Our Ethos

Who is the expert: The renewable energy specialist or the 80-year-old housewife from the village? 

The answer is of course: both!
When a place is in need of re-visioning, it can be important to call in global expertise to breath in fresh air, but to tailor a vision to the place and make the change sustainable, we include and emphasise the embedded knowledge of the community.
To make the most of both expert parties, the CLEAR VILLAGE process creates a space and provides a methodology for locals and experts to meet, collaborate and co-vision the future of the place.

All are experts
It is key that the change process happens on the terms of the community. Therefore we always have some 80% locals and 20% globals in the room. And the first rule is: all are experts. The globals have their defined fields of expertise, be it renewable energy, sustainable architecture, anthropology, economy; and the locals are the experts of that place, knowing all about how it is to actually live there, what could easily be changed, where the lively places and the dead spots in the settlement are, what collaborations will not work and what they dream of the community to be.

When these two areas of expertise are combined, new potential can be unveiled and dream implementation can begin!

Process Design & Facilitation
As a general rule, it’s the locals who re-vision and define the change that will take place. The globals are there to be called are there to be called in by the residents to advise on concrete solutions, adaptability, feasibility or however the residents might want to draw on their expertise. The globals are also there to take a look at the community with a fresh eye and point out unexplored potential, which one doesn’t notice when living there day-to-day.

CLEAR VILLAGE’s role is to take the process leadership. We first talk to the community, then cast the global experts after following the wishes and needs of the community to create a group with diverse and directly applicable knowledge.
With that diverse a group of people, the role of process design and that of the facilitators is to accommodate for the wide-ranging forms of contribution that will spring from the process and as such to ensure the equality of participation for everyone involved.

For that we have designed a series of exercises that activate both body, mind and soul to explicitly facilitate and encourage a collective intelligence within any given group.

In short, CLEAR VILLAGE facilitates the cross-pollination of local knowledge, experience and competencies with high quality global expertise from passionate professionals in our network into a pragmatic vision for the community.

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