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A Dayton Renaissance, driven in part by a multitude of micro-renaissances of community-driven initiatives. These initiatives will contribute to fostering a "culture of imagination" in the Dayton region, a culture that will permeate our people, our educational system and our businesses and institutions.
Entrepreneurial in spirit, Involvement Advocacy is an umbrella organization, home to the Dayton region's most imaginative civic engagement and community-building initiatives, created or facilitated by the organization's leadership. (Think Proctor & Gamble-type portfolio, only in terms of Civic Brands* instead of consumer brands.)
If a consumer (or B2B) brand is essentially a framework for creating customers by getting people to reallocate their money, then a Civic Brand is a framework for creating citizens by getting people to reallocate their time. While the "sales & marketing" tools may be different in each case, the engagement hierarchy is similar: Trial -> Repeat -> Adoption -> Advocacy.
(Admittedly, this is somewhat of a simplification, since there is time involved with consumer brands and money involved with Civic Brands. At the core of the notion, the former is really about establishing economic capital, the latter, social capital.)
The concept of "Civic Brands" as a mechanism for generating civic engagement was developed by Involvement Advocacy Founder & President, Peter Benkendorf. It is based on his 25+ years of corporate and consulting experience in brand, product and communications development and his nearly 20 years of community-building experience.
Involvement Advocacy is committed to strengthening the Dayton region by acting a catalyst for imaginative, entrepreneurial, community-driven solutions to pressing social, economic and civic challenges. These collaborative solutions will include citizen, government, business, institutional, organizational and philanthropic players.
Blue Sky Project is an international summer artist residency and youth collaborative. Founded and operated from 2005 – 2008 in McHenry County, Illinois, the program is now housed at the University of Dayton, in partnership with the College of Arts and Sciences and ArtStreet.
Committed to producing significant works of contemporary art across all mediums, Blue Sky Project links five professional artists from around the world with five college apprentices and 40 young people aged 14 - 18 from throughout the region, to pursue projects proposed by the artists
Blue Sky Project's objectives are threefold:
Blue Sky Project has been described as "transformational" by artists, youth participants, teachers and parents. This transformational effect is possible, in large part, because an aspect of Blue Sky is its eight-week duration and the intensity of the experience. This has allowed Blue Sky to focus on bringing about a paradigm shift in the following areas:
The embodiment of 27 years of proprietary and proven community building work, the Center for Community Engagement fully represents the spirit and intentions of Involvement Advocacy.
An open hub of interaction and action, the Center is committed to 1) maximizing human potential and leadership and 2) creating a community of citizens who are connected and interconnected... by fostering a culture of imagination and action that permeates our neighborhoods, our educational system and our businesses and institutions.
Through a series of inspired small group conversations convened by the Center or citizen-dreamers, we are creating a pool of citizen-owners of the possibility of a different future for ourselves and each other. Further, we are gathering the dreams of individual citizens representing the diversity of the region. And those who have participated in the conversations are opting to become conveners themselves, inviting friends and colleagues to become owners of the future too.
As we begin to roll out the Center, we are using our own collaborative process of "Self-Expression / Dialog / Action" to determine a whole range of possibilities and ultimately design the Center's primary activities. This ensures maximum community ownership of the Center's future, and hopefully of the community's as well.
Initiated by Air Force Research Lab Director Joe Sciabica and Involvement Advocacy founder Peter Benkendorf in late 2010, TECH-ARTS COLLABORATION is bringing together local artists and engineers to investigate the economic and community development potential of these two strong Dayton resources coming together.
The first initiative involved seven artist and eight engineers & scientists from the Air Force Research Lab in a pilot project to explore new approaches to addressing Information Visualization challenges. Additional outcomes include putting Dayton-based technologies in the hands of local artists and engaging the community around the intersection of art and technology.
Collaborators include the Wright Brothers Institute, which is helping to facilitate the collaboration, and Larrell Walters, director of UDRI's IDCAST, which is also making technology accessible to the artist team.
Watch a short video on the AFRL/Arts collaboration.
Performance. Installation. Art Making.
A window looking in. A window looking out.
Artists engaging Community. Community engaging Artists.
Transformation.
Each month 510project invites an artist and the community to a different kind of conversation about:
The genesis for 510project was a conversation between community catalyst Peter Benkendorf, Founder of Involvement Advocacy and artist Loretta Puncer. According to Puncer, who owns Gallery 510, “I think we both felt that artists who live in Dayton have much to contribute to addressing the challenges we face in the community. They just need a viable venue to begin the conversation."
August 8, 2009 Dayton, Ohio
An article in the August 5, 2008 issue of Forbes.com declared Buffalo, NY; Canton, OH; Charleston, WV; Cleveland, OH; Dayton, OH; Detroit, MI; Flint, MI; Scranton PA; Springfield, MA and Youngstown, OH as America’s 10 Fastest Dying Cities.
Looking to prove that nothing could be further from the truth, and timed to celebrate the article’s 1st anniversary, on August 8, 2009, representatives of eight of the ten cities and more than 200 concerned citizens gathered in Dayton to share ideas and inspirations, make new connections and imagine possibilities for the kinds of communities we want to live in an have thrive.
Ten Living Cities Symposium was the brainchild of Involvement Advocacy executive director Peter Benkendorf and Mike Elsass, owner of Color of Energy Gallery in Dayton. Put together in under four months, and highlighted by opening remarks from Forbes writer Josh Zumbrun, author of the original Dying Cities article, the event succeeded beyond the originators expectations, with representatives of eight of the 10 cities sharing why their cities are very much alive.
Involvement Advocacy was founded in Chicago in 1992 by Peter Benkendorf, to provide individual citizens the opportunity and resources fundamental to addressing systemic community needs.
In 1993 Involvement Advocacy created Sister Neighborhoods to link up residents of resource-rich communities with those of more limited resources. The first relationship was between the north shore suburb of Winnetka and the Chicago public housing community of Cabrini-Green, much to the surprise of many. A number of exchanges and programs took place over the first year, however the one project that took hold was the establishment of Voices of Cabrini, the only resident-run community newspaper in the Chicago public housing.
Through Voices of Cabrini, which received national recognition from Senator Paul Simon, for highlighting the positive activities taking place in the community, residents were trained in writing and interviewing techniques, project management, desktop publishing and advertising sales. As a result, a number of people working on the paper were able to gain full- or part-time employment and the paper was self-supporting over its four-years of publication. However, at a higher level, hundreds of people of all ages from throughout the community who had never been heard, took advantage of an opportunity to share something important and begin to make a difference.
In 2000, Benkendorf relocated to McHenry County and in 2004 Involvement Advocacy was reconstituted with a local board of directors to initiate Blue Sky Project, as well as other innovative programs that offer new frameworks for community-building.
In 2009, Involvement Advocacy was relocated to Dayton, Ohio, in part to form a partnership between Blue Sky Project and the University of Dayton, and in part to continue the grassroots, urban civic engagement work Benkendorf begun in 1992, in a community that is rising from its Rust Belt ashes.
Involvement Advocacy relies on the generous support of individuals, corporations and foundations to make the program possible. All contributions are 100% tax-deductible.
Here's how you can help:
Make a secure online donation or send a check to:
INVOLVEMENT ADVOCACY
P.O. Box 10506
Dayton, Ohio 45402
Office:
Involvement Advocacy,
Courthouse Crossing, 33 North Main Street, Dayton, OH 45402
Mail:
Involvement Advocacy,
P.O. Box 10506,
Dayton, OH 45402-7506
Contact:
(937) 732-5123, peter@involvementadvocacy.org
"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men's blood and probably will not themselves be realized."
Daniel Burnham, Chicago lakefront master planner