Where are our Third Places?

Much of the ABCD work we have been doing looks at the places and spaces that we use in our daily life. How do we use our parks? Where can we walk from point A to point B? How do the businesses in our neighborhood affect our routines? We all spend a considerable amount of time at work and at home, but where is that other space we go to meet friends, our significant other, or family that is comfortable and familiar? Ray Oldenburg, a professor at the University of West Florida calls this extra place beyond home and work the “third place.”

We have watched our favorite characters on weekly sitcoms go to their third place. On the show “Cheers”, it’s the bar. In “Friends”, it’s Central Perk. And on “How I Met Your Mother” it’s MacClaren’s Pub. One of the goals as we learn about and spend time in our North Denver community is to find the third place that we have here and what third places mean to community life.

We tried our local coffee shops – Laughing Latte, Black Eye Coffee, and Common Grounds. While there are some small groups just talking, mostly these shops are filled with people working on their laptops with headphones in, and only stopping to talk to the barista or ask to plug their computer charger in. In the bars it seems that as the neighborhood is branded more and more as trendy and “Top of the Town” that people that do not live or work here are coming to see what the cool, new scene is and not make lasting roots.

So what allows these social spaces to hold that welcoming, vibrant status as a third place? Is it one with more couches and less tables for laptops? Is it a smaller bar that not so many people think is trendy? In your lifetime have you known that you have had a third place? Where do you enjoy spending your time with friends and family that is not school or work? Do you have a third place in North Denver? We want to hear about yours!

Sharing Successes

The Next Step: Bringing Together Groups with Common Interests

Last week we began the next step in this continual process of community engagement and asset mapping work. This next step for us was a community conversation. It included bringing together members of the community with similar interests to simply meet each other and to discuss the findings we have compiled through one-on-one conversations so far. We chose to invite people based on the interests of folks we had already met and through email introductions. This conversation focused on youth, schools, and partnerships with local businesses in the community. In this conversation we shared the asset map we have created so far and anonymous quotes from people that spoke about education and youth during their one-on-ones. This helped create positive dialogue about the programs North Denver schools are currently implementing: both with in-school curriculum and after-school extracurricular activities.

The conversation was highly positive in a number of ways (many that we were not expecting!):

• We were able to introduce people that ordinarily may not have met each other, but are passionate about the same things;
• New assets were added to the map that we had not heard before;
• A way to explain the boundaries of Northwest Denver, including a color coordinated map;
• Follow-up task items created by attendees, including goals for school-business partnerships, collaboration between our local food bank and after-school programs, and ways to create future connections; and
• It provided a way to share the stories of the Jubilee Center, folks in the community, and what is happening in our local schools.

The follow up from this conversation is to check in with the attendees before school begins at the end of August and continue to share contacts that are passionate about the youth in our community.