Our Income Model as Neighbourhoods

A self-sustained network of Neighbourhood Campuses will extend wherever a demand exists. We will offer educational opportunities for mutual fulfillment – “What you need, near where you live.”

People have asked me - 

HOW DO WE BECOME SELF-SUSTAINING BY OFFERING COURSES?

How could offering courses make enough money to pay people and still generate sufficient funds for introducing more ambitious changes to the neighbourhood?

The courses are there purely to promote the spread of creativity, self-awareness, mutual fulfillment and fun - while course facilitators and school directors share the marketing costs incurred when promoting what they offer.

Even a plant starts by sending down roots to sustain itself.  Similarly the courses are dedicated to intake of participants from the neighbourhoods.  You don’t make money out of the nutrition that sustains you, so why would we expect the initial stage of offering courses to make money? 

However, the second developmental stage includes academies and guilds.  These are where people learn marketable skills, develop plans, and find collaborators.  Academies and guilds are places for the executives and entrepreneurs amongst us to explore how to adapt and transition to become more fun-loving, creative, and self-sustainable people.  

At one academy we learn about disruptive technologies, like CleanTech, that exhibit exponential business growth and change our old ways of thinking.  We explore where, as individuals, we experience discomfort with change and movement forward.  We discover who we want to collaborate with, and form powerful business alliances.

These are benefits that make Neighbourhood Campuses different from universities and business schools.

We’ll make money, especially by reaching out to executives.  Again we’ll share the marketing costs incurred.

Production departments linking across neighbourhoods are the third developmental stage. Production departments exist for entrepreneurs and activists to make money as subcontractors on bigger, more complex projects than a single entrepreneur could take on by working alone. 

Production departments have existed to supply film companies for decades.  Departments known as wardrobe, script writing, props, cameras, lighting, etc. come together to meet a film producer’s needs.  Then, after a production ‘wraps,’ the production department framework quickly dissolves only to reconfigure again to fulfill the needs of the next film producer.

Production departments will engage students and entrepreneurs in solving real corporate challenges for short amounts of their time during the day.  The rest of the student’s day is devoted to reconfiguring departments for media or creative event production such as activist projects and joint actions. 

Making money while still a student makes us very different from a university or school. This not only provides part-time income, and experience.  It also provides 'light at the end of the tunnel' in terms of education.  How many people graduate from university with a large debt load only to find there is no employment in their field?

Our QUEEN EAST Agency (see sidebar to right) offers our corporate clients what's called 'crowdsourcing' or outsourcing of services to a network of lifelong students.  Crowdsourcing service companies already offer access to networks of engineers.  No-one has effectively offered access to networks of arts-based professionals - artists, entrepreneurs and activists, while helping their network learn and advance.

The production departments will handle customization of executive visits to Toronto, and enrichment courses on cruise ships.

OMNI-DIMENSIONAL ALLIANCE, (OA)

The Agency and production departments also save our clients time and resources by facilitating how corporations collaborate as an alliance. We are starting with outreach to 

• hospitality and tourism, 
• learning institutions, 
• hospitals, 
• condominium developers, and 
• film producers. 

In order to stay in business members within these industry sectors have already grasped the importance of human values (abundance, sharing, a healthy and life supporting ecology,) compared to corporate values (scarcity, optimized return for investors, minimum responsibility for clean-up when accessing natural resources.)

Coordination of companies and entrepreneurs by neighbourhood is the final development stage of the Neighbourhood Campus.  We start to bring entrepreneurs and companies together across a neighbourhood so as to benefit from bulk purchasing discounts.   

Toronto hospitals are corporations that already coordinate their activities so as to buy specific supplies on the same day. Charging a minor service fee for coordination services allows us to make huge amounts of money.

Bulk purchasing across a neighbourhood becomes possible because people will use on-line software to register within the alliance.  They will specify what they want to buy, when they want to buy, and who to contact in the company regarding each type of purchase.

  

The sense of prosperity we proactively generate as shared enterprises for mutual fulfillment within a neighbourhood must increase our strength to act as an enterprise of neighbourhoods (coordination.)  Prosperity also requires respect for freedom of expression (diversity.)  

So we create a space for corporations to benefit enormously, and for communities to flourish in ways unlimited by corporate values.

WHO WE ARE…

The Neighbourhood Campus movement is currently a volunteer-run group of local residents and others who take action for change - committed to preserving and strengthening the distinctive vitality and quality of life in the Toronto-Centre area. 

Our community partners will provide courses as well as income to local entrepreneurs through securing outsourced services needed by corporations locally.  

We aim to make lifelong learning, starting a business, and activism more self-sustainable.

WHAT’S HAPPENED SO FAR?

The Neighbourhood Campus sprang to life in March 2012.  It is a way to face the educational challenge of learning how to organize to benefit everyone. 

For example, we face an educational challenge if neighbours don’t already know how to best fulfill the local neighbourhood’s mission and vision as in the case of the Bay Cloverhill Community Association, BCCA. 

BCCA’s Mission:

To build a great urban neighbourhood in active partnership with those who live and work here.

BCCA’s Vision:

A green and clean community recognized for its exceptional quality of life.

Values that inform BCCA’s Actions:8

Balance -- we strive to balance sustainable urban growth with respect for the natural and human environment.

Collaboration -- we seek to collaborate with community partners for positive and meaningful change.

Commitment -- we are committed to being responsive, transparent, and accountable to our members.

Advocacy -- we advocate for our community with passion and perseverance.

WHY DO THIS?

Ontario is no longer the economic engine of Canada.  The manufacturing era finished in the nineteen nineties.  It is crucial that the education we have available builds on what we learn in school and helps cities to transfer out of a past reliance on manufacturing. 

Education must be relevant to today’s economic realities in an international society where more than ever, moving forward depends on our capacities to collaborate in departments to get things done, and our individual capacities for creativity and innovation.

We had moved almost totally out of manufacturing in Ontario by 2003.  This was a finding of the Organization for Economic and Cultural Development, (OECD.)

Governments assure us that we need to learn how to do more with less, while offering few alternatives for moving forward other than austerity measures. 

However we see the importance of collaboration, creativity and self-awareness to get things done in today’s world.  These were not taught in school during the manufacturing era and are still not taught today.

Another reason for doing this is that we want to work on cruise ships, and need excuses to hold conferences in the Caribbean.  Neighbourhoods have failed to offer us such opportunities, until now!

CONTRIBUTIONS NEEDED TO MOVE FORWARD

Our goals include having a complete curriculum of courses that tie in with skills, attitudes and understanding needed to participate fully in the new economies.  We need to hear from facilitators and also gather input from people who want to transition from old-style business to more sustainable economic activity that is based on his or her individual values.

We are putting together an Advisory Counsel to Universe City with representation from each neighbourhood.  We need to hear from leaders who have the capacity and commitment to gain from contributing to specific outcomes beneficial to their neighbourhood.

To ‘be the change’ that we desire, (or even be a small part of that change,) we must look at where we need to go both as a society and in terms of today’s economies. 

Update on Social Creator network in Toronto

We had a Social Creator gathering at the Italian cultural centre in Toronto on Wednesday February 8th, 2012.

As promised we took a look at the income model.  We are redesigning business as a fine art form, called Biz Nouveau.  Using the methodology of 'expressive movements' rather than work with a preconceived agenda, other than the income model we let topics for discussion emerge.

One focus that emerged quickly was on the group supplying physical products and systems for land developers who are putting up condos, theme parks etc. 

A second focus was an agency to represent, or sell the ideas and services of our arts-based professionals. We also saw a market for accreditation of land developers as agreeing to work by certain standards that the agency will develop.  People interested in participating in the agency shared an interest in collaborative villages.  We are witnessing and keeping track of these gradually spreading across various neighbourhoods and coming together as a social ecology. 

Another focus was on services such as theatre productions that put across subtle ideas about the role of the interrelationships and the technology in our lives.  

The agency's income as a percentage of the ideas, services and goods sold will allow us to establish an acting troupe for storytelling, skits and theatre productions.  These events will prepare people for new ideas, our products and services, as well as outright 'selling' to interested prospects.  We also see a promotional role for video production and film.

Hello, Occupy! What you doin'?

To better understand how the Occupy Movement is so different, here is an email a devout Christian land developer friend of mine sent.  It's about a seminar that was being offered to North Americans about opportunities to legally evade paying national taxes by using tax havens in the Caribbean.  


My friend wrote:

These tax schemes are only one way that the 1% have legal ways to get further ahead of the rest of us. This is an actual example. If you were an accountant, you would know lots of other examples. The point is that the high net worth of the 1% does not come from just being industrious. If they paid their fair share of taxes, this would be a start in moving all of us towards equity.

This was great fuel for the Occupy conversation that the mainstream media has now engaged the broader population in.  


In response to my friend's request to pass forward something ‘that might be of interest to Occupy’ I sent the following email: 

Thanks for pointing out a real way in which the 1% gets ahead of the 99% with little effort.  This is a great idea that could turn into an action that Occupy takes, or at least enter the general discussion within the movement.  However, I've since discovered that there are no means for me to forward this suggestion on your behalf to, say the Action Committee for consideration.  


You are part of Occupy.  Sorry to have to say this... it’s either of interest to the individual or not.  It can't be 'of interest to Occupy'. 

Expressive movements fly in the face of everything we're taught about organizing.  They start with trust.  Trust is earned through experiences of working together.  'Organizing ourselves' as a corporation doesn't give us options, like choosing to only work with, or under people we trust.  Instead we pay ourselves to show up, and when we show up, we work.  That's part of what's usually called the 'command and control' model.


However an expressive movement bases collaboration on trust, sharing, caring, kindness, respect... and even more advanced values.  Together we become an embodiment of ideals, and compassion.  Delegation is out the window, and it’s more about freedom or expression, not imposing our individual ideas or ideology on someone else, or suggesting our ideas are things that others could be attending to.  It's about freeing ourselves from chains of command.  

The combination of community, creativity, and compassion results in something that no--one can command and control.  All this is relatively new and something I am still struggling to get my head around.  So far, I know this way of doing things is life affirming.  Both life and light are allowed in.  It's an enlightened development that goes beyond 'organizing ourselves' as a corporation.  Perhaps we're allowing God to step into the middle.  

An 'expressive movement' is special and very different from a single-issue movement or a corporation. The culture in Occupy is that something happens when someone decides to move it forward and it gains wider support.  Otherwise it languishes by the wayside.

To move forward with this valuable idea of doing something about tax haven seminars, you'd either take it as a proposal to a General Assembly, or, more effectively, join the Action Committee by signing on to their Googlegroup.  The info is given under the 'Committees' tab on  the main OccupyTO.org web site.

All the best to you, and heaven help us all.

What does the Omni-dimensional Alliance I'm hearing about refer to?

It refers to working together towards revitalization of society within a place.

Revitalization means more than putting up new buildings or working together to sell new products and services.

To understand revitalization requires learning to work creatively in ways that embrace all aspects of life.

Discovering how DNA works was not the key to understanding life, or revitalization, no matter what you've heard about in documentaries. Life is partly physical - something based on light energy, nerve impulses, and molecules that include DNA. Life also includes places for everyone and everything to grow and mature.

Life is about a shared vitality amongst people, animals, and plants, both locally and throughout the ecology of lands and oceans. Life includes our minds, emotions, the unique individuality of our creative expressions, and the unifying influence of a team spirit.

To revitalize our neighbourhoods requires us to develop and bring forward an omni-dimensional approach that embraces all visible and invisible dimensions within life.

With a mission of international renewal, why focus on revitalization of our neighbourhoods and rural areas?

Large scale renewal is the result of small responses. We respond or adapt how we do things in order to adjust to changes in our surroundings. The neighbourhoods and rural areas that immediately surround us are places where we are most able to respond, encourage learning and creativity, plus enjoy a shared vitality and team spirit.

Commuting to a factory or head office has become less important in what's new and creative about society. Entrepreneurs live, work and collaborate in neighbourhoods. Local collaborations and less commuting becomes important for a clean and healthy ecology.

Who do we partner with if we are to help local entrepreneurs?

The alliance is for people in the learning and creative field, organizations that bring people together in order for us to prosper and become all we can be -

schools, libraries, theatres, galleries,

land and building developers who want to stand out,

movie, television and web content producers who work with neighbourhoods

associations committed to professional development of their members,

hotel and resort operators that need our neighbourhoods and rural areas to thrive and be renewed if visitors are to enjoy greater experiences while working and relaxing.

The alliance is a way for organizations to enter into healthy working relationships with neighbourhoods. There will be one number to call, and one invoice to process, whenever leaders in an organization want to respond to opportunities in their working environment, and adapt how things get done. As neighbours we're partnering with organizations in an easy way so that we all benefit from the brilliance present within our local networks of entrepreneurs.

As neighbours we're facilitating how organizations link together to derive greater benefit from one another.

What's next?

Click at the end of the page to become a friend of this social creator network blog. Contact biznouveau @ gmail.com to enquire about upcoming events. Take some courses in news ways to work more creatively and effectively.

If you're with an organization, association, or a media producer, contact confercentre @ gmail.com, and find out more about alliance membership.

There's more to life and revitalization than we've considered to date. There are better ways to express ideas about vitality, spirit, revitalization, cultural renaissance, health and wellness. We're anchoring these ideas within a place. We've started where we are.

That is what the social creator network is about - starting conversations, having more rewarding collaborations, and introducing smarter ways to get things done.