Something had already changed at the dark end of Bridge Street. A couple of retailers chalked some hopscotch squares on the pavement and dawdled outside their shops to watch what might happen. People on the street responded almost immediately. An elderly woman with a Zimmer-frame was making slow progress up the street. She wasn't able to hop but she steered her frame towards the hopscotch markings so that she could at least walk over the numbered squares on the footpath.
David Engwicht I went to a public workshop last Monday and it had me in tears. It was held, as these things often are, in a fairly utilitarian space with grey chairs and grey tables. Before a representative of the workshop’s sponsor - Nelson City Council - could give the usual welcome and introduce the speaker, there was the typical last-minute tussle with an uncooperative computer projection system.
We’ve all been to workshops with this kind of set-up: a worthy topic, presented by a dull but knowledgeable speaker, in a dull but functional room, aided and abetted by an over-head projector. If tears are shed at such workshops, they are usually tears of frustration. While work piles up back at the office, you squirm through the plodding torture of a PowerPoint presentation yearning for the impossibly distant El Dorado of morning tea.
But the tears that came to my eyes at this workshop were not those kind of tears. They were the kind of tears that come when something touches you deeply. The tears were also completely unexpected: when did you last feel moved by an interaction organised by a local authority?
We’ve all been to workshops with this kind of set-up: a worthy topic, presented by a dull but knowledgeable speaker, in a dull but functional room, aided and abetted by an over-head projector. If tears are shed at such workshops, they are usually tears of frustration. While work piles up back at the office, you squirm through the plodding torture of a PowerPoint presentation yearning for the impossibly distant El Dorado of morning tea.
But the tears that came to my eyes at this workshop were not those kind of tears. They were the kind of tears that come when something touches you deeply. The tears were also completely unexpected: when did you last feel moved by an interaction organised by a local authority?
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