I. GETTING STARTED To some extent, centers emerge when people's needs change faster than institutions. One day the principal finds students pounding on his door asking for a student louri'ge; another day the south corner of the school's boiler plant is suddenly taken over by the sophomores. From another standpoint, institutions are ideal seed-beds for center development, and there are many cases in which centers and institutions develop a synergistic relationship. Ideas which originate in a center often become established by the parent-institution, while innovation tolerated within centers might not be tolerated on an institutional level. Centers also get started when people have a shared vision of their needs. One way to stimulate that vision is to use brainstorming techniques (see Roughdraft I, February, 1975). State the problem in terms of a need: What type of center would stimulate the building of more solar heated homes in our city? What type of center would result in the opportunity for student involvement in the planning of parks and greenways? Often it takes some kind of stimulus to dislodge fixed notions from people's heads to make them think about the possible instead of the probable. Members of the Parkrose Methodist Church were paying an innocent visit to the Environmental Education Center when the idea struck: why not start a church center? Two brainstorming sessions later, the church had material enough for a 10-year plan, launched a campaign to get such a center going, and won the support of the congregation. Several years later, the Parkrose Methodist Church has a successful church center which incorporates the idea of videotaping services with the idea of a multi-purpose center. II. BARN RAISING As old as the frontier, barn raising represents collective action by which people get together voluntarily, and assume that it is in their best interests to help each other. Applied to building centers instead of barns, this technique creates a center clientele by allowing people to participate in the decision-making and execution of a problem. At some point in human history, barn-raising may be developed as a basic survival technique. People who lend their various resources to a common project (1) receive confirmation and positive support for individual talents, (2) acquire a needed sense of community and (3) gain confidence and acquire a sense of power derived from solidarity. Ill. VOLUNTEERS If members of the community have been involved in brainstorming sessions and in barn raising events, a significant number of volunteers is probably available. Volunteers like to feel that they've had a say in the way things go, and bringing in volunteers from the beginning is an ideal way to accomplish this. Sometimes group leaders make the mistake of feeling beholden to the volunteers. Though it's not a good idea to Centers: The Past, F ~ THE MODERN CLASSROOM: With closedcircuit television broadcasts, learning labs and electronic readers, many schools have attempted to bring the real world inside the walls of the classro ~~~~~~~~~~~'-- SALONS: In the eighteenth century, particularly in France, salons such as those held in the \. &I CENTERSThe walls of the classroo of all ages step out of th< together create an enviro disciplinary flavor of inf< the salons and rural comr Like the modern classroc is unified by electronics 1 availability of infornptio the horizon, centers Ire j from every neighbor~ooc -GUILDS-Craftsmen's S< up in Renaissance Europ people with common int to promote the survival trade. Though guilds we tions, their membership daries and members-relit give volunteers the jobs that no one else wants to do, volunteers are usually volunteering because they see some worth in it. They should be encouraged to do a good job and be given a sense of responsibility for a job, just like paid workers. At the Multnomah County Human Services Bureau, volunteers are asked to sign a statement committing some time each week as a way of reinforcing an individual's sense of commitment. A positive atmosphere of trust is the best way to encourage volunteers. Monitoring devices and desks placed near entrances make people feel watched and controlled. Existing community networks should be tapped for volunteers by advertising in community or school papers, and by visiting PTA presidents and church ministers, asking them to include appeals in their bulletins. Build the users into the system. At the Environmental Education Center, users help maintain information files, updating and correcting the system on a volunteer basis, thereby eliminating the need for bureaucratic growth and encouraging volunteer participation. IV. AESTHETICS People seem to like an aesthetically-pleasing environmen . Why? No one exactly knows. What is an aesthetic environment? Another toughie. Comments gathered from visitors
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