Creating the “All-In” Culture
March 31, 2015
SEATTLE LEADS THE NEXT HUMAN RESOURCE REVOLUTION
April 28, 2015
LOOKING AT A DIFFERENT KIND OF CULTURE
Over the last year I have focused on my passion for defining and creating high-performance organizational cultures. I have the same passion for defining and creating community spirit. In Seattle we are blessed to have a unique and very rewarding community culture. We love community festivals!
The definition of a festival is:
An event staged by a community, centering on and celebrating some unique aspect of that community and its traditions, often treated as a local holiday.
Last Sunday I was reading Danny Westneat’s column entitled:
GROWTH GONE WILD WEBSITE PINS IT DOWN
We all know Seattle is exploding and we are becoming the new tech hub of the west coast. It was reported last week that in 2014 over 65,000 new King County drivers’ licenses were issued to people that have moved here from somewhere else. I encourage you to visit www.seattleinprogress.com, this site shows you where the 476 large scale buildings are located. These buildings are permitted to be or are currently being built. This does not include any of the last few years of building explosion.
This article considers what will Seattle be like in the next few years; will our community festivals be alive and well? Will all the new residents of our great city get involved? Can our Community Festival culture remain intact in the midst of major demographic changes in the city’s population?
66 years ago, when the Seattle business community started Seafair and many of the neighborhood festivals, Seattle needed to define itself after the Alaskan gold rush was over – and our great Community Festival culture was born, with Seafair, in a way that would be impossible to replicate today. 50 years ago we had a special World’s Fair and the Seattle Center has proven to be an enduring central gathering place for festivals, with Bumbershoot still alive and kicking, as well as Folklife, the Bite of Seattle, The International Children’s Festival, and, now entering their 20th years, the 24 different Festals, cultural festivals hosted on the Seattle Center grounds.
Part of the pressure of keeping these Festivals alive is in how these events take place: the majority of the effort to do a festival is with volunteers – people who do not get paid – they do this work because they believe in their communities. I wondered just how many festivals does our region and Seattle in particular host each year? – According to an event website called www.event12.com (which is a great resource for planning any month’s activities) the Greater Seattle Region holds 786 events each year: film festivals, music, dance, and Arts festivals, cultural festivals, and neighborhood parades. Somewhat new to the event list are a growing number of wine and food celebrations, food truck events, and Microbrew and Whisky events. Of the 786 events listed, 225 are Festivals. Seattle has 88 events listed as community festivals, not counting the many film festivals listed in the website. The high season for Community Festivals are July, August, September, and October, and October is the biggest month overall for Festivals.
What I have learned:
SEATTLE AND OUR REGION HAVE A LOT OF COMMUNITY FESTIVALS.
Will they survive our population explosion?
I think the answer to this is that we don’t really know – The neighborhoods of Seattle are growing as fast as South Lake Union, which should enlarge the audience to support the growing crowds, but I think the real question is: will the volunteer army that loves, produces, and maintains these cultural festival survive the increased difficulty of maintaining and producing these events….
Remember, these volunteer or low-paid event producers have to meet never-ending changes in government permits and processes, our new international company status means sponsorships for local events become more difficult to secure, it is difficult for community level organizers to keep up with the new technologies for everything from volunteer management databases to hand-held components, and most importantly, the next generations of people need to understand (and not take for granted!) that Seattle culture supports these Community and Cultural Festivals.
65 years ago Seattle needed an image and a community spirit – and all these years later, Seattle’s image shines through its Festival spirit. I would contest that Seattle is a great city not only because we have the water, mountains, international companies, a great waterfront and very moderate weather with very few bugs, but also because Seattle has a community spirit where we all can enjoy each others’ diversity of neighborhoods and culture, because we are all invited to share this spirit, by pitching in to produce or showing up to enjoy our 88 Festivals.
