On Thursday, July 30th, I hosted the inaugural Dream Into Change Salon, and now I’m really excited to host more of them, both here and elsewhere.
The salon—a free event—is a place for us culture shifters to come together and talk about our ideas for projects, businesses, campaigns, and the like, and to give and receive emotional and strategic support for these ideas.
On the 30th, we started with a small event: just four of us gathered around a table at Liz’s Creative Café in Milwaukie, just south of Portland. We spoke briefly about our personal and/or professional histories, and then for the next two hours we discussed the ideas and projects we are all working on. The magic of synergy appeared right away, as people began collaborating, offering ideas, asking strategic questions, and connecting each other with resources. By the end, we were all excited to keep in touch, and to meet up at the next one.
I will schedule another salon at the same location near the end of September; I plan to offer them here in the Portland area every two months.
But afterward, I got to thinking that I would love to take this idea on the road as well! I would love to host similar salons for culture shifters in many cities, around North America, and quite possibly beyond. Perhaps I could dream up a tour, similar to my 2013 East Coast Empathy Tour! I could travel by train and/or bike for a couple of weeks, stopping at several cities as I go.
Then I started thinking, I could even create themed salons! Say, one for veganism and animal-related ideas and projects. One for touch- and/or sex-positive-themed ideas. Maybe one for bicycling and sustainable transportation. One for NVC and/or restorative-justice-themed ideas.
In this way, I can encourage people to start thinking about, and working on, exciting specific ideas for shifting our culture forward in myriad ways. And I can begin to build a worldwide network of such folks, whom I can introduce to each other if, say, someone in Boston and someone in Melbourne had similar ideas and wanted to support each other and build on each other’s success.
I’m pretty lit up about this!! I don’t have a particular timeline in mind; I will let it unfold organically (per my previous posting here).
However, I would love to hear from anyone, anywhere, who would be interested in helping me to organize a salon—with or without a specific theme—wherever you live. I can begin putting together a list of such contacts, and perhaps before long, an itinerary will emerge.
For now… I will begin organizing some more salons here in Portland!
