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What's next for InCommons

InCommons.org will soon be closing down. For an update on what’s next for the work of InCommons, please check out Bush Foundation President Jennifer Ford Reedy’s latest blog post. Thank you for being a part of the InCommons community!

Collaboration

Peer Spirit

PeerSpirit is an educational company with a small office, transformational dreams, and global outreach. We are a privately held corporation with two founders, Christina Baldwin and Ann Linnea, our office manager, Debbie Dix, and our webmaster, Margaret Rode. We work with a cadre of teaching companions whose wide range of expertise allows us to respond to many opportunities.

The name, PeerSpirit, comes from the group process methodology that informs all our work: PeerSpirit Circle Process. When leadership rotates, responsibility is shared, and ultimate reliance is based on the group's highest intention, a peer spirit is in action. In everything we do, we believe that equality of contribution releases a synergistic energy that helps us toward best outcomes.

PeerSpirit colleagues are masters at facilitating significant conversations among people in businesses, education, non-profit organizations, and personal groups. The partners bring decades of experience in group facilitation, teaching, speaking, writing, and leadership skills to this work.

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Nature Inspired Design

Understanding the Biomimicry Taxonomy (a nature classification system) provides a novel way for designers and biologists to collaborate and approach the next design challenge in a life-conducive way. The key to using the taxonomy is forming the question. Instead of asking how to make less toxic pigments, the designer can "ask" a Morpho butterfly how it modifies its color. Instead of using high pressure and temperatures to manufacture tough, lightweight building materials, an engineer can "ask" a toucan how it manages impact with its strong and light beak.

Click on the website link to learn more - or to use their example questions as a design tool for your latest challenge.

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Clean Energy Resource Teams

Clean Energy Resource Teams

Community members from around the state have developed a bold vision for Minnesota’s energy future, through greater energy efficiency ...

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UMN Research: Pay-for-Performance in Minnesota Nursing Facilities

Since 2006, Minnesota nursing homes, Minnesota Department of Human Services, the University of Minnesota and Indiana University have partnered to implement a pay-for-performance system for state-owned nursing home facilities. This program has gone beyond simply offering payment incentives to actively promoting the sharing and implementation of evidence-based practice. This is a summary of a preliminary evaluation of what is successful in this pay-for performance model.

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MinnPost's newest "Driving Change: A Lens on Leadership" package: "Nathan Johnson helped Pine City accept gays," by Sharon Schmickle

The latest pair of entries in MinnPost's "Driving Change: A Lens on Leadership" series are a profile and commentary about Lyndel King and the expansion of Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota.

Driving Change: A Lens on Leadership
Lyndel King's 'amazing vision,' passion were keys to audacious Weisman's completion

By Sharon Schmickle | Monday, Nov. 14, 2011

Through the Great Recession, debilitating staff cuts and other obstacles, Lyndel King drove to fulfillment her longstanding vision of an art museum that would be pushy about pulling in students.
Related: 'Driving Change' panel: King inspired staff, cemented bonds to meet challenge of Weisman expansion

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EquityNowMN

"By working together, a diverse group of passionate people will achieve equity for Minnesota and beyond by tackling issues like sustainable community planning strategies, the use of mapping tools to empower communities, the transformative impacts of art & culture, job creation, storytelling for social change, thriving diversity, organizing for social justice, food systems change, the power of collaboration, and many more."

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People You Should Meet: Patrick Moore

How one man has helped transform a small community through uniting people in a common purpose rather than dividing them in contentious destruction.

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Creative Placemaking

In creative placemaking, partners from public, private, non-profit, and community sectors strategically shape the physical and social character of a neighborhood, town, city, or region around arts and cultural activities. Creative placemaking animates public and private spaces, rejuvenates structures and streetscapes, improves local business viability and public safety, and brings diverse people together to celebrate, inspire, and be inspired.

This white paper summarizes two decades of creative American placemaking, drawing on original economic research and case studies of pathbreaking initiatives in large and small cities, metropolitan to rural, as well as published accounts. Each reveals a distinctive strategy that succeeded when initiators built partnerships across sectors, missions, and levels of government, leveraging funds from diverse sources and programs.

This white paper was co-authored by Ann Markusen, former director of the Project on Regional and Industrial Economics at the UMN Humphrey School of Public Affairs and Anne Gadwa of Metris Arts Consulting.

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