felt longings from childhood.

No-one can dictate what we value and the longings that we strive to fulfill.  We can only agree to promote or espouse values that we may not actually hold deep within us.  We can talk in terms of values we don;t necessarily hold if we want to justify establishing new goals and strategies.

There is little evidence of education fulfilling the goal of changing the industrial culture of the 20th century.  Offices and schools are still run like factories within an industrial production line culture.

Offices and schools are still laid out with separate facilities depending in what someone decides should be produced there - a product, service, or a young mind.  Each facility is run based on different standards of what is acceptable not what is going on in our hearts.

To make a shift in a culture we change our habits of thinking and our observable habits in terms of how we interact with others.  We also positively influence the effects that a prevailing culture has on us by changing the physical surroundings where we learn and do things. 

Within effective approaches to cultural change we observe a cycle of steps (a, b, c, d, a, b...):

b. Beliefs

                                                 a. Habits                            c. Heart-felt values

d. Physical
surroundings

This goes against the traditional approach of starting with c, focusing on changing other people's values.  This is instruction, literally 'to strike', 'build with' or in order to impose or leave a deep impression.  It comes from Middle English, and from Latin in- + struere to build.

We influence or change a culture when we begin to focus on our habits.  This means looking at beliefs that we take for granted.  Hence the important role of eduction which literally means to educe or draw from within, or from 'our hearts'.

The more we focus on our habits the more likely we are to examine our beliefs.

To change our habits, first we examine why we are doing things.  For example, in education, endless attention is given to deciding how we educate ourselves.  Little if any time is spent on time questioning why we educate ourselves.

Are we educating ourselves to prepare for fully benefiting from today's economies, or are we still caught up in the old manufacturing economy?  Is education meant to promote making healthful food choices and well being?  Is it to make ourselves resourceful and imaginative people?

d. What kind of physical surroundings would contribute to questioning our habits in terms of why we do the things we do?

a. What kind of new habits in education can draw out our current beliefs?

b. What new understanding can support getting in touch with our heart-felt values?

c. How can we find people who share individual values and express them within our surroundings in ways that remind us to adopt new heart-felt habits.

Is this how we develop a culture of mutual fulfillment in our lives rather than short-term satisfaction.

Fulfilling deeply held longings

My sense is that, in Toronto, we are transitioning away from meaning and becoming more in touch with our core values.  

First I want to explore the effects and conditions of this transition to soulfulness as individuals.  Then I want to look at how to adjust socially to a new mood that’s rising up in the city.

We can identify our unique values by what we do on a Saturday afternoon - family, community, or hobbies.  Though we may have a sense of what our values are, we don’t necessarily give them the importance they deserve as indicating what we have to contribute to society.

However, fewer of us are willing to live based on meaning alone – like getting a salary, getting ahead of coworkers, or waiting for our boss’ job.  Meaning was an important motivator from the ‘60’s – ‘90’s.  Now we want work activity that fulfills our deeply held values and longings.  

People in the arts and self-expression are in touch with, and must express their values each and every day.  We express our values when we decide what is important, gracious, lovely and essential to a course of action.  

We attempt to glimpse the wholeness in situations.  Our values are what indicate the way forward after taking any number of factors into account.  

Decisions made based on values, wholeness and inclusion are not logical or about taste.  They are decisions made based on love and a higher pragmatism.  Pragmatism beats what’s achieved with logic and thinking about a limited number of things we’re able to measure.  Pragmatic action is based on a realistic big picture.

Our values are our means to the things that we live for.  Our values are like gas in the tank, and a map.  We need a course of action or some idea of a destination that will fulfill an inner longing. But values and a course of action without engaging in community limit what we can achieve to express love. 

We know there is strength in numbers. Working in organizations goes further.  It is powerful.  In fact corporations and the military are incredibly powerful.  They’ve become the most powerful things on the planet.  

However we leave many of your values at the door or in the office lobby before starting work each day.  We limit the number of factors we consider.  We think in polarizing, competitive and disheartening ways.  We can be working to pull the social fabric apart.  We must adopt policies and an agenda set by someone else.

My second point is about society and our complete empowerment as individuals.  Complete empowerment comes when we combine our values and our direction on a map with the resources for moving forward.  We readily find help and resources to use in an organization.

However, once you are in touch with your core values the last thing that you want is someone else telling you what to do or setting a course for you.  That is why so many of us who have gone inwards and found our souls stayed away from corporations and group activities.  We want to be proactive in response to inner promptings and be free to do our own thing.

What’s been missing is a form of organizing that allows us to respond to whatever values we have registered in our souls.  That is partly why the Markham Street MuSE is very significant to you at this time.  It’s a form of organizing able to support the new mood in the city.  

A muse is defined as ‘the function of deciding among ourselves through ongoing distributed decision-making across a network of developing or emerging connections’.  

Compared to what’s produced when people get together and assume power after politicking among themselves, a muse leads soulful people to full empowerment with shared roles that make things more fluid and practical.

The function of a muse in organizing does not consider only one location.  It is meant as a source of inspiration for organizing across neighbourhoods and organizing in any local area, no matter how small.  I recommend that you check it out and look at the degree to which we are free to do what we want once we’re connected with our values.  

It allows for all our multiple, diverse visions.  These are the courses we chose individually on a map of a creative era.  

If you are in touch with your core values and aim for full empowerment, then you don’t have to wait for society to change completely.  Find out more about how to use a muse to get from where society is now to where you want to be.

Science and Buddhism

oThe following quote by Einstein is sometimes abbreviated or misquoted to make it sound like Einstein was promoting Buddhism.

"The beginnings of cosmic religious feelings already appear at an early stage of development, e.g. in the early Psalms of David and in some of the Prophets. Buddhism, as we have learned from Schopenhauer, contains a much stronger element of this. The religious geniuses of all ages have been distinguished by this kind of religious feeling."

The Dalai Lama wrote an Op-Ed article, “Our Faith in Science,” published in New York Times, before he talked at the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience in Washington, November, 2005.  It is a well-grounded, not so spiritual article that contains the following quote: 



He takes the view that science and Buddhism both search for truth and for understanding reality.

"By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview."

"...Through the Mind and Life Institute, which I helped found, I have had the opportunity to meet with scientists to discuss their work. World-class scientists have generously coached me in subatomic physics, cosmology, psychology, biology.
"It is our discussions of neuroscience, however, that have proved particularly important. From these exchanges a vigorous research initiative has emerged, a collaboration between monks and neuroscientists, to explore how meditation might alter brain function." 

Later in the same article he writes,

"... I am not advocating a fusion of religious ethics and scientific inquiry.

"Rather, I am speaking of what I call "secular ethics," which embrace the principles we share as human beings: compassion, tolerance, consideration of others, the responsible use of knowledge and power. These principles transcend the barriers between religious believers and non-believers; they belong not to one faith, but to all faiths."

It would take a lot of work to see whether scence can enrich a Buddhist world view.  Is it realistic to expect Buddhists to change?

Last Sunday I went with a friend to hear a talk by Tulku Lobsang at the Native Centre.  Lobsang was born into a farming family in the Himalayas in 1976 and enthroned as the reincarnation of 'the Speech of Nyentse Lama' (not the body or mind), at age 13.  

Two years earlier the male oracle of the monastery advised the monks that Tulku Lobsang was the eighth reincarnation of their Nyentse Lama, once head of their monastery.  When Lobsang did not stay to become the new head amazingly another monk was identified as the reincarnation of 'the Mind of Nyentse Lama' and stayed to lead the monastery.



Tulku Lobsang's website says that he mostly lectures in medicine, Buddhism, and astrology.  During his talk, with a qualifying remark, he gave the abbreviated quote from Einstein to suggest Buddhism was the religion best suited to become universally adopted one day. 

He clarified that Buddhism is not a faith or cultural belief but all about nature and the science of how to align with nature.  This amplifies what the Dalai Lama wrote in the New York Times' article.

This strikes me as odd.  When you read pamphlets and books on Buddhism they encourage increasing or deepening our knowledge and experience of Buddhism.  They do not say anything about deepening our knowledge of reality.  Neither do books on science.  Science provides us with understanding of what's been discovered by applying the scientific method.  Buddhism and science are both cultural products that promote specific practices. 

Lobsang urged those in attendance to get rid of the self.  This is a major departure from science where a pattern called self-organization is how everything in the universe comes into existence.  The self is sometimes used interchangeably with the ego or a conditioned mind. 
Lobsang could conceivably have meant that we need to get rid, or get beyond our social and cultural programming. 

Without a scientific or spiritual practice that studies and reveres the self we have no way to apply an understanding of self-organization to attune society with nature.  We could be organizing society based on what we've learned about organization in nature.

The self has been big in psychology since the second half of the 20th century.  It is a little known fact that the Catholic Church counsels or ministers to the needs of its members based on Jungian understanding of the self.  

Understanding the self can perhaps lead to a more advanced science that engages more of our inherent neurological capacity to grasp wholeness.  This means moving beyond linear and analytical 'left-brain functioning' to explain nature.  It is our ego or socially and culturally programmed way of thinking at this time.  But linearity and sequence are blunt tools for understanding reality.

We were penalized in school and sometimes soon became economically marginalized if we could not think straight or function linearly day after day.  Now that society is desperate for innovation we are learning to think outside the box.  This is called insight, or holistic thinking which engages the 'whole brain', or at least more of the brain's functioning.

I found Tulku Lobsang's comments fascinating when he talked about how Buddhism starts to build an understanding of reality.  Buddhism begins with a concept of space and volume, the 'element' traditionally called ether.  I thought of how Newton started with explanations of cause and effect which are clearly linear.  

Science sets a cultural limit on what is of interest, or what scientists can study.  The ideal that is applied to restrict our thoughts is called determinism.  This is a big word that means putting your faith in what is predictable.  We are urged to believe in the 'element' traditionally called earth.  We give no consideration to what is free and unpredictable - like water, air, or fire.

Buddhism does not accept linearity.  It places a huge emphasis on the experience of freedom which follows from enlightened thinking.  It considers the traditional 'elements' as 'directions' that exist simultaneously as if on a plane.

Tulku Lobsang explained that ether is seen as enclosing everything and containing the other four 'elements' inside it.  Buddhism does not accept the idea of a beginning state, a sequential development where the four other 'elements' somehow build towards the formation of ether.

By way of contrast Newtonian science is a culture for studying things that are predictable.  This can never lead to ways of being free of consequences in our lives.  That is why linear thinking produces so many problems and why science is so effective in promoting today's culture of end-of-pipe solutions or EOP.  Science wont get us out of this civilization of EOP, or stop us from being conditioned pEOPle.  Its scary to think that science will prevent us from enjoying freedom from consequences.  Freedom lies outside the scope of this prevailing belief system.

Holistic thinking in terms of directions is definitely out of fashion in scientific inquiry.  And the notion of liberation and freedom from predictable or conditioned behaviour has never been within the range of interests prescribed for science by professional bodies of what amount to scientific initiates or a priesthood. 

Yes, this notion of volume and states existing simultaneously across an area is very interesting.  It could be very useful in revitalization of science and society.  Holistic notions can sometimes be explained linearly but this only limits our interest in the whole and encourages us to think unrealistically.

When Tulku Lobsang and I met I suggested that by using a model based on the seven levels present in the periodic table in chemistry we can now align with nature and heal society.  He did not engage in conversation but gave words of gratitude and one those great smiles of his.

With the motivation of a better, more inclusive international society we can look for ways to accommodate what we read and hear about in science, psychology and various spiritual disciplines.  We might find that these fit within a unifying framework that makes our enterprises for understanding of reality, or realities, less divisive academically and socially. 

We can discuss things within a scientific, psychological or spiritual framework without discarding the framework when we realize it needs to expand to embrace more of what we read and hear.  Any frameworks of reality can surely expand.  Discarding a framework altogether, whether it is spiritual, psychological or scientific, comes as a last resort.

At Social Creator events in fall of 2014 we will discuss whether a seven stage framework can be usefully applied to model how our neurological functioning develops.  Our neurology is the tool with which we perceive reality.  It must have some importance in how we understand reality.  

We'll take a look at a framework based on science, values and purpose.  Values could be similar to what the Dalai Lama refers to as 'the principles we share as human beings'.  As an artist however, I believe each one of us differs in terms of values.  A framework that acknowledges that we differ in terms of our views and values is important in an era for realizing a vision of everyone becoming increasingly fulfilled and free.

Future of Media

'Future Media' is the book title that jumped out from the shelf at me while I was sitting at the library today.  The back cover explained what to expect between the covers:

"Combining their prescient nonfiction and fiction, Future Media showcases ... innovative explorations of the mass media...  Both cautionary and optimistic, this groundbreaking anthology offers challenging, engaging predictions of a future that will not be ignored."

It sounded great except for the bit about 'mass media'.

Because of the internet, mass media will continue to disintegrate even further beyond the 1000-channel cable bundles.  Ultimately the outcome is decentralization of the power to influence and persuade.

What will be new about the media in future will be a YouTube channel for every neighbourhood featuring the work, aspirations and needs of entrepreneurs.  You will check out interviews with local entrepreneurs and know who you want to connect with and help in some way.

We have seen the rise of social entrepreneurs who have missions of supporting a new kind of society.  People are making money out of entrepreneurs who deeply want to support neighbourhoods.  Centres or hubs for social entrepreneurs provide services and venues for gathering and collaborations.

City councilors and economic development departments understand and support this concept of a home for entrepreneurs to incubate projects.  It's another aspect of building management.

There are other trends in business besides social missions. Entrepreneurs have started to get into energy supply, ecological clean-up / recycling, re-purposing of material that would otherwise go to landfill, education, and community animation. 

What has been missing in all this innovation is ways for neighbourhoods to support entrepreneurs.  That's where neighbourhood YouTube channels come in, that link video interviews to wish-lists.  Neighbours can find ways to support the local start-ups instead of waiting for the start-ups to support them during times of increasing instability.

Changing the world will continue to involve a massive number of new initiatives.  It is not a mega project.

We can create a future that benefits everyone when we help business start-ups that we feel warrant our support.  Media can help us make those decisions.  

We need building managers for entrepreneurs.  Help for entrepreneurs in other forms are also necessary.  To find out more - here is a link to the QUEEN EAST Agency website.  I hope you will recognize that the future of media is partly local, and partly a means for us to help create a new kind of world. 

Inclusive Capitalism

In May, 2014 , Prince Charles said in a speech at the Inclusive Capitalism conference:

"We can choose to act now before it is finally too late, using all of the power and influence that each of you can bring to bear to create an inclusive, sustainable and resilient society”. 
 
The Prince was addressing an audience of 200 business leaders including Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, and chief executives of multinational companies such as UBS, GlaxoSmithKline and Unilever. 

Here are more quotes from the article appearing in the UK's Telegraph newspaper.

“I remember when the Iron Curtain came down there was a certain amount of shouting about the triumph of capitalism over communism. Being somewhat contrary, I didn't think it was quite as simple as that. I felt that unless the business world considered the social, community and environmental dimensions, we might end up coming full circle.” 

He called on businesses to focus on the long-term and make “an authentic moral commitment to acting as true custodians of the Earth and architects of the well-being of current and future generations”. 

“It is only by adopting a broader sense of value that our finances will be sustained and we can find new sources of profit,” he said. 

The Prince suggested that companies must do more to put “young people properly at the heart of companies' employment practices and planning strategies, in order to tackle more effectively the world's growing youth unemployment crisis”. 

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/prince-charles/10859230/Prince-Charles-reform-capitalism-to-save-the-planet.html 

Ed Miliband, UK's Labour leader, has also called for “responsible capitalism”. 

Newly Elected Premier of Ontario

This past week Kathleen Wynne was voted the first woman, and openly gay leader of the fair province of Ontario.

Taking from Occupy messages she said she is committed to creating an Ontario that works for everyone.  We probably haven't had that spirit here since the European settlers arrived.

When Occupy started there was talk of 'the 99%'.  This message was something the media could get their teeth into.  The message successfully changed the worldwide conversation on mainstream media and strongly influenced the agenda at the annual Davos Summit.  All with very little budget.  That was impressive.

Then Occupiers talked about 'a society that worked for everyone - 100%'.

Interestingly it was about that time that national leaders called the various Occupy groups terrorist organizations.

Now we have seen an acceptance speech where a major politician adopts the same, later, more refined message. It is an approach towards working smarter.  It has a stabilizing influence on society.  It is an enlightened approach that encourages greater participation in the social sphere.

We can recall how things progressed over the last forty years.  Conscientious citizens became known as engaged citizens that in turn became known as peaceful activists, only to be more recently branded as threats to security.  People who want to build a world that works for everyone were and probably never will be a threat.  Now again it is something to celebrate and be open about.

We must cherish her commitment.  It shows true leadership when we need it. 

How we tackle Cancer

'Speed Futuring' is like speed dating.  Choose a future.  Spend some time with it and see if you want it in your life.

June 3rd marks our fourth 'no-charge' Social Creator event of 2014 before our usual summer break.   

Mark your calender for Tuesday June 3, 7 - 9.30p.m.  We will be in the Columbus Room on the Columbus Centre main floor, to the right of the restaurant.

We are featuring a presentation by world-renown cancer researcher and geneticist, 
Dr. Andrew Hessel from the University of Ottawa Institute for Science, Society, and Policy, and former co- chair of bioinformatics and biotechnology at Singularity University. He is trained in both microbiology and genetics. 

Doctor Hessel is a catalyst in biological technologies helping industry academics and authorities better understand the changes happening in life science. He is also the co-founder of the Pink Army Cooperative, the world's first cooperative biotechnology company aimed at making viral therapies for cancer 'open source' i.e. available to everyone. Since the cooperative was founded in 2009, the cost and time needed to make a new biotechnology therapy for one person (which skips over the most expensive and slow parts, like big clinical trials) has fallen by 50% (and continues to fall). Source: http://andrewhessel.com/?page_id=141

'Open source' is a powerful, relatively new model of development that promotes a) universal access to a product or service's design, and b) universal redistribution of that design, including subsequent improvements to it by anyone.


The Columbus Centre is an Italian cultural centre just west of Dufferin on the south side of Lawrence.  (Use the Allen Expressway or get the subway to Lawrence west and take a bus a few blocks east.)

We will serve refreshments and have our exceptional free dessert table catered by Mama D'Aleandro!

At 7.10 p.m there will be a 20 minute introduction to Social Creator network for people attending for the first time. 

Speed Futuring: Applying what we've seen and heard earlier in the evening

After a presentation on Organizing in Neighbourhoods to end our use of Toxins by Andrew Owens we will break into smaller groups to share ideas about assessing new innovations based on a big picture, international approach.

This promises to be another busy, fun and delicious evening.  Bring a friend.

Please confirm with Nick D'Aleandro or Andrew Owens if you plan to attend.

Speed Futuring is like speed dating.  Choose a future.  Spend some time with it and see if you want it in your life.

Mark your calender for Wednesday May 7, 7 - 9.30p.m. when we will get together next.  We have the Columbus Room which is at the Columbus Centre main floor, to the right of the restaurant.

The Columbus Centre is an Italian cultural centre just west of Dufferin on the south side of Lawrence.  (Use the Allen Expressway or get the subway to Lawrence west and take a bus a few blocks east.)

We will serve refreshments and have a free dessert table!

For our the third 'no-charge' Social Creator event of 2014 we are featuring a presentation by Petri Tanninen on how the government plans for the future.  Petri is into Design Thinking, Business Analysis, and Strategy and has his own uniquely creative perspective on aspects of how the Canadian government develops and implements strategies.

At 7.10 p.m there will be a 20 minute introduction to Social Creator network for people attending for the first time. 

If you are a regular attendee check out Nick D'Aleandro artwork about the convergence of art, science, medicine, engineering and technology.  This exhibit has met with rave reviews.

Some people asked to see the fascinating video on Cryogenics again.  Anyone is invited to come at 6.30 p.m to see this video on freezing your body after death until researchers find a cure for whatever illness killed you.

Speed Futuring: Applying what we've seen and heard earlier in the evening

After Andrew's presentation on the Collective Unconscious we will break into smaller groups to share ideas about assessing new innovations based on a big picture approach.

This promises to be a busy, fun and delicious evening.

Please confirm with Nick D'Aleandro or Andrew Owens if you plan to attend.

Meeting with City Councillor, Mike Layton

Here is a quick update on the development of collaborative villages.  Hope you find it inspiring for what you are up to in your neighbourhood.  Let me know if you and your neighbourhood would like to collaborate with the Bathurst and Bloor area of Toronto.

Councillor Mike Layton and I met January 6, 2014, regarding the Markham Street MuSE for living in a more creative Toronto.  It is also a community-led innovation and social response to today’s creative and learning economies.  We noted the fact that the Canadian economy is now less reliant on manufacturing, and that the City of Toronto wants to encourage citizen's to be leaders in today’s economies.

Mutual Support Enterprises are proactive member-owned associations that develop and advance a neighbourhood vision of urban living, or a ‘hyper-local’ vision for a street.  A MuSE is an association and hybrid of a social agency and a business.  It makes money to reinvest in social and economic development.

It encourages fulfillment of each person’s preferred roles, values, and vision for their life.  As member-owners we become more of who we are, both individually and collectively.  We develop further understanding, creativity, and increased capacity for health, vitality and well-being.

A MuSE is also uniquely positioned to be first-in-the-marketplace for helping corporations look at the wholeness in situations so as to benefit their return on investment.

There is an opportunity for the City of Toronto to supply arts groups with reusable material such as wood, metal, ceramics, fabric, etc., that would otherwise be sold or put in landfill.  The councillor is currently looking at options, say, when contracts with existing service suppliers are up for renewal.
We live in an urban forest.  Neighbours could use felled local trees to make structures, such as gazebos and arbors, that could be sold for beautification of local gardens and parks.  This kind of logging would be more enterprising and locally advantageous compared to the noisy practice of reducing trees to wood chips.

The future of society depends to great extent on encouraging our entrepreneurs.  We had a conversation about establishing creative economy hubs, and the need for neighbours to support entrepreneurial start-ups.  Practices of supplying office space and services to entrepreneurs that support neighbourhoods (‘social innovators’) remain part of the solution.

The councillor is a board member of Artscape YOUNGplace which is an example of a new, multi-tenant arts & cultural centre in the ward – at 180 Shaw Street, just west of Trinity-Bellwoods park.

We also touched on how Waterfront renewal as an opportunity to demonstrate the advancement of larger scale creative and learning economy hubs.  Exhibition Place has always tried to showcase innovations, such as wind turbine technology.  Councillor Layton pointed out how governments are now limited in what they can responsibly invest in, in terms of supplying basic services such as sewage and drinking water, when there is no immediate return on taxpayer investment.

We discussed the possibility of making Waterfront development ‘more organic’, more responsive to community needs, more economically sustainable, and less reliant on investment through financial institutions.

China is building 1,000 new universities over ten years (source: Roger Martin, past dean of the Rotman School of Management, U of Toronto,) as a strategy for adapting to the learning economy.  However, ‘developed countries’ in North America and Europe are making little or no investment in new learning institutions.

This led to a discussion of our proposal for neighbourhood campuses and the possibility of using underutilized local spaces.  Ideas for gathering and streamlining existing learning opportunities into curriculum streams that develop new skill-sets necessary for today’s economies could have been discussed further.  However, we had talked for over an hour and it was time to adjourn.

Our appreciation goes to the councillor and his staff for their kind cooperation.

Andrew Owens.