The post A Sense of PLACE appeared first on PLACE.

More than 150 organizations and groups (PDF) gathered to help launch our community’s ambitious effort to revitalize the Arlington Way, that uniquely Arlington approach to making the important civic decisions that touch our lives.

During two days of small-group conversations, participants exchanged business cards, made new connections and lingered for hallway conversations.

They put themselves on the Arlington map — literally — by pinning ribbons on a large, mobile map of Arlington that now stands outside the County Board room. The multi-colored ribbons, spread across every neighborhood in the County, is a powerful visual display of the extensive web of groups and organizations that together make Arlington such a vibrant, welcoming and diverse community.

The map will be moving around the County this year, offering more folks an opportunity to put themselves on Arlington’s Civic Engagement map.

But that’s just the start of this County-wide effort to ensure that the Arlington Way – the sort of deeply thought, constructive civic engagement that has been a hallmark of Arlington decision-making for decades – carries us into the 21st century and beyond.

Open House participants posted on the Artisphere walls their thoughts on Civic Engagement, boiling down into a word or phrase what they think we do well (PDF) and how we do that (PDF). They also offered many suggestions for what we can do better.

We’ve collected all those responses and will post them here soon.

Next steps

Our next step is to analyze and group the responses into broad themes that will help guide PLACE’s next steps. Those themes and suggestions will be highlighted on this website soon.

We’ll be reaching out to the entire community, in different ways, to join in this important initiative — so stay tuned!

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