2023 I start the year wondering which catastrophe will come this year, and I am getting ready for the word 'Brace for impact' like in airline terms for whatever: - an upcoming heat wave - a crazy shooting in a crowded shopping street - an uppercut right wing party election - a car driving by too fast - an unidentified drone flying above the Belgian airspace - a cyberattack - a real heart attack Than I look around me from Transforma coworking in Evere, see a white Porsche parked whose owner I know and greet, a container of Mover Potiez Demain, that uses former prisoners to move stuff, and the former Nato headquarters juste behind that are now used for judging Belgian extermist terror and a blue sky above. Should I brace for impact all the time? Should I just ignore that there is a war going on in less than 2 hours flight from here, that the frogs are waking up in the middle of the winter and being hit by cars? Or should I look for another impact? - continue facilita
I was in summer 2020 at the reels of a quite unorthodox way of creating of a region wide bike network basd on the nodes. Unorthodox, in the way it was a complete grassroots initiative, with zero budget, and that with sufficient volunteers and support from an active biking community, managed to convince the Brusels region to take over the network, make it official and create the needed signages and management. My role in this project is the one of facilitator (bringing citizens together) ecosystem actor (discussing with the different stakeholders and policy responsibles), communicator (keeping the different communication channels in sync and up to date), and manager (keeping the network alive, looking for funding,...) In this article I would like to focus on 3 moments of the facilitation. This to understand that in your city or region, you could also make use of grassroots intelligence to build a supportive base for a biking network. - summer 2020: facilitation of the creation of the