Community
Building Community.
Restoring Hope.
The line under our logo is a claim. This page is where we back it.
The field record
We do not engage from a conference room.
Before any of it was a firm, it was a man on a corner refusing to leave.
Six days on the corner
39th & Prospect, July 2000
A 144-hour marathon at one of Kansas City's hardest intersections, meeting residents, business owners and anyone who would talk. It produced a citizen-driven corridor plan no consultant study had managed.
The full account →A month in the complex
June 2002
Residents described conditions nobody was fixing. So he moved in for the month and documented it from the inside.
The full account →Nights in fire stations
Kansas City, 2001
Firefighters said the stations were failing. He slept in them. Voters later approved a 15-year, quarter-cent fire sales tax projected to raise $276 million for the Kansas City Fire Department.
The full account →How we engage
Four rules we do not break.
We move in
Not a meeting series. Presence, on their schedule.
We ask everyone
Not just the twenty people who show up.
We publish what we hear
Whatever it says, on a date set in advance.
We say what we cannot decide
Before the first meeting, not after.
The evidence
35+ years of it, written down.
Every claim on this page has a full account behind it. Six days on a corner, a month in a complex, nights in fire stations, and what each one actually changed.
Bring us to your community.
Or join the people already doing this work with us.