Open Space

Recently in our sustainability and community relations class we were given the opportunity to participate in an open space workshop in order to generate ideas for the overall goal of “What can I do to help Colwood” become more carbon neutral. This ultimately aided the class in brainstorming a number of ideas and concepts to help produce individual team wikis/presentations for the Colwood council.

The group that I eventually reached to becoming a member of revolved around improving the trail system at the Royal Roads campus and inevitably promoting the opportunity for users to bike/walk/jog these trails. It initially involved incorporating all the bike paths in the Colwood municipality but our group felt that the focus on Royal Roads Campus would be of more interest. The Royal Roads campus is a large part of Colwood and is largely shaded by the fact that the trails are not openly exposed to residents and visitors. Our group felt that the generation of a map using GPS and ArcGIS would provide the necessary resources for people to thoroughly enjoy this campus for all it has to offer. Signage was also an issue as we felt that the existing trail map was confusing and the fact that the trails have none in place. We also felt that perhaps a survey of Colwood residents would provide the data necessary to see how willing the community would be to these ideas and perhaps be the encouragement for taking this idea from paper to actual reality. In my mind, Royal Roads is a largely untapped sustainable resource and hopefully with our groups vision we can encourage people to enjoy the campus without the need to generate carbon emissions.

I felt that the open space workshop was a very valuable tool which opened up the creativity in individuals and help connect classmates with similar interests. The open space workshop allowed our class to freely move around as they please between all of the carbon neutral ideas that were generated. The two foot approach gave everybody the freedom to leave and enter groups as they please. In the end, the groups that were left were based on by chance and similar interests. The open space environment opened up the imagination of our cohort and in the end produced a number of ideas that can hopefully become implemented within the municipality of Colwood. The open space workshop I feel was very appropriate and perhaps the best tool that could have been used for this purpose. There were no limitations and nobody was held back from their ideas. Open space can be applied to a variety of situations and I feel that this example that took place within our cohort further exclaims that this can work and should be applied to other team building exercises. In conclusion, each individual idea was thoroughly discussed and changed throughout the 3 hour block of time that we were allowed to work on this. In the end of this, a refined and polished set of concepts existed which included each members individual thoughts.