High Line Network National Convening: Community Visioning + Engagement Training
The High Line Network (HLN) is a non-profit organization that brings together infrastructure reuse projects from around North America to learn from each other. In supporting these reuse projects, the HLN aims to promote the sharing of best practices across disciplines and foster equitable and responsive spaces whose effects embrace local communities and reflect their needs. In mid-October 2017, HLN held its first national convening for project staff across its 19 member organizations. To support HLN in fulfilling its objective of helping members build equitable public spaces through their projects, Karp Strategies designed and facilitated a community visioning and engagement training, highlighting the critical role of applicable tools that can be used to address broader issues of equity, accessibility, and reconciliation. Firm facilitators moderated discussions around a variety of engagement techniques and activities, involving different types of organizational staff with projects at different stages of development, and projects in dramatically different communities. Karp Strategies also delivered a summary memo of findings to HLN in order capture key themes, hopes, and concerns heard among participants, and to aid HLN in shaping future gatherings.