A Community of Place is the constellation of relations amongst individuals and initiatives that give rise to potentially transformative activity in a geographically centered location.
Activating involves a process of catalyzing and supporting the self-organizing process in a Community of Place.
activating
communities of place
projects
Community Food Summit
By 2009, it was clear that there was lots of energy brewing around local food. People where primed and ready… hungry, starving for connection.
In 2010, Yanez and Earth Learning intervention design team (David Harper, Elena Naranjo, myself), designed and held a transformational 3-day gathering of 120+ local food change-makers.
All that were present agree that real magic occurred.
We went in as many individual initiatives, launched and gave birth to the local food movement in the Greater Everglades bioregion ( Southern Florida).
EarthFest
EarthFest was conceived as a way to engage audiences via a festival format, modified to foreground a Life-sustaining paradigm in the process of celebrating Earth in the Greater Everglades (Southern Florida). From 2007, it ran annually for 5 years and attracted 5,000+ people every year.
The core purpose was to establish viability for distinctly new patterns for festivals in a manner that demonstrated by example, Life-sustaining practices. For example, only vegetarian, responsibly-sourced food vendors where invited to operate, musical artist where curated for their relevant messaging, no plastic was generated during event, and so on.
Farmers Markets
Prior to 2010, Miami was saturated with pretend farmers markets: outdoor venues where vendors would resell imported food items to the public.
Realizing what was happening, our Earth Learning team designed the authentic farmers market experiences in the Greater Miami area, which we operated weekly for several years until the pattern caught on. This was a natural outgrowth of the annual EarthFest event.
Earth Learning central green tent provided an outlet for The Farm @ Verde Gardens as well as other local organic producers. Other well-curated vendors provided all sorts of responsibly-sourced products.
Florida Local Food Summit
The first Florida (state-wide) Local Food Summit took place in summer of 2015 in Orlando, FL.
Yanez participated in the co-design of this event, which benefited from several years of experience hosting the The Greater Everglades Community Food Summits and attracted a statewide audience interested in connecting and cross-pollinating over local food systems.