Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Building "community"

[Evan A.C. Hunt (evanh]

A quick tip for people interested in building a strong community
relationship:  Check out the book "Creating Community Anywhere"
by Carolyn Shaffer and Kristin Anundsen.  A marvelous book; it has
lots of pointers on how to avoid pitfalls in the creation of
a community spriit.

The chapters that discussed group dynamics, and the stages of
a group's development (excitement, jockeying for power, stability,
synergy, etc), have been very useful to me in my only real experience
with intentional community so far--an improvisational theatre troupe
I nominally "lead".

(Digression:  If you can find the book IMPRO, by Keith Johnstone,
which is about improvisational theatre, have a look at it.  Improv
is a great way to build trust, confidence and team spirit, though
I suspect it would work better in a smallish group than a large one.
The confidence that you get from walking onstage with someone and
making up an entertaining, cohesive playlet with them is applicable
to a lot of other areas of group endeavor--and it's not particularly
difficult, either.  And a lot of the games that teach improvisation
skills are also useful in team-building, and vice versa... I'll post
examples if there's interest, but I realize it's way off-topic.)

                                        eh