The newly established Community Department was set up to support the humans of Kiwiburn to do community even better. So important, and so vague! It would be easy to colonise this space with our own assumptions about what should happen, or respond with ad hoc reactions to try and minimise complaints, but neither of those strategies are going to achieve much in the long term.
We’ve heard so many people say that their experiences of community at Kiwiburn are what they cherish the most. And we’ve heard many people yearning for this to be more than a moment in time.
What is clear is that this is a task worth doing well and it’s important that the community department doesn’t set the agenda or decide the direction our community goes. Instead, we have a vision for co-creating a participatory process to enable the community to answer the juiciest and hardest questions for itself, and to find answers that we are all willing to live with.
Right now, the details are few, and the timeline is hazy. But we want you to know that we are working on something with more than just next year in mind. It’s not going to happen overnight because it needs to be sustainable. There will be a place for every voice to be heard, and every experience to be validated. There are no foregone conclusions, and no agenda to force on anyone.
We believe this is the best way for us to grow, adapt and thrive together
In the meantime, we have identified some urgent gaps, and we’ve been recruiting splendid humans to fill these roles and help us develop our longer term community strategy. Hopefully we’ll have those roles filled in the next month and you will get to hear about your new Rainbow, Accessibility and Consent Co-Leads in the Electric Fence Post.
We’ve also prepared a survey to assist us in identifying barriers that exist at Kiwiburn which we would really appreciate you taking the time to complete if you have experienced any, or pass it on to people who you know have.
