Shogren Consulting | Heritage, Museum & Cultural Planning

Our Principal, Sam Shogren, travels to Toronto in mid-August to receive his introductory training to the principals and practices of LEAD - Leadership for Environment and Development.  Shogren will be joining colleagues selected from throughout Canada at the Humber College Institute of Technology & Advanced Learning in Toronto for six days of workshops, lectures and hands-on expereince.  This first LEAD training session titled: “Sustainability in a Changing World: Energy and Cities” will teach LEAD’s fundamental tools for facilitating change in communities and organizations through multi-stakeholder process towards a sustainable future. The principlas and practices of sustainability will be explored both in the classroom and in the field with trips to Humber College’s new Centre for Urban Ecology, the Toronto Transit Commission, Toronto City Hall, Toronto Community Housing Corporation and their project at Regents Park–a billion dollar urban/public housing redevelopment project, and a visit to FOCUS - A grass roots youth collaborative and arts education project located within Regents Park.

CONGRATULATIONS!!

Our President and Principal, Sam Shogren, has been selected by LEAD Canada to join the LEAD network and undertake the training required to become a LEAD Fellow.  LEAD, short for Leadership for Environment and Development, searches worldwide for outstanding people, developing their leadership potential through innovative training programs and working with them to mobilize others to make a real difference to the future of this planet.

LEAD Canada is a not-for-profit corporation, dedicated to furthering the goals of environmental, social and economic sustainability through training, projects and networking.  Created in 1994, LEAD Canada joined the global network set up by LEAD International, which was originally funded by the Rockefeller Foundation.  One of 13 member programs, LEAD Canada is comprised of about 90 of the 1800 LEAD Fellows living and working around the world.

The LEAD network, which was built over many years through its leadership training program, is made up of professionals from many backgrounds, including scientists, medical doctors, environmentalists, engineers, lawyers, economists, journalists, business and cultural specialists.

LEAD offices across the world deliver training programs that challenge traditional notions of leadership with progressive participatory techniques. Using LEAD’s experiential learning approach, our participants learn through multi-stakeholder dialogue, systems thinking, and inclusive cross-cultural processes.

Internationally LEAD Member Programs operate in Brazil, Canada, China, Commonwealth of Independent States, Europe, Francophone Africa, India, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Southern Africa. These is currently no program in the United States.

This was a fantastic conference organized, planned, and hosted by the graduate students in the Museology Program at the University of Washington. Close to 100 people attended representing museums and academic programs from both coasts, the Midwest, Canada and China!

Significant news for us here at Shogren Consulting is the warm reception for our Principal Sam Shogren’s paper titled: Museums, Starbucks and the Third Place Way: Civil Society and the Revisioned Museum. Presenting in the first general session, Sam’s concepts of museums as Third Places, curtailing construction of new museums to seek new community partnerships and the emphasis on sustainability were influential throughout the conference.

Look here shortly for a link to a version of the paper Sam presented.

Can the arts and culture play a central role in revitalizing American cities? Over the past decade, a number of cities have answered this question affirmatively. For the most part, they have turned to big-ticket downtown cultural districts as the strategy to expand their “creative economy.” At the same time, skeptics like Joel Kotkin have ridiculed this approach as the creation of “the ephemeral city” that ignores thefundamentals of good city-building for the illusion of urban vitality.

Cultivating Natural Cultural Districts