Final Draft NCP Fantasy Systems Thinking Team

The last two blog posts selected four of the five for the proposed NCP Fantasy Systems Thinking team, two new and two from the SP UK course selection leaving, Sir Geoffrey Vickers, Peter Checkland, Stafford Beer or somebody else new for the last position.

The SP UK course, using Ray Ison’s chart, placed Forrester and Meadows, the first two selected, on the ontological side of a Y-axis of a systems thinking chart of influences, and Ackoff and Argyris, the second two selected, on the epistemological side, though still fairly close to the ontological. The X-axis of Ison's chart is developmental influences, growing in these instances out of Operations Research and Complexity Sciences respectively.

Sir Geoffrey Vickers could be seen as a foundation of the SP UK course’s approach to systems thinking. Admittedly, very little is known about him and there has been no exposure to his work before this. A good part of his work was on Appreciative Systems and Behaviors. His school of Social Systems though is placed by Ison on the ontology side in between Systems Dynamics and Information Sciences, Management Sciences and Management Learning.

Vickers corresponded with another contender from the SP UK list, Peter Checkland, who is squarely on the epistemological side. They discussed the relationship between systems ideas and real-world experience. Checkland, similar to Ison and the SP UK course, saw differences between what could be termed hard and soft systems perspectives, with soft systems treating the definition as a question of epistemology, as in what can we know or find out about the world? A hard or dynamic system takes a more ontological approach. The differences between the two approaches are provided by Dr. Mike Yearworth in a chart (slide 5 adapted from Checkland & Holwell, 2004).

The Viable Systems Model (VSM), developed by Stafford Beer, was featured in the blog post Systems Thinking - Sailing through Wicked Problems on Complex Seas. VSM has been seen as a dynamic system, though according to Ison is epistemologically based, said to be not a method or process but a model.

"It is an organizational representation of the elements and interactions considered essential for any system to be viable or autonomous".

“A viable system being one that is organized and operates in a manner such as to survive in its changing environment. Adaptability is one of the prime features of systems that survive."(Adapted from Wikipedia)

This video explanation on the Basis for the Viable Systems Model is narrated by Beer, himself.

The final selection for the team, however, is Michael C. Jackson, who, as featured in the post Enabling a Better Tomorrow through New Community Paradigms via Systems Thinking, developed another type of System of Systems Methodology (SOSM) framework. Jackson’s framework, rather than being divided between ontology and epistemology then defined by developmental influences, is defined by simple systems versus complex systems and by the type of relationship between participants, whether unitary, pluralist or conflictual (my preferred term, Jackson also used coercive). Jackson, as he explained in Critical Systems Thinking: Beyond the Fragments sought to,

"Relate developments in systems thinking to an increased sophistication in coming to terms with extreme complexity and an increased awareness of difficulties posed by the divergent values and interests of stakeholders.”

Jackson's framework puts Forrester, Meadows and Beer together under complex and unitary. Peter Checkland assumedly fits under Soft Systems Thinking, incorporating a pluralist perspective ranging from simple to complex. Vickers, Ackoff and Argyris assumedly fit somewhere in between (unfortunately, the original creator Systemswiki is no longer in existence).

Ison’s chart places Jackson, himself, under Critical System Thinking which seeks to bring unity to the diversity of different systems approaches by combining systems thinking and participatory methods in addressing challenges characterized by large scale, complexity, uncertainty, impermanence, and imperfection.

By incorporating nonlinear relationships, feedback loops, hierarchies, emergent properties, it seeks solutions to the issues of inclusion, exclusion and marginalization as determined by boundaries and their consequences.

How Jackson influences the approach the NCP Fantasy Systems Thinking team takes in applying systems thinking to real world situations and systems is the question. Understanding needs to come before enabling.

Despite an admitted bias towards what could be considered hard or dynamic approaches to systems thinking with the intention of understanding or diagnosing problems and solving them, NCP has been exposed before to the soft systems thinking side, most directly through the newly revised Dialogue, Deliberation, and Systemic Transformation (DDST) which it needs to be confessed has, until recently, been left grossly neglected. As was said in Using Systems Practice to Unravel Complexity (Hands-on) in learning about a situation, one can expect new insights and expect to redraw (one's maps) to incorporate those new insights. Redraw, however, can refer to far more than just a map, it can also include correcting basic material and revising premises and conclusions.

DDST, originally in Hackpad is now in Dropbox Paper. NCP sought to provide and develop a concept map of the intentional transformational process to take a complex world through to what was seen as "the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible."

Jackson's System of Systems Methodologies, again as discussed in Systems Thinking - Sailing through Wicked Problems on Complex Seas, suggested two potential pathways that could be created by following two different approaches, one hard systems thinking, Creating the Future and one a soft systems thinking approach, Transforming the Future.

These were then combined together under Bridging Creating and Transforming the Future (a multiple causes map), revealing where the maps intersected and where they diverged was with complexity appearing at the juncture at which obstacles could arise creating tolls to further progress or at which the two pathways could be bridged and further developed.

Previously though, the Direct Democracy and Systems Thinking Kumu map recognized that interactions would be done by groups of diverse, independent agents, not as single entities but would be pluralist, possibly conflictual and very likely often complex with two Casual Loop Diagrams, R1 Deliberative Democratic Dialogue and R2 Working with Systems Thinking. The process would be both ontological and epistemological in nature.

These two foundational reinforcing loops were later considered as creating a juncture between Design Thinking, Collective Impact and Systems Thinking with "Civic and Community Groups" being at the center in the blog post, The What, Why and How of Design Thinking and Collective Impact part 2 of 3.

The actual creation of community projects, programs or policies was envisioned being likely assisted with the use of design thinking, involving working with "Systems Thinking Facilitators" and other community government "Staff". The development of specific proposals for projects, programs or policies would come from the community or from democratically selected or assigned leadership in the community. It could also be useful in assisting in integrating Community Groups into a prototype system of Community Based Virtual Systemic Inquiry (influence map), again supported by the implementation of systems thinking in both a complex and participatory mode within Jackson’s SOSM Framework.

Achieving the challenge of actually implementing new community paradigms is far more complex. The paradox is that one has to deal both with the complexity of the situation being faced and the seeming complexity of finding the means of dealing with it through systems thinking.

The blog post The What, Why and How of Design Thinking and Collective Impact part 3 of 3 recognized that systems thinking alone is simply not enough. Systems thinking not only requires other disciplines and methodologies through which transformation and change can be implemented effectively, but should explicitly subordinate to a role of support, serving either as scaffolding for such efforts or strengthening the systemic infrastructure of such efforts.

As an example, the entire series of Systemic Design of Public Participation was seen as a viable vision for Solving Democracy’s Design Problem by addressing Public Participation Designed for Entrenched Incumbents as instances of espoused claims (examples of Stafford Beer’s POSIWID) being detrimental. Designing Public Participation Processes Map proposed to be a means of moving to a more viable, yet nonetheless more idealized system.

Active Digital Citizens Seeking New Community Paradigms pt. 3

Having  now covered weeks one, two and three, the fourth week of the course, The Active Citizen in a Digital Age took a look at volunteering and donating but the focus will be on another concept raised in the material, social capital. There’s a need to differentiate, nuanced though it may be, between the NCP perspective on Civil Society and the Active Digital Citizen Perspective. 

NCP does not see Civil Society as an “institutional manifestation of our basic human rights to peaceable assembly, free expression and, privacy,” but rather as the Australian Centre for Civil Society does as “the relationships and associations that make up our life at grassroots levels of society, in families, neighbourhoods and voluntary associations, independent of both government and the commercial world”. The difference is the level of dependence on institutions not the exclusion of them. Civil Society is the basis for Community Governance in that it recognizes that the right of the community to govern arises from the community itself through civic interactions and is not bestowed by any governmental institution.  As proposed by Laurence Demarco,  The difference between Civil and Civic, Civic refers to the 'local state' — “where citizens participate in local health boards, schools, community councils, planning partnerships and all the other mechanisms ultimately under the direction of the state.”  Civil society means voluntary actions undertaken by citizens, not under the direction of any authority wielding the power of the state which has a tendency to encroach. A similar perspective is presented by Larry Diamond, What Civil Society Can Do to Develop Democracy.

This arguably places civic society between civil society and the political sector of democracy with the institutions spoken of by the Active Digital Citizen being institutional touch points between the community and government power.  The human touch points are volunteers.

Although the course warned of dangers with digital interactions and democracy, one organization seen as utilizing technology very effectively is VolunteerMatch. Greg Baldwin, the President of VolunteerMatch talked about utilizing technology to make the world a better place and how technology has changed volunteering for the better.

The NCP wiki page Voluntary Participation and the related NCP Kumu map, which provides a non-hierarchal graphic representation of the wiki, places Voluntary Participation  as a bridge between Civil Society and Governance.  Another bridge from Civil Society to Governance is Data Journalism and Community Information to help the community keep an eye on the government institutions. Both would arguably be needed to ensure the independence of Civil Society sought by Active Digital Citizen and others. 

The course cites Robert Putnam’s book Bowling Alone, The Collapse and Revival of American Community in which he argues the breakdown of “social capital” because of pressure on time and money, the disintegration of the family unit, media, television, and generational change resulting in the  diminishment of networks of trust and reciprocity that these connections advanced. A sharp decline in neighborhood bowling leagues leading to many more people bowling alone being the illuminating example. 

Putnam’s book was previously included but not cited as part of the Collective Impact Living Cities Kumu project as an extension of How Can We Recapture the Spirit of Community Engagement that Built America?, Kumu map of a Living Cities blog post of the same title. 

The concept of social capital, according to Putnam, depends on people believing that if: “I’ll do this for you, without expecting anything specific back from you, in the confident expectation that someone else will do something for me down the road.”

From very early on with a Second look at Making Cities Work, social capital has meant creating an environment from which there was more from which draw to bring about new community paradigms. This would require a good deal of volunteering from members of the community, as participants actively pursuing their role as the producers of democracy.  Volunteering is not limited though to formal volunteering in a community but all forms of altruistic social interaction. Volunteering at its best is a face to face proposition which means creating social connections within a community, helping to increase the democratic participation being sought. 

Building 'Social Capital' within a  community through community engagement can be seen as the planning process of building both 'Bonding' and 'Bridging'.  One metric whether community engagement has been successful or not is the extent to which the process has helped the community to build social capital, making the community stronger and more connected.  

"Social Capital" can, however, be seen by some as being part of a technical discourse with which the majority of people are not engaged, making it a more useful term when examining community engagement from an exclusively systems perspective. 

The organic based direction a community takes can be diverted by institutions attempting to fulfill what they see as their institutional mission.  Even when well intentioned, professionals whether directly involved in community engagement or more likely indirectly as part of some other function, say economic development, often lack a true understanding or appreciation of what community engagement as a means of building real community capacity is about. Instead of talking about community engagement what should be talked about is an engaged community.

Even if one starts with the right motivations and frame of reference, it is still difficult to work with a community that is disengaged or disenfranchised or with a group that lacks sufficient social capital in the larger community.  This can arguably be widely applicable as many if not most people in any large community feel disengaged, as social capital is only generated where people are actively engaged.  The individual then rather than the organization becomes the most basic component of community engagement.

Stuart Graeme promoted Colin Williams’ ideas of individual community engagement, "Fostering community engagement and tackling undeclared work"  consisting of "spending time, engaged in unpaid activity, doing something that aims to benefit someone (individuals or groups) other than or in addition to close relatives, or to benefit the environment."  

This doesn’t have to happen through organizations but could arise more like a "good neighbor" concept.  Graeme also seemed  to suggest that these 'good neighbors' could be the ones to start in engaging with the community to build the connectedness comprising the Bonding' and 'Bridging' of 'Social Capital.'  It would be based, in my view upon the existence of what has been labeled ‘Civil Society, particularly when thinking of community paradigms as a set of community relations. The connection with Civil Society is made stronger yet in Community paradigms as a set of community relations.

Only later was a connection realized with Asset Based Community Development through ABCD, Social Networks and the Commons connecting Associational Life which looked at evaluating communities on an Asset Based Community Development basis, as a whole, in terms of social capital bonding (connecting neighborhood residents together) and bridging (connecting volunteers from outside the community with residents, or presumably, the community with other communities within a common jurisdiction). 

In a more recent post connected with this course Establishing a Foundation for Democratic Belief, I argued that Brennan was right as he said to have previously written that participation can be meaningful even when its practical effect is nil, because of the social bonding it creates. He assumed though that no comparable duty existed to take part specifically in voting, because other kinds of good actions can take the place of voting, believing that voting is part of what is termed a larger market in civic virtue. Those other components cannot though make up by themselves for the loss of voting from the total civic virtue or social capital created with the inclusion of voting. The overall capacity of civic virtue or social capital is diminished for the sake of administrative efficiency.

The assignment for week four included one question which was:

• Give two to three reasons why you think volunteering is important/effective

Volunteering through civil society is important to a community because the political institutions and market institutions cannot be expected to be able or to be trusted to fulfill all the needs of the community, especially in addressing Wicked Problems. Our challenges are increasingly complex. Our responses to these challenges cannot be merely simplistic but need to be coherently complex. From a systems perspective, we need to focus not only on what Chris Argyris called Single Loop Learning but Double Loop Learning as well. 

I will finish up with Zeynep Tufekci: Online social change: easy to organize, hard to win but in the next post as it deserves its own podium. 

Creative Discovery on New Community Paradigm Pathways

The last blog post continued to explore the new Kumu map of the New Community Paradigms (NCP) Wiki (the map is also contained within the wiki page). Here is a tour if this is the initial general introduction but this post does not depend upon it. The last blog post expressed the view that the NCP Wiki Map was not so important on its own but as a tool for creative discovery, an idea which will be explored further in this post.

Actually, it is not the NCP Wiki Map itself that is the basis for creative discovery; it is instead the Kumu program at its foundation and the application of systems thinking in the use of that tool. Still, the NCP Wiki Map is believed to be a pretty good example of what can be done with Kumu, especially when applied to complex community issues as is being attempted here. 

It should be made clear though that New Community Paradigms is not endeavoring to become a large organization or movement. It is intended to be designed as an expandable and evolvable template that a group within a community could use to leverage potential community resources. 

The last post also spoke of getting ahead of myself. In the post previous, I had jumped from dealing with planning and placemaking within complex systems (of greater community involvement) to contrasting complicated top-down management systems and complex community governance systems, as had been discussed in past posts, and then jumped back to planning in the context of creating healthy communities. The point and a rationale behind this effort are that not only is organizing information gathered over time challenging but disseminating that information in a coherent manner within complex social networks, especially when others are unfamiliar with the concepts, can be a daunting undertaking. While examining "complexity" and its relation to community building and development has been of interest since the early beginnings of this effort, it was wrong to jump back and forth without more context.

There are then three separate concepts about which people have to be persuaded to invest time into understanding, Kumu mapping, systems thinking, and community issues (actually a host of concepts filed under new community paradigms). This obviously is not going to be for everyone, to be truthful, not even most people. Most don’t need to be experts though in all three, actually not even particularly in any one of them but they would have to have some knowledge and more importantly would need to be able to collaborate. I believe though that, in the hands of even a small number of people working together, it could begin to make a difference. 

After the confession, it was a matter of discussing the resources to be found under the recent Planning for Healthy Communities wiki page and connecting to the mapped element for it (use the “On Kumu Map” link at the top), and other elements of the Places and Healthy Communities maps (also accessible from narrative sections to the left) and then clicking on the related Asset Based Community Development element moving next into its own map then back to the wiki (use the URL near bottom of the element’s narrative section or double click the element within the map). 

This continued in the next post with exploring  Community Design, and Community Arts (both under Places, mouse over the listed text) with Healthy Cities and began tying them together (needs to be repeated, clicking a map’s white space reveals underlying map).

The Places map may be the most complex appearing of these maps but is basically a collection of eight related issues (put the mouse over the center Places element within the map to highlight first degree connections) which bridge over into other sectors. The Healthy Communities and Asset Based Community Development maps aren't that complex on their own. Individual elements though within these maps can appear in other maps and all can be connected. Hopefully following element paths into different maps will generate new ideas, new connections could be developed. 

The last blog post also attempted to create a mental model of “Artistic Thinking” as pathways of connections, the first, being the Art and  Healthy  Communities Map. The mental models for the current configuration NCP Wiki Map were developed through the related blog posts found in their most closely related wiki page. Although blog posts are not always the defining basis of the mental models for all of the map elements, connections were not created unless what could be seen, and better yet delineated in writing, as establishing some meaningful relationship. These then helped to define the NCP Wiki Map’s structural level connections, especially the bridge elements connecting substantially different elements and sectors together. 

These new sets of pathways were then enhanced further after publishing the blog post introducing the ability to highlight or focus on certain element or groups of elements. As explained in the Art and  Healthy  Communities Map narrative, going through the different levels of focus new elements appear.

This is where this being a solitary endeavor, due to my introvert and introspective nature, runs into its limitations. Having everyone already learned Kumu mapping is the best solution but until that can be taken for granted it seems necessary to provide explicit instruction on issues such as white space or determining focus. 

This is being attempted, in different ways, with the two new pathway sets. Further directions are provided in the hope people will learn Kumu directly and figure out how to navigate on their own or the other way around, both work. The hope again is that the map can be designed so that groups of individuals with different interests and backgrounds could work together and create common collaborative maps but that's not happening here yet. Instead, this is more at the level of explorations, if things work, and experimentation, if they don’t.

Two other new sets of pathways, Pathways to Healthy Communities Map and the Collective Impact within NCP Map were also created for the post, as working at the mental model level of the Systems Thinking Iceberg Model. 

Because it involves the entire larger overall NCP Wiki Map, the initial Pathways to Healthy Communities Map is apparently complex. However, by clicking on “Focus on Pathway” the specific specialized map is focused upon or by moving further down to the second paragraph of the narrative section one can also choose to only highlight it.

Further down the narrative section, the narrative approach is integrated with the graphic elements of the map. Unlike maps such as Places, there is more than a collection of related objects underlying the map’s organization. The connections cross over different sectors influencing each other. One can follow these pathways by mousing over the text within the narrative. Additional directions can be found in the Pathways to Healthy Communities Map itself.

The Collective Impact map, on its own, is not seen as being directly subsumed or above other elements of the NCP Wiki Map. Rather, it is seen as being related to other elements. These particular displayed relationships, as configured within the map,  were based on my individual inquiries. Different relationships could be created, developed and evolved further by others. 

The Collective Impact within NCP Map, which is accessible through the main Collective Impact map, is of a different configuration. The map’s narrative provides access to greater focus or further down the ability to highlight within the map by passing over with the mouse. Selecting the Community Impact Focus Map allows one again to highlight or by following the directions select the specific map then proceed 1, 2 or 3 degrees out or clear the map to its original configuration. As the narrative for the map states, though, not all elements will be related meaningfully to but a number could be integrated into supporting Collective Impact efforts. 

It is still necessary though to visit each element of interest’s wiki page by double clicking on that element or clicking once to open up its narrative and then clicking on the displayed URL. There are then a variety of resources available though these are by no means exhaustive, undoubtedly more are out there. These are the building blocks for creating new community innovations by providing more in-depth information. There is not, however, any correct pathway or any right answers to be revealed.

The long term goal then is not to get people to use my map but to get people to build their own maps, using systems thinking approaches, preferably together with others in their community. The NCP Wiki Map is capable of being “copied”, what Kumu calls “Fork”ed (past tense?) and is licensed to fully authorize this (get to the NCP Wiki Map, three line icon top left corner, click, look for “Fork Project” left-hand column). 

Exploring Pathways Between Community Health, Community Design and Artistic Thinking

In the last blog post, I got ahead of myself too quickly having created a new platform,  New Community Paradigms Wiki Map, to use in these explorations and experiments to discover new paradigms of change for our communities. 

Having covered the same material a number of times, I  can forget that people who may come across this blog more often than not have no idea about what has been done and little awareness of systems thinking as its foundation. One can't assume that people will be impressed you found something if they did not realize it was needed but undiscovered. 

The NCP Wiki map is a tool and while useful, not necessarily that important on its own, the same navigation can be achieved through the New Community Paradigms Wiki itself. It is the compass helping to find the way, not the destination to be discovered. However, having a strong interest in the New Community Paradigms Wiki Kumu Map (stand alone version) not only as my creation but as a different means of creative discovery, I am still going to use it as the basis for navigating some of the concepts included in this blog post.

An original intention of this blog and its related wiki was to provide online resources which could be used to create new community paradigms. The New Community Paradigms Wiki Map is designed to assist in that effort. 

A recent update to the New Community Paradigm wiki, under the Community Design wiki-page, is the Un-School of Disruptive Design | Experimental Knowledge in New York City which encourages people from diverse professional backgrounds to reorient, as the NCP Wiki map seeks to do, the way they perceive and act in the world, learning how to maximize their capacity to influence and affect positive social and environmental change. The concept of disruptive in the teaching design of an experimental un-school is what was appealing. Unlike many if not most of the resources provided in the NCP wiki though there is usually a cost to taking the courses they offer.

This is not the first occurrence of being willing to look at community design experimentally considered. The BMW Guggenheim Lab, also under Community Design was considered back in 2011 in the blog post, Placemaking for communities the canvas becomes the art. The experiment was concluded by 2014. The idea at the time, having had been recently introduced to the concept of placemaking (still not in the dictionary), being that a community’s geographically located, place-based foundation was previously thought of as being only a stage or canvas upon which creative community life happened but instead should be considered essential and integral to the community in its own right. Other resources provided under the Community Design wiki-page are more pragmatic and hands-on related to on-the-ground efforts. 

There is a connection through the wiki-focus page, Community Design to Greater Places | The Community for Urban Design, a crowdsourced “How-To” manual for creating great communities – cities, suburbs and rural areas.  Think of a Pinterest or Houzz for community design.”

“WHAT IS COMMUNITY DESIGN? Community design is about people, the places we live, and the spaces we share. Community design is also about how we come together and make decisions that affect our communities and neighbors: from crossroads in the country to homeowners’ associations in the suburbs to new apartments in the city.” 

There is continued interest and now greater ability to see how these resources and the concept of Community Design can be related to other concepts under new community paradigms, particularly at the mental model level of the Systems Thinking Iceberg Model. 

At the top of the Community Design wiki page, there is a link to its specific location in an NCP Kumu Wiki map. In this instance, a link will not be provided on these pages in the hope that readers will click on the designated link within the wiki-page. 

Mousing then over the revealed highlighted (green circled) element on the map points to other elements seen as being most closely related to Community Design, including most directly being Community Places and seen as being indirectly related to Community Arts and Planning the Urban Landscape. Clicking on these elements will open their respective narrative sections. Clicking on the white space of the map will open the narrative section of the entire map revealing all of the elements in the underlying Places map. 

This post is going to focus on the related idea of Community Arts. Clicking on the URL provided within the narrative section will take you to the Community Arts wiki page with its own collection of web-based resources. Bringing up the concept of disruptive again, a previous blog post, Art as a Path of Social Disruptive Innovation Towards New Community Paradigms can be found near the top of the wiki-page.

A Community Engagement question was, What's the impact of community art projects? A common response to this question leans towards finding the right metrics in terms of economic impact. However, as a result of new resources added to the New Community Paradigms Community Arts wiki-page, I now believe that focus is limited, that we make a mistake if we only think of integrating art and especially artistic thinking into our systems of community as window dressing for our economic development activities. We should instead be looking to art as a means of transforming and invigorating not only our economic development activities but also our community design and community governance as well.

Artistic thinking then has the potential to become a basis for developing new mental models. One question is how such a mental model and resources could be applied to efforts at Planning for Healthy Communities discussed in the last post. (mouse over Art and Healthy Communities). This is not meant to provide answers rather pathways for exploration. 

Then click on Planning for Healthy Communities. Clicking on the Healthy Communities link provided in the Planning for Healthy Communities narrative bridges over to the Healthy Communities map. One of the first NCP blog posts, Collaborating to Create Healthy Cities, can be found within Healthy Cities (click the URL).

The city of Richmond, California was one of the first cities in the United States to develop a comprehensive general plan element that addressed the link between public health and community design. A full profile on this effort is available from the Prevention Institute of Oakland, CA and more information can be found at the Healthy Cities blog. 

Adding, even more, resources to the Healthy Cities wiki—page was Pathways to Healthy Communities which came later.

“Davidson Design for Life (DD4L) is an initiative of the Town of Davidson to foster healthy community design through the use of health impact assessments (HIA), public participation, and collaborative efforts in Davidson, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg region, and North Carolina.”

Even though a small community of 11,750 people (2013) with Davidson College nearby with 1,920 students, the site provides information on “Health Impact Assessment: What is it?”, for the surrounding region and information on HIA in the US.

Pathways to Healthy Communities expands and makes more complex the network of connections, working at multiple levels. Incorporating artistic thinking effectively into these processes will take a great deal of insight and effort and will require finding the right leverage points.

Artistic-thinking was also seen as an approach that has the potential to be useful in broad-based, multifaceted change efforts such as Collective Impact as in Under The What, Why and How of Design Thinking and Collective Impact part 2 of 3.

Artistic thinking can help reach deeper insights, generate more ideas and seep into the community's fabric so that its influence becomes one more of dispersion within a complex community system rather than a transfer of information from one institution to another. An artistic perspective should not be left to the end though but made foundational in community design through design thinking, systems thinking, and other approaches to achieve Collective Impact through new community paradigms.

Collective Impact is, however, seen as being a number of steps or degrees away from Places and its internal connections to Community Design and Community Arts (click “In Places” to reveal), not being directly related to other efforts but an indirect accumulation of those efforts and seen, and in this evolving configuration, as being mitigated through Direct Democracy and Systems Thinking under Systems Thinking, Governance through Community under Community Governance and Design Thinking, placed under Community Management and Technology (you can also find by using the search box at the top right corner of the map section). Closer examinations may reveal means of strengthening these pathways. One path of exploration for the future is integrating Asset Based Community Development into both Collective Impact and Healthy Communities. 

These are not the only correct pathways available to integrate artistic thinking, community design and planning for healthy communities together but they at least point out potential pathways.